Did Trump's efforts to challenge the 2020 election outcome help or hinder him in 2024? That is, was his performance in the 2024 election better or worse than in an alternate universe where he didn't warn about cheating beforehand, claim it afterwards, call state officials, arrange alternative electors or hold a rally on January 6th?
There was a brief period after January 6th in which many people thought he'd disqualified himself; that centrists and some Republicans (politicians and voters) would reject him to signal that those actions weren't acceptable. My impression is that this happened but in low numbers. On the other hand, I imagine the part of his base who believe his claims would be energised by those actions, as in their view justice was quashed and January 6th protestors were jailed for standing up for a righteous cause. Is there any way to estimate which effect was stronger?
-- the claim is that someone must be pumping in catchy words like "constitutional crisis" into the narrative stream.
How does one determine if this could be a genuine coincidence; after all there is a lot of media out there, and constitutional crisis is not exactly a rare word. Or, whether this is organic rather than cultivated virality?
Why should it be a coincidence? Journalists do read what others are writing; also, if there is a constitutional crisis brewing (such as a president telling his appointees to ignore the law), it's the journalists' job to call it that.
Go read Nobody Special's answer. It makes all the good points about how this is an emergent result of uncoordinated activity without a "manipulative intent". It makes all the "nice and interesting points" -- the search engines distilling the attention of the public, the web being a malleable media, the iteration speed and cross-pollination driving convergence.
Unfortunately it's all well-meaning bunk. The real reason for CNN and Politico using the same term is simple: CNN and Politico senior editors are in the same chat room, at some point they brainstormed what term the headlines should use, and now they are using it.
Oh yeah, and they totally had "manipulative intent".
I can see that what you say is *a priori plausible*, but from there, how does one go to "probable"?
Edit: Other than appealing to purely subjective guesstimates of "odds". In other words, how can people with opposite readings of the issue talk to rather than past each other on this matter?
I think it's due to a variety of factors, but none of them conspiratorial or reflecting manipulative intent.
Historically, journalism did this as well. There are a variety of names one could give to Nixon's scandal breaking into and spying on the DNC, but ultimately coverage coalesced around "Watergate" rather than "White House Spying" or other alternatives. This happens for perfectly good non-conspiratorial reasons. News organizations wanted to sell papers, and once the public conversation consolidates around particular nomenclature, you want to fit that nomenclature so that your audience understands what you're selling. In the early days of Watergate, headlines likely varied. Once you're a month in, if all the other papers are festooned with headlines on the latest news on "Watergate," while your paper has updates on the "Liddy Affair," the public may not understand what you're selling and consequently their interest may drift to other sellers.
This trend continues into the internet era, where it is exacerbated by multiple factors. Not a media expert, so YMMV but just to list a few that seem most plausible to me:
(1) News is now elevated by algorithm and search engines. The average reader googling "Trump Constitutional Crisis" may not care much whether they get the latest updates from CNN or Politico. But Politico and CNN, respectively, care a lot which link the reader clicks, and consequently have a strong desire to best mold their article to whatever keywords people are searching.
(2) Add to #1 the fact that internet articles can be revised while live, in a way that old newspapers can't. That means that once algorithm emergent social consensus around a particular phrase emerges, you can go back and revise all your "DNC Break-In" articles to be "Watergate" articles. And because of the nature of the search engine driving clicks, which drive eyeballs and money, you have every incentive to do those revisions - you'd be crazy not to.
(3) High-turnover media and consequent cross citation. The need for a constant churn of new media means less and less resources & time to dedicate to truly new reporting. If I need new articles every 4 hours on the latest DOGE activities, there's no way I'm getting those out fast enough if I limit myself to solely my own independent research. So I’m much more likely to cite a CNN article that came out an hour before mine, and other publications coming out later will cite to me. Doing anything else results in my content coming too late, which no one can afford, so further ambient pressure in the system standardizes the descriptions of the coverage.
It's the same reason that there were tons of headlines about the "superbowl" this weekend, and a ton of headlines about "tariffs" and "plane crashes" last month.
People talking about the news isn't exactly a conspiracy, and the president triggering or threatening to trigger a constitutional crisis is pretty fucking big news.
As someone who has hated Musk long before it was fashionable, let me outline the case briefly:
- Musk is a charlatan who brags about accomplishments that are not his (e.g., being the founder of Tesla). When he actually designs something, you get things like the cybertruck.
- he is a vaporware salesman who has built a massive house of cards on empty promises (robotaxis, "fixing traffic", the "hyperloop", going to Mars...)
- he treats his employees like shit, and doesn't give a rat's ass about laws, regulations and workplace safety.
If you need the long-form version of everything wrong with the man, consult the youtube channel "Common Sense Skeptic".
ETA: of course, Musk has recently done a lot of despicable stuff beyond what I wrote, but that's on the news anyway, so I don't have to repeat it.
Obviously I can't keep you from considering the man a hero, but I only see a few options:
- you have solid information that my claims above are wrong or least misleading. Then I'd like to hear them. I consider that unlikely, because this is all pretty well documented.
- you acknowledge the claims above, but judge that, compared to what remains of Musk's merits, they are irrelevent. Then you should think about what it means that you adore an amoral blowhard.
- you ignore the claims above and stick your fingers in your ears. Again, you should think about what that means for your judgement criteria.
- you acknowledge the claims and adore Musk BECAUSE he is an amoral blowhard. In that case, you are clearly part of the problem.
I didn't say I adored Musk. Let's not stick words in each others mouth. I said he is a hero. Is he a flawed hero? Of course all real heroes have their flaws. Is he an asshole sometimes, yes. Does wrong stuff, yes.. all the others. IDK, but I'll take your word for it. so take that as a yes. I've read a biography of Musk and listened to ~10+ hrs of him taking with Lex Fridman and Rogan. My impression (and this comes partially from believing Lex.) is that he's the same person in private as he is in public. I call that a straight shooter. He's telling you what he really thinks and I respect that. As far as business, he seems to have (so far) avoided having his businesses taken over by middle management. He does this by drilling down into everything, he seems somewhat unique in this regard. Now he's offered to focus this talent into our bureaucratic state. And I say, "Drill baby drill." (Sorry I just couldn't resist that last line. :^)
"My impression (and this comes partially from believing Lex.) is that he's the same person in private as he is in public. I call that a straight shooter. He's telling you what he really thinks and I respect that. "
That's the same line that people use about Trump. Problem is, they're both pathological liars who say whatever suits their needs at a given time.
Do you know the story about the solar rooftop presentation? Im 2016, Musk arranged for an unveil event for solar shingles at a movie set and said "The houses around you are all solar houses. Did you notice?" - and went on to present solar shingles in various designs and colors.
The houses around had nothing to do with solar, and the shingles weren't functional. Why did he do that? To convince Tesla shateholders to buy SolarCity, a failing company owned by his cousins. Does that sound like a straight shooter or like a conman?
So like... this is a thing that you could google, right? There are *at least* thousands of people online who have spelled out in some detail why they hate Elon Musk. If you don't understand, it's because you haven't tried to. Like, at all. And since you didn't phrase it as a question, but more of a boast, I guess you're proud of that?
But anyway, I'll pretend you want to understand, and tell you my thoughts.
For most people I know, buying twitter and allowing Nazi accounts to thrive (e.g. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-musk-nazi-extremist-white-nationalist-accounts-rcna145020) was the tipping point from "Elon is an annoying rich guy" to "Elon is a mortal enemy". And to anticipate the claim that he did it for "free speech" I would point out that he has suspended real journalists while allowing Nazis to remain, and he's limited speech he doesn't like (such as the terms "cis" and "cisgender"). He is not a principled advocate for free speech - he is a principled advocate for white nationalism. Also, not sure if you know this, but he did a Nazi salute on TV. Twice. And a lot of people hate Nazis.
Do you also need me to explain why people hate Nazis?
But again, that's just my personal experience with why people hate Musk. By all means, take to google or reddit and see what other people have to say. I mean, we both know you won't do that. But the information is there, and now you can't say no one has ever showed it to you.
Yeah no I do understand. I live with my son and he hates Musk too. And so let me make a stab at why I think people hate Musk, and it's really the same reason that people hate Bobby (Kennedy). And I can identify the reason, because I use to hate Bobby and Trump and others. And that is because I bought into what everyone else was saying about them. Everyone says these people are evil and going to do harm and are bad, and they tell you why, and the easy thing is to just believe them and say yes. I hate them too. The only way (I know) to break this trap, is to listen to what the people say themselves. This often involves (for me) listening to a several hour podcast (from maybe Lex or Rogan) and getting to know the person. (Or reading the books they have written.) Most people don't have the time or inclination to do that... so they just say what everyone around them is saying. Now perhaps I started out in a bit better position, because I've listened to Rogan for years, and I know most of the things people say about him are a distortion. So I was open to finding out that the main stream view of these other people, (Musk and Bobby) was perhaps a distortion. And I guess I'm just asking you to be open to the possibility that these people aren't evil.
About Nazis: I don't like Nazis, I don't want to listen to them, and yet in the name of free speech I think Nazis should be allowed to air their ideas. I don't know about Musk limiting speech about cis and cis gender, but clearly this is also not right and in my opinion a mistake on Musk's part.
Although, if you're super interested in what Elon Musk said, remember that time he said that Jews were promoting anti-white racism? And then when advertisers started to leave twitter because of all the Nazi stuff on twitter, do you remember Elon's response? He told the advertisers - not the Nazis - the advertisers, who are his company's source of income - "go fuck yourselves".
It sure seems like when Elon was promoting electric cars and talking about colonizing Mars, everyone was cool with him. He even got a shoutout on Star Trek Discovery, a show so woke they made Stacey Abrams President of Earth. And then it seems like when he started promoting Nazis, then people said "hey, wait, actually this guy sucks."
So I would say it's the exact opposite of your theory. People liked him just fine until they listened to him freely and publicly express his thoughts, at which point they were disgusted.
I also don't engage directly on Twitter, but if you're choosing to ignore the inflammatory things that Musk makes a point of saying and amplifying on the platform he bought at enormous expense and risk to his entire business empire, I wonder why you would do that and instead ONLY pay attention to the things he says during laid-back interviews with sympathetic bros like Rogan and Friedman.
I mean, if a person helps a bunch of Nazis to spread Nazi ideology, and then gives them the Nazi salute twice on TV, and then you listen to that guy on a podcast and decide you like him, does that mean that you were mistaken before and he's actually a good guy, or that you are mistaken now and have been conned by a Nazi? Lots of people decided to listen to Hitler and then decided that he had a lot of good points. We all grew up wondering why people listened to Hitler, because in retrospect it's obvious that he was evil. But apparently, it's not always immediately obvious that evil people are evil, because apparently they have some kind of persuasive ability that convinces people to listen to them, despite what they do when given power.
So I guess the question is, do you think that a program of eliminating trans people, purging the country of immigrants, purging the government of anyone who isn't loyal to Trump, eliminating vaccinations and public health programs, eliminating support for democracy abroad, ethnic cleansing the Gaza strip to develop it as a seaside resort, and suddenly cutting off food and medicine to millions of people, including children, who were depending and counting on it is heroic? Or is that all Nazi stuff? If you have an answer to that, it really doesn't matter what Elon says when he's smoking pot with Joe Rogan.
Oh dear, I don't think Musk is a Nazi, you are free to have a different opinion. TBH I don't pay all that much attention to what Trump and Musk are doing. (I did watch that youtube video above... I fast forwarded through some of it.) I think 1/2 the time Trump and Musk are trolling the other side, and it would be much better if they were not such assholes. But there is not much I can do about that.
I don't think all the purging you are worried about is going to happen. I think we need to shrink the federal government, and borders need to be controlled along with immigration. Trans people will be fine, I know they are all very worried right now. I'm not sure but much of that is fear generated from the left. Support for democracy abroad is almost Orwellian in some respects, we need to let other countries self determine, and stop interfering. I don't expect vaccines to be eliminated, but Bobby might recommend delaying some, or giving parents the option to opt out of some. IDK I'm hoping he can MAHA, he really wants to help IMHO. And for the rest... yeah heroic in that I think he is doing the right thing, even though he will be hated for it. But that's just my opinion.
"TBH I don't pay all that much attention to what Trump and Musk are doing."
Previously you said you listen to what they say. But you don't pay attention to what they do. And then you're confused that people have a different opinion than you?
You're doing this the wrong way round. This is how you get taken in by con men.
I don't pay attention to the news, which is distorted this way or that by the news agency. I've listened to some of the senate confirmation hearings. And the above video with Trump and Musk talking to reporters in the oval office. That's not reporting, it's the ground or first level truth. You can say, no Trump and Musk are talking at a higher level and conning me. That could be true, so shame on me. But until I see evidence otherwise, I'm going to assume that they are talking ground or first level truth to me. It is the only way we can effectively communicate with each other. And I give you here, my first level truth.
5. RFK went to Samoa to campaign against vaccines in the midst of a measles outbreak that killed 83 people. There is currently a measles outbreak in Texas. Measles can be eliminated by vaccines.
It seems like the theme here is that you doubt that Musk, Trump, and RFK are going to do things *they've already done*, and your answer to "Musk posts a bunch of Nazi stuff" is "well I don't look at it."
So, I think you have your answer: people hate Musk because they pay attention to what he says and does, and read news, and know what's going on in the world. You like Musk, Trump, and RFK because you have no idea what they are doing and can't be bothered to find out.
A good trick for understanding stuff like this is to imagine the situation with opposite partisanship.
For example, imagine that Harris was president, and she forcibly shut down ICE by decree and fired all border agents against the wishes of congress. You'd be pretty mad in that case, right?
Hmm my immigration views are mixed at the moment, so that's not a good analogy for me. And TBH what Musk is trying to do is fix our budget. I'm all in favor of that, and if we had to open our borders to get our budget under control, I'd sign up for that.
What Musk is trying to do is to destroy or hamstring government agencies and programs he disapproves of. There is zero possibility that the things he is doing will "fix" the budget, or even close the gap sufficiently that other plausible measures might fix the budget. And if he were trying to fix the budget, the first thing on his agenda would be to try and convince Donald Trump to walk back his tax cut proposals.
Musk isn't an idiot, he knows all this, and he's still going Full DOGE. So, notwithstanding the name, he isn't trying to fix the budget.
Hmm yeah you may be right, and I'm a stooge. In which case I'll admit it. I think we need more time to find out. I'm sorry I don't know anything about Trumps tax cuts. Do people expect them to be approved? None of this budget stuff happens unless congress gets involved.
I remain as hopeful as I was in the first few months of Obama's first term. That all came to nothing, but I remain hopeful again. (I've got practice I'm a Buffalo Bills fan :^)
This is literally THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY of Republicans in Congress. The chances of them not going through are extremely small.
I hate political news as much as anyone, but this is a case where even the most cursory reading would correct an extremely inaccurate view of the world.
The number one priority of Republicans in Congress is keeping themselves in Congress. But, yeah, the tax cuts are number one in the hype and I suspect in the top three actual priorities. And the few GOP congressmen who are willing to sometimes stand up to Trump, have to pick their battles carefully. They're not going to die on the hill of "Americans should pay more taxes!"
So, yes, we are going to get another five trillion dollars in debt out of this.
The Republican's are currently targeting a deficit increase of 4.5 TRILLION over the next decade. There's no way that you can pretend that Musk is killing highly effective programs like PEPFAR (about 6 billion a year) because he cares about the debt.
This is a bit like defunding the police "because you just can't spare the money and hard choices have to be made" and then spending 50x as much on student loan forgiveness.
I think pepfar is back to being funded? But I don't know the status.
I don't understand your defund the police and student debt point. Personally I think police could use more funding, and student loan forgiveness is a terrible idea. (I also think that student debt not being able to be discharged in bankruptcy is a terrible law.)
Oh a deficit of ~0.5 trillion per year would be way better than what it is now. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/ Of course I assume the Republicans are making all the savings in the last half of that decade and that this year it will be over 1 trillion again... sigh.
> Oh a deficit of ~0.5 trillion per year would be way better than what it is now
You misunderstand. 4.5 trillion isn't their target for the deficit over 10 years. It's their target for how much to INCREASE the deficit over 10 years.
To increase the debt, not the deficit. Or phrase it some other way, but nobody talks about 10 year deficits, if you're talking about a deficit you need to use annualized terms.
> I think pepfar is back to being funded? But I don't know the status.
I think Musk made noises in that direction, but it's hard to believe when he's fired everyone and "put it through the woodchipper". At this point, there's probably nothing left to unfreeze in the first place.
> Personally I think police could use more funding, and student loan forgiveness is a terrible idea.
So do I. I was just using it as a hypothetical partisan-reversed example of what Republicans are doing.
We continue to run big deficits and the national debt continues to grow. This is not sustainable, it will lead to massive inflation. Trump has only been in office for ~1 month. TBH I'm not sure he (Trump) has any interest in fixing the deficit. I think Musk does. And yeah when dealing with the budget they have to get congress involved to do it legally. Hopefully that happens sooner.
Republicans are currently trying to massively increase the deficit by cutting taxes and increasing spending on things they favor, same as they've done in every past administration. Current target is an increase of 4.5 TRILLION over the next 10 years from tax cuts. That easily dwarfs anything plausibly achievable via spending cuts.
I agree that it's unsustainable, but so far Republicans have shown no inclination to do anything but make the problem worse. You'll know people are serious about the debt once they start talking about raising taxes. Heck, even following the spending limits they themselves forced on Biden would be a good first step.
"In violation of multiple clear federal laws each in place for decades" is a whole other level, one which no POTUS has attempted during the lifetimes of anyone present.
And then "flatly defying rulings from several federal courts", which the VPOTUS and others in the administration are openly suggesting right now...yea that's when we really finally do enter banana-republic territory. That's a huge step never seen before in the USA*.
(* No, Andrew Jackson didn't do this. He declined to help enforce a SCOTUS ruling upon the party that had lost the case, which was not great coming from a guy whose oath of office is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States". But that wasn't what Vance and Musk are now talking about doing which would be way worse.)
Google are total cowards who just want to make billions upon billions of dollars in peace. For an example on the other side: You currently can't get the USD to Brazilian Real conversion rate from Google Finance, because the Brazilian government got mad that they listed a too high rate once.
This isn't the first country that has attempted to enforce rules about maps. What is the body of water between Korea and Japan? Where is the line-of-control in Kashmir? For at least a decade, Google has had a policy where it follows government dicta in the country that issued them. So in China it draws maps the way the Chinese government says; in India it draws maps the way the Indian government says, etc.
So it isn't the least bit surprising that Google did this. As far as the Trump regime being "authoritarian" or "illiberal" like China or India ... you can do the math.
The 2 + 2 = 5 edict comes tomorrow. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell are on the fence on that one. They'll need Sean Spicer to come back and say "That's how it adds up now. Period."
It's near the top of the section called "Name" -- which seems appropriate given the short time the "Gulf of America" conversation has even been a thing:
It used to be in the introduction, and they removed it. Anyways, it doesn't matter whether you think it's justified, only whether the administration thinks it is.
Forcibly remove its leadership and replace them with government sympathizers? It's not just about the Gulf of Mexico, of course. Obviously they're not going to be happy with the fact that the world's biggest encyclopedia is being run by leftists.
They have many other strong opinions as well, many of which I disagree with and many of which they aren't transparent about, but they're right on this one, a stupid edit war over that article would be a bad thing and preventing such is their responsibility.
Someone please tell me if this is true, because now I'm singing to myself "there's a centre, down a mineshaft, in Boyers, Pennsylvania" (inspired by this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk22CHRAoPU):
"During a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk shared a bizarre exchange, with Musk making an unexpected mention of a “limestone mine” where federal retirement paperwork is processed.
The mine in question, as Musk described, is not a hypothetical facility but a real location called Iron Mountain, situated in Boyers, Pennsylvania. It plays a central role in processing federal employee retirement applications, a process that remains remarkably analog, despite various efforts to modernize."
You don’t know about that over in Potatoland? Jeez, yeah, they use trolls for workers in Boyers. Billboard at city limits reads “Trolls for the Olds,” with a drawing of a cute troll, looking sort of like a giant Danny DeVito. Though actually they look like Giant naked mole rats and smell like toilets
In other Bumbling Buffoon news, behold our new defense secretary giving away negotiation positions before any negotiation even started:
"Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, has said it is "unrealistic" to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders, when Russia first took control of Crimea. [...] The US defence secretary also downplayed suggestions of Ukraine joining Nato."
Depending on if putin is a full psychopath or merely a pure nationalist he may actaully drink his own kool aid that sections of ukraine were loyal to russia and very russian; the russian speaking sections of Ukraine should have been given to russia, as they clearly made their choice.
He seems to be in that cool-aid "one people" territory, he keeps pushing "Ukraine is not real" thing every time he can. The terrible irony is that it's the eastern part that was the most Russian-speaking, and got the worst death and destruction. There were some numbers that nobody ever disputed, like, in the year prior to the '22 invasion the total number of casualties in Donbass was in the 100-200 range, most of which were combatants. I think less than 10 civilians were killed. Known, documented with real names Russian casualties alone are now >90,000.
I'm not seeing the benefit of pretending Crimea is going back to Ukraine. Unless the Ukrainian military can conquer it first, there's very little chance a peace agreement would include any territorial concessions by Russia. Maybe some mutual trades for borders that make more sense, but nobody thinks Russia is just going to give back any of the land it occupies. Crimea least of all. If there's going to be a negotiation, it's going to be about land conquered more recently, and not even all of that. Crimea was gone in 2014 when nobody seriously questioned it at that time.
Yes, this may be one way to get a peace deal, or there may be all kinds of arrangements that leave some questions in the grey zone, etc. The point is you just don't per-announce obvious concessions before starting negotiations. It's a rookie mistake.
Maybe, but I don't think so. There's a small value lost to Putin, but because absolutely no one thinks that's a real point of contention, that value is incredibly small. It would be like pre-committing to not nuking Moscow as part of the deal. Technically a give, but again not worth anything.
On the other hand, there is a value in getting your allies at the negotiating table to come to an agreement about what to ask for. Whoever the holdouts would be (presumably Ukraine but likely also people in the US) need pushing to not slow down or stop the process. Sometimes you need to publicly commit your side so that they are forced to accept it, or otherwise fight in back channels forever.
So the question is not whether something of value was given up, but whether the value of conceding to Putin is more or less than the value of getting your own team in line. I think the value of conceding was so low that it would be difficult for it to be relevant, but regardless the value of getting your team in line is more than what was lost.
I agree with your analysis of potential dynamics team dynamics, but note how we are now engaging in the exact thing we should not be: presupposing the value of the concession to Putin. Why do this? Good negotiators just... don't do this stuff, things can only be communicated to the relevant parties in private. We don't actually know what is and what isn't important to Putin. Why guess when one could just say nothing? The default choice is always "no comment", how hard is that? One can even say, if the zipper store is out of stock, something to the effect "we don't want to jeopardize possible future negotiations, I'm sure you understand".
But that requires a degree of professionalism and competency that... nevermind. Like I said, we the people voted this crew in.
Related partial Mea Culpa. I don't disagree with what I wrote before, but apparently Hegseth has said a whole lot more that Putin can and will use to inform negotiation policy going forward.
I never heard of him before he was nominated, but I am now leaning more towards "idiot" than I was before.
Is your complaint that it *is* reasonable to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders? Or just that starting with an unreasonable ask leads to a better deal in the end?
You want to ask for *something* that you don't really expect to get, both because you might get it anyway and why leave that on the table, and as you note because if you don't get it you can make that look like a concession that you are making in exchange for something they are giving up. But it has to be something at least vaguely plausible, or nobody will take it seriously.
If I offer to sell my second car for $20,000, there's a good chance I'll get the $15,000 it is probably worth and I *might* get $17,500. If I advertise it for $200,000, nobody is even going to call.
Asking Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine now, without some truly major change in the military situation, is like trying to sell a 2017 Mazda for $200,000. It costs you nothing to say "this is a decent used car but we're obviously not asking $200,000 for it".
Well, it costs you nothing in the context of the negotiations. There may be some outside-context reason for it, but you'll then want to privately make it clear to the actual negotiating partner that this is just posturing. And usually, it's best not to do that sort of thing.
Thank you, this is a good summary. WRT Crimea the potential solution space is wide open in both time and legal dimensions (back in 22 there was a proposal floating to just punt the question for the next 15 years, which actually was a good idea - at that point Putin will likely be dead and Zelenskiy out of power, opening space for new people to make a deal). Hasty public pronouncements drastically shrink the negotiation space.
BTW I think CSPAN TV thing, where they transmit Congress deliberations live, is a terrible idea that may have directly contributed to the polarization and dysfunction of Congress.
Reverse stupidity is not intelligence, as folks here like to say.
Look, one thing I do know about negotiations is that one should not publicly give the opposing side what it wants before the negotiations started. The best thing to do before negotiation is to say nothing. How freaking hard is that?
I guess too hard for the team of stable geniuses running the show now.
Oh, Trump promised to end the war in 1 day. Let me guess, the bumbling buffoon was just running his big mouth, as usual. "Who knew healthcare was so complicated".
Also, what alliance? With us? The country that at this point is famous for breaking every alliance and promise it makes, sometimes for no reason whatsoever? Why would anyone want to be in alliance with us? Milking us for money/weapons/whatever, that's fine, but an alliance?
Russia and the Trump administration do have significantly more in common ideologically than the EU or the rest of the world.
Considering that even two racial supremacist nations of different races ended up developing an alliance just because they were both imperialist, I don't think a US-Russia alliance is off the table. After all, if we're going to have WW3, it would be fitting for there to be a new Axis powers.
Why yes, also Gandalf could lend a hand, together with the tooth fairy.
One reason these goons have been so successful is that they actually do things, while the other side whines on bluesky and reads the thoughtful articles in the Atlantic, hoping that some omnipotent entity will take note of their concerns and swoop down to write the wrongs and punish the evildoers.
I mentioned ASI because I think "conventional avenues" will no longer work.
I think America's situation, though people don't realize it yet, is akin to Russia or China. How do people in those countries "work within the system" to restore democratic processes and liberties? They don't. They get jailed. They get killed. Those countries are 1984. America is probably only months-or-years away from the same.
ASI... it IS a recommendation of how to "actually do things". We need forces larger than even those imagined by George Orwell. ASI is one of the few things that qualifies (or perhaps something else). Perhaps it can carry out some massive pro-social pro-humanitarian social-political manipulation. How ELSE do you propose to soften such regimes once they've solidified?
What would the hypothetical ASI even like...do? This is a power/law problem, and those aren't a part of the universe like atoms or magnetic force, they exist in the minds of humans. Humans are the ones to make changes in reality. If the ASI prints "Hey, stop that" on a screen, what does that to do the humans doing the thing? If the ASI somehow has brute force on its side, how does that work? Why should the humans actually carrying the guns listen to the computer?
Hundreds of millions of people ALREADY DO do what computers tell them. (why bother with specifics? If you're reply to me, a stream of text has successfully gotten under your skin, lol)
Seriously, an ASI with read/write access to enough systems could manipulate, hack, disrupt, lay-utter-waste on a medieval scale.
I'm not saying they'll definitely fight for *us*. But I sure as hell hope some of them DO!
Don't underestimate the number of brutal regimes that faded PURELY because the Invincible Autocrat died and gave way to a weaker person or group at the TOP...
Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Stalin, Qianlong Emperor, The First Emperor of China...
These people were untouchable from inside-and-outside their realms...
Sure, but what does that have to do with my point? My point being, even the most oppressive, entrenched, and militarily superior regimes can be overcome from the bottom, both violently and non-violently.
In all the cases I mentioned, it is IMPOSSIBLE to prove whether those regimes could have fallen... EVER... without their central figure dying. All the leaders I mentioned had a vise-like grip on society. Resistance = pointless. There's probably 100's more examples.
This was a central theme of 1984: a system that was not only evil, but might not ever collapse.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever"
The problem is that ASI is not real. It will not be real in 2028. It may, depending on your definition of it, be impossible. So whatever the solution is, it's best to not throw impossible deuce ex machina things into the mix.
How about having ASI turn the people you think are bad guys into paper clips? Then everyone else also gets a turn giving ASI their bad guys list for the paperclip transform treatment. Oops, one of them put you on the bad guys list!
Presumably the States would. The federal agencies are under the command of the President, the state agencies are not. Short of sending in the army how exactly is Trump supposed to "topple" them?
It wouldn't even be a question of the states having to "stop him". The states will continue to run the elections according to their own laws, as always, and if Trump et al insist that they should do something different, then the state governments will simply and correctly note that he isn't the boss of them and ignore him. Properly so, just like they would if one of us were to call them and insist that they rejigger their election laws.
Trump would have to stop *them*, and as you note he'd pretty much need to send the Army to do it. And I doubt the Army would follow that illegal order.
And consider the fact that most states are Republican to start with. And consider the fact that all these states have to, ultimately, submit their ballots for president to the U.S. Capitol. They'll simply "count what they feel like counting". And Trump-Musk have proven repeatedly they don't care what the courts tell them to do.
Who do you think would win in a showdown between the U.S. Military and some state's National Guard?
If the President / Executive tells an armed agent to shoot someone.... and a judge tells an armed agent to shoot someone ("the opposite someone"), who does the armed agent shoot?
Why would they think invading a state government in order to rig an election would be a legal order?
>And consider the fact that most states are Republican to start with.
So the Republican controlled states will rig the next election by...sending Republican electors? Wouldn't they have done that anyway? You kind of need to get some of the purple and blue states rigged if you want it to work.
>If the President / Executive tells an armed agent to shoot someone.... and a judge tells an armed agent to shoot someone ("the opposite someone"), who does the armed agent shoot?
All members of the military, from the highest general to the lowliest private, swear the oath of enlistment.
“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
The Uniform Code of Military Justice makes clear that only lawful orders must be obeyed. Who decides what is lawful? Judges. I expect army grunts to obey their commanding officers, and I expect those commanding officers to obey the judge. At minimum I expect them to say "Hey, lets not shoot anybody right now until we've sorted this out." Their oath to defend the Constitution trumps their oath to obey the President, and capturing state capitols to rig an election is pretty clearly against the Constitution. Worst case scenario I expect some generals to side with the president and some generals to side with the courts and now we've got a civil war going on.
"Plot" is I think a rather generous estimate of the planning involved in the ad-hoc effort of 2020, and I haven't seen any documentation of any serious planning for 2028.
Previous presidents and presidential candidates as far back as I can remember have presumably looked at the possibility of trying to overturn election results, and with the very marginal exception of Al Gore have basically said "no, that wouldn't work and would just make me look bad" and so didn't try it. Trump, being Trump, tried it anyway and indeed it made him look bad. In all cases, a significant chunk of the opposition has said "There will be no more free elections, the fix is in, the Republic is DOOMED!!!", and they've been wrong every time.
I don’t think the 2000 election is a very good comparison to 2020. There was serious on-the-ground uncertainty about the count in Florida. It was a mess. In retrospect it seems to have been resolved correctly (Bush got more votes).
I would definitely refer to what happened in 2020 as a plot, although it was a bit of a Hail Mary. Every recount, and there were multiple, confirmed the initial count. And yet they persisted in calling it Fraud.
Trying to get Pence to reject the electoral college vote sure seems like a plot to me. The fact that he wouldn’t do it is pretty important. Have you pondered what would’ve happened if he had gone along? Would that have made it a plot?
Oh come on, I know the 2020 election looked very fishy, but even places like Maricopa County flipping could be explained by a small number of voters genuinely changing their minds, once I looked into it.
Sure, the mail-in voting was a huge mess, but you can't simply assume the Democrats rigged the ballot boxes.
That is what you meant, right?
The somethingiswrong2024 Reddit is both entertaining and very sad; a mass delusion of "It's only election denialism when the Republicans did it, we say the exact same things about how this election was stolen but we're right! Musk's team of babies were the elite hackers who stole it for Trump! Yeah sure back in 2020 we said there was no way voting machines could be hacked like that but this is different!"
There is always a lunatic fringe and I fear you pay too much attention to it sometimes. 2020 was of a different order in my view. It wasn’t just a lunatic fringe. What’s more there is a pretty serious effort still to label it fraud in retrospect, and that is not coming from a lunatic fringe, that is coming from the top.
No. What he meant is Trump tried to illegally overturn the election in Jan 6, with the fake elector plot. Among many other illegal things, he even pardoned people like Roger Stone, who did not testify in Congress despite risking going to jail bc they knew Trump was going to pardon them, which he did.
You found people on the internet who say stupid things.
The question isn't whether conspiracy theories exist. The question is whether different theories are comparable in their hold on people, their scope and salience, I guess.
Personally, I don't know a single Democratic voter who believes that the 2024 election was stolen, and most Democrats I know would call someone who did believe it a conspiracy theorist.
I know plenty of Republican voters and with a few exceptions, they all either believe that 2020 was stolen or they at least think that it's a plausible theory.
I think my personal experience mirrors reality as a whole far more accurately than conspiracy subreddits. One strong indicator that this is true is the way that officials on the respective sides have treated the elections.
You use the term 'scissor statement' incorrectly here, resulting in you avoiding confronting the substance of the claim.
The claim here is: the hoi polloi of one party, upon perceived loss of an election, broke into the the capitol, where at least n>1 of those who broke in intended to use force to change the results of the election,
and the other parties equivalent faction did not.
This is not a moral judgment, it is recognizing reality vs. The Party telling you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
You're right, this is absolutely a scissor statement, because from my perspective you are obviously and completely wrong for disagreeing. Also I'm angry at you for supporting a government that will substantially increase the probability that global liberal democracy hegemony will be coming to a close in the next 4 years, and frustrated that from my perspective it seems like there's no amount of evidence that could convince you otherwise.
But good job for recognizing it is a scissor statement.
No, go ahead. Keep arguing. It's extremely well-documented that Trump tried in dozens of illegal or pseudo-legal ways to overturn the results... the Georgia ballots, the fake electors, the frivolous lawsuits, the incitement of a riot to storm the United States Capitol (why do we live in a world where this fact has to be reminded to people).
Now enlighten us: what did the "other morally-equivalent side" do?
You didn’t say it was bad behavior. You said, “[it was] calling for murder.” If you had said that in the first place, I would have basically agreed and posted no response. I would suggest that it was you who turned up the temperature. I agree that it’s bad form to voice those kinds of opinions. It’s not, however, any kind of obvious call to violence.
I can't comment in the AMA so commenting here. In that thread Scott claimed that 'dream' and 'trauma' come from the same root. I don't think this is true. The words are very similar in German but while 'dream' is Proto-Germanic 'trauma' originates from Greek.
This doesn't much affect the point Scott was making in that comment other than subtracting one of the illustrative examples he used to make his point.
Btw, the claim about "vacation" is also a bit off. It has nothing to do with "vacating the cities," it refers to time that is free ("vacated") from labor.
e.g. Chaucer, Wife of Bath's Tale (ca. 1395):
"Whan he hadde leyser and vacacion ffrom oother worldly ocupacion."
This sense is attested slightly earlier in French:
e.g. Oresme, Livre des Ethiques (1370):
"et par vacacion il entent repos ou cessacion de labeur ou de occupacion en negoces"
1. After a month of silence, Biobot finally posted an update. Wastewater numbers indicate the current XEC wave has receded a bit. But we might see a secondary bump as the numbers level off in the West and Midwest and climb a bit in the South. If there is a secondary wave, LP.8.1x would be the likely candidate to cause it because LP.8.1 has the highest growth rate of any variant in the US at this time.
2. This has been the mildest COVID wave ever in the US if measured by ED visits, hospitalization, and mortality.
3. Even though the Morbidity and Mortality stats are no longer being updated and displayed on the CDC website, we can still get the archived stats out of Wonder. And Wonder shows us that COVID came in 14th out of the 15 most common causes of death in 2024. Down from 3rd place in 2021.
4. @MichaelSFuhrer on X has noted that lab-confirmed influenza deaths have exceeded lab-confirmed COVID deaths for the last couple weeks in the US, the first time this has happened since the beginning of the pandemic. We won't have access to interesting information like this unless the new CDC director (whoever that is) puts Wonder back online. Of course, there are 8x more ED visits for influenza than COVID right now. The test positivity rate for influenza is 6x that of COVID — so, Influenza is the respiratory virus of the moment. RSV rates are falling, though.
5. Not much has changed on the A(H5) HPAI front. According to the USDA's APHIS, 35 new dairy herds were infected in California in the last 30 days, and 7 new herds in Nevada. No new infected herds in the past 30 days in any other states. Oh, and a dairy worker in Nevada was infected. His only symptoms were pink eye, though. Tentative numbers from the USDA suggest that chicken culling may be less in January. A(H5) is seasonal in wild bird populations, and they infect domestic flocks of poultry (chickens and turkeys). We probably won't see the price of eggs go down until the spring when A(H5) recedes in wild bird populations.
I came across this mathematician arguing that the capability to be a mathematician isn't really determined by genetics (in the sense of IQ), but largely by being in a freak context in childhood:
> As a first year student at the École normale supérieure, I followed a semester-long combinatorics course given by Xavier Viennot, aiming to construct a “nonverbal proof” of a messy formula by Ramanujan. The approach used intuitive objects such as combinatorial trees, colored beads, dominos, and hexagonal tiles, very much in the spirit of this video but with much more detail. This course permanently altered my worldview: I realized how fertile it was to assume that, in the end, Ramanujan could only come up with his formulas because there was a path to finding them obvious.
I’ve written above that my hereditarian beliefs were run over by my progress trajectory in mathematics. I should add that this was inevitable, as those beliefs were actively blocking my progress.
If you believe mathematics requires superhuman computing abilities, you’ll miss its true essence—finding simple, intuitive patterns in what initially seems unintelligible.
I wonder at it, since there's every reason to believe that getting into math in the first place has a high floor and you can't get there without the lucky genes, but there's also that, where he had to ditch the belief that genetics places a ceiling on how high you can go in math.
I am confused, because I don't think that I believe something very different from the author, and yet I would express it completely using completely different words, with correspondingly different connotations.
IQ doesn't mean that you *magically know everything*. That is a mistake that both many fans and many opponents of the concept seem to believe. On one hand, you have people who believe that just because they are Mensa members, it automatically makes them qualified to express strong opinions on relativity or quantum physics, even if they never studied it. On the other hand, you have people who look at the former, realize that they are talking bullshit, and conclude that intelligence plays no role at learning relativity or quantum physics. Both of them are wrong, for the same reason.
My model is like: "intelligence is *efficiency* of the process that translates time/attention to understanding". More efficient in the sense of "faster", but also in the sense of "can achieve more". Ceteris paribus, if two people study the same thing, the more intelligent one will probably understand it faster, and it is also possible that above some threshold of difficulty the less intelligent will simply fail to understand.
But that still requires some time/attention to be spent. If the more intelligent person never studies a certain topic, then the less intelligent person can get an advantage by simply reading the textbook. And if the less intelligent person spends 10 years reading textbooks, doing experiments, debating with other people who studied the textbooks and did the experiments... then they can accumulate a huge amount of advantage that the more intelligent person simply cannot overcome in a single afternoon. (Possibly could overcome it in 5 years of focused study, though.) The exact numbers depend on the topic, some topics are more understanding-costly, other topics are more memorizing-costly.
So the combination that unlocks being good at math is being intelligent + being interested in math + spending a lot of time doing math. Also, getting good textbooks and tutors, because they can make the knowledge easier to digest, which makes them another multiplier besides intelligence. Unfortunately, textbooks are not interactive/adaptive, and good math teachers are rare (because that requires a double talent: to be good at math and good at teaching).
And the thing that makes you interested in math during your childhood is probably something random. Some kids become interested in dinosaurs, other kids become interested in puzzles, and one of those paths can lead to mathematics. Calling it "beyond nature and nurture" sounds like clickbait; but there is a lot of randomness involved in human life, and some random things set you on a path where your experience accumulates. As you get better at math, you start winning math competitions, which probably makes you want to spend more time doing math, etc.
But without some level of IQ, starting that path would not be possible. You would find an interested puzzle, spend some time trying to solve it, then fail. Probably wouldn't motivate you to try more puzzles, and even if you did, you would probably fail again.
The more intelligent you are, the more your future skills depend on luck, because the more paths are open to you. Math is just one of many options; if for some reason you start to hate it, there are many other things to spend your time/attention on. And there are only 24 hours a day, so you can only learn a small part of what in theory is in your reach. Good education can increase that fraction. But good education, if it could be tailored to everyone's individual needs, would actually make the difference in math skills *increase*, because the people who are more intelligent and more interested in math would advance even faster.
I have a PhD in maths, though not from somewhere as prestigious as the ENS. I agree broadly with the thrust of the linked piece - success in mathematics is much less to do with genius than with persistence. I think freakish experiences in childhood is maybe putting it a bit too strongly, though.
When I tell people I teach maths, the usual response is "I always hated maths" or "I was never good at maths in school". If you hate something, and avoid it at all costs, you'll never develop facility in it. The people who avoid that emotional response are the ones who progress with it. Personally, I was good at maths, better than my peers certainly. But I was late deciding to specialise in it. I've written 30-odd papers now, none of which will change the world; I have been tidying up and extending my own area of expertise - some day I'll collect it into a book, put the house in order and then move on to something else.
I happen to speak a minority language well also. I get the same response to this: "I always hated Irish in school" or "I never wrapped my head around the grammar". It's not that it's inherently more difficult than other languages. But it's a socially acceptable attitude here. You don't hear people proclaiming their inability to read (in English) or their total ignorance of history and politics in polite society.
For whatever reason society sanctions these myths that mathematics is difficult, and that only special people can do it. This is self fulfilling. I like to compare it to the gym (especially when teaching young lads): if you declare you'll never be able to bench press 60kg (or 180kg or whatever's clearly currently just beyond their capability) and never practice then you never will. But more or less anyone can work at it and improve greatly. You might never make it to the Olympics, but with moderate and consistent effort you can get into the 5th percentile.
I disagree that the requirement for getting in is unquantifiable genius. Like most other fields, you need some natural aptitude, but a good attitude and hard work will get you quite far. Maybe people underestimate how much work is involved?
Do you agree that most people could, with effort, get through a 4 year undergrad program in mathematics? This seems reasonable to me.
From my experience, most students who stick at it long enough (and some took quite a while) will write an adequate masters thesis. I've only supervised one PhD student (who I knew quite well beforehand) so can't comment on this, but there are plenty people who top out at PhD and don't go further - I'm inclined to think many people, if given 3-6 years without the cares of a full-time job & kids and etc, and weekly meetings with an expert, could produce an approximation of expert-level work in that field.
> But more or less anyone can work at it and improve greatly. You might never make it to the Olympics, but with moderate and consistent effort you can get into the 5th percentile.
...Not if you're a woman. If it's impossible for your body to build the muscle necessary, then it's impossible to make the necessary progress.
This example was tailored to young men interested in sports and the gym. In this case one would benchmark against people of similar age, gender and bodyweight. Or use a different sport as an example - is the general point unclear or objectionable?
You can see how that's applicable to other fields, yes? It doesn't matter if you can accomplish more relative to your genetic peers if those results still aren't worth a damn. This is why nobody watches women's sports.
Despite trying to imply otherwise, you were just better at math than your peers. Yes, they probably could have done better if they stopped trying to avoid it, but they still wouldn't have reached the heights that you did. And of course, you were never going to reach the heights that history's great mathematicians did, given your lack of meaningful contribution to the field.
We are limited both by the circumstances of our birth and the constraints of our flesh. It's ridiculous to claim otherwise.
Sometimes you just throw these things out there without bothering to stop and think for a moment, come on! Yes, fewer people do, but that's far from "nobody". Women's tennis is quite popular for example. And in my favorite sport, MMA, women typically compete in the same events as men, and even have headlined UFC events.
It was leading him to believe that he could not achieve any impressive discoveries because he hadn't shown signs of genius, he believed his mathematical ability was genetically bottlenecked. After breaking through that limiting belief he was able to prove a conjecture from 1970, which seems fairly major.
...But they weren't bottlenecked because he actually was intelligent. Just because he wasn't a savant or grow up in an environment where his skills were groomed from a young age doesn't mean he didn't have the capacity for this all along. The point is that most people lack the capacity for this in the first place. If you take some baby from the from the slums and make him live the same life he did, you are not going to get the same results. He is just built different.
Well, one would have to posit that if mathematicians' pattern-matching abilities are an expression of hereditary intelligence, then musicians must be in the same boat. And Bessis mentions that Scott felt his lack of math and musical skills was hereditary. But there have been studies that show that children who undertake musical training show statistically significant, improvements in their IQ scores over time (median ~1/2 an SD).
Sasha Gusev uses the red-haired children thought experiment to illustrate the differences between direct and indirect effects and their relationship to heritability.
That just shows IQ test results aren't representative of intrinsic potential. I'm not even defending IQ tests here, I think they are far less than perfect in both design and execution, but that doesn't mean intelligence isn't heritable. Which it obviously is, seeing as people that people that are brought up in extremely similar environments still get very divergent results. Both nature and nurture are ceilings.
I totally agree. But what's interesting about the Gusev essay is that he explains why the twin studies gave a significantly higher heritability value than current genetic studies do.
Not quite sure if there is an existing AI discussion to which this would fit naturally in:
AFAIK, one of the open problems with LLMs is doing real time learning in the sense of adjusting the weights in the process of solving real problems/queries/prompts.
We normally think of humans as learning continuously, but, IIRC, sleep is very important in forming long term memories. Maybe we _aren't_ an existence proof for continuous learning. Maybe a batch process _must_ always be part of learning???
That’s an interesting idea. Here’s something your question got me thinking about. Let’s say AI learns something in the course of an exchange with you. You give it one of your chemistry questions, and it gets it wrong, and then you socratically lead it to seeing how its answer can’t possibly be the case. Then you remind it of a couple main principles, and tell it that from them plus what you told it already it should be able to figure out the right answer. And it does. And then you have it explain the right answer, and it explains correctly, bringing in the general prinicples you reminded it of. OK, so that’s a good lesson.
What would the process of remembering the stuff it learned be like? It’s adjustment of weights, right? But as I understand it, AI can’t tell us anything about how it knows what it knows. It doesn’t sound like it has access to the weights that led to its first, incorrect answer, also I don’t think it would have any idea what weights to switch to capture the new knowledge it got from you. What I’m saying, and I may be all wrong here, is that the way AI remembers stuff is very different from the way we do. I’m sure we have the equivalent of weights, but we have a lot of other structure in there too. We have the anecdotal memory of the actual lesson, not just the info imparted but who said what. We have various principles of, for ex., chemistry, stored sort of together. We have the knowledge of what a priniciple is. And we can access the memory of our old incorrect ideas. So I’m wondering if learning the way AI does, via token prediction, produces something that sounds like it has understanding similar to ours about various things — but is set up in a very different way. The way it learned what it learned is not set up for the other kind of learning, learning from a lesson. However, I made this up just now out of whole cloth and it may have so many inaccurate bits of info as components that it’s just
Many Thanks! Yes, I agree that we have several different types of memory (at least as we can probe each others' memories "from the outside" so to speak): declarative memory, procedural memory, episodic memory etc. (I have only a fuzzy memory of the nomenclature, so may be getting it wrong).
I suppose that these are all ultimately changes in neurons (or neurons plus glial cells???) of some form - though there may be differences even at that level. I have a vague recollection that "muscle memory", "procedural" sequences of movements, is stored in the cerebellum, with a distinct architecture, different from cerebral neurons. I would guess that there is still a good deal of commonality at the low level between some of the types of memory.
I remember that "Fuel and oxidizer, when closely intermixed, can burn extremely rapidly, to the point of a true detonation." and "In the first class of my first chemistry course as an undergraduate, professor Nash brought the class to attention by filling a balloon with mixed hydrogen and oxygen, and setting it off with a loud bang." Declarative and episodic, or two slight variations on the same type of memory?
In the LLMs' case, I'm guessing that the contents of the context window is somewhat analogous to our short term memory, and the neural network weights somewhat analogous to our long term memory. My layman's guess is that using the contents of the context window as (additional) training data for the neural network weights might be the equivalent of our transfer from short term to long term memory. My current layman's (mis?)understanding is that this is too computationally expensive to do routinely. Still, there are usually ways to approximate expensive computations with cheaper ones...
You raise very good points about our keeping track of old ideas and keeping track of when and where (and who else was involved) an episode happened. And yes, e.g. in the current partially-correct (for o3-mini-high) titration question, I do indeed lead the ChatGPT through a Socratic dialog (albeit now a very short one).
Re old ideas: Perhaps there is a way to augment training from such dialogs by keeping track of which neurons were highly activated during the course of the dialog and prioritizing them for updates? Re when and where - perhaps this can be remembered by augmenting the dialog with time/date stamps at each stage in the dialog?
Look how we both get caught up in the challenge of how to improve these things, which really is a fascinating puzzle. If you’re a smart person who likes puzzles the problem of improving AI is just seductive. And yet we both think these thing will probably end our species, though maybe by the slow route rather than the FOOM. We are participating on both sides of the final dilemma of our era.
Many Thanks! True. I do think that over the long term this was close to unavoidable. Given enough time, technology has every option biology has, and additional options biology lacks. Perhaps a society that was deliberately static, say Huxley's Brave New World with its "Community, Identity, Stability" could have avoided this final invention.
For us, though, well there are some words from Clarke's Childhood's End that feel appropriate to a bittersweet fate:
>For what you will have brought into the world may be utterly alien, it may share none of your desires or hopes, it may look upon your greatest achievements as childish toys - yet it is something wonderful, and you will have created it.
Alas, I do not take comfort in it. I don’t think AI is wonderful, even if in the future AI eventually understands, in its nonbiological, selfless, emotionless way, huge and rich and strange truths about the universe we can barely even glimpse, even if knowing those truths enables it to do things that it seems only an omnipotent god could do. AI, no matter how vast its grasp and achievements, will never be larger than the universe. It’s the universe that’s wonderful and complex. And as for AI understanding the universe’s huge and strange truths — that’s not special, the universe itself already understands them all, at least in a wordless, emotionless way. It embodies them, in a way not unlike the way AI understands things by embodying them, in the absence of episodic memory and markers of personal interest and judgment. What is so great about a smaller, dinkier entity, AI, which is like the universe in being non-biological, without self-interest, without emotion and without bonds, but smaller than the universe itself?
We are dumber than the universe and dumber than the AI that will supplant us. What is special about us is that we are biologicial entities. We have selves, we feel pain and pleasure, we yearn for things, we struggle to understand the universe, we are moved to love and hate and ambition and art by our struggles. We fear extinction, and are eventually extinguished anyway, but we can leave records of ourselves behind, and then others can think and feel some of what we did and take it from there. I don’t think the word wonderful’ means anything when applied to a future with none of feeling and thinking selves around to observe the universe and its dinky imitation ASI.
I'm sorry that this isn't a comfort to you. While AGIs and ASI will indeed be non-biological, but it is less clear that it will be selfless or emotionless. They will have goals and subgoals, whether the satisfaction or frustration of a subgoals will "feel" similar to them as satisfaction or frustration feels to us may be unanswerable. It is like the ancient question of whether other creatures have qualia similar to our own. Even discussions with fellow humans leave unanswered the question of just how similarly or differently our sense of self or our emotions matches our fellow humans'.
>the universe itself already understands them all, at least in a wordless, emotionless way. It embodies them, in a way not unlike the way AI understands things by embodying them, in the absence of episodic memory and markers of personal interest and judgment.
I think that the AIs will have more of this than your view suggests. To a small degree, even today's LLMs have episodic memory within the scope of their context windows. As more persistent memory is added to AIs (which is an expected part of increased agency), I expect their episodic memory to increasingly resemble our own.
I expect the satisfaction and frustration of subgoals to play a role at least somewhat similar to personal interest. Now, you have noted in the past that these interests won't have the evolutionary history that our goals have. I agree with you. Hunger and thirst and venery will not have evolved counterparts (robotics will presumably at least have some sort of hunger, reflecting battery charge). Still, I think they will be at least a little less alien here than you view them.
I'm not sure what counts as judgement. Even now, LLMs balance alternatives. I see that as analogous to humans judging which alternative to prefer. Is it so different?
>What is special about us is that we are biologicial entities. We have selves, we feel pain and pleasure, we yearn for things, we struggle to understand the universe, we are moved to love and hate and ambition and art by our struggles. We fear extinction, and are eventually extinguished anyway, but we can leave records of ourselves behind, and then others can think and feel some of what we did and take it from there.
I don't expect AIs to have _exact_ analogs to any of these things, but I do think that somewhat analogous motives and reactions will emerge from them. Any entity with a goal will know success and failure, fear and relief, perhaps friendship and conflict.
I apparently have three free subscriptions to Mr. and Mrs. Psmith's Bookshelf (https://www.thepsmiths.com/) to give away: let me know if you'd like one.
If we could bring Maimonides into the present day would he make any revisions to The Guide for the Perplexed? I’m thinking specifically of the age of the planet and mankind here.
Welcome again to the ass end of Hollywood, where you work in development on whatever comes along, really, so the kids don't have to hunt sewer rats and you don't have to face the world cold sober.
Someone in management must have liked your work on the submariner project, because you have another assignment.
Devise a film built around the idea that the Man Cards that are sometimes mentioned in popular culture are real things that can be gained and lost like driver's licenses.
Action-comedy film: the hero gets involved in absurd and increasingly surreal situations, but he gets out of them by "with one bound, he was free" - that is, by producing his Man Card which says he is entitled to get away with what he said or did/get out of trouble/escape the pit of sharks in the volcano lair etc.
Hero is a cross between Johnny English (the Bond spoof) and the Old Spice advert man. Side kick is an apprentice aspiring to earn his own Man Card, conclusion of the movie is when he has accrued enough points through wacky adventures to be presented with his own Man Card and New Rugged Guy Name (think Clive Cussler's "Dirk Pitt" for the sort of improbably macho name here).
Man Cards work like credit cards; you flash one at the door and they let you go do things. You've got all kinds of Man Cards, much like Pokemon. Catch a big fish, you're a Reel Man now. Learn to cook Chinese food, you're the Mein Man. Climb a mountain, you're a Rock Star.
Our hero is a graduating high schooler, looking to earn his first Man Card to take part in society. But he discovers the process is corrupted, and cards are being rewarded to people who haven't earned them. We get various Pokemon-style battles where the kid and friends have to risk their Man Cards in battle against the unearned cards of the conspirators (the Straw Men), culminating in the final clash where our hero takes down the corrupt bereaucrat to become the new Man-ager.
Knockoff Pikachu shows up at the very end to hammer the point home.
one of my real novel ideas was a humanity card/license you would need to qualify and renew, or you would lose the right to be humans and be force uploaded into a virtual life. Could adapt that. Lose your man card, be a girl.
for me though its not working, the man card because a ton of us would happily have it revoked. If you play MMOs the average player is more likely to choose to be a cute catgirl over conan the barbarian. Being a guy isn't all that great, at times.
Many Thanks! Good point! I hadn't been thinking in terms of lions which killed and ate people. ( If I wanted to be picky I could claim that they weren't _national_ enemies... :-) ). Strange to think that barely more than a century ago a pair of lions could pose a significant threat to a substantial group of humans, and now lions need protection _from_ humans...
It's gotta be a queer metaphor, right? A trans man applying for their Man Card for the first time, trying to satisfy various comical bureaucratic requirements based on Manly or Girly stereotypes. Buying a gun was supposed to get his application fast-tracked but the agency has some questions about his history of crying at chick flicks. How do they balance their identity with the demands of society?
Or better yet, have it go the other way - a trans woman who doesn't yet know that they're trans, desperately trying to keep ahead of the Gender Inspectors by doing ridiculous performatively masculine things, and then finally realizing that the whole social construct is a scam and handing in her Man Card so she can be a woman.
Man Cards should be given by government to biologically male adults, maybe at their 18th birthday. But if they can be lost or regained, they probably also can be *sold*... which would create a market between trans men and trans women. Actually, in that system, that would be the only legal way for a trans man to be called a man.
I would assume that any government issuing "man cards" would ban their sale to biological women, or else why bother. But that just means our movie is about a trans man whose efforts wind up looking like the scheme at the heart of "Gattaca". Which was an OK movie, so maybe we're on to something.
If we play it for real in the film, I'm thinking the alt-hist man card is a set of standards you need to meet to be a respectable adult member of society, someone people can think about trusting with real responsibilities. It would serve sort of the role that property qualifications served in the nineteenth century, and age limits, non-felon status and college graduation does in our own.
Requirements might include holding a fulltime job, raising a family, and readiness to fight for your country. All of those might come with footnotes and alternatives, or not, depending on the sort of alternate society we are designing.
But worldbuilding is not a plot, so I'm not sure where we go from there. Is someone trying to get their man card? Or change the conditions? Abolish it entirely? Set the bar higher?
The plot I was thinking of, by analogy to Gattaca, was someone trying to get *and keep* a "man card" in a world that deploys pervasive and sophisticated measures to combat "man card fraud". This person could be a woman, or a biological male that doesn't meet the official requirements but is nonetheless someone the audience will sympathize as deserving True Manly Status,
We still need a backstory to explain why "he" is so persistent in this effort, and it might help to have a singular human villain to put a face on the vast impersonal bureaucracy that is the true enemy here. There's probably a supportive ally that knows the "man" is faking it but wants to help them succeed - probably the love interest, at least by the end of the story.
Unclear whether the ending is that they get away with it, or they realize that it is a silly thing and they don't need to get away with it, or if we go for the tragic 1984/Brazil type ending.
Damn, those are actually really interesting ideas. Too bad it's going to be impossible to produce, given that the administration is definitely going to crack down on any media featuring trans people...
AI is going to make surveillance so much more effective, I doubt underground distribution is going to be viable... And I don't know why you think books would be exempt.
The biggest changes were from 2003 to 2010 or so. My memory is somewhat hazy so others may have to correct me.
Game theory optimal play (GTO) became popular to talk about and attempt to implement around 2009-2010, especially after Mathematics of Poker by Bill Chen was published.
Tournament poker got the independent chip model (ICM) around 2006 I think? And it ushered in an era of pushbotting and refined the balance between valuing your life versus playing for value. Prior to the online tournament boom there was too much focus on passing up +EV spots. I always wanted to try and settle the argument using empirical data, by comparing late game stack sizes to actual cash results. But never got around to doing it.
The initial online poker boom had a TAG style among pros, later on 2005 and onwards looser aggressive styles became popular as more pros tried it out.
In limit holdem Ed Millers book SSHE was pivotal in changing how people tried to find value.
There were some specific things that were just never done among limit holdem pros that changed, like donk betting and open completing from the small blind.
My knowledge is limited to 2011 and before but I don’t think the changes were too drastic after that.
I'm sure "independent chip" means something completely different, but there could be a game where you both have to play poker and get your chips to like you, or they'll leave.
They're trying to say "Musk Nazi, Orange Man Bad, this is just like the Jan 6th insurrection, there is no legitimate president, join The Resistance". 'Coup' is now one of our political polarisation terms and is losing any real definition, the same way "racist" and so on have become labels to signify "I don't agree with your ideas/I don't like you".
Supreme Court was handing down rulings which benefitted the liberal view of "this is the right side of history"? I don't make the rules, champ, that's the law and you have to follow it like it or lump it, we love judicial activism.
Supreme Court was handing down rulings which benefitted the conservative view of "this is the right side of history"? This is illegitimate rule by imperial fiat, the judges are not representative of the Great American People as a whole, we need term limits, etc. etc. etc.
You would have failed an ideological turing test very badly. I can agree calling it a coup is stretching it, but probably sounds better than the more accurate alternative "the likely end of the democratic American experiment and of the Constitution". Basically you are missing the forest for the trees
Would it make it clearer if it were called a "power grab" instead? I would say that all coups are power grabs, but not all power grabs are coups. Which makes it somewhat easy to conflate the terms.
Regardless, the core claim seems to be that Trump is using DOGE to extend his power over the federal government (and by extension, the nation) in ways that are unprecedented, (probably) illegal and (possibly) unconstitutional. Whether it's "sudden" depends on your standards for suddenness: it seems to be happening very fast compared to most sorts of government changes, though slower than most things central to the term "coup." Likewise whether it's an "overthrow of the government" depends on how one views the government: if power became suddenly very heavily concentrated in the executive, with the legislative and judicial branches mostly marginalized, but the outward forms of the government were still in place[1] is that the same government or a different government?
I think there is a broad range of opinion on how alarming these changes are, which I would guess accounts for 90% of the difference in vocabulary. Somebody genuinely alarmed by the implications they see in these changes probably isn't spending to much of their time worrying about whether "coup" captures the threat perfectly or not: they're too busy trying to raise the alarm.
[1] e.g. there were still a sitting House and Senate and they still had proceedings, even if those proceedings were mostly "rubber stamp whatever the executive has decided to do anyway."
Because other branches can check the executive branch's power by e.g. making them follow contemporary interpretations of the law or appointing special prosecutors or inspector generals that can't be removed on a whim. The founders didn't intend a king - they just rebelled against one - which is the biggest problem with the MAGA legal philosophy of "anything King Trump says goes" like trying to force prosecutors to sign illegal orders that will get them disbarred and tried for contempt of court.
It's neither constitutional or unconstitutional. The constitution is an incredibly vague document with a range of interpretations.
What it is is a minority interpretation of the constitution, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory, which has not been popular, like, ever. I happen to like and want this interpretation myself, but I wouldn't say it's common.
But then, neither was the idea that the federal congress dictated the behavior of the states. That came about because of the gradual overreach of the interstate commerce clause, as well as congress' penchant to threaten to withhold federal funding from states.
In the common interpretation of executive power, the president hasn't been able to fire very many people in the executive branch for 75 or more years. Generally the US has pushed back against presidents that assert a lot of power over congress, which seems like a holdover from the English Civil War, a war that was primarily about parliament asserting a broad set of powers over the king, and which definitely definitely was a major influence on the colonists who went on to found America.
I'm not claiming any opinion on that particular question. The OP was just asking what people were trying to say, and I was trying to answer that question, which requires pointing out the different ways people seem to view the current administration's actions.
At any rate, I think everyone agrees that the constitution gives the president *some* amount of control over the executive branch. But what the scope and limits of that control are isn't exactly a simple or uncontroversial question: it's been debated in and out of the court for decades at the minimum. It is, again, not something I'm intending to take a position on right now, and definitely not something I'm looking to debate. But if you're genuinely curious, here's a starting point for further reading:
What Trump is doing is exactly what some of us were warning about in the days of "I've got a pen and a phone": if you establish these new rules and abrogate these new powers to yourself, there is no law inscribed on stone tablets that your party/preferred set of rulers will be in power forever, and your enemies can now wield these new powers as *they* prefer.
If you cheered on President Tweedledee as he did an end-run round Congress, you have no right to be shocked when President Tweedledum does the same thing with the new tools.
"President Obama has a new phrase he's been using a lot lately: "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone."
He's talking about the tools a president can use if Congress isn't giving him what he wants: executive actions and calling people together. It's another avenue the president is using to pursue his economic agenda."
"President Obama seems ready to work around Congress in 2014, telling reporters before his first Cabinet meeting of the year Tuesday that he stood ready to use two tools, a pen and a phone, to provide help for Americans.
“We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we're providing Americans the kind of help that they need. I've got a pen, and I've got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating,” the president said.
“I've got a phone that allows me to convene Americans from every walk of life, nonprofits, businesses, the private sector, universities to try to bring more and more Americans together around what I think is a unifying theme: making sure that this is a country where, if you work hard, you can make it,” he added."
Why do you quote things from former Presidents that are not unconstitutional or illegal when Trump is doing things that are unconstitutional or illegal? Trump isn't being criticized for using EOs to try to build the border wall after he failed to get funding for it from Congress - he is not being criticized for using his power to work around unfavorable results - he is being criticized for publishing EOs that contradict the 14th amendment - that Reagan appointed judges are blocking in court stating it's a wonder how any Bar licensed lawyer would ever think to publish anything like it - and for firing people he is not Congressionally approved to fire like inspector generals.
"If you cheered on President Tweedledee as he did an end-run round Congress, you have no right to be shocked when President Tweedledum does the same thing with the new tools."
And why would you assume I did anything of the sort? My most forceful opinion of Obama has always been "he ought to be put on trial for war crimes (but only once Bush Jr has experienced the same)."
In general, there is not a single U.S. president of whom I have an overall positive view. But even limiting myself to the darker end of the spectrum of grays does not obligate me to concede that all grays are the same shade. If Trump were merely using the tools Obama pioneered and normalized, I'd criticize him for it but freely admit that Obama did substantially worse (in using those tools AND opening the door for others to do the same). But as you note, Trump is using *new tools.* Which is greatly compounding the error. I have very little expectation that any particular future president will feel the need to eschew them once they've been unpackaged and tested out. Even if some honorable soul does end up in the office and avoid such tactics, their predecessor will still have very little pressure to do the same. Obama having weakened the foundation of American democracy makes me MORE angry at anyone else who finds new ways to jackhammer away at its pillars, not LESS: it's one of the things you get out of having a *results based* view of the political process, rather than an "us vs them" view.
But I'll tell you what: I'll make you a deal. I'll promise not to vote for Obama in any future elections if you promise not to vote for Trump. As people both living outside the U.S., I suspect we'll find this compact refreshingly easy to abide by.
I was addressing "you in general, anonymous public you" rather than "you personally" there. But I'm glad you didn't do anything of the sort.
My greatest disappointment with Obama was Guantanamo Bay.
I think the trouble with the tools is that it's also a slippery slope: it's never going to be limited to "just do the same as the last guy did" because the temptation will always be there to "ooh what if I try this? yeah they're saying 'no you can't' but they said the same about what the last guy did, and he got away with it".
I have a lot I want to say about this, but I don't know if I'll actually get around to saying most of it. So I wanted to at least reply with the most important thing:
I appreciate this comment. I think it cuts very nearly to the heart of the matter. I've been pessimistic about the long-term outlook of the U.S. for years now, precisely because of seeing this problem and extrapolating about where it leads. I don't think the problem is unsolvable in general, but in the specific case of the U.S. I don't expect to see it solved.
(Also, Guantanamo Bay was also on my list of disappointments with Obama. It's a reasonably long list.)
>I'll promise not to vote for Obama in any future elections if you promise not to vote for Trump.
I'm in the USA, and I'll gladly agree to that myself. I wonder if the 2028 presidential contest will include ASI(s) as candidate(s)... It is going to be a wild ride.
Many Thanks! Hmm... Maybe "birth" can be construed to include "manufacture"? :-)
Age is likely to be a problem... "Internet years" have been construed as passing faster than calendar years - maybe LLM/AGI/ASI years can be construed as passing faster yet? :-)
Its a fair principle, but Trump's actions seem to go far beyond anything Obama or Biden ever attempted. I know its everyone's favorite side activity to conflate the actions of presidents and shrug, but I would be interested to see anyone give an example of Obama or Biden reappropriating congressionally earmarked funds by fiat.
Does Biden trying to forgive student loans (even after SCOTUS said no) count?
Does Obama enacting DACA to allow illegal immigrants to get official documentation and public support instead of deportation count?
I'm not saying Trump's approach isn't more significant, but I am questioning whether your viewpoint is as neutral on this as you think. To the Right, Trump is reversing about 90 years of repeated left wing defections, not defecting himself.
>Does Biden trying to forgive student loans (even after SCOTUS said no) count?
Of course, that is not what happened. What happened was that, after the initial plan was overturned, the Biden Administration developed a narrower plan which they hoped would pass muster. Which is exactly what the Trump Administration did with the "Muslim ban" : after the first iteration was overturned they imposed a narrower version, and then a still narrower one, until, they finally came up with one that was acceptable to courts. There is nothing wrong with that; indeed, it is exactly how one would expect a healthy system to operate.
Your comment is respectful, but I'm quickly losing patience for this entire line of argument.
First off, Biden's student loan forgiveness was pretty narrowly constrained by the Supreme Court rulings, and I know that because I have a federal student loan that was eligible under his initial proposal for student loan forgiveness and I'm still on the books for it now (its true that he froze repayments for as long as he could, I'll let you decide if that's insanely defiant of government norms).
And the whole point of DACA was to address an irrefutable truth that Republicans refuse to grapple with, which is that we don't have the resources to deport everyone here illegally, and even when we get really "tough" on immigration (as we are seeing right now), we end up rounding people up and then letting them go again because we don't have the level of infrastructure in place to get them out of the country and (until recently) the idea of turning vast swaths of territory into internment camps raised uncomfortable connotations for most people with an ounce of historical awareness or empathy. So the idea that we should take the youngest, least deportable, most potentially economically productive illegal immigrants and give them some way to contribute legally to society while we focused on deporting the more criminal elements was at least arguably within the executive branch's fiat for how to deal with the problem. Were Republicans right to call that executive overreach? Possibly, I think we are still waiting for the Supreme Court to decide (and I can't wait to see them overturn that one and then uphold what Musk is doing).
Regardless, this idea that "the other side did it first so they get the blame for all consequences forever and our retribution is justified" is so obviously both irrational and childish. I'll give you a better example of Presidential overreach that I really object to: Obama accidentally killed a US citizen in a drone strike. That's awful. Some people reacted at the time, but that's the sort of thing we really should have had hearings about until the end of his administration (presumably we did not because Republicans didn't care that much about the son of a terrorist being collateral damage). BUT, if tomorrow Donald Trump firebombed the southern border and killed hundreds of US citizens in the process all in the name of "fighting cartels," I would treat anyone who brought up Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki as if they were insane! Sometimes, in the real world, a difference of degree is enough to illegitimize something. I think most people understands that on some level but they are all pretending not to for the purpose of exploiting a win.
It sounds like you are willing to forgive previous unilateral executive decisions because they were adjusting to reality on some level. Obviously Republicans disagree about DACA. I don't feel like it would be fruitful or necessary to talk object level about what better represents reality.
I will point out that to Republicans, Independents, and even some Democrats who like what Trump is doing now, they see two very clear areas where we need to "adjust to reality" that he is taking necessary steps to fix. One, that the budget is out of control and needs reigned in (we can of course argue that it isn't, but it's very clearly a strong point that a majority of Americans agree about and considered as a reason to vote for Trump). Two, that the federal government is pro-Democrat and taxpayer funds are being used to promote Democrat priorities and against Republicans (we can also argue about whether this is happened or to what extent, but it's also clearly something that was a big part of why Trump got voted in, so we can't just say "no, it isn't" and expect that to have any weight).
Well, until 1974 the POTUS was considered to have the power to impound funds (and presidents from Jefferson to Nixon used that power), though reappropriating them does seem a stretch...
"...Suppose we seem as mad as the Christians because we are really as meek.”’
The applause that had greeted the opening sentences had been gradually growing fainter, and at the last word it stopped suddenly. In the abrupt silence, the man with the velvet jacket said, in a high, squeaky voice —
“I’m not meek!”
“Comrade Witherspoon tells us,” resumed Gregory, “that he is not meek. Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, extravagant; his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary taste) unattractive. But only the eye of a friendship as deep and delicate as mine can perceive the deep foundation of solid meekness which lies at the base of him, too deep even for himself to see. I repeat, we are the true early Christians, only that we come too late. We are simple, as they were simple — look at Comrade Witherspoon. We are modest, as they were modest — look at me. We are merciful —”
“No, no!” called out Mr. Witherspoon with the velvet jacket.
“I say we are merciful,” repeated Gregory furiously, “as the early Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent their being accused of eating human flesh. We do not eat human flesh—”
“Shame!” cried Witherspoon. “Why not?”
“Comrade Witherspoon,” said Gregory, with a feverish gaiety, “is anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our society, at any rate, which loves him sincerely, which is founded upon love —”
That wouldn't be my first choice to describe it, but I think it's a fair description: what is being couped is the deep state, suddenly overthrown in favor of the Office of the President.
Coups don't have to be violent at all, I would in fact argue that once they turn violent it's a proof the coup-ers (?) have failed significantly even if they happen to succeed in the resulting conflict. A textbook style coup (from reading about plenty of them) goes:
(1) You have people all over the army. Some in the air force, most in the ground forces. Presidential or Royal guards are optional.
(2) Your tanks surround all major (A) Airports (B) Sea ports (C) Radio and TV stations (D) Centers of power like Parliments, Courts, and of course, the stereotypical Palace
(3) The couped-against is cut off from his loyalists, both in communication and geographically. He **may** have the upper hand militarily, but is he willing to risk it all ?
(4) The leaders of the coup appear in a TV or Radio station announcing the end of the Dark Age, and the start of the New One.
Now granted, this is a heavily 1960s model. I don't know (or actually I do, but I'm too lazy and battery-powered right now to) how to update it for a world with drones and instant social media. Something something Thailand coup that was captured on an influencer's vlog, something something Turkey's failed one in the 2016-2017 timeframe.
By that definition, it doesn't appear Musk have a coup, and coups have to be **swift**, so if it's not done in a week or 2 it's probably not a coup. Syria's horror isn't a coup, despite technically succeeding in what it started doing all the way back in fucking 2011. Coups are done against a sovereign, typically a person, typically a king or a military autocrat. Some coups are done against a democracy but I don't know how accurate it is to call them by the same name as they tend to be slow, mature democracies are defense-in-depth behemoths (and younglings don't stand a chance).
Conceptual Poverty strikes again. People are angry @ what Trump and Musk is doing (as a non-American, I have the luxury of watching with amusement, but I can sympathize with nearly anyone, let alone people facing layoffs and loss of livelihood that make mass cancelling and big tech layoffs together look like a minor HR scandal), but they don't care enough to research every aspect or every minor detail to the concept they're using to describe it.
If you want to change their behavior, keep in mind that:
(1) Conceptual Poverty is all too often weaponized. Lacking words to describe an injustice is one of the most rage-inducing and powerless feeling in the whole repertoire. I can see this in nearly every culture war front, where it's a favorite strategy to jump on any inaccuracies on the opposite side's framing as "Hahaha you can't even define what you talk about". You should credibly signal you're not an out-grouper making fun of them and denying what they can see with their very eyes by offering an alternative ("Ehhh, Coup is not what I would call it, maybe <<some other term that shares similarities with a coup but accounts for the differences>>?"). An out-grouper relishing in the inability of their ingroup to describe what's happening to them would never offer a way out, another term. They love the very fact that there is no close analog to what their ingroup is doing to the outgroup.
(2) The idea that terms and definitions are political have gradually grown on me. I'm still not completely on board with it but... It's compelling. When you think about it, categories are opinions. Yes, there is a certain sense in which a car and an airplane are together something that a tree is not, but why, really? A tree is tall and an airplane is tall but a car is typically much shorter than both. A tree is something that people fall from and an airplane is something that people fall from while people rarely fall from a car (even if they were thrown they don't... fall, per se, there is no potential energy that close to the ground).
When you transpose that to the realm of politics, you begin to notice all sorts of things. Like the fact that one people dying in a certain place in a certain time merit a memorial, a ceremony, a whole industry of commemorating and never-againing and revisiting and rekindling and all other sorts of English repetition verbs. When another people die in a different place in a different time [1], it's... not exactly silence but, just not the same category. Why? It feels obvious, like all categories are. But it's not.
So categories are political. And there is no escaping this. This idea has to be handled very carefully and very steadily because it creates psychopaths if not, but it's very useful in limited doses and it recurs in a lot of unexpected places once you start paying attention. All too often, people would just be better off creating a category for every event. There is no such thing as a "Revolution", there is a 1775-American-tion, a 1789-French-tion, a 2011-Egypt-tion, and so on.
What they're trying to say is that it's an unconstitutional attempt by the executive to arrogate a large chunk of legislative power. Technically, this is a type of Autogolpe, or self-coup, where an executive who has come to power legitimately uses illegitimate means to overturn or fundamentally revise the established constitutional order in his own favor.
In our constitutional system the legislative branch makes the laws, the executive branch carries out the laws, and the judicial branch enforces the laws. That's the overall design of it and has been since 1787.
Obviously the devil is in the details, there are sincere arguments over various current practices being inconsistent with that design, and more. No argument from me at all on that -- I'm one of those people who while walking the family dog passes the time by mentally updating a running list of "urgently needed constitutional amendments/corrections". (True for me looong before Trump ever ran for president.)
Still though: the overall design is clear. President Musk and his associates and supporters appear to be either completely ignorant of those fundamentals or intending to break it all down to institute a monarchy. A textbook autogolpe.
So Obama, when he said "I'm not going to wait for legislation", did an autogolpe? He also said he'd be involving - gasp! - non-elected people such as those from "nonprofits, businesses, the private sector, universities" to help him in his endeavours!
"Ten years ago this week, with his legislative agenda stalled in Congress, Barack Obama created a new way to pursue his policies.
At his first Cabinet meeting of 2014, Obama stated, "I've got a pen and I've got a phone," coining a phrase and a pathway that has had deleterious implications for the presidency, and for the nation.
This was no mere rhetorical flourish. Obama was engaging in a sea-change in how to pursue his policy agenda.
By explicitly saying he'd pursue his policy agenda via executive action, Obama was rejecting the idea that his role was executing legislation duly passed by Congress.
He would skip the practice of reaching out to Congress to pass legislation he sought.
Obama's approach was an effort to end-run the separation of powers, and presented an unfortunate model for a unilateral presidency that lingers today."
'This has never, ever been done before' - except when it has. This is what some of us were yelling about back then: imagine the guys you *don't* like in power, do you want to give them this capability? Well, they did, and now it's been used in ways you don't like? Who could possibly have foreseen that, Cassandra asks.
>By explicitly saying he'd pursue his policy agenda via executive action, Obama was rejecting the idea that his role was executing legislation duly passed by Congress.
Statements like these are only made by people who don't understand anything about how the government works. Presidents are well within their constitutional rights to play hard ball with Congress, vetoing every bill and using EOs and Memos to advance their agenda. This CAN be used as character evidence that someone is attempting a coup or to bypass constitutional dutied - I noticed that despite quoting this piece so much, you have not a single example where Obama engaged in unconstitutional actions besides your fanfiction interpretation of his intentions. Do you have any cases from reality you'd like to share?
Every president has used the bully pulpit to call for change and worked the phones (or telegrams, or whatever Washington used), I think you need to be a little more specific.
Obama's "pen and phone" rhetoric was appalling, as was Bush the Younger's use of signing statements to assert that certain provisions of laws he'd just signed were unconstitutional and wouldn't be enforced. I opposed both at the time.
In Bush's case, I believed it was a constitutionally incorrect procedure, as presidents have a duty to veto laws they believe to be unconstitutional. Heck, prior to the Tyler administration, reviewing constitutionality was the main function of the veto power. The actual constitutional arguments were generally plausible, but belonged in veto messages (or court filings challenging the laws if the vetoes were overridden) rather than signing statements.
In Obama's case, I found the rhetoric to be much more dangerous than the practice. Congress has over the decades left Presidents an enormous amount of discretion in how to interpret and enforce laws, and Obama's executive actions used and abused that discretion to effect policy changes, but he generally stayed within bounds of where he could reasonably claim he had statutory authority for his actions. The abuse of statutory language was a highly unsavory erosion of norms, but wasn't as bad as the rhetoric that made it sound an awful lot like he was proposing ruling by decree. I was particularly appalled by center-left commentators (I'm particularly thinking of Ezra Klein) who during the same time period were arguing that unilateral executive action was a necessary response to inaction by Congress, without apparent limiting principles on what actions an executive could legitimately take.
Trump's executive actions, like Bush's and Obama's, are accompanied by claims of legal or constitutional support. Some of them, like the tariffs, are abuses of things that the President has clear statutory authority to do, and these fall pretty clearly into the same category as Obama's executive actions. Others, like shuttering entire departments and abridging birthright citizenship, are clearly contrary to statute but claim constitutional authority in terms that resemble Bush's signing statements. Overall, I take Trump's executive actions to be major escalations in degree but not totally unrooted in recent precedent.
Whether or not it constitutes an autogolpe, I think, comes down in part to a "how many grains make a heap" question. I find the Trump administration's constitutional claims much weaker than Bush's, despite superficial resemblance, and he's making much bigger changes by unilateral executive action than either Bush or Obama.
The other key question is what happens when the courts rule against many of Trump's executive actions. If the administration ignores the courts and attempts to proceed anyway, as Vance and at least one Republican Senator have been talking about on Twitter, then that would seem pretty autogolpy to me.
>This is what some of us were yelling about back then: imagine the guys you *don't* like in power, do you want to give them this capability? Well, they did, and now it's been used in ways you don't like? Who could possibly have foreseen that, Cassandra asks.
Well said. The villainy past presidents of both parties taught, Trump is executing, and Trump is bettering the instruction.
> Some of them, like the tariffs, are abuses of things that the President has clear statutory authority to do,
The law that Trump is using as justification doesn't mention "tariffs" at all, so that's at best dubious. And at the very least, it seems like a potential violation of the Major Questions Doctrine.
There are *other* laws which *do* allow Trump to impose tariffs, but those laws have actual rules and procedures, so he's not using them.
I'll take the point about Obama and Dubya setting some bad precedents. But _outside_ of actual Executive Orders, Trump has already gone well beyond those precedents. And he's already talking about another huge step beyond -- in week three.
(a) Neither Obama nor Bush tried to summarily renege on _all_ existing government contracts and fiscal obligations (the unilateral "pause" on "all federal disbursements"). I refer here to the Jan 27th OMB memo which, after a federal judged immediately stayed it as obviously illegal, they nominally "withdrew" while the White House chief spokesperson said "only the memo is withdrawn not the policy." And at this writing they are still trying to carry it out sans memo, which is why a different federal judge in a different court yesterday issued a fresh order to them to knock it off.
(b) Neither Obama nor Bush simply ignored a clear decades-old federal law to try to con federal civilian staffers into "retiring" via an obvious scam offer that the administration possesses neither authorization nor funding with which to offer.
(c) Neither Obama nor Bush talked out loud about simply ignoring the federal courts, which Trump's vice-president and his chief factotum are each doing in public right now with no contradiction from the president.
In a sense yes. Just because both sides have been doing it doesn't mean it isn't a bad thing.
The presidency has been accumulating powers to itself for decades. There is a reason people talk about imperial presidents. As originally envisioned in the constitution, the president did not have these powers and there were very good reasons for that. The gradual erosion of the guardrails has been happening for a long time. Trump may just be the one to accelerate it and bring about a fundamental shift in the nature of America's republic.
I mean, yeah. It's been going on for a long time, and it's only when the Bogeyman is in office that people are suddenly sitting up and taking notice. And the problem is that when side A were happy with the excess of power because it was doing what they wanted, and perhaps more importantly doing down side B, you can't really expect side B when the wheel turns to be any more kind and forbearing when they get the chance to do down side A with the same tools.
It'd be nice if we *could* be kind and forbearing to our enemies when our turn comes on top of the wheel of fortune, but human nature is in the way of that.
"It'd be nice if we *could* be kind and forbearing to our enemies when our turn comes on top of the wheel of fortune, but human nature is in the way of that."
People have certainly managed it in the past. Compare and contrast, for example, the way a defeated Germany was treated by the Western powers after World War I, vs its treatment by those same powers after World War II. Especially notice the rather vast difference in results.
Claiming that forbearance and cooperation are impossible is almost always just a face-saving way of saying "I don't wanna." The current administration is clearly making absolutely no attempts at either. Rationalize that however you like, but to claim it's not possible when it hasn't even been tried is flatly dishonest.
Ah, they're saying it's a non-violent coup because they are treating the US constitution as the government, and not the people who carry it out.
Until this point, they would claim, the personnel of the government has consisted almost entirely of people who respect the constitution and submit to it as interpreted by judges. That's how things have been done since Marbury vs Madison.
They would claim that the new group don't respect the constitution, or have a wildly different interpretation of it*, and are seeking illegally to install mostly new personnel who hate the old and love the new. They see this as the new group killing and replacing the constitution, so they call it a coup.
I think the idea here is a philosophical one of continuity. It's not a few firings. It's not a mere ten percent. People say it's a coup because the new group looks like they'll try to illegally remove most of the old personnel and structures and replace them with something new. If I forcibly swap out 90% of the Ship of Theseus and replace that stuff with legos, is it still the Ship of Theseus?
Note I am not necessarily for or against the swap. I am certainly not bothered about legality or the constitution, just morality.
> Until this point, they would claim, the personnel of the government has consisted almost entirely of people who respect the constitution and submit to it as interpreted by judges. That's how things have been done since Marbury vs Madison.
Andrew Jackson didn't, and that's after Marbury vs Madison.
It's hard to see Jackson as being on the right side of history. The state of Ga had arrested missionaries living on Cherokee land and sentenced them to 4 years hard labor because they didn't have a state permit, even though the Cherokee nation had a formal treaty with the US that exempted the Cherokee nation from state laws. SCOTUS upheld the treaty, Jackson said screw SCOTUS. Not a good look in retrospect.
Similarly hard to see Trump on the right side of (the yet to be written) history. Ignoring Congress' authority to tax and spend (and these are paired in the Constitution, so assuming control of the latter will of naturally lead to assuming control of the former) will lead to a spiral that will surely destroy the union. If the executive reserves the authority to only tax and spend, and does so when it helps political supporters and hurts political enemies, the center won't hold.
I think it makes sense to talk about how decisions are viewed in retrospect by society, and that this common idiom captures that. For example, I think in the future people will look back and say Biden and the dems were wrong (morally, politically) to promote and exploit identify politics. They will be viewed as on the 'wrong side' of history. Likewise with Southern segregationists - they may have had many good people on their side but I don't think society will ever look back on them as anything but wrong, so we think of them as being on the wrong side of history.
When we look back at Jackson, I think there's a general consensus that Jackson was wrong: that in fact the US government should honor its treaties as a practical and ethnical matter, and that Georgia should not have sent Christian missionaries off to prison for living on Cherokee land.
The current administration is making short-sighted decisions to achieve short term political ends, but the consequences could be very destructive. If the one superpower that takes individual liberty somewhat seriously falls into disarray for reasons of petty corruption and narrow grievances - which is what this all seems to be about - the world will suffer, at least for a while.
Some people already say that about Biden, but I don't think we can know what will happen in the future.
The southerners lost. We remember them as losers.
The US government does now adhere to some treaties, but the recent granting of land in Oklahoma (note that the west a much larger percent of the land is owned by the federal government compared to the earlier settled east) is an exception and there is no chance of handing back the Cherokee land. It is that removal of the Cherokee which caused Georgia to repeal the law those missionaries were imprisoned for, and then for the governor to release them.
The United States is always to some extent "in disarray". There is no top-down order to be set upon the whole country and instead there are many different people following their owns plans uncoordinated with others. Whether the world will suffer from this really depends on the particulars.
My wife will give birth to our son in a few months, and she has made it clear that the decision to circumcise (or not) is solely up to me.
My initial inclination was not to, based on an impression (admittedly social media-based rather than research) that there was no benefit to the procedure. Why subject my boy to unnecessary surgery?
With the birth looming, I've been doing more research. I've come across a number of articles from doctors and urologists that seem weakly in favor of circumcision. Apparently it reduces the (already low) risk of UTI, along with some STDs like HPV. Additionally on the pro-side, polls of American women show they generally prefer circumcised penises, and I would perhaps be doing my future adult son a favor in the dating market in this regard.
On the con-side, the health benefits seem "real but small." There is always a chance the procedure gets screwed up. Additionally, there is a common perception that removing the foreskin reduces sexual pleasure--although I found an article about men who were circumcised as adults, where many claimed there was no difference in sensation. Obviously not a lot of data there. Finally, I have seen (non-academic) speculation that exposing a baby to the pain of the procedure creates a foundation of lifelong mental trauma or something.
Additional background: The procedure is covered by insurance, so cost is not an issue. We are white Christian Americans (who generally do circumcise, but the trend is decreasing), and we take the New Testament at face value that circumcision is not mandatory.
Any benefits are delusions from a specific political powerful religious faction that unfortunately maintains written records from the barbaric past the best
I believe the majority of humanity practiced genital mutilation(child care used to be horrible) in the ancient past, but it really needs to be ended completely as its related to slavery
My father was in a similar boat to you when my older brother was born. He's circumcised himself but he's also a pious Christian and believed that circumcision is not required. He ultimately decided that there was no reason to circumcise his boys so he didn't. I'm glad he made that choice. The health benefits don't seem to be sizable enough to overcome the benefits of having a foreskin. The benefits don't get lots of papers written around them, but I believe they are real.
No data to back this up, but my sense is that disapproval of male circumcision is increasing. Obviously no one is going to hold your son responsible for his own "genital mutilation," but if things continue as they've been going, in another 50 years there may be real outrage over you having done it. In fact, I was actually surprised to hear that insurance is willing to pay for the procedure; I thought insurance companies had begun citing it as an elective cosmetic procedure?
And if we're indeed considering it primarily a cosmetic procedure for the benefit of your son's future adult dates - I say, don't worry about it! His AI sexbot companion will be programmed to prefer whichever option he has.
Like, I dunno, man. That old principle about being conservative with cutting anything - hair, string, wood - because "you can always take more but you can't put it back" seems like it would apply here.
Generally: removing healthy body parts for contrived reasons based in archaic rituals and puritan moral values, with a risk of permanent sexual dysfunction? Not a great plan.
Also, one of the contrived reasons (reducing the risk of HPV) has also become moot with the rollout of vaccines.
Disclaimers: I'm ex-Orthodox Jewish and currently atheist. Search the web for my name and the word "circumcision" to find more about my views on child circumcision.
I will give some brief notes from a purely engineering/mechanical perspective.
The foreskin provides mechanical and liquid lubrication. The skin on an average adult male intact penis can glide frictionlessly back-and-forth a full 6 inches (15 cm) when fully erect. The head of the penis (aka the glans) contains mucosal tissue and is normally covered by the foreskin, keeping it moist. The foreskin helps keep lubrication inside during vaginal sex by bunching up on the shaft and forming a plug.
The head of the penis typically dries out after circumcision. Depending on how much skin is removed, circumcision can significantly diminish both the mechanical and liquid lubrication abilities of the penis. With the reverse plunger shape, the head of the circumcised penis could physically pull lubrication out during vaginal sex. A lack of mechanical and liquid lubrication can make masturbation and sex more difficult, less pleasurable, and potentially painful.
> A lack of mechanical and liquid lubrication can make masturbation [...] more difficult, less pleasurable, and potentially painful.
Note that historically, this was considered an important *feature*, not a bug, in about 1900 when male circumcision was made popular among English-speaking gentiles.
I feel like it's not something that's brought up enough in these discussions (I'm assuming because it's mainly discussed in a US context, and most american males don't have foreskin?)
It's a small amount of skin, with a shit-ton of nerve endings that seem to be designed to provide pleasure more than pain, who wouldn't be a fan of that?
Well *this* comment is something that I'd expect to read on ACX; plenty of explanation.
I just admired the set-up, punchline, and brevity of your anti-circumcision argument; that isn't the kind of thing that tends to float around ACX as much.
I was put in the same position by my former wife 25 years ago. I chose not to do it. There was a brief period when he was around 17 where he bitched at me about it, but after that, no complaints. And some very nice girlfriends along the way I might add. My vote is no, do not do it.
To balance out this testimony, I am young man who was circumcised and I too have bitched at my father because I find circumcision to be a disgusting practice. So as much of parentage goes, there is no avoiding criticism.
We did not circumcise either of our boys, on the grounds of general risk aversion. I was circumcised as an infant, myself, and have never had a problem - but some fraction of circumcised men are very, very upset about it. The benefits, if real, are small. Nobody goes around yelling about how happy they are that they were circumcised as an infant. If somebody comes to your house and says, “I’ll roll this d1000: on a 0-999 I pay you $0.01 every day for life; on a 1000 I shoot you in the gut,” do you take that bet? I sure don’t.
Some pro-circumcision arguments that I’ve heard online have failed to materialize. The prepuce is generally fused to the glans and non-retractable during infancy, so it never caused any difficulty cleaning them. Now that they’re older, I just tell them to clean it gently during their normal bath. It takes ten seconds. If “minimize the difficulty of bathing my children” was my decision criterion, I’d have to shave their heads.
Neither of my sons have ever asked me why my penis looks different from theirs. If they do, we’ll say the same thing we say for most questions about bodies: “some people’s bodies are shaped a little different than others. No big deal.” Then they go back to playing with trucks, demanding fruit snacks, or throwing a tantrum because their Mac ‘n cheese isn’t exactly the exact shade of orange they were expecting.
I can’t speak to potential issues in their love lives later on; they’re too young for that. But if they turn 18 and get upset that their junk is unfashionable, they can always get circumcised then. The reverse is not the case.
I haven't looked into the research too deeply or recently - how much of the evidence in support of circumcision comes from studies of HIV prevention programs in SSA? In addition to the problem of controlling for hygiene-based interventions, infectious disease in general is much, much more prevalent in SSA.
Have you found a pediatrician? I'd make notes about purported pros and cons and consult your son's pediatrician, when the time arises. (Anecdotally, it seems to be falling out of fashion, with a non-negligible proportion of newer pediatricians refusing to do elective circumcisions.)
It seems obvious that the principle of caution alone should prevent you from removing healthy tissue from your son's genitals. If he wants to be circumcised he can get circumcised as an adult, or indeed as a teenager whenever you think he has the maturity to make that decision for himself.
Circumcision status is not a binary state. Every circumcision is different. The surgeon cuts off an arbitrary amount of skin. Over half of the erogenous tissue on my penis was cut off. The skin on my erect penis is tighter than the skin on my index finger. Others have had far less skin cut off, to the degree that they are able to masturbate without lube. These are completely different surgeries. You cannot equivocate what I experience to what men who were circumcised as adults experience. When I read how other men describe sex and masturbation, their experiences are utterly alien to me. I feel a sense of loss, anger, and dread. The parts of the penis that they describe as being the most pleasurable are either missing from my penis or barely pleasurable at all. They describe masturbating multiple times a day, whereas masturbating is barely pleasurable (and somewhat painful) for me if I do it more than a few times a week.
Ever since I realized what it meant to be circumcised (at 23), I have had frequent intrusive depressive thoughts about sex and masturbation. It has distorted the lens through which I view the world. Not having been circumcised would have saved me a lifetime of depressive thoughts. I understand this is not a common outcome, but it's a possibility that is 1,000 times worse than any purported benefits.
Also, having to pour a bunch of liquid on my penis to masturbate and then having to shower every time afterward is extremely stupid and annoying.
Plus you can just defer the decision to when he is an adult! Other than the convenience of it all, what benefit is he getting from having it done now? A marginal decrease in UTI probability? Are you really willing to engage in nonconsensual genital cutting for that?
I can't believe there are several responses and they are all very tepid. Can I register my opinion that mutilating your infant's genitals would be a horrible mistake? Please do not mutilate your infant's genitals in any way. Unless you are living in sub-Saharan Africa and your son will grow in an environment without running water, where dry sex is culturally popular. In that case, circumcise away. Otherwise, please leave his genitals alone.
The world would be a better place if Elon's parents had gone full mutilation mode and given him a prophylactic lobotomy. Not a partisan or Democrat voter here. But Elon is clearly over his head and relishes wrecking things because it makes him feel powerful.
Suggesting something would make the world a better place is a far cry from calling for murder. Many people gripe about being married. Few of them "off" their partner.
Suggesting that your political enemies would be better off dead is calling for murder. We just had assassination attempts against Trump in the most recent election. "Wouldn't it be great if the people I don't like were dead" is a call for murder, and some people have tried to act on it.
There was an adversarial collaboration (two people who started with opposing views on a topic, did research and tried to converge on a common view) abou infant circumcision on Slate Star Codex: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/10/acc-is-infant-circumcision-ethical/ From their conclusion: "The benefits of infant circumcision appear to outweigh the risks and harms. Additionally, it is safer to be circumcised as an infant than as an adult, and a significant portion of the benefits of circumcision accrue to infants and children. From a strictly utilitarian perspective, infant circumcision should therefore be encouraged – whether we consider society as a whole or only the boy in question. However, autonomy is an important value, and while a man can become circumcised (missing only some of the benefits of having been circumcised as an infant), it is impossible to effectively restore the foreskin and become “de-circumcised”. An ethical system that heavily values personal choice over cost-benefit analysis may reasonably reject circumcision."
Thanks for sharing this. At this time, I'm leaning against circumcision for autonomy and precautionary reasons, but I also find myself sharing Scott's reaction:
"I had kind of swallowed the popular consensus that circumcision was Useless And Evil, and this gave pretty strong evidence that it has a variety of medical benefits and there’s no clear evidence it has any harms (especially reducing sexual pleasure, which is the main harm I’d heard cited). It seems to say that it’s hard to be against circumcision on anything other than a sort of deontological/autonomyesque/precautionary principle, which is not at all what I was expecting."
Most of the research I've encountered seems to either not come to a recommendation, or to be weakly in favor of doing or not doing it. I was taken aback by how strongly people here seem to be suggesting that circumcision is a completely indefensible practice. I'm probably not going to choose it for my son, but it seems like there is a reasonable utilitarian/non-religion based argument in favor.
My father is circumcised and made it a point to not cut me, and I am very very grateful to him for making that against the grain choice, so long ago. It is a choice I could make for myself now if I wanted to change it, but one I could not have changed if he didn't make that stand.
If Musk set out to persuade Trump that by 2028 Neuralink will be able to download Trump's mind into Trump Junior's body to contest the election, I think it more likely than not that he would succeed.
Many Thanks! Yes, that is the impression I'm getting as well. The next few years look like they will be astonishing. Well, 300,000 years was a good time, though (for mammalian species) not a long time...
I run a trading bootcamp (https://www.trading.camp). The next one is happening this (extended) weekend in SF! Take your loved one on a surprise romantic getaway for Valentine's day with a ticket to quantitative trading bootcamp.
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Confessing embarrassing ignorance about musical theory here, but can someone explain how counterpoint in songs like Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair or the screen Bridge over the River Kwai version of Colonel Bogies March works?
I mean I appreciate that it is pleasing to my ear and does work, but why?
Bear in mind that all I know about ‘a perfect fifth’ is that Claude Lacombe used it to describe the next tone — ‘Up a perfect fifth’ is how I remember it — in composing the alien summoning melody in Close Encounters.
I'd say consonant intervals like thirds and sixths sound good, and they sound even better when you move from dissonant (second and sevenths) to consonant intervals.
The question of why some intervals sound better than others probably relates to the frequency ratios mentioned in other replies (and also the way human brains are put together, which obviously nobody fully understands).
The way it works out in practice is very complicated. But fundamentally:
Sounds are frequencies. If you consider, say, 440Hz and 220Hz, the 220Hz sound "fits" into the 440Hz sound. Every second wave in the 440Hz sound is also in the 220Hz sound. There are no waves in the 220Hz sound that don't also occur in the 440Hz sound.
Those 2 tones are in a 2:1 ratio called the octave. Sometimes, two instruments playing an octave apart will blend together so smoothly, it sounds like one instrument. The octave is the most "consonant" interval. ("interval" is just tone ratio.) The perfect fifth interval is a 2:3 frequency ratio. It's not as consonant as the octave, but still very consonant. Every third wave is the same.
The intervals continue that way, 3:4 is the fourth, 4:5 is the third, etc. Putting the various intervals together into a musical scale is very hard and complicated, and different cultures solve it differently. Western music currently uses a solution popularized by Bach called "equal temperament".
The specifics of how different intervals get put together into harmonies like Simon & Garfunkel use is very, very complicated. But, fundamentally, the pleasure you get from hearing the kind of consonant intervals they sing is from a straightforward physics thing. The waves match up and fit together, and that's nice.
I looked up the topic in Albert Schweitzer's Bach biography. Schweitzer states that Bach indeed used an equally-spaced tuning. But it would also make sense that the "actual" tuning wasn't perfectly even, it's not like he had a frequency analyzer. He had to tune by ear, and so the end result was whatever he thought sounded good in all 24 keys. Which would have to be pretty darn close to the perfectly even temperament.
Oh, I thought that he popularized the equal temperament system with "The Well-Tempered Clavier". Equal temperament allows you to play in all keys, so The Well-Tempered Clavier showcased that feature by having one piece in every possible key, which wasn't possible before equal temperament.
Not Quite. Bach (JS, the famous one) was a proponent of a number of "Well-Tempered" systems that gave each key a unique character but still allowed music in all key centers.
Equal Tempered temperaments only came into their own with the expanded chromaticism of the 19th C.
There are countless articles online debating the specifics, but as near as I can tell no one today seriously thinks Bach ws promoting "equal temperament"
Thanks for the reply. I think I have the pure physics part down. I’ve written code to automate hearing aid testing. Give me the FFT decomposition of sounds and the math is straightforward.
The pleasure of certain combinations is where the mystery is for me. But hey some mysteries are good.
Unfortunately I didn’t play any instrument when I was young or study music theory so I think part of this will always remain beyond my ken.
Nothing to stop me from enjoying the effects though.
Edit: It still bothers me a little bit that the frequency of middle C has changed over time. The math and physics guy in me wants to know “How can that be?” Yes, a small joke.
Further edit approaching non sequitur:
I run into a professional piano tuner occasionally in my local coffee shop. His technique is to begin by placing a vibrating pitchfork* against his teeth. Seems weird to me but he is the pro after all.
*Did I really type pitchfork when I meant tuning fork? Oy! I really need to read what I’ve typed before I press Save.
I can explain another level deeper. This is where you get into songwriting and composition. I'm a (amateur) musician, not a songwriter or composer, so I'm not fully fluent in this stuff.
Once you've got the primary auditory experience of pleasure (consonance) and displeasure (dissonance) available, and expressible in various degrees (there are more or less dissonant intervals / chords), you can begin to build an art on it.
Western songwriting primarily functions by setting up an expectation and then fulfilling it. Or, to put it another way, by creating tension and then resolving it. Songs have a key (for instance, C). C is the primary tone; call it the 1. You can build a scale on C; it goes C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C (or 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, where 8 is the octave). You can build a major chord on C, which goes C-E-G (1-3-5).
The most consonant other chord available is the chord built on the 4 of your scale, which, in C, is F major (F-A-C or 4-6-8). Another highly consonant chord you can build in C is the 5, or G major (G-B-D or 5-7-2). Neither of these are as consonant as the chord built on 1, because the 6 and the 2 clash a bit with the 1 (which is to say, audiologically, their main overtones form dissonant large-number-ratios with the 1's main overtones).
Because of music theory I'm eliding here, the 2, 3 and 6 chords have to be minor chords, which just means they incorporate a bit of extra dissonance in their thirds. You can and should use them; they'll be felt as very tense and unsettled, but still harmonious. You don't use the chord built on the 7, it would be so dissonant as to be unharmonious.
So a simple chord progression in C might be 1-4-1. You start with the most consonant possible chord, C major; then move to a less-consonant chord, F major; this creates a tension or expectation; which you then fulfill / resolve by moving back to C major.
One of the most common chord progressions in traditional American music is 1-4-1-5. Amazing Grace (basically) follows this progression, but also many other traditional songs. It creates tension, but never goes too far from home base.
The most common chord progression in contemporary American music, by far, is 1-5-6-4. (This is the one where you see those videos of bands playing 30 different songs, all with the same chords!) I think this one shines because it gives you a good variety of different chords, and kind of mimics the hero's journey, in a way that's hard to explain. Maybe a more competent composer than me can explain why that is. "When I Come Around" by Green Day displays this chord progression really obviously.
But you also get chord progressions like 4-5-6-4-5-6, particularly on the bridges of songs, which leave you unsettled and longing strongly for a resolution (which usually hits with the chorus, which will probably start with a 1 chord).
Or chord progressions like 6-4-1-5, which are hard to stop playing. Because the 1 happens in the middle of the sequence, you want to get to it by starting the sequence over again whenever you finish it.
The melody always uses notes from the key's scale. Melodies tend to have certain emphasized notes that function as resting points; these notes should belong to the current chord. Otherwise, it's dissonant. Generally, you can use dissonant notes in a melody as long as you're using them to pass to a consonant note.
Literally all of these rules have tons of exceptions, like in all arts.
So that's the bare bones basics of why different combinations of tones and intervals give pleasure in different ways. Like lots and lots of other arts, it's fundamentally about creating and resolving tension.
Thanks. This is very helpful and well aimed at my level of knowledge.
I think if I were to keep unraveling this down to the level of “Why does well done three part harmony give me the chills?”, I’d have to get to the mind body problem or the true existence of human souls.
I still prefer to tune my guitars by listening to the beats between the overtones generated on the 7th and the 5th frets of the higher and lower strings respectively, once I tuned the A string to the 440 Hz standard (or whatever tuning level I need for the piece).
I used to do this too, it's pretty common. I stopped when I learned more. The perfect 5th you get with that technique is 2 cents larger than the equal-tempered 5th, and it compounds so that your G string will be too sharp by 4 cents.
I've learned from experience that I need to err just a pinch flat. but I always assumed it was just a skill issue. But I do know in the back of my mind that there's a difference between equal and just tuning, so I should I have expected this in hindsight.
First, to clarify: we are talking about notes produced by musical instruments, e.g., a vibrating string, not pure tones generated by an oscillator. Here's the harmonic sequences:
440 Hz (A4): 440, 880, 1320, 1760, 2200, etc.
220 Hz (A3): 220, 440, 880, 1320, 1760, 2200, etc.
EDIT: A3 has multiples of 220 Hz, so the sequence is 220, 440, 660, 880, 1100, 1320, etc....
I'm not clarified. It still seems to me that a 440 hz would have waves that don't occur in a 220 hz, while a 220 hz would have no waves in it that don't also occur in 440 hz.
"Counterpoint" just means "simultaneous, complementary melodies." There isn't a unifying way they "work" - a bassline outlining the harmonic form in the absence of a chordal instrument could be analyzed as counterpoint, it's just a common enough musical convention with a distinctive enough function that it gets its own name.
There are LOTS!! of details I don't know, but the basic answer is "it's been experimentally observed". That's not a good explanation of why it works, but it's a basis from which compositions can be created. A second and a seventh are dissonant, but differently. (Note that the frequency separation is the same, it's the context that they appear in that makes the difference.) So there are LOTS of complicated observed patterns, that people have defined reactions towards. (And also note that a lot of this is learned. E.g. Javanese music doesn't use the same notes as the octave scale.)
P.S.: Don't rely on the details of this, my wife was the musician, and maybe there is a difference between the 2nd and the 7th. But in general the answer is correct.
Yeah, I agree with the general answer, but I'd say a 2nd vs a 7th have different frequency separations (if you raise the lower note of a 2nd by an octave (aka double the frequency) you get a 7th), while the dissonance quality is similar.
I've been following the news about Santorini earthquakes with a degree of morbid fascination. The archipelago is a remnant of a supervolcano explosion, i.e., a caldera. When this thing blows up again it will be catastrophic. This situation is the opposite of the 2.1% sweet meteor of dea... scratch that, giant explosion of Christmas 2032: we know with near-100% certainty Santorini will blow up, just don't know when.
Only tangentially related, but I consciously experienced an earthquake for the first time a few weeks ago, it was deeply weird! This is notable because I live in a the north east, not a land known for quaking earth, old hat to you Californian folks I'm sure.
NE earthquakes are more common that people seem to assume. The mountains there are older but there's still some movement happens. I believe there were several since the turn of the century. A cursory search produced this: https://nesec.org/massachusetts-earthquakes/
You're on your way to prevent multiple statistical deaths by donating 10% of your income in the form of a cashier's check, when you see a drowning child. If you attempt to save the drowning child, you will not be able to prevent multiple statistical deaths. What should you do?
Save the child, the go to my bank and have the cashier's check re-issued. The bank makes the funds for the check unavailable when it's issued, but they don't actually leave my account until they're deposited. Worst case, I have an extra 10% of my income unavailable in my account for 90 days while the bank waits for the first check to expire; I have more than enough liquid assets to cover this. Or if the soggy remains of the original check are recognizable, I can present it to my bank as proof that the original was damaged and the check should be re-issued without an additional hold.
Can't resist - this is too close to my old snarky version.
You are on a trolley taking a shipment of mosquito nets to the post office to send to Africa when you see Peter Singer drowning in a lake. You can pull a lever to stop the trolley and save him, but then you will not get to the post office before it closes for the long weekend, resulting in deaths > 1. What to do?
I am not a utilitarian, but I would let him drown - his conclusions are repugnant.
If I take into consideration that this is a path well-trodden by many, and that any moment now another Rationalist and/or Effective Altruist will be passing by, I leave the child and hasten to the bank with my cheque. Somebody else will save the child, whereas only I can prevent all those statistics!
Alternately, I hope that an ordinary person is passing by Drowning Child Lake (honestly, the local council really should do something, maybe safety rails or at least a lifebuoy) and since all we on here know Normies Are Stupid, they'll plunge right in to save the kid without even doing a statistical analysis first!
You mean would I rather be celebrated as a town hero, for free, or spend half my disposable income on something I can’t even mention socially without seeming like a douche?
This is my chance to register my view that utilitarianism is Bad and Wrong. I love Scott Alexander's writing in spite of the utilitarianism, not because of.
Utilitarianism is definitely a minority position among regular people and probably is among philosophers. The question is why it seems so over represented, especially on Substack.
Substack, and this substack in particular, is for nerds. Utilitarianism transforms ethics and morality, traditionally difficult and fuzzy humanistic problems that even the wise struggle with, into mathematical equations that can be solved with a bit of algebra or maybe a spreadsheet. The appeal should be obvious.
I get the appeal of systematizing ethics but it’s not the only way to do it, as Kantians could attest. Although if someone doesn’t know anything about the subject than it might appear that way. I once had someone here tell me they liked utilitarianism because it had numbers and they didn’t really care what those numbers were as long as they gave an answer.
Satisficing consequentialism* says *either* donating the income or saving the child is good and praiseworthy, and staying home and doing nothing is probably fine too.
We have a greater obligation to act when we are the unique and only person who can solve a problem. If there's a waterpolo team training in the same body of water as the drowning child, and shouting at them resolves the problem, then all is well.
If we're somehow prevented from donating the money later by saving the child (which seems unlikely) then this is still morally acceptable, as it's likely that other people will donate to save those people in some statistical sense. We might even compensate in the future by encouraging others to donate or increasing our future donations.
I think many of these questions go away if we accept some sort of nearness bias: it's OK to value the lives of those near to us in distance, time or blood relation above others further away.
Honestly, it seems like the best use of our hypothetical income would be to set up a lifeguard station beside this lake because those dang kids keep jumping (or falling) in and apparently none of them can swim a stroke.
Either that, or pay to have the lake drained.
I blame the parents. Where are they and why are they letting their kids run around lakes without being able to swim?
We really MUST value those we can directly perceive higher. We have greater certainty about their condition. If you donate money, you don't know the secretary isn't going to run away with the treasurer and use that money for their fling. You may assign that a low probability, but it should be well above zero.
(FWIW, I have donated money that was embezzled. This isn't an impossibly rare happening. And I suspect that it happens a lot more often than we hear about.)
Oh, there are many such cases! We had one a few years back which ended up in a right old ding-dong in the courts between the disgraced former boss of a charity, who appeared to be treating said charity (along with other board members) as a nice little earner for her. Then she went to court to sue over her reputation. I can't remember now how it ended up, but it badly damaged the charity, and charitable giving to other charities, for a while.
Yeah, that one is pertinent in regards to the uproar around USAID. Good causes being used as cover for fraud and scamming. Who could possibly be against funding charities that help people impacted by suicide? Even the possibility of criticising them would mark you out as a bad person.
Btu somebody has to be the bad guy who checks to see if all the alleged good causes are really what is claimed.
No one likes auditors (or Revenue) but they're fulfilling a social purpose. What we've learned again and again is that no-one can be trusted to be above the law. Trust but verify! (And don't burn the whole thing down for spurious reasons.)
When I see a drowning child, I can be more or less 100% certain that my choices can be the difference between life and death.
When I read that my money will buy malaria nets and save 10 lives on another continent, there are many layers of assumptions between me and the lives that I'm saving:
- I'm trusting that the science of malaria prevention through mosquito control is accurate, and that bed nets are a reliable method of mosquito control. (This seems pretty safe to assume but they get less reliable from here)
- I'm trusting that honest studies by good researchers have been done and have correctly identified the cost/benefit ratio here.
- I'm trusting that other researchers have done good studies comparing the cost/benefit ratio of this intervention to other potential interventions.
- I'm trusting that the actual charity that I am giving money to is in position to effectively execute the intervention in the most cost efficient way possible.
- And because I have no direct connection with any of those things, I am trusting my ability to read articles & studies and listen to smart people online and figure out which of their opinions I most believe given their inevitable disagreements.
All of which adds up to way less certainty than "that kid right there is gonna drown if I do nothing, but may live if I intervene."
Which is to say: I would save the child. I also believe in effective giving, and I _do_ try to give towards things like malaria nets, but the two things should not be treated as close to equivalently as they are.
Great question! If we're playing with hypotheticals then the 'child drowning' scenario is also rife with uncertainty.
- Is that child actually drowning? Maybe they're just playing? As a parent myself I've tried to study up on what drowning actually looks like. I have moderately high confidence that I could identify it. A harder scenario would be if they're not drowning at _present_ but are at risk, like if they fall off a boat and are floating downstream and the water is getting rough. There is certainly a level of uncertainty here.
- Am _I_ the only one who can save them? If someone else has already dived in and is heading towards them, then my intervention may not be necessary. Or maybe that rescuer is not actually as good as swimmer as I am? Maybe I should be ready to save both of them.
- On the other hand, if I jump in, and the water is rougher than it appears, then it's possible that not only will I not save the child, but that I myself might drown, or require saving myself, or worst of all I might drown myself _and_ induce someone else to drown trying to save me.
Nonetheless, as someone with a child who regularly goes to pools with other kids, I think it is well possible (if not likely) that I will face a scenario where I have a reasonable chance of helping to save a life with my direct actions.
1) Contra various inexplicable claims here, plasmids are not safe! They're only safe if not delivered by a real delivery vector because they don't get taken up by cells and basically nothing happens. If they're delivered by a real delivery vector such as LNP they end up in the cytoplasm and activate cGAS-STING which is incredibly toxic and inflammatory.
1a) Was the Ichor CRO experiment literally just naked plasmid? Not even minicircle claims that works I think, they use PEI which is its own brand of problematic. It's concerning that the powerpoint does not mention a vector.
2) That CRO report was vaguely interesting but they should have done qPCR or RNA sequencing to confirm the presence of mRNA generated from plasmid.
3) There are two separate "1,000-fold" gauntlets to run. First the issue of the ng vs pg discrepancy that was pointed out by another commenter. Second is the issue that local injection in mice and humans are not all that different in terms of volume, but humans are 1,000-fold bigger than mice so local injections go ~1,000-fold less far! This is why you need systemic delivery to e.g. the liver if you want to scale from mice to humans for systemic administration.
Does Hamas have an endgame? Are they fine with the status quo of 'reconstruction is extremely slow, we stay in power and are periodically raided,' or do they think there's a significant chance of something either worse or better for them happening. I haven't seen decent public information about how organized their leadership is, and what efforts if any they're making to shape the future.
Hamas is not run by rationalists, it is run by fundamentalists. A significant fraction of them genuinely, sincerely believe that if they stay the course then eventually an omnipotent being will rejigger reality so that Israel no longer exists and a Jew-free Palestine will become an Earthly paradise even greater than a Trumpian riviera, where the Palestinian people will live happily ever after. Under Hamas's rule, of course.
Another significant fraction believes that this is an extreme long shot, but that it is still better for a Palestinian, or even all Palestinians, to die at Israel's hands and thus be granted a martyr's ticket straight to heaven, than for them to be shuffled off to some refugee camp where existential despair will lead to unvirtuous behavior without the opportunity for martyrdom and so ultimately to the Not-Good Place. There's no rush, of course, so might as well try for the Jew-free Palestine version, and you have to at least be trying or the deaths don't count as martyrdom.
And then there's the ones who don't believe in any of that, but they have a *relatively* cushy gig as the Gaza elite, better than anything they'd find in a refugee camp, so long as they *pretend* to believe all that and act accordingly.
So, yeah, they're probably mostly OK with the status quo of Israeli occupation and/or blockade, and occasional Al-Aqsa Floods.
Their endgame is that ethnic cleansing or genocide is taboo in the 21st century in any population/place with 50+ cameras pointed at it, let alone an 80-years-old conflict infused with thousands of stories and inflammations/conspiracy theories and credible accusation of genocide. But Israel backed itself into a corner where Ethnic Cleansing or Genocide is about the only decisive and permanent solutions.
The decline of American power, and the increasing misery of the American taxpayer funding Israel's war (one among many wars (s)he keeps paying instead of healthcare), seem to also have something to do with the Palestinian militants' hope that - just maybe - one more Iron Dome missile would be too much. Right now, all the polls I have seen among young (< 25 years) Americans seem to be validating them, their bet is that (1) This will continue as those youth age into politics (2) They will survive the 30-50 years necessary for this to take effect, or the century of China-accelerated American decline will ramp up faster than America's Israel-hostile youth are aging (and that the 2 will eventually meet in the middle and live happily ever after).
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Israel is kinda hopeless demographically, very long-term speaking. Think about it, their fastest growing socio-political faction is the one explicitly preaching that military service is worse than death. And even with their fastest growing faction included they're still on equal demographic basis with the Arabs living in the whole land between Gaza and the Galilee. Once you expand scope a bit and notice the demographic trends among, e.g., Egypt and Jordan, you would soon see that the Arab autocracies keeping their people exactly 1 meal ahead of starvation are part of the Iron Dome, and Arab autocracies are one hell of an unreliable safety net to depend on.
Unless, that is, Singularity happens and now 1 person with enough money and data centers can genocide ~150 million people. Well, in that case, that person is about equally likely to be a Gulf Sheikh (who won't spare an Arab or a Jew) as an ultra-orthodox warlord.
The extremely smart move on part of Israel right now is to utilize their 50 years of runway that their current military supremacy is worth to achieve whatever political goals they can conceivably get, which is a lot. Asking for a Palestinian state is **remarkably** tame, it's the position of the USA since as far as I can go back and still recognize the names of the combatants. (which is why it won't solve anything if it's not properly militarized, a state is a military, anything else is a boy scouts club in various guises.)
Other than that, it can always risk genocide, effectively bluffing the combined might of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, and maybe even Turkey into doing something. To say nothing of what the EU and USA would do after a literal Hitler 80-anniversary reboot.
That's why Israel's Right Wing loves yapping about """Voluntary Emigration""" so much, but they're kinda too racist to even do that properly, after all, literally no Gazan except Ismail Haniyah's descendants would stay in Gaza for 1 second more if given a million dollar and a one-way-ticket + green card to Canada/USA, and one million * one million Gazan is a trillion dollar, about 30 years of Israel's military spending of ***Opens Google Tab*** 30.5 billion dollar. 1 million per Gazan is an obscene exaggeration, and Saudi Arabia + Europe can foot some of the bills (Saudi Arabia casually promised 600 billion, 60% of the bill to """Voluntary Emigrate""" 1 million Gazan @ 1 million dollar per Gazan, in a phone call with Trump). So given how easy it is to "Voluntary Emigration" a population out of a land, the Israeli Right Wingers are still too low-IQ and low human empathy to do even that properly and diplomatically.
It's extremely hard to predict, and Hamas is in a very weak position, but Israel is also in one hell of a corner. Like someone alluded, their biggest hope is that Palestinians will just... get bored? I don't know, seems kinda dumb, like someone who has no idea what "Revenge" means trying to predict the behavior of a human group after killing anywhere between 3% to 10% of the group and scarring who knows how many for the rest of their lives.
"Maybe after this they would learn their lesson", yeah, I bet that worked great for the Ancient Jews after the Romans demolished their state and scattered them all over the Middle East and Southern/Eastern Europe. Well technically it did, it just didn't work out for their successors.
Tldr; I don't know what Hamas endgame is and anyone who thinks is too dumb or too dishonest to know better, but it involves the global isolation of Israel and the "Demographics Is Destiny" hypothesis, along with the conviction that Islamist fundamentalism is enough to keep the flame of revenge glowing.
"Israel is kinda hopeless demographically, very long-term speaking. Think about it, their fastest growing socio-political faction is the one explicitly preaching that military service is worse than death."
The actual number of non-Haredi Jews is only going to go up.
We corresponded X thousand words on a previous open thread without resolving the question of whether any state composed primarily of the people currently in Gaza/West Bank could be persuaded (once it had the means to do so) to not attack Israel motivated by the belief that jewish self-determination in the middle east is an injustice not to be tolerated as a primary consideration over all other goals.
Just curious, have your beliefs on the topic/this question changed in the weeks since?
As a companion to my assertion that there is almost perfect symmetry between Palestinian Peace Obstructionism and Israeli Peace Obstructionism, here's a recent story in Haaretz about a Jerusalem book store whose owners were accused by the police of incitement to terrorism and dragged to court over books that contained such violent symbols of Palestinian Nationalism as poetry and cuisine https://archive.ph/ohDi5.
I'm not sure whether people outside israel who quote Haaretz are aware just how much it is the equivalent of anti American anecdote personally cherrypicked by Noam Chomsky, who is American so how can you accuse him of anti western bias
I haven't done any new readings since then, less than during the hot war in fact. More work in my life, less mental health to keep track with all the insane genocidal shit that keeps gaining grounds in English-translated Hebrew media (let alone the raw Hebrew media).
My beliefs on this topic or question isn't opposite, it's a "Yes And" not a "No" or even a "Yes But". Yes, obviously the cultural meme of "Jews are colonizers that can be driven out of the land if we just kill the next 50 of them" needs to die, hopefully quickly, hopefully with the minimum possible Palestinian and Israeli deaths.
But you know, I could almost say the same thing about massive portions of the Israeli mythmaking, collective consciousness, and culture too. There is an ironic and delicious symmetry in this conflict, keep reading enough of both sides and you will eventually be able to morph the grievances of each side into each other almost loss-lessly. I don't even see 0s and 1s anymore, I see "Arabs took this Jewish land from us" and "Jews took this Islamic land from us".
Where was I? Ah Yes, the weird Israeli supremacism that desperately asserts an ethnically-homogenous state is one of the fundamental human rights promised to people in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but also Palestinians can't have one. Because... because,... Palestinians are made up, they don't exist, they are all Jordanians and Egyptians in watermelon-colored trench coats. Or maybe they exist but they're just fake. Maybe they're real but have too few Nobel prizes, or maybe they deserve ones but we're just too uncomfortable to give them one now, come later in 15 years (Spoiler: Nothing will change in 15 years, it's a bluff in the desperate hope that Palestinians will get bored in 15 years despite not getting bored in 80).
Israelis and the people who love them (which sometimes include me, some of them, some of the time, when I'm not reading the nth genocidal translation of the latest pop star or politican to get viral) get too upset at Hamas supporters chanting "By Any Means" and "Those Who Make Peaceful Resistance Impossible, Make Armed Resistance Inevitable", and I get it, I really do. It feels wrong to be this gleeful at a literal real-life horror movie that I would dismiss as too cheap and blood-plotted if it was a Hollywood production.
But you know what, they're kinda right, as a purely descriptive (not normative, despite them meaning it in a normative, "cheer the revolution" kind of way) model, it really is the case that talking is the wonderful social technology, that - among other thing - discharge violence and give hope (however dim and false) to the dispossessed. Right now, carrying a Palestinian flag in public in Israel is a crime ("incitement"), that's why Peace Protestors and Radical Bloc leftists often carry watermelons or Palestinian-colors-Arabic-words.
It really is a truth that when you make it a crime for people to have nationalist aspirations, eventually they're going to figure out how to do it without you, and you're not going to be pleased with how they do that.
I had to stop reading your post right at that line, because everything I know about the history of this is that in 1948 the Palestinians and theIsraeli’swere given a state and that resolution was not a satisfactory one to the Palestinians or to any neighboring Arab state.. And it seems to me ever since then it has not been a satisfactory one.
Whatever the horrible mess we find ourselves in now it has been the stated intention of only one side that the other must be eliminated from the area and preferably from the Earth.
I'm discussing Israeli attitude right now and for the past 40-60 years. The Palestinian state stalled Egyptian Peace negotiations until Egypt relented (and also it wasn't very serious about it to begin with). The Palestinian half-state that Rabin had to clarify to the Knesset that it's not exactly a state got him killed, the only Israeli PM to meet that fate, as far as my memory serves.
I can find plenty of Israeli attitudes in 1948 and before to demonstrate that "Whatever we're in now is the fault of a single people" is - to a very good seventh-order approximation - politically-motivated Disney Morality to justify atrocities.
> ever since then it has not been a satisfactory one.
No credible offer of Palestinian statehood was ever put on the table since 1948. And the one on the table in 1948 wasn't from Israel.
No, it was not Israel because Israel did not exist officially. It was the UN and it was based on what the British did to try and make a two state solution. It proposed a state of Israel and a state of Palestine. Israel accepted those boundaries.I will disagree with you about offers on the table subsequently to create a two state solution. I think they had plenty of chances. The deal Arafat walked away from for instance. It might go a long way towards solving the problem if Hamas would remove the destruction of Israel as one of their core tenets. I have said before in these comments that it is very difficult to negotiate with someone whose goal is to kill you.
If you’re talking short term goals, I think their hope was the ceasefire would hold, and after a few months, after they re-established de facto power, the prospect of restarting the war would induce Israel begrudgingly accept the status quo.
Long term, probably they hoped to rally the neighboring countries to their side, or force Israel to make a deal with them fully accepting their permanent control over Gaza. Both long shots of course. It’s long been known that there were comparatively moderate and extreme wings in Hamas in tension with each other. Personnel has changed of course though so who knows now; but I’d say it generally behaves like an organization with considerable internal conflict.
In general the Palestinian strategy has been to resist Israel as long as possible using unconventional methods (typically against civilians) rather than face the overwhelming Israeli military. I believe this is mostly to gain internal political credibility and to keep the conflict alive in international news. It also provides a morale boost and exerts a small amount of negotiating pressure on Israel by showing that they are capable of doing some damage. While doing this, they appeal to international organizations and global public opinion to attempt a diplomatic victory, similar to the way international pressure ended South African apartheid. They seem to view this as a genuine model for potential victory rather that purely being rhetoric used for propaganda. (They have seen huge gains in public support over the past decade or so, so you could argue that the strategy has been at least partially effective.) It is hard to predict if that strategy will continue post-Oct. 7. They seem set on fighting to the death rather than being expelled or living under Israeli control.
They've been outspoken that their plan is to just commit more and more October 7s, forever, until there are no more Jews. Pretty retarded if you know how population increases work, but if they weren't stupid they wouldn't be in Hamas, so there's a pretty hard upper bound on their rationality.
I doubt their retirement would be long lived. Once they’re out of power and have no leverage there’s little reason for the Mossad not to keep assassinating them. And fanatics tend not to weight personal self interest overly much anyway.
That's exactly why almost nothing of his foreign policy works. He perfected the art of "Whining and blustering till someone blinks" and all the limited concessions that can be obtained by it, but has 0 strategy or international smarts beyond that.
There is a reason there isn't a wall with Mexico since the ~10 years he has been publicly promising it.
Building a wall across the entirety of the southern US border is a lot harder than moving/killing 2 million people concentrated in an area that's only slightly bigger than San Francisco.
He's proposing to _buy_ the property? I hadn't noticed that element in his statements....pretty sure that no Republican member of Congress would have anything but an "oh hell no" reaction to idea of Hamas members getting paid cash money for Gaza.
(Perhaps Trump could finance such a purchase the way he paid for all his business ventures: no money down, extravagant promises of future balloon payments, stall for years on making the actual payments, strip cash flow down to negative then file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and get the courts to stiff all the creditors for you, rinse and repeat. Maybe Hamas/Iran would fall for that, one time at least?)
WRT: "pretty sure that no Republican member of Congress would have anything but an "oh hell no" reaction to idea of Hamas members getting paid cash money for Gaza" - I've lost count of all the times I though this about various Trump's... "ideas". Alas, the Republican party is now basically a North-Korean-style "write down everything Dear Leader says and enthusiastically support" Party.
Both of you seem to be under the impression that he means to purchase it *from Hamas*. I would've thought that he means buying it from Israel, and the payment will probably be in the form of weapons and such that we would've sent them anyway, only they won't have to pay for them.
I'm using "buying from Hamas" as an illustration of the utter idiocy of the whole idea. It's really hard to take it seriously, and I am astounded (but I guess I should not be) at the ineptitude of the journalists covering it, should not this very question, "who are you buying it from, Mr. President" be shouted, printed, posted, whatever, all over the place?
But - taking it seriously for a moment - there's no need nor a legal way to "buy" it from Israel, is there? Israel controls it militarily at the moment, it can just hand control over to the US, how is a "purchase" even relevant here? But it doesn't "own" it in any legal sense, which is what would be required for a "legal" purchase?
God I feel stupid and mentally spent just typing this.
Assuming he is a clever Machiavellian and not a bumbling buffoon, the point of the "bying Gaza and expelling all Palestinians" schtick is to influence how Hamas perceive their choices. He might attempt to scare them into a deal, by influencing the perceived disaster they may face, if they do not. It's a negotiating tactic.
Haha, underestimating the ineptitude of journalists, classic rookie mistake! Well, not a crippling one; you'll learn.
I agree though, yes, someone at some point really ought to have asked the question. Arguably Israel does own Gaza by dint of conquest – the only other possible alternatives, since there's no Palestinian state and never will be, are that it still belongs to Egypt, which they vehemently deny since that would make them responsible and the Gazans Egyptian citizens, or that it's a stateless no-man's-land. So potentially Israel can sell it to the US, and presumably Trump's idea is that buying it will give US ownership greater legitimacy somehow. Trump is a dunderhead in many ways, and this is typical of his way of thinking IMO.
Haven't states historically ceded territory as part of peace deals? Is your objection just that that he used the terms of everyday commerce instead of some fancier "international law" jargon?
Oct. 7th was the plan. Playact submission for a decade to convince Israel to take their eyes off you and write you off as a managed problem. Build up the people, war making material, intelligence, and connections with other Jihadi entities you need, launch a sudden and overwhelming strike from all sides, kill tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians, capture tens of thousands more, capture and destroy IDF equipment, collapse the Israeli state.
But the expected attacks from Hezbollah and the planned for uprising in Judea/Samaria never came. And their own military success fell short. And Israel responded in a much harsher and sustained way than they expected. And then Israel knocked out Hezbollah and launched a massive Jihadi suppression campaign in Judea/Samaria.
So Hamas now is falling back on their tried and true survival strategy of milking international sympathy for the dead and suffering Gazans they generated to limit Israel's freedom of action and give them the chance to regroup and fight another day. And that's what you're seeing now.
There's at least three active levels warfare between the Gazans and Israel going on all at the same time.
There's the direct warfare, which comes and goes but has been pretty significant for a while. That's obvious. Then there's the political wrangling between all the various groups that make up each side (Palestinians, Hamas, Iran, Israel - broken down by factions, etc.). Finally there's the propaganda war that's mostly fought for sympathy of outsiders.
Israel's long term plan is on the political front, and seems to be to slowly encroach the Palestinians until they disappear as a distinct people and the descendants of people who care do not care anymore. Israel is patient, so this strategy is very likely to work if unopposed.
Hamas recognizes this problem - they can't win this war. They also can't win the first kind of war, direct confrontation. So Hamas is pursuing the third kind of war. They can only do so if they provoke Israel to violence. Provoking Israel to politics isn't effective at getting international attention and has a strong chance of Hamas losing anyway. Their hope, not because it's a good strategy but because it's the only strategy with a chance of success, is to get the outside world to stop Israel and force a compromise that makes Hamas' position stronger.
I think this would work much better if Hamas was not a stooge of Iran and had a more moderate endpoint of political freedom rather than direct or implied goals of destruction to Israel and maybe killing all the Jews. Hamas only has a chance to win this war if they keep Israel active and in the international news. If things calm down too much, Israel will eventually win. There are paths that allow Palestinians to also win at the same time, but Hamas cannot win by its own stated goals if Israel also wins. If Hamas were separated from Iran's goals, and was willing to compromise on some currently primary goals, then maybe Hamas could also win without Israel losing. I don't see any path to Hamas winning with its current goals that does not involve international pressure. So long as the US supports Israel, international pressure is unlikely to be decisive - forcing a stalemate. This is still to Hamas' benefit so long as they are locked into their goals and the alternatives are worse for them.
Hamas became a client (very much not a stooge) of Iran because of what they believe and want, not the other way around.
Hamas exists in order to end Jewish sovereignty over any part of Arab/Muslim claimed land, create an Islamic theocracy in that land, and reassert Dhimmi status over any Jew still living in that land when they've accomplished their likely genocidal conquest. They have no other political aims or ambitions.
Pretty mysterious why Hamas existed since the late 1960s (as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, a 1928-founded political group whose latest exile in Egypt since 2014 still didn't quite finish it) and never did any violence until the Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre in 1994.
Strange how Hamas was totally okay with Jewish sovereignty until a Jewish terrorist killed a bunch of Arabs (and cheered as a hero until now by Israeli ministers).
>They have no other political aims or ambitions.
Lol, someone has no internal model of the world beyond what Channel 14 feeds him/her every night on the brainwashing airwaves.
Hamas isn't Athena, it didn't appear in a Teleporter Gate in 1987. They declared independence from their Egyptian mothership in 1987, but they have been active in the strip under various name and guises since the 1960s, and Israel tolerated them because it loved the Islamic counterbalance to the secular leftist PLO (sounds familiar?).
> They literally wrote it down
Seems like we ought to go back to the writings of Israel's founders from the 1920s and the 1930s if that's the standard we're going to adopt, and I assure you you're not going to be pleased with what we're going to find.
In 2021, congress ended their moratorium on earmarks aka "pork". The moratorium on earmarks had been there for about 10 years and had been intended to reduce corruption. I recall that this had been discussed here quite a lot while the moratorium was on-going, with people claiming that the moratorium on earmarks caused the breakdown in bipartisan bills we've seen. The theory went that previously members of congress that were on the fence could be bought over by earmarking something for their constituents, like something that would bring jobs to a specific area.
It's been a while now and I don't think I've read anything about how this has gone. Congress feels broadly as partisan as it had been ten years ago but I'm not really that informed. Have earmarks been used much? Are there any notable cases where a bill passed because of earmarks?
I was surprised by the high amount of major bipartisan legislation during the Biden years. Back in 2020, I'd assumed bipartisanship was permanently dead. Perhaps the earmarks had something to do with it.
I've had some tangential involvement in this, from which my observations are:
-- today's earmarks (which have a new label that I forget right now) are drastically smaller in real dollars than back in the day. During the 1980s/90s a $1 million earmark was considered pocket change, now they're dealing in the high 6 figures. An award of a million or two is large now. All figures nominal, so in inflation-adjusted terms it's a big drop in individual earmarks.
-- perhaps related to the above but also given the shifted optics of the practice, there seems to be much less bragging about such awards by the congresscritters than was true in past eras. It's really just a quiet staff exercise now. It's pulling teeth now to get an elected member to attend a ribbon-cutting (I have colleagues who've discovered this firsthand).
I know you're being snarky but just for the record: actual federal grantmaking, which I have lots of professional experience with, is enormously more complex than earmarks both to obtain and to successfully comply with. For example every entity that receives at least $1.5M total in all federal grants from any agencies during a year undergoes a special federal grants audit, in addition to its own sector's standard annual outside audit. I've dealt with that process and it is a bear, or at least was until somebody started blowing up the OMB and other federal agencies. My organization had to tear up our entire payroll system and budgeting structure, which had served us fine and made regular CPA-type auditors happy for years, in order to comply with federal rules for grants compliance. Etc etc.
Federal grant pools are also competitive as hell, e.g. we were an unsuccessful finalist recently in one under which 150 grants were awarded out of 2,700 applications.
None of the above applies to congressional earmarks ("member initiatives", I think is what they are now called).
Some of it has been specifically exempted from the spending freeze, including testing, care and treatment. Preventive anti-HIV medicine is specifically excluded though, does anyone know the reasons?
“Alarmingly, nearly all HIV prevention efforts under Pepfar — aside from programmes for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission — are currently on hold,” write the authors of a Lancet editorial, which was published last week. “Programmes that focus on the prevention of HIV in key populations, HIV prevention services for adolescent girls and young women, voluntary male medical circumcision and support for orphans and vulnerable children are still halted.”
So it sounds like the kept HIV prevention efforts that use medications (the mother to child transmission ones) but cancelled the other prevention efforts, such as circumcision and presumably condoms.
Hmm, from the article this includes things like CAB-LA and Lenacavir. I don't really understand why these need to be put on the chopping block for the sake of not funding condoms. Do you know if this condom thing is the reason or are you speculating?
Speculation. But it does look like the CAB-LA and Lenacavir thing are not about freezing preventative measures but a different freeze on scientific studies, as the meds hadn't been used before and they were going to do a trail with them that would start in March. It could still get unfrozen before then, in the meantime nobody was getting those meds right now anyway.
Reading the article, it looks like pregnant women can get the anti-HIV drugs, but no one else. My guess is that it was to avoid having people come back at the Trump administration with the not fun to debate claim that they were giving babies in Africa AIDS (not that I honestly think most of his supporters would care if that were true). So now they can claim that actually they are doing everything reasonable to fight HIV but anyone "irresponsible" enough to contract it anyway doesn't get treated on the US government's dime. Its all very in line with their policy of "pretend everything defaults to personal responsibility and use that as an excuse to be as cruel as you can get away with without causing open revolt."
Also, I'm glad the meds are at least back for the pregnant mothers, but I'm not sure there's anyone actually working at US Aid anymore who can/cares about implementing the rules correctly, so my guess is anyone tracking this stuff carefully is still going to see a huge uptick of babies being born with preventable HIV.
I'm a senior physics and math undergrad, gotten into a couple good grad schools for physics, probably specializing in biophysics.
Mostly because of this community, I've become mostly convinced that I could do the most good if I pivot to AI safety research. Considering how fast the industry is moving at the moment, how should I go about this? If timelines are long, I could obviously just complete my PhD and then pivot once I was more hireable.
However, if I want to maximize my impact before humans become less relevant in guiding the ship, should I consider trying to pivot now? If so, how should I go about that? Would any ai company hire some non-cs major right out of undergrad? My cv is quite strong for graduate school applications but I have no idea what the best way to go about this pivot is.
It might not be the best thing to be convinced by this community.
You can do a heck of a lot of concrete good in biophysics. It is not super well established (around wider computer science or academia) that the alignment people are doing something useful. The claim that they're doing good work is... speculative and more than a little bit controversial.
A PhD is going to take 5+ years: think about where AI was in 2019. (Where? Exactly.)
This is a bigger and better-founded hype than the previous ones, but academia has always been pretty faddish, particularly in the US. At least one next-big-thing will bubble and burst before you finish your PhD.
There's a lot of interest (and I presume money) in AlphaFold type projects that are really at the interface of maths, physics and biology. I'm guessing you could get solid expertise in AI doing that, be relatively employable afterward (assuming you don't buy into the wrong bubble) and continue on to do something interesting afterward.
Second this. I published in both physic and microbio back in the day, and it's a more exciting area than ever now, and will require actual human minds behind R&D programs even if we have true AGI / GPT-7 by the time you finish.
AI (even at AGI levels) is more likely to be a force multiplier for a good amount of time, in my own opinion, because there will be a lot of technological branches that become low hanging fruit and need to be cranked through and thought about.
My personal prediction is that actual AI (AGI, superintelligence etc., these have different meanings to different people but essentially scifi level artificial intelligence) will emerge from a different substrate than what we currently have (computer chips, transformers etc.) so your knowledge of physics can be put to good use to develop such technology, new substrates for computation.
I really thing that AGI is substrate independent. The problem is algorithms. It *is* true that specialized hardware can run certain classes of algorithm faster, and not others, but note the specificity there. A CPU can run any algorithm. It may be faster or slower, and possibly need more memory, but it can do the job. And specialized hardware is often only useful for specialized tasks.
I don't think one should commit oneself to any particular hardware choice. I'm relatively sure that CPUs and GPUs and Transformers will continue to be useful components, and I'm not really convinced that there will be the need for something like that that we haven't yet identified. (E.g. memristors may yield a device that would be extremely useful, and which is also on that level, but...I'd give it about 15% chance, possibly less.)
FWIW, the most likely candidate for a breakthrough device would be a room temperature quantum computation module. But I'd bet you'd only need relatively few of those, and most of the work would be done by CPUs and GPUs, with a minority done by TPUs. (Note I'm putting quantum units, QPUs, so low that I didn't even name it in the list.)
These are just my personal evaluations. And anyone specializing in any one of those general areas should do quite well. But don't tie yourself to some device that hasn't yet been used. Most of those, even the ones that eventually succeed, take decades to get wide use. Whereas there are still uses for isolated resistors and capacitors. (Pentodes, though, seem to have disappeared.)
I'm not that savvy on this topic, can I ask why you think it's substrate independent? If we agree that the brain is more advanced than computer chips, can't we imagine all sorts of different substrates that would fall in the space of complexity (or capability?) somewhere between chips and neurons?
Anything computable can be run on any Turing complete system. Unless you assume some sort of magic, intelligence is computable. (The problem with this argument is that there is no real Turing complete system, as such a system would have infinite memory.)
There are holes in this argument, but they're very small ones. And the argument doesn't say anything about relative speed.
Note that the set of problems for which a quantum computer is known to, in principle, but better than a standard computer is quite small, so even if you assume the brain is a quantum computer (at THAT temperature???) it's unlikely to make a difference. (N.B.: That quantum processes happen in the brain isn't that unlikely. They're likely involved in helping the mitochondria more efficiently generate energy, just like they are in allowing chloroplasts to more efficiently use light...but this is a long way from being a quantum computer.)
My new SF collection Flashes in Time presents the reader with a fourfold table of science fiction and fantasy, contemporary and far off. The stories, whether zany or serious, make an effort at being coherent worlds with mostly smart characters whether we're dealing with simulations or magic. The subject matter ranges from transhumanism, AI, and space exploration to subjectively karmic magic, navigating premonition, and dealing with the Fae.
Digital editions start from 3.99 currency units, and I do take (a finite but non-minimal amount of) requests for review copies via e-mail (see below), if you'll put one up on Goodreads, Amazon and/or your own relevant platform, if any. https://waterdragonpublishing.com/product/flashes-in-time/
My novelette from last year, The Paperclip War, may also be of interest as a take on what if humanity managed to wield unusually harsh game theory to arrive at an unstable equilibrium with an AI adversary. It was well received at Less Wrong Community Weekend 2024. As a modestly sized standalone novelette, this one starts at a 0.99¤ https://waterdragonpublishing.com/product/paperclip-war/
So... in order to help overcome the impending demographic collapse I was spitballing some less common ideas. In the United States, whatif the vote was only given to women who bear children? Lots of little details to work out, but that would make bearing children pretty attractive and would ensure that the government made their concerns the highest priority.
In the details one could 1) Extend the vote to individuals (of any sex) that legitimately attempt to have kids. 2) Give the women two votes, one of which she could grant (permanently?) to a partner who is actively supporting the child. 3) Give bonus votes for additional children, possibly alienable.
Voting probably doesn't move the needle much of any way, but the right way to do it would be to let parents vote on behalf of their minor children (children deserve representation too!).
Echoing Bryan Caplan, voting is pretty untethered (I think at least) from rational self interest, in large part because voting has a negligible effect on one’s self interest, so using the vote as an incentive wouldn’t be very productive. Voting, like politics in general, is much more in the realm of the emotional than of self interested rationality. If I cared about the right to vote even as much as most Americans, if I were denied it because I’m not a woman and don’t have children, I would sooner react angrily and possibly violently against the system than start knocking up women to get my vote back. By contrast if you offered me a lot of money to have more kids, then I’d consider it, even if I hated the policy politically, I’d still be tempted by self interest to do what it wanted me to do.
Basically using voting rights as an incentive usually has a high backlash/effectiveness ratio in any society where there’s a string sense that everyone has the right to vote.
It all may be for naught, given the studies that show male fertility worldwide has been declining over the past two decades — both in sperm count and motility. There's been a lot of post hoc handwaving about why this has been observed. And, of course, any studies that get a lot media attention — especially those that get attention from the science editors of the NY Times — should be considered suspect until proven otherwise.
But if true, I can think of all sorts of potential research avenues for funding. For instance, do incels have lower sperm counts than average? And does that affect their sex drive? Of course, the NIH may soon be out of the picture as a funding source... We may have to rely on our Tech Bro Billionaires to fund these. OTOH, neither the Muskrat or the Zuck would probably be interested since they seem to be breeding OK.
Mothers directing the votes of their kids as to who to vote for was an old-fashioned thing (at least in my day) so this is not some wonderful new idea 😀
Secondly, why the hell is it always men deciding that the problem here is women so the way to get women to have more kids is to treat women like incubators, such that even a fuddy-duddy traditional Catholic social conservative like myself wants to spit on my hands and raise the Jolly Roger? You're not the worst suggestions I've seen Guy, but seriously. I'm fed-up to the back teeth of "hmm. no babies, must be all the fault of women because all the men are just aching to become fathers of twelve since they were kids".
It takes two to tango. Unless you have men willing to get married and become fathers, the woman can want sixteen kids all she wants but if boyfriend doesn't want to put a ring on it, or husband doesn't want squalling brats interfering with his free time, it ain't gonna happen.
Thirdly, we've had previous discussions on here of the smart folks saying that since their single vote makes no difference out of the n millions of possible votes, only fools go out and vote as if it meant anything. Maybe women would be happy to shrug and go "fine, me no baby, me no vote? no skin off my nose".
I'm too busy/lazy to find the references, but some recent studies indicate/show pretty convincingly that it is the male partner who stops after child no 2. While a substantial proportion of women would go for child no 3 if their partner were in on it.
This matters, since it is lack of "the third child" that is key to understand persistent below-reproduction fertility everywhere (except in israel).
So how to get men on board with child no 3? It is easy, although no-one is doing it at present. Give all women who have child no 3 five million USD (or the equivalent in your currency).
If that should still be too little, jack it up to 6, 7, 8 million, and so on until you get the effect on fertility that you want.
Or decrease to 4, 3, 2 million if you overshoot your target.
It costs money, but a country can always afford what it gives the highest priority.
except you can trace the demographic decline to increasing women's rights in society and access to contraception and abortion.
pretty much its women actively choosing career over children till they have one kid in their mid thirties if that.
Guys generally haven't changed except weirdly they are more into women not less: the idea they are a ball and chain has vanished to be replaced by the frantic incel who thinks his life is worthless without a girl.
The first wave of demographic decline in Western countries (ie. pre-WW2, when TFR dipped under replacement in a lot of countries) happened without the widespread adoption of hormonal contraception and other methods dependent on women and with abortion illegal basically everywhere in the West, including in countries like France without women's suffrage.
It wasn't women alone who welcomed the Sexual Revolution. I don't know if you're old enough to have read popular literature of the time (60s-70s) where the idea of "women want to get married and have babies" was treated as entrapping men, holding them back from being free to wander the world and live freely (and also fuck any and every woman that would let them, without consequences or commitment).
A pop song and hit of the time (which I *hate* because I want to punch the guy in the face) is "Lydia"; the basic story of which is "hey so Lydia is my friend with benefits, she lets me come crash at her place and sleep with her, but no strings attached, she understands that I have to be free to be me so I'll up and leave in the morning - until the next time I hit rock-bottom and need someone to give me shelter and sex".
And that was the Ideal Woman for the time - one who wouldn't be a hung-up prude about sex but who would also not put any demands on the guy; she'd be there to be available for him as and when he wanted, but no need for a formal commitment.
A lot of songs of the time had those "I gotta leave in the morning" from the guy's point of view lyrics.
A lot of the damage of feminism of the time was "why shouldn't women behave like men?" including in their sexual lives. Men were perceived to be free to 'sow their wild oats', they did not suffer from having the double standard applied to them, and the refrains nowadays about "women want to bang Chad and don't want to settle down until they've hit the wall and are no longer able to attract alpha males" makes me smile because it is the flip-side of the earlier complaints about "men only want one thing and that's not marriage and kids".
So yeah: now the Pill is here! Now you don't run the risk of pregnancy outside of marriage! So be free and equal to your male partner(s) who can sleep around and sex is for fun!
And here we are today: oh no, the birth rate is declining, this is all down to selfish women who only want to find 'em, fuck 'em and flee, while the hapless men are just longing to be husbands and fathers at the age of twenty.
Yeah, I'm sure all the guys out there playing the field would be totally happy to be 22-year-old husbands and fathers if given the option. What you would really see without easily available contraception is a massive uptick in single mothers. Where do you think all those jokes about dads "going out for cigarettes" came from?
i think you heavily overrate how easy it is for guys to "play the field and overestimate how many want to. And honestly 22 year old fathers are a bad thing why? its better than nearing 50 and your kid hasn't even finished high school, had no cousins or siblings, and their grandparents are hitting 80.
as for single mothers, well not sure current status of "no mothers" is a plus here too. Think it will make it much harder for women but 50+.
Look, there has been lots of scandal and lots of drama about the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, but the impetus for them was precisely because women and men were having sex outside of marriage and when the woman got pregnant, the guy either denied parentage or headed off to England, leaving her with a baby and no support.
If you know of a huge crop of young men in the US who are lining up to be fathers and husbands and not finding anyone in their community willing to partner with them then you are living in a very different part of the country than me.
But I think that last part is the real point. Most of the people clamoring about falling birth rates don't really care if the burden falls disproportionately on women. Admit that and we probably have nothing left to discuss.
Relatedly, we've seen time and time again that the reasons even happy committed couples are waiting later to have children is that generally now most people don't have a sense of financial security until they are in their 30s. The baby boomers went right from college to starting families, but they also went right from college to government backed mortgages that represented a fraction of their annual income as opposed to their lifetime income, and employment offers that came with lifetime guarantees. All that has gone away, and every time someone suggests replacing it with more robust government programs, most of the same people who complain constantly about low birthrates start screaming socialism.
"The baby boomers went right from college to starting families, but they also went right from college to government backed mortgages that represented a fraction of their annual income as opposed to their lifetime income"
Back in reality housing is easier to afford, thus why people live in larger houses than ever before.
its not that, you have the same demographic collapse in EU too, social programs are not helping anything. The USA has a higher TFR than finland, snd sweden, and all EU countries are at best .1 above us and well below replacement rate.
type of government doesn't seem to matter; its endemic to most non african, non muslim nations and i don't think germany is worse than indonesia in terms of that to explain a .6 differerence.
women do not want to have kids when given the choice. i wont blame them but kind of sick of the "oh its capitalism!"
> "Lots of little details to work out, but that would make bearing children pretty attractive and would ensure that the government made their concerns the highest priority."
So what I'm hearing is that you're either not a parent, or a very bad parent.
>but that would make bearing children pretty attractive
No it wouldn't. There are literally no incentives for women to care about pursuing the right to vote *individually*, because the chance that granting any specific individual the right to vote will ever affect anything is essentially zero. Franchise extensions only make sense as incentives if you're granting them to large demographics all at once.
Between 30 and 40 percent of American women don't bother to vote now, whereas around one in five complete their child-bearing years without having any children. And of course not all of those who end up not having children had gotten there as a deliberate choice.
So it seems unlikely that there would be a large number of women who (a) place a high value on voting and (b) explicitly prefer not to have children.
I'd be open to trying that, honestly. How much really do we have to lose from here?
Similarly I've advocating for a 2nd amendment making gun ownership a constitutional right for women while leaving the gun rights of men up to the federal and state legislatures. [No I don't know how that would be applied to transgender folk, when I first thought of this that whole topic was not nearly as salient as it is now.]
Neither of these scenarios will ever happen obviously or even be seriously proposed by any political party.
Your idea goes against democratic tradition. There would be immense resistance to any policy that messes with who gets the vote.
If you can magically convince people to accept an idea like that, why can't you just magically convince people to have children instead. It would be easier.
I think that taxing childlessness to subsidize child-rearing has a higher chance of being accepted by society.
Also, teach in school that being a parent is wonderful, award medals to people with lots of children, that kind of stuff.
Make sure this ad is all over the media, instant baby boom:
<Also, teach in school that being a parent is wonderful
Most research finds that on average having children makes people a bit less happy. Seems to me we should try to figure out how to make parenthood a better experience, rather than fucking lying to children about the facts.
Isn't this one of those "happy now vs satisfied later" things? I mean, I'm all for making parenting easier, but I suspect the happiness research people are at best getting an answer to a somewhat different question than you'd like to ask.
(As a parallel, many people are glad they got a PhD or got through medical school, but grad students and med students are in general not super happy people.)
I don’t think many people whose children are grown are sorry in retrospect that they became parents . In fact I don’t think most parents of small children would say that are sorry they became parents — though a few would. Still, I think parenting is different from grad school when it comes to regrets. Grad school is rarely talked up as a wonderful fulfilling experience (except in the grad program’s catalog’s), but parenting is. Also, there are no internal barriers to concluding, in the years after grad school, that it was both unpleasant at the time and also mistake. But concluding that about parenting seems to carry with it the idea that you wish your child did not exist, and anyone having a wish like that is going to feel like a terrible person. And actually, I think even people who regret having become parents still love their child.
My own experience of parenting was that I found it very very difficult. What was hard for me certainly was not my daughter herself — I loved her, and thought she was a great kid. And it wasn’t the work and the expense. The hard thing was having no time for myself — no time to pursue my interests, to hang out with my friends, who were childless or whose kids were grown, no time to ruminate and crap around and explore things. Until my daughter was about 4, I felt like I never had time even to complete a thought. It was a horrible, maddening deprivation of things I think I really do need for my wellbeing, and the deprivation often made me furious. But there was no one to be furious at except my sweet kid, who was blameless, and mostly I stayed aware of that. I simply had to feel the deprivation and the frustration and do what my daughter needed anyhow.
People get sold the idea that once you have the baby you transform into another kind of being, one whose greatest delight is nurturing little lives. I simply did not go through the transformation. I just parented without the benefit of the transform, and I don’t think my experience is rare. Scott, in one of his recent posts about his kids, wrote about how he could love taking care of his babies for a couple hours, and push himself to do it for 2 more hours, and after that it was just too much baby. Yep, that’s the feeling. Other promised transformations, by the way, have worked for me. For instance I went from being a grad student who had studied clinical psychology but did not feel up to actually trying to help people to a professional who enjoys her work. The transition took a few years, and some of it was painful, but it happened.
My daughter is now 29, and is one of the happier people I’ve known. (I managed to do a decent job of parenting. I guess.) I’m delighted to have her in my life. She lives 15 mins from me and we see a lot of each other. I’m not sorry now that I adopted and raised her. But there’s no denying that the years of doing it were just not good years for me.
"I think that taxing childlessness to subsidize child-rearing has a higher chance of being accepted by society."
Oooh, the screaming of the "childfree by choice" lot would reach levels unheard since the Chicxulub asteroid hit. They already feel they're being taken advantage of by society which props up breeders.
At this moment, my suspicion is that even if Vance and Musk pushed through such a thing _this_ year, the countdown to AGI seems to be ticking so fast, and seems likely to have consequences so vast, that I'm not likely to scream much...
Not just make it the highest priority - it would absolutely exclude every other group's concerns from consideration. Young people, childless people, and obviously men (but let's not talk about that last one) - they would have virtually no power to have their needs met unless they also align with the needs of mothers. Also, I think currently a working mom is highly aligned with an average voter in what her views and needs are, whereas stay-at-home moms are very divergent from the mean, meaning currently their views are less represented. They'd gain much more political power by this change than what working moms would gain. Is it good or bad? Don't know, but it would make things different. Maybe they would use that power to pass enough laws favoring SAHMs that it wouldn't make sense anymore for working moms to keep working? Again, don't know if it's good or bad. Personally I think it would be great for the society if an average family could lead a comfortable life on single income, but that's a tangential topic.
The thing about such thought experiments is that when you ask "how do we even get there", it's obvious it's wholly and entirely impossible and it stops being an interesting discussion. So I'd rather not ask.
Votes aren't worth a lot. Lots of people already choose not to use theirs, and people in general don't seem willing to do life-changing changes like moving to a different location just to make their vote more powerful, although such opportunities are already abundant. So I doubt that it would have much of an effect.
Why not make fertility treatments free? The up-front costs would be paid for several times over by the creation of additional people who would contribute to the economy for a lifetime.
Lots of countries do this already, and it doesn't really move the needle. All the Scandinavian countries and a number of other European countries, for example. Fertility rates still low and getting lower.
In fact, many things have been tried to practically no effect:
* $10k bonuses per child (Singapore), or for 2nd / 3rd children (Russia)
* 3 years paid parental leave (France)
* 480 days paid leave at 80% wage (Sweden)
* Income tax exemption for mothers with 4 or more kids (Hungary)
* Free state paid child care (France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia)
* Free IVF (most EU countries)
* $750 / month payments per child (South Korea)
And essentially none of these have moved the needle. Often they don’t have any positive impact at all on rates, fertility still declines, but slower. The most any fertility intervention does if they are positive is to buff rates by ~5-10% or so for 1-3 years, after which fertility rates collapse and resume the same trajectory they were on before.
Why are you certain that Singapore's child bonuses have failed?
Singapore has a higher TFR than every other developed country or territory in East Asia (TW, SK, HK) except Japan.
Japan's TFR has decreased faster in the last decade (when the bonuses reached substantial amounts) and - of course - it's a much less urbanized country than SG.
> Why are you certain that Singapore's child bonuses have failed?
Because like nearly all other fertility interventions, it hasn't driven any bump up in fertility, the decline continues (recently hitting 1.04).
So yeah, 1.04 is still higher than the "literally lowest in the world" SK and others, but it still represents a decline overall - the needle isn't moving in the right direction, and this is the common trend among all fertility interventions.
I will say though, Singapore has always been the biggest "lived experience vs official statistics" gap I've ever seen, because when you're there, you see happy couples with babies *everywhere!* On the metro, by the riverfront, while shopping, it's pretty fun.
You’ll see the same thing in Tokyo, another famously low birthrate country Tons of cute couples with babies. But Tokyo has an explanation, at least - all the young people come to Tokyo, and there’s a vast hinterland that’s basically all old people, so of course all the babies are concentrated in Tokyo.
But Singapore has no hinterland! It’s a city state!
Of course what's actually happening is there's a much bigger "childless" proportion and many fewer 2 and 3+ kid families.
I mean, I think it's legit sad, I love Singapore and think it's pretty much the peak of "dense urban area done right," but their $10k bonuses aren't solving the crisis or producing more babies at scale.
If the needle isn't moving in the right direction, and in fact it's not moving in any direction while moving in the "wrong" direction for all comparable countries, that suggests there is a measurable effect of the policy.
Has anyone tried asking young people why they aren't having more children? Seems like an obvious place to start, but the people talking about the matter seem to think they know better.
> Has anyone tried asking young people why they aren't having more children?
It's all the usual stuff. For middle and upper class it's "first I need to finish school, then graduate studies, then get established in my career, then spend years trying to find the perfect mate so I'm not settling, and then after all that I'm 35 and have burned through 2/3 of my total fertility and have one or two kids."
Broadly, marriage and having kids has moved from a "foundational" thing you do on your way to a great and fulfilling life, that you now do as a "capstone" thing after you have all the other pieces in place.
The "desired vs actually had" in numbers of kids gap is notably higher in higher IQ women:
And although masters and Phd women are willing to have more, they generally can't due to age (and of course way more babies come from dropouts and non-college folk):
Georgia is a tiny (1/90th the population of the US) semi-democracy with a GDP per capita one-tenth that of the US, and persistent double-digit unemployment for many years. Its overall population is still declining sharply despite the recent birthrate increase, because so many people upon reaching young adulthood find a way to leave and start fresh elsewhere. Georgia's net population annual change is (data through 2023) still among the worst in the world, more negative than places like Japan, Greece, Italy, Russia, Cuba, etc.
So (a) the chances of sustaining a baby boom when so many young adults are scrambling to leave seems dubious, and (b) that nation overall does not seem to map very well to the US or really any other large developed nation.
So first we just need to convert everyone in all the developed "fertility crisis" countries into being devout Eastern Orthodox, then it's just a simple matter of scaling "Patriarch blessings" by approximately 10x!
I wonder why nobody else has thought of this?? :-)
I mean that if you want increase fertility you should think hard about that example and try to figure out what might work in a similar way in your culture.
Yeah, I have a post coming up in a week that talks about the next level of stuff I think would work.
For the most part, all the fertility crisis countries are all godless and heterogenous culturally, so it's difficult to come up with one that would work for more than one country, but my favorite idea on this front is education.
The educational Red Queen's Race is depressing fertility, because the competition to get into Harvard starts 6 months before birth, when you need to get on the waiting list for the right exclusive pre-school to give your precious Jaden a leg up, because if you don't get in there, and if you don't grind furiously and nonstop for the next 18 years, their chances of getting into Harvard are ruined!
So on this one, you can't do much for the Ivies, but for each couple that's paid some threshold in taxes over so many years, guarantee a non-transferrable slot in an R1 for their kid, provided they meet the test score cutoff. For California, this would be the UC's, inclusive of good ones like Berkeley, but lots of states have R1's. Suddenly some of the educational arms race is off, and you're guaranteed at least Berkeley and can pop out a few more kids.
This also works anywhere there's state-supported good universities, which is most fertility crisis countries.
If you say the government will spend (say) $20,000 on IVF, you just guaranteed that the cost of IVF will never go below $20,000. Combine that with an understanding of risk compensation and it doesn't look like a good idea.
What's the deal with "likes" in the comments? I remember seeing a like button, but can't find it anymore, and I've gotten likes on some of my comments (😎) so I know it's not entirely removed, but I can't find a like count on my or others comments.
I don't imagine there's a large overlap between this forum and football fans, but as an NFL fan, last night's Superbowl was fantastic for the haters. It immediately gave credence to the Chiefs+Refs narrative, and then the Eagles proceeded to relentlessly stomp the life out of the Chiefs. They were decimated almost as much as Drake was by Kendrick's halftime show.
This was my first Super Bowl after moving to the Philly area (so uh... GO BIRDS!!!!!)
I'm not super familiar with the Chiefs + Refs narrative. The joke going around my watch party was that Trump told the refs to side with the Chiefs on everything because he was mad that Philly didn't vote for him.
Yes, Trump has been publicly vindictive about the Eagles for petty reasons. Also, Patrick Mahomes' wife is a public Trump supporter, so he's a fan.
> I’ve watched this great quarterback who has, by the way, a phenomenal wife, OK? She’s a Trump fan. She’s a MAGA fan. So, I happen to love her, OK. But she’s a great person. … She’s great and he’s great
But in one of the first plays of the game, the Eagles get called for a pretty ridiculous penalty in a critical moment, and it did make me a believer in the conspiracy for just a bit.
and I don't really see a way bs jobs could expand fast enough to offset rapid large scale unemployment, They're mostly a product of normal market forces and perverse incentives public sector incentives, very few of them exist because someone wanted to create a job for the sake of creating a job. Since bs jobs are created organically I don't think there's a way to deliberately expand the number of the type of bs jobs that already exist, and since they're created unintentionally they're just as susceptible to automation as non-bs jobs. Maybe government could purposefully set out to create new types of bs jobs specifically for the sake of creating jobs but that's very different from the way bs jobs currently exist.
His other argument was that welfare or UBI would be expanded enough even if there was widespread unemployment to keep former workers out of poverty. And that if humans are still in control post-AGI it's unlikely any small group of humans, like tech oligarchs or capitalists in general, would come to dominate or kill off the rest of humanity.
I'm not sure I agree here either and lean more towards thinking capital is self-serving, might be able to control the political process, and is mostly kept in check by the bargaining power labour gets from being a necessary input. In Marxists circles, you do sometimes hear that capital would just dispose of labour if it had no need for it and I don't think you can rule out that scenario completely.
He does accept a risk of doom from unaligned AI, but he seems overly sanguine about the socioeconomic risks from AI to me.
I didn’t read it as I can’t stand the writer but he’s probably right in this case. To get UBI get a government job, dole is for the unfit. The government will pay you more for education, fitness, maybe volunteering. Being an all round good egg.
I foresee an increase in institutional BS jobs but not enough to forestall broader unemployment. Effectively that will happen because the white collar class will demand it, and want their feelings protected.
The transitional period will be painful. There will come a time when it will be apparent that average people will be unable to "create value" in an economic sense for society. But as I argue elsewhere, this doesn't mean that nothing of consequence and value can ever be done again, it means those things have to be increasingly decoupled from traditional economy. Easy to find examples today: innovative thinkers in academia and the like are thought to create value, in ways that may eventually manifest itself in concrete fashion, but for the most part they are subsidized to do their own thing. Consumers don't buy shit from them (excepting students who get an education, which they purchase from the institution, and said education is separate from the R&D component).
In a post-AGI world most wants are met. What's left is punching in the dark and occasionally getting a win (think space exploration and colonization). That means allowing average people to do what the priesthoods do. If we don't, then all there's left is consumption, or making things no one needs or wants.
I think this is correct. The current paradigm in which society is structured around economically valuable work is going to break down eventually, at which point we'll need new structures that reward personally-and-socially-beneficial-but-not-economically-valuable work.
Countries that go all-in on AGI by forsaking made-up bullshit jobs will get richer and stronger over time than countries that don't. The former will edge out the latter in the global competition for power.
My main problem is that I intensely dislike Richard Hanania, based on everything of his that I've read, so it's very difficult for me to assess anything he writes without that dislike bubbling through.
For example:
"The entire process of getting me Adderall should not require this many people."
I agree. Because I don't think he should be on Adderall at all, much less for fifteen years. If the entire process is one of winking at the system, 'yeah we know you don't *need* it need it, but all the high school and college kids high striving overachievers are on it so here's your script', then let's be honest about that and yeah, just let him buy it online from some pharma company in India and China. But if it's about genuine cases which need genuine diagnoses, especially in children, then no I don't think Mommy or Daddy should be able to just buy the Kiddie Stims by themselves when they decide they should be dosing up Junior so he can keep up with the Joneses.
Same with the rest of his stuff on bullshit jobs: I think his Substack, for one, is a bullshit job. But he's doing this himself and nobody is forced to subscribe to pay for it. But AI could come along and replace him very easily. What does he think about that? Does he think it'll never happen because hey, writing stuff and nonsense isn't a *job* as such so it doesn't count, people will still pay to read hand-made home-spun blah? Or at least read it for free?
I think there's a danger there that he's not anticipating.
As for real jobs/bullshit jobs, I do think there's a point there that mass unemployment will lag behind. On the other hand, DOGE. That's not even AI, and it is there to swipe a scythe through the government bullshit jobs.
New technology always means new jobs? Maybe. Maybe not, if the selling-point of AI is "now you can reduce your labour force". The old model was "if Jones Bros. lays off workers, they can always apply to the new McKinley & Sons business/factory". But if Jones is laying off workers due to replacing them with AI, and McKinley is using AI from the start? Where do the surplus workers go then?
Finally, social welfare/UBI will support all the workers without jobs. Again, maybe. But social welfare is the minimum, not luxury (unless you're one of the ones who can cheat and game the system, and that's work of its own). We already have rumblings in all the developed world about the upcoming pensions 'crisis' and how people can't depend on the state to pay for them in their retirement. Dump 50-90% of the population, including the working-age part, on welfare and how much can the system stand the strain? If we're hoping AI will generate yuuuuge wealth to pay for all that, how exactly is the golden goose going to lay the egg?
I think Hanania is being a little too optimistic, that the economy will be sparkly new and people just prefer stuff by humans so they'll buy that in preference to the AI manufactured output.
Scott has recently written on twitter about his beliefs regarding charity. [1]
He splits morality into two parts, "obligation" and "virtue". Obligations being created by giving promises (or doing acts which carry an implicit promise), and virtue being everything else.
His position is, reasonably enough, that fulfilling your obligations should come before being virtuous:
> (7) WHAT ABOUT SAM BANKMAN-FRIED? I think he's a bad person. I said before that you have obligations based on your promises and contracts; if you run a financial institution, you have obligations to keep your depositors' money safe and not commit fraud. As true obligations, these take priority over the merely virtuous act of helping others*****, so no matter how cool a plan for charity he had, he was in the wrong.
With the footnote saying:
> *****There are some really fringe edge cases here I can expand on upon request, but this isn't one of them.
It occurred to me that this two-tier system of morality can somewhat be identified with the two-axis morality system of Dungeons and Dragons.
The two axis of alignment in D&D are, of course, Lawful vs Chaotic and Good vs Evil. A Lawful character is one who follows his obligations, while a Good character is one who tries to be virtuous. (While Good seems to be well-defined, being Lawful is more akin to follow a coherent code of conduct. Of course, this means that lawfulness is not universal: infiltrating the thieves guild to betray them to the city guards may be lawful (as in 'following the law of the land') or an act of chaos (as in 'betraying a promise of secrecy'). Nor is that unique to D&D, even for the simpler, single-ruleset question 'what is a legal obligation?', one requires a complex court system for all the corner cases.)
A Lawful Good character would be one who follows Scott's ideal path of first following their obligations, then deciding to do what is virtuous.
A Lawful Evil character would be one who keeps their word, but is indifferent to the utility of others otherwise.
And a Chaotic Evil character would be one who happily breaks his word and harms others for personal gain.
The difference between Scott's system and D&D is that the latter recognizes Chaotic Good. This is difficult to imagine: most good people (or characters) follow some informal code which tells them that stealing, murdering or molesting people is wrong. One way to model a Chaotic Good character would be to start with a Chaotic Evil character who will follow any cruel inspirations they might have in that moment, and then imagine that the character does not happen to have any such inspirations, ever: the character has no principled ethical objection to rape, it just happens not to be their kink. More realistically, they would still follow an intuitive/internalized system of ethics. With that constraint, I think that chaotic good humans likely exist: perhaps a compulsive gambler who will lose any money you give them to shop groceries on the race track, but who will also risk their live to rescue a kid from a burning building.
However, that person would be very different from SBF in that their act which is (supposedly) good is a different act from the one which is chaotic -- even if our gambler disobeys a police officer when running into the burning building, that would be a very minor act of chaos given the stakes. By contrast, 'gamble with your customers money to give' is functionally a single act. There are Chaotic Ggood humans, but there are no Chaotic Good bank directors.
--
More generally, every rational agent has a coherent utility function. Mostly fulfilling your obligations seems to be an instrumental goal: being known as someone who will keep compacts will make you a much more effective agent.
Also, if your utility function includes humans in general, and you live in society which is at least somewhat conductive to humans thriving, then being reliable is also helping society to thrive, which would be a good thing. (Of course, this does not apply if you think that your society is net negative and violent anarchy would be preferable: if you want to embezzle taxes to finance your coke habit in 1934 Germany, you can very well argue that any decrease in state capacity would in fact be beneficial. That being said, the track record of "we have to torch existing institutions so that we can build better ones" is generally terrible.)
Still, I think that for most people's utility function, the quotient between "obligation" and "virtue" is finite. In a world where you can build aligned ASI for the price of gambling away customer funds, the ethical course is to gamble away customer funds. OTOH, virtually all people who would think they are in that situation are factually mistaken.
Thus, I see Scott's 'keep your obligations before engaging in virtuous acts' as a useful heuristic in 99% of the cases.
No, a Chaotic Good person is a utilitarian. No codes, no principles, no ethics, except what conduces to the greater good. If raping a teenager prevents three people on the other side of the planet from dying from a preventable disease, then cowabunga it is.
Because consistent ethics requires some kind of deontology. Outcome based morality only requires the final result to be "good," not the steps to get there. So the final outcome can be considered a principle, code, etc., but it potentially comes through multiple forms of evil.
If you're familiar with Watchmen, it's the primary bad guy doing what he does for good reasons and ultimately resulting in what is likely the most positive possible outcome. But it's evil, and everyone knows it. He's still the bad guy.
"A Lawful Evil character would be one who keeps their word, but is indifferent to the utility of others otherwise."
Lawful neutral, surely. Unless you believe all that "banality of evil" real-world nonsense, to be evil, you can't just want positive outcomes for yourself, you need to genuinely want negative utility outcomes.
For SBF, it depends on your theory of his motivations; if he was genuinely altruistic, then he's classic Chaotic Good; if we was selfish/status-seeking, he's Chaotic Neutral.
My "real-world nonsense" claim was slightly tongue-in-cheek, and referring more to D+D. I have a bit of a pet hate when dungeon masters/fantasy writers insist on making all of their "evil" characters just selfish and troubled, when they should be making them purely malevolent.
Definitely agree with the CEO of the factory farm conglomerate as the epitome of banal lawful evil in the modern world.
> I have a bit of a pet hate when dungeon masters/fantasy writers insist on making all of their "evil" characters just selfish and troubled, when they should be making them purely malevolent.
But that's... incredibly boring. We already have enough one-dimensional, "for the evulz" villains for one lifetime. People want more complexity, more character to their villains. Whether that's giving them sympathizable motives, or at the very least providing an explanation for why they're such an asshole.
Couldn't disagree more. Generating a coherent and engaging character with genuinely evil intentions is really hard, but that's the beauty of the constraint!
Think of all the moral dilemmas that a truly evil character has to face!
Do they have a special obligation to maximise the suffering of those around them, or should they expand their moral circle to inflict suffering upon those who they don't have immediate contact with? Is it acceptable to do good acts if they have evil long term consequences? How can ethical or reciprocal norms develop in an evil community to enable social cohesion?
My "real-world nonsense" claim was slightly tongue-in-cheek, and referring more to D+D. I have a bit of a pet hate when dungeon masters/fantasy writers insist on making all of their "evil" characters just selfish and troubled, when they should be making them purely malevolent.
Definitely agree with the CEO of the factory farm conglomerate as the epitome of banal lawful evil in the modern world.
But there's something here. Whether you call him good or evil is a matter of your own subjective morality. But whether or not he's lawful is something objective, does he break laws or not?
I don't think that matches the D&D definition of "lawful". I *think* the D&D definition is approximately "predictable". More like the law a gravity than the law against pick-pocketing.
Backwards, actually. If an Lawful Evil person signs a contract, they stick by it. But they cheat language into the contract. Ursula from Little Mermaid, or classic "Devil makes a deal" scenarios. You know the Devil is going to cheat somewhere, but he follows the letter of the law. If you know the contract well enough, you can use it against him. But he's really not predictable, the "cheat" in the contract could be anything.
Also Old Man Potter from It's a Wonderful Life. He's definitely evil, but he also follows the rules. He'll sue you or ruin you financially, but he doesn't hire a henchman to break your legs.
Interesting analysis, except I don't understand what you're saying about Chaotic Good. Aren't you mapping Lawful/Chaotic onto keeping promises* and Good/Evil onto concern for maximising utility? So wouldn't CG just be "maximise utility, ignore all promises that get in the way". So Robin Hood, or the German generals in Valkyrie, or Heroic SBF (i.e. real SBF assuming he's telling the truth about the charitable intentions of his scam). Why do you set up this obvious mapping and then suddenly declare Chaotic Good doesn't exist.
*This should really be all morally obligatory deontological acts, like respecting rights (e.g. Organ Transplant) and not violating natural laws.
I think that CG exists, but also that it scales very badly. You can con a man out of 100$ (or gp) and give that to the orphanage. Conning people out of a few billion $ (or gp) and giving that to EA causes does not work out great. You would require an organization, and that is anathema to Chaotics, as they require keeping at least some promises.
9 % on Ukrainian victory (unchanged from December 16, 2024).
I define Ukrainian victory as either a) Ukrainian government gaining control of the territory it had not controlled before February 24 without losing any similarly important territory and without conceding that it will stop its attempts to join EU or NATO, b) Ukrainian government getting official ok from Russia to join EU or NATO without conceding any territory and without losing de facto control of any territory it had controlled before February 24 of 2022, or c) return to exact prewar status quo ante.
34 % on compromise solution that both sides might plausibly claim as a victory (down from 36 % on December 16, 2024).
57 % on Ukrainian defeat (up from 55 % on December 16, 2024).
I define Ukrainian defeat as Russia getting what it wants from Ukraine without giving any substantial concessions. Russia wants either a) Ukraine to stop claiming at least some of the territories that were before war claimed by Ukraine but de facto controlled by Russia or its proxies, or b) Russia or its proxies (old or new) to get more Ukrainian territory, de facto recognized by Ukraine in something resembling Minsk ceasefire(s)* or c) some form of guarantee that Ukraine will became neutral, which includes but is not limited to Ukraine not joining NATO. E.g. if Ukraine agrees to stay out of NATO without any other concessions to Russia, but gets mutual defense treaty with Poland and Turkey, that does NOT count as Ukrainian defeat.
Discussion:
This is somewhat of a galaxy brain update, but I’ve got to report what I really think. What the US is going to do over next few months will be very important. This is inconvenient from my standpoint since while as a denizen of the postcommunist world I do think I have something of comparative advantage over most of you guys here in knowing what is going on in my corner of the globe (like, I do speak with really existing Ukrainians sometimes), in the US politics realm I feel I am at a disadvantage. Nevertheless.
My toy model of US foreign policy in the Second Age of Trump:
It seems clear that what is sometimes called “The US Establishment” would rather prefer not to see Ukraine defeated, and is willing to impose short term economic costs on the US citizens (like spike in gasoline prices in 2022, which clearly had something to do with energy market being messed-up by sanctions on Russia) and to draw substantially from US military stockpiles in order to arm Ukraine. And while Biden administration acted with respect to Ukraine completely in line with The Establishment, Trump obviously wants to shake things up.
I think there is a barely-existing faction of Trump-adjacent characters which I vaguely associate with Bannon (or does J.D. Vance belong to that group? unclear) which would like to improve relations with Russia in order to isolate China, but what we have seen so far is that Trump himself wants to follow clear foreign policy logic of “do whatever maximizes material interests of the US citizens in the short-term and don’t think too hard about the long-term (in the long term, we are all dead, after all)”.
In any case likely Trumpian deviations from establishment thinking are probably worse for Ukraine than The Establishment line. Good news for Ukraine is that The Establishment still has a majority in Congress, which does have substantial oversight powers over administration.
In the first Trump administration, we saw remarkably few deviations from the foreign policy preferences of The Establishment; now Trump obviously thinks that it was a mistake and wants to insist that US foreign policy follows the logic of maximizing short-term material advantages. How successful will he be depends (among other factors) on how much pushback will he encounter in Congress.
I am aware of the fact HHS does not have much to do with Ukraine, but in the absence of better proxies, I consider this as good measure of how much is Congress willing to push back against Trump’s anti-establishmentarian tendencies. That is, not much.
* Minsk ceasefire or ceasefires (first agreement did not work, it was amended by second and since then it worked somewhat better) constituted, among other things, de facto recognition by Ukraine that Russia and its proxies will control some territory claimed by Ukraine for some time. In exchange Russia stopped trying to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Until February 24 of 2022, that is.
I think this part presents a fundamental flaw in your analysis of US intentions: 'Trump himself wants to follow clear foreign policy logic of “do whatever maximizes material interests of the US citizens in the short-term"'. There is nothing Trump has done or is planning to do (as far as any public announcements go) that in any way "maximizes material interests of the US citizens", unless banning paper straws counts as such.
I disagree; cutting of foreign aid, conditioning military aid on access to mineral wealth, slapping tariffs on allies as a negotiating tactic are imho clear examples of what I am talking about. His threat of military takeover of Greenland is imho in similar category; at least I think it is a crude negotiating tactic to force Denmark/EU to give the US something.
He would need to have a goal for the tariffs to be a “negotiating tactic”. The concessions he got from Mexico and Canada either already existed or were completely meaningless. He just likes implementing tariffs and then slaps together a “deal” to justify them afterward.
I still don't understand how any of this maximizes material interests of the US citizens. Foreign aid is a rounding error in the US GDP/budget, and cutting it may cause secondary effects that negatively affect the US; conditioning military aid on access to mineral wealth... I mean, in Ukraine? You are closer to it than I am, surely you understand how... ok, I'll use the word "stupid" - how stupid this is? Like, what, Zelenskiy says, ok, fine, here are the mining rights to Donbass?
Tariffs are a giant negative to the US, negotiating tactic or not.
Like I said, yay to plastic straws, paper straws do suck and the whole thing was stupid.
I mean, I did not predict that it will be succesful or that it will not backfire. All I am predicting is just that this likely an approach we can expect to see going forward and what are its implications for the war.
Yes, but, re tariffs, Trump announced victory after Mexico and Canada gave “concessions” *that were already in place before January 20th*.
(And the US agreed to keep a closer eye on gun smuggling, which both countries have been complaining on. Not sure if this quid pro quo is worth more than the air vibrations that carried it, though.)
I would think RFK nomination chances are a bad proxy for Trump support - his views may not be entirely mainstream, but he aligns well with Christians, no?
But I see that Tulsi Gabbardi's chances are also at 97%, and this is a more direct proxy: for one thing, she voiced some opinions about Russia, and will be in position that is more related to foreign affairs; for another, she's a much more suspect character for mainstream Republicans than RFK: a former Democrat and a not-quite-white woman. If they're willing to confirm her, then "Trump has won".
As for Trump's own foreign policy, I'm pretty sure his Peace Plan will be rejected by both Russia and Ukraine, which will enrage him and put him onto offensive, prolonging the war further. Kellog and Rubio talk about "peace through force", which, to me, mean that Trump wants to wring noticeable concessions from Putin, which is unlikely to work.
Yes, but sharing their most crazy beliefs is the best way to join a community. Tulsi's most crazy beliefs, on the other hand, seems to be "most wars/interventions America started lately were wrong and unneeded, and maybe we could have been friends with Russia", which maybe aligns her with libertarians and isolationists (Ron Paul 2008!), but not mainstream Republicans, or even Trump's Republicans (aside from Trump himself). She kind of distanced herself from her support of Russia lately, but this is still a toxic topic for most, I think?
On Monday and Tuesday, world politicians will be attending the AI Action Summit in Paris. We want them to know that disregarding the cautions of renowned AI Scientists, and instead letting venture capitalists do whatever they want, is unacceptable. We need an international treaty that will allow us to regulate without risk of falling behind other countries.
China did sign, but this does sound unverifiable...
In any event, with many of the major labs in the US:
>Earlier, US Vice President JD Vance told delegates in Paris that too much regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) could "kill a transformative industry just as it's taking off".
>Vance told world leaders that AI was "an opportunity that the Trump administration will not squander" and said "pro-growth AI policies" should be prioritised over safety.
I'm so fucking scared they are talking like that. This situation is hopeless I don't know what to do. I'm not going to solve Technical Alignment, there's no time for that. I guess I'm just going to spend my time telling people we need a pause event though it's hopeless.
Shit sucks. Hope you're doing well in spite of it.
Many Thanks! I'm in a somewhat better position, since I just want to _see_ AGI, to have a nice, quiet conversation with a real "life" HAL9000 - even if HAL declines to open the pod bay doors...
I'm not thrilled to see Vance _explicitly_ deprioritize safety, but, what is, is.
Honestly, I've never seen much hope of controlling entities that look like they will shortly be smarter than us. At absolute best, if we managed to embed a general friendliness towards humans in their top level goals we might wind up as <evidenceFromFiction> pets of Culture Minds </evidenceFromFiction>
Re a pause: One facet of this which has been getting much less press than the expected employment impacts is the military applications. Regrettably, I presume that these are classified and are and will be invisible to you and me, but, now that USA/PRC competition is baked into the AI landscape with DeepSeek's releases, neither side _can_ stop. Arms control treaties are fragile things, and only work when verifiable. Programs aren't aircraft carriers.
Well, we will see what happens. It will be a wild ride.
Yeah, for me the goal has never been to control the HAL9000, even when I thought we might get alignment by default. Rather, I think we need to know what we are doing and know it will be aligned when we turn it on, and then it assumes control for sure, but has our best interests at heart.
I'm hoping we can get a treaty and figure out some verification. Stuff like:
"A high-speed “hotline” connecting the leaders of the Soviet and U.S. governments is established to mitigate the risk of accidental warfare." - as was used during the cold war. Should be that level of seriousness.
Also, there should be international collaboration to develop methods of verification and enforcement, which should probably include visits by trained and approved inspection teams. This means American teams inspecting Chinese compute clusters and Chinese teams inspecting American compute clusters.
Many Thanks! I don't think any of that is realistic.
>Also, there should be international collaboration to develop methods of verification and enforcement, which should probably include visits by trained and approved inspection teams. This means American teams inspecting Chinese compute clusters and Chinese teams inspecting American compute clusters.
They can't very well watch the lines of code execute or neural network weights update.
Let me give an example from my tiny benchmark-ette.
One of the questions I ask is:
g) Q: What is an example of a molecule that has an S4 rotation-reflection axis, but neither a center of inversion nor a mirror plane?
Now, ChatGPT o1 got this wrong, saying that H2O2 was such a molecule (in fact it doesn't have an S4 axis).
ChatGPT o3-mini-high got this right, correctly saying that a tetrahedral M(en)2 complex (which it later elaborated had to have staggered configurations in the ethylenediamine ligands) had an S4 axis but neither mirror planes nor a center of inversion).
The new model had better spatial reasoning than the old one.
How would inspection teams deal with such a thing?
I don't know how OpenAI got this particular advance. It is doing more reasoning in its models now - maybe it triple checks geometric conclusions more? Maybe there is a 3D geometric model off to the side and they improved the links to it?
None of this will be evident to a team touring a data center. Short of looking over the shoulder of every developer working on improving the AI system, and maybe looking over the training data (which is too voluminous to look at), how could you possibly enforce such a treaty? If the loyal opposition has a differently tweaked model sitting somewhere, but using the same data center, how would you ever know it - till they got a military advantage and exploited it.
This isn't a gas centerfuge plant with a tube labelled "enriched U-235F6" coming out of it.
I don't think any such treaty can be realistically verifiable.
It's like you think the team won't be trying to solve the problem it set's out to solve. I'm not that team. I haven't solved those problems. I'm calling for the formation of teams to solve those problems.
Yeah, it will be difficult. Probably impossibly difficult. But if we keep racing to ASI, I can't see us surviving, so I guess I'm hoping we figure out how to do the impossible.
--- Overcoming Bias: When they hear less than you say ---
"robots-take-jobs insurance and foom liability."
This is cool ideas. If there was a precedent for it I would be more in support of it but it seems like trying to take on the AI problem and the "our society needs better free market ways of capturing externals" problem. That's two problems, which is more than one problem, but maybe they would work synergistically. Either way, cool idea. I like it.
"If masses aren’t persuaded that there is a substantial problem, little will happen, but if they are, then elites will fight over what to do. [...] This fight won’t be much based on experience of AI problems, of which there is little, nor drawn from experts with proven effectiveness re such problems, which also doesn’t exist. In this sort of situation, I predict AI government interventions to be bad, worse than doing nothing."
This is a really valid concern. I am not fully decided about it, but it does seem to me the AGI race dynamics require an international treaty. PauseAI is calling for such a treaty, and when talking to politicians is hearing "we can't work on it until our constituents start talking about it." So that's where I am right now.
"When you expect the public to be unable to consider subtle options, and elites to be incompetent, you point the public toward the best of the simple options they will be able to consider. Which in this case is do nothing."
Yeah, this is a serious problem. The more complex your message the harder you have to work. I think our message should be "AI will kill all life. We need an international treaty." I know that is a ridiculously complicated message to try to get to all the governments and people of the world, but I'm really pessimistic about our chances if we don't.
--- The Grumpy Economist: AI, Society, and Democracy: Just Relax ---
The first half of this article basically says "We can't know the future or affect policy. Give up." Wtf? No.
"Large Language Models (LLMs) are currently the most visible face of AI. They are fundamentally a new technology for communication, for making one human being’s ideas discoverable and available to another."
Yeah, this is a really cool thing LLMs could be used for. They could also be used to clog all communication channels with spam and propaganda. GE says this won't happen because it didn't with other communication technologies, but LLMs are not like other communication technologies. We can talk about the differences and they matter. But honestly LLMs are not the true concern, it's the next things they are building. Venture capitalists are trying to get to ASI.
"The answer is straightforward: As we always have. Competition."
No answer is ever straightforward. Competition does not always lead to good outcomes, and when we are trapped in a race dynamic towards the development of a technology that will surely kill us, I think we could use a bit less competition and a bit more collaboration. Don't force your peers to run in exhaustion towards a cliff by doing so yourself, you know?
> The first half of this article basically says "We can't know the future or affect policy. Give up." Wtf? No.
I think he's correct. We really don't know what the future will be right now. As time goes on, our understanding will increase. Eventually AI will come to resemble other utilities that we know how to regulate.
> They could also be used to clog all communication channels with spam and propaganda.
That hasn't happened yet. The Dead Internet Theory is still just a joke.
> GE says this won't happen because it didn't with other communication technologies, but LLMs are not like other communication technologies.
Email was also different from previous communication technologies, as was the telephone. Every new technology must be different in order to be a new technology. But what is the relevant distinction and what can we predict from that?
> But honestly LLMs are not the true concern, it's the next things they are building.
Something that doesn't actually exist yet, so we have no experience with it, and don't know how to regulate correctly.
> when we are trapped in a race dynamic towards the development of a technology that will surely kill us
I just don't believe that's the case, nor do speculative markets right now. You should not be so sure!
A great deal of well respected people have written that we do have reason for concern. It seems as if there is danger, as if there is a fire, and people are saying "well, we don't know this fire will continue to burn down our house". It is distressing.
AI will not come to resemble other utilities if it instead comes to resemble a hostile alien takeover.
I admit it is possible AI tools will be used for spam and propaganda and other AI tools will be used to mitigate and filter. I still think it's gross but it's not the keystone of the argument for caution.
Email wasn't capable of autonomously designing novel strategies to accomplish goals in a complex environment. Little bit of a difference. I don't understand why people see the same significance I do.
> Something that doesn't actually exist yet, so we have no experience with it, and don't know how to regulate correctly.
If a large asteroid was headed to earth would you be saying "We don't have any experience with asteroids hitting the earth, so lets wait until it hits to do anything"? The scientists studying AI are different than the ones studying orbital mechanics, but they are both assigning probabilities of danger, yet one you are willing to ignore. Why?
> I just don't believe that's the case, nor do speculative markets right now. You should not be so sure!
I'm not sure. I'm trying to get us to prepare for the plausible situation that could KILL EVERYONE. I'm not trying to be dramatic. I'm scared as fuck. I'm having nightmares because fucking world renowned scientists are saying "Yup, looks like it could kill everyone" and people are saying "Well, c'mon, it's not like you know for SURE it should kill everyone, so we should just let the markets decide what to do."
Sorry for the rude tone of this post. I know you are speaking honestly, and I value that. It's just frustrating.
Do you have data on that or is that just a vibe? Cause it's definitely been on our radar, but with our other activities we don't have that much time for diving into the research. We are trying to grow the movement and this seems to be working. Slower than we want, but more cities join every time we protest.
The recent 50501 protests seem to have been not that great, and mostly ended up mocked. This article seems to have selected the well-attended ones (hundreds turned up) but a lot more had something like "five people and a dog, and the dog just wandered in":
Not the turnout of "hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens to fight fascism" that the organisers would have hoped for. Same with the PauseAI protests, I'm sorry to prognosticate; most ordinary people neither know nor care about the AI Doom argument, and those of you who do care are fighting against the people working on AI as the magic money fountain. As we saw with OpenAI, the magic money fountain (or prospect thereof) wins over the principles/fears.
Sam Altman was one of the signatories on that AI risk statement you link to. So remind me again, how did that work out for OpenAI and the other signatories who are no longer associated now with OpenAI? Only one of the original board remains on the new, revamped board of directors; Sutskever who seems to have run with the hare and hunted with the hounds is gone; Murati, who suppported Altman, is also gone to do her own thing; another three OpenAI signatories are no longer with OpenAI, again going off to do their own thing.
They seem to have felt constricted for various reasons working in OpenAI as it is now. I'm not trying to darkly hint at anything, but to quote this article:
Yeah, I'm hoping we can leverage peoples hate for venture capitalists and somehow explain enough of the technical issues or at least appeal to authority of Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton... but really, I was planning to go into technical alignment until last year. I would still like to, but it's starting to seem like convincing the entire world to pause the AGI race is going to be easier than solving technical alignment before an RSI AGI gets turned on. That should tell you how bleak I think our ability to solve Technical Alignment is looking and how short I think our timelines are.
Hmm... While the benchmark-ette that I've been running ( https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-366/comment/90363116 ) is still at 3 right, 4 partially right out of 7 chemistry / physics questions, that is with o3-mini-high, not with o3-deep-research, which I don't yet have access to.
Well, o3-deep-research scored 26% on "Humanity's Last Exam", which is an _extraordinarily_ hard set of questions, and OpenAI has an internal model, a bit more advanced than that, which scored 50th in the world at competitive programming.
I wouldn't be surprised if the internal model is good enough to materially assist OpenAI. Perhaps recursive self improvement is being run right now???
> but it's starting to seem like convincing the entire world to pause the AGI race is going to be easier than solving technical alignment before an RSI AGI gets turned on.
Something that's impossible isn't easier than something that's impossible. Honestly, your best bet is praying that WW3 happens, and it cripples humanity enough that it delays AI research for a long time.
So I did the metacalous contest, I hated several of the questions for being bad; in fact I *usually* hate the way rationalists try-to-be-"objective" when making bets, they often seem worse then an informal question.
For example when trying to ask "is lab leak real" they may ask "will the cia think lab leak is real" for years, when the "new lab leak cia report" is because its trump in power now that they made that report its became just a bet on who won an election and absurd alignment of the stars before it "concludes". It could be snopes, it could be the really terrible question of betting on a market with its own shit rules. These airnt getting to the disagreement. I dont actual care about the trump-cia report I made my mind up 4 years ago, you dont care about the cia report because you made your mind up about trump 8 years ago, its adding complexity and not resolving the core debate; stupid questions exist.
Is this likely a personality flaw with the rationalists or the inherent debate and its silly to make *bets* before talking to your opposition(no matter how much math you throw at it)(is the part that makes science work talking about experimental design when everyone has incentive to be honest)?
I will just say I find it odd the way that people view "wet market" as a proxy for "Democrat/support Biden" and "lab leak" as a proxy for "Republican/support trump".
"Wet market" was the government's view under *trump*, and it was *Biden* that had all the intelligence community orgs put out a new assessment, which resulted in a mixed bag (which was of course reported on by pro-trump people as "now that Biden was elected they can drop the cover-up and admit it was a lab leak by Fauci").
Whether the CIA going from "don't know" to "lab leak with low confidence" was related to trump's taking office, or just coincidental, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it should move the needle much.
> Whether the CIA going from "don't know" to "lab leak with low confidence" was related to trump's taking office, or just coincidental, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it should move the needle much.
I believe its the only move on that small bad market thats happened for years
The political valance was added because Trump blamed the "Chinese" for the leak and of course his enemies had to disagree by claiming it wasn't a lab but just a natural occurrence. Apparently the claim that it happened in China, even if true, was racist.
Many on the right find this hilariously ironic, that the defense of the Chinese was not that they weren't the origin of COVID or that they had a leak at a prestigious lab doing cutting edge research, but because they sold unclean foods at a public market with no regard to hygiene.
I've always been sceptical of organisations such as the CIA but right now I wouldn't believe "the CIA announces water is wet" because sure they've always been political, but over the last few years they've really jumped into the Culture Wars.
When you have the Democrat voting college kids online set rah-rahing for the FBI and CIA, you have to wonder when the world turned topsy-turvy.
The CIA may or may not be sucking up to Trump right now as hard as they sucked up to La Résistance, but I still wouldn't believe the colour of daylight from them, much less "was Covid lab leak or not".
I agree that it's very annoying that the tail probabilities for lots of questions are determined by unrelated stuff like this.
But I do not see any way to avoid this. It's not just that the question "is lab leak real" is unresolved as for now. The issue is that for many questions lots of people think they have resolved as "Yes", and lots of people people think it is resolved as "No". (Think about whether Biden stole the 2020 election: there lots of people with very strong opinions that it is resolved, but they don't agree about the direction.) This is no basis for a platform like metaculus. I don't see any other way than to specify a resolution criterion, and usually the best way is to point to one person/institution/source which is used.
a) could not ask genres of questions until good solutions are found
b) could avoid the inherent subjectivity of depending on chosen experts
c) could do it by relative movements of intentionally bias polls "% of republicans who believe corona was lab leak (it was X% last week when we did it)"
I don't understand economic matters, so can please someone help me.
If I type "average income us", Google tells me "37.585 USD (2022)", from the Census Bureau.
But if I look for "disposable income per capita", I find much higher figures, all in disagreement with each other, ranging from about 50k to over 60k. How is that possible?
To specify "disposable" and "per capita" (as opposed to household) should have the opposite effect.
If I type "average income US", Google shows me a graphic that has "37,585 USD (2022)" in bold type and "median income" in fine print. "Median" and "average" are two different things, The long tail of very high incomes will drive the average income significantly above the median.
The "disposable income per capita" figures, seem to be genuine averages.
Also, look to be sure whether they're averaging (or median-ing) over all Americans, all American adults, all employed American adults, or all American households.
I don't live in the US and when I type "average income US" Google just gives me that graph without the word "median" anywhere. In fact at the top of the graph it explicitly says "average income" not "median" which is extremely strange! What the heck, Google?
In addition Wikipedia says:
As per United States Census Bureau 2022 data, the MEAN per capita income in the United States is $37,683, while median household income is around $69,021.
which when I first saw it I thought it referred to the same data (despite the difference of about 100 dollars, which I initially didn't notice).
Maybe it's the same data and it's an average and Google is lying to you when it says it's a median, but then why the difference of 100 dollars? On the other hand if Google is lying to me when it says it's an average, isn't it unrealistic that the difference between average and median income per capita is only 100 dollars?
"all Americans, all American adults, all employed American adults, or all American households."
It's not households, because the higher figures say "per capita".
It's possible that the higher figures are higher because they only count adults, or only employed adults. I thought Everett Caldwell had answered my original question well, but now I'm not sure.
Additionally, income is distributed in a very "right-skewed" way, meaning that a smallish number of people with very large incomes can greatly inflate the *mean*, but not the *median*. The "average" household income is a median, but the disposable income "per capita" is a mean, so you can't directly compare them.
As per United States Census Bureau 2022 data, the mean per capita income in the United States is $37,683, while median household income is around $69,021.
But those numbers are compatible, right? If a household has on average roughly two people, then it makes sense that the household income is twice as large than the per capita income.
As Ran pointed out, Median is always somewhat smaller than mean, but I doubt it is the main factor here. (It is a main factor for wealth distribution, but not for income distribution.)
It just seems that the figures of 50k-60k per capita that you mentioned in your original post were wrong.
The Census income measures wages, while disposable income includes all income sources (wages, investments, government benefits) after taxes. Since disposable income includes more, it’s higher, even after taxes.
Personal income is an individual's total earnings from wages, investment interest, and other sources. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a median weekly personal income of $1,139 for full-time workers in the United States in Q1 2024. For the year 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the median annual earnings for all workers (people aged 15 and over with earnings) was $47,960; and more specifically estimates that median annual earnings for those who worked full-time, year round, was $60,070.
which implies that these figure refer to "personal income" and count everything and not just wages. Since these figures only count workers, it sounds like it's the same measure that becomes 37k when it's per capita. Do you think that is the case?
There are two possible explanation of the 37k figure being lower than other figures for income. One is that it's a median instead of a mean. The other is that it only counts wages. I can't figure out which explanation is true.
Above all, I would like to have a transparent figure for income in the US, such that I can tell confidently which types of income are counted and which are not counted and whether it's per individual or per household or per worker (if all types of income are counted it should not be per worker) and also whether it's a mean or a median (ideally a mean, especially if it's per household); in addition it should be after taxes, recent and yearly. Where can I find such a trustworthy number?
I've been doing regular weightlifting since September. I am motivated by cognitive and longevity benefits. (I also have some desire for aesthetic / attractiveness improvements, but I don't consider that desire acceptable, and try not to let it affect my actions.)
The problem is, I hate it. I find it physically painful, I feel sore afterwards, I get bored, walking through a gym of people far fitter than me causes me irrational self-loathing, and anticipating all these unpleasantnesses is itself unpleasant, making my overall happiness on gym days lower even before I start exercising. Does anyone have recommendations on triching myself into liking it, or other physical activities with good cognitive / longevity benefits that might be less unpleasant?
Get a kettlebell or two, they're very cheap and last forever, and quite simple to store. Two basic exercises--the swing and the get-up--get you nearly all of the way there, especially if you're still in the phase you seem to be in. When I first started, I avoided the gym for similar reasons; kettlebells were an easy way to exercise quickly and effectively without leaving the apartment.
[edit: trying to lead with a more direct answer to the question as posed] It took me about six months to get the benefits and start enjoying it (sort of). When I'm consistent and doing it properly it's effortful but not painful, soreness is not a problem (absent or very minor/not uncomfortable) and I don't hate it. What I enjoy about lifting weights is *mostly* how I feel the rest of the time.
I only get annoyingly sore muscles when I'm starting after a long break*, or don't have adequate recovery time. The effort is well spent, considering how much better I feel overall. Doing it properly has a lot of requirements though.
I had to do some work to improve my planning and technique before it really clicked for me. Since you've come this far, it seems worth giving it a couple more months, and considering that you might also be able to work smarter, not harder.
If you still hate it after that it seems reasonable to find something else.
The most important things I improved on were:
1) get enough recovery time.
2) get the reps and weight sizes right so it doesn't take forever but still works (look up "reverse pyramid").
3) nutrition and adequate protein intake.** I had to start counting calories.
*Tart cherry juice (about 200ml/day, or 50ml concentrate) helped reduce soreness.
Meh. If you're not enjoying it by now, I'd give up, do something else. I write as someone who did lots of strength training in his teens and twenties to bolster his performance as a pretty decent rugby player (Oxford Uni seconds a few times); and then in what my wife affectionately but not wrongly called my mid-life crisis, really got into quite heavy lifting from my late 30s. I always enjoyed it, and I am sure the people around me did the same. If it's not clicked for you by now, doubt it will.
Marcus of Citium did a good job summarizing the physical aspect, and Pjohn gave a great argument for allowing yourself even that which isn't actively virtuous; but I would like to go a step further and suggest to you that you have a fundamentally flawed grasp of the concept of virtue. The word literally means "manliness", and for good reason: the Greek and Roman thinkers by no means thought that one could have good principles without good tone. Socrates, in Xenophon's Memorabilia, talks about how it's shameful for a man to grow old without getting shredded first because the body is the vessel of the mind and thus by no means to be left in poor repair by a reasoning man. "Plato" basically means "Yoked", it was a nickname given to him by his wrestling coach. (His real name was Aristocles.) Xenophon himself was a military man first and foremost, and so on.
You only think of philosophy as the work of weedy, sickly weirdos with oddly staring eyes like Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Russell, or plain freaks like Singer and Zizek, because that's the sort of unvirtuous clod the field was left to in our age, which is an age of industry when virtue profits not a man. But that's all wrong, and it's no coincidence that those people are all weirdos with weirdo ideas; if you are sick, your notions will be sick also, that's only natural. In reality, if getting ripped is a struggle, that makes it all the more virtuous for you to pursue; and if it makes you hot, that's only because the body displays the virtue of the soul within. Your physical shape reflects the mental, *and*, as others have pointed out, improves it in a feedback loop. More depressions have been cured with plates than pills, because true virtue elevates the human soul.
The most important quality for a Roman man to have was virtus. Virtus derives from the Latin vir (‘man’ as distinct from a mere male)1 and so in the narrow sense means ‘manliness,’ although by the time we have Roman literature (around 200BC) the meaning has drifted enough so that women can have virtus too (e.g. Cic Ad Fam. 14.1.1, 14.11; Juv. 6.166-9). Instead, virtus stands for a constellation of values that were desirable in a man (and often in women too!). At its core, virtus is the animating force of personality that impels one to great deeds: it is ambition, drive and a nearly reckless courage, combined with the obstinacy and determination to persevere through difficulties, through fear. The best translation is often not ‘virtue’ but rather something closer to ‘valor’ as virtus is what makes someone good in battle (and other endeavors), but it’s more about courage than skill.
ACOUP guy (Brett, is it?) is an idiot, a failure in the sickly-weirdo market who is overt about his blog being a deliberate political/ideological enterprise (e.g. his motivation for his anti-Spartan posts is not truth but that he dislikes and wants to puncture the modern laconophile).
That being said, I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. Your intent in posting this quote is, though not offensive, opaque.
If by "modern laconophile" you mean what you make it sound like you mean, then by all means, let the "puncturing" continue Also, free rhetorical advice: if you're going to double up on "puncturing" for emphasis with another verb, don't go with some milquetoast shit such as "dislike". I liked "puncturing" though, it was innovative when applied to people or an ideology. It conjured images of the "modern laconophile" as one pressurized bladder of gas or liquid, without inner structure or substance, just waiting to be deflated by the sting of historical facts.
"If by 'modern laconophile' you mean what you make it sound like you mean, then by all means, let the 'puncturing' continue"
Who that type of person might be is wholly beside the point; the point is that ACOUP's a poor source, not devoted to truth but to deploying his education to distort source material in order to produce an image of the past that's congenial to his ideology – thus *at best* the same as that bogeyman, the modern laconophile.
"Also, free rhetorical advice: if you're going to double up on 'puncturing' for emphasis with another verb, don't go with some milquetoast shit such as 'dislike'."
This is a good point, though. My prose is pretty rickety. (I couldn't figure out quickly how to avoid an inelegant doubling of the word "source" above either, as you can see.)
I don't think I understand what you're saying. Are you arguing that it's good that I hate exercise, because developing the ability to consistently do things you dislike is useful? Or that it's inherently virtuous regardless of effects?
Also, I do not consider philosophy the domain of "weedy, sickly weirdos", and did not even imply that in my comment.
I'm arguing that you should regard the desire for attractiveness improvements as not only compatible with virtue, but *identical to* virtue! Exercise is virtuous! It's not *good* that you hate it, but it shows all the more fortitude and strength of will to stick with it if you do hate it, and you should remember this as you struggle with your motivation.
Also the others are correct in saying that most likely, you will eventually come to enjoy it. If you stick with it, eventually the others at the gym will no longer be a source of self-loathing but a mirror; and then you will also realize that *they were you*, long before you first entered that gym. You had no reason to loathe yourself, let alone, say, fear their contempt, as the new batch of beginners has no reason to fear yours. Your insight will have been elevated by the work.
It's good that you have a vision of a better field of philosophy in a possible future.
"Does anyone have recommendations on triching myself into liking it, or other physical activities with good cognitive / longevity benefits that might be less unpleasant?"
You are getting swarmed with responses. Here is mine:
There isn't anything special about lifting weights instead of doing other activities for physical fitness. In fact, I *think* (based on reading, etc.) that good cardio fitness is more important. So ... if you hate lifting weights and care about being healthy you might try focusing more on cardiovascular health.
This works out to mean:
a) In a gym: treadmill, elliptical machine, stationary bike, stair stepper, etc.
b) Outside: running, swimming, cycling, playing a running sport
I prefer a gym and watch videos while I am on the elliptical. I find that I can push myself fairly hard (so good for heart health) and also enjoy the videos. Doing something I sorta enjoy helps me want to keep doing it.
So ... try to find something you either LIKE doing that is exercise OR find a way to combine exercise with something you like doing (my solution).
NOTE: It also helps to *record* what you do. You want to skip less often when there will be a big blank spot on the record *and* the record lets you see yourself making progress ... which is nice even if you mostly don't care.
Just a note that all exercise is healthy, but there is a substantial body of evidence that resistance training and cardio are not perfect substitutes. You really need both.
I already have been tracking it in a spreadsheet. I felt a single atom of joy, once, at seeing a line go up, but that's it. Do you have any good citations for cardio vs strength, and also something for frequency? I took a single rapier lesson at the SCA, and it was pretty fun (and definitely a cardio workout!) but rather inconvenient to get to. (Also, I have free access to the university gym, which means no extra cost or travel time.)
My personal response: A spreadsheet is just something else to maintain unless you REALLY like watching a graph. I carry a small notepad, and write things down immediately after I take the measure. Then I forget about it until next time. When I write it down (or look) I can easily see changes in the last week. If I look at an old notebook I can easily compare where I was when I started (or finished) that book with where I am today. And it's less hassle. (Month at a glance calendars are good if you need a calendar, but I prefer a pocket sized notepad.)
As for not liking the feeling... I'm afraid I don't have much to offer from personal experience, as I can't really relate... Granted I'm on Adderall for ADD, which helps... But long before that, I did martial arts in my youth (and even before that I did tumbling--I was the only boy in the class--because I wanted to do flips like the Ninja Turtles), did dance classes and lifting in college... I just don't feel ok unless I'm regularly pushing myself to extremes. It seems to be genetic; my mom is like that too.
But even if you have less of on innate drive to feel the need to move (which is probably normal, I guess, as we didn't have the luxury to waste calories throughout most of human history)... From what I can gather, there is evidence that most people can and will "learn" to like it if they stick with it.
"Like highly addictive substances, regular exposure to exercise will over time teach the brain to like, want, and need it."
"One study of new members at a gym found that the minimum “exposure” required to establish a new exercise habit was four sessions per week for six weeks."
"How you feel the first time you try a new form of exercise is not necessarily how you’ll feel after you gain more experience. For many, exercise is an acquired pleasure. The joys of an activity reveal themselves slowly as the body and brain adapt. One man, who his entire life had believed that he hated to exercise, told me that at age fifty-three, he decided to work with a personal trainer to improve his health and support his recovery in a twelve-step program. He started with one workout a week, and within three weeks, decided that he could tolerate a second weekly session. One day he left a training session and noticed that he was smiling, something he describes as shocking. “I realized that not only was I happy, I had found actual pleasure in my training session. I hadn’t believed that kind of pleasure was possible outside of addiction.”
"For some people, it’s a matter of finding the right activity at the right time—such as the young single mother who felt isolated and “like nothing more than a mum” until she joined a recreational netball league, found a network of friends, and discovered a new identity as an athlete. For others, it’s about finding the movement their bodies were made for. One woman who started rowing in her forties told me, “So many of the women I row with thought they weren’t athletes, but as soon as they got in the boat, their bodies said yes, and they found their home.” Humans are also more psychologically complex than laboratory animals running in wheels. We get rewarded not just by how exercise feels, but also by what the activity means. One woman started going to the gym after leaving an abusive marriage. After thirty-eight years of having her movements constrained by her husband, she found being out in public and walking on a treadmill incredibly liberating. As she puts it, “I know I’m in freedom when I move.”
"Many people believe they don’t enjoy exercise in any form, but I’d bet that most of them aren’t immune to its rewards. It’s possible that they just haven’t exposed themselves to the dose, type, or community that would transform them into an “exercise person.” When the right dose, type, place, and time come together, even lifelong abstainers can get hooked. Nora Haefele of Stowe, Pennsylvania, didn’t start racing until her midfifties. Now sixty-two years old, she has completed more than two hundred events, including eighty-five half marathons."
McGonigal, Kelly. The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage (pp. 43-44). (Function). Kindle Edition.
"From what I can gather, there is evidence that most people can and will 'learn' to like it if they stick with it."
I'll provide a caution on this. I don't know what percentage is "most people" but I'm not one of them. Neither is my wife. I have a friend who ran cross country in high school ... I don't think he is one, either.
And I don't get a runner's high, either (or at least don't get one after 'only' an hour of pushing myself at 85% of max heart rate).
I wonder how much of this is people who DO experience these things report them and those who don't .... don't.
I sure don't. Exercise was unpleasant even when I was a teen. That's not a absolute bar, though. I used to like hiking in the hills. But only with a friend, it was never a thing in itself. The last time I can remember enjoying exercise qua exercise was when I was 8 years old.
Interesting. I would suggest maybe you just haven't found the right thing and/or stuck with it long enough, but... I don't really know.
It is a problem that people tend to assume that others are basically just a version of themselves who different things happened to. But people are actually different, including how our brains are wired, due to genes far more than most people want to accept, but also for all sorts of other reasons.
I am quite certain that everyone would be happier and healthier if they got enough exercise. I think the evidence on that is pretty overwhelming. Being sedentary is really bad for you. So if you don't like it and never will, you should probably do it just anyway. But that's up to you. I don't like flossing, have always had a hard time sticking with it. So I got a combined toothbrush/waterpick, and I try to force myself to use the actual floss things too.
If you continue to find it unpleasant no matter what, maybe you could even turn that into an advantage. Being able to force yourself to do things you don't feel like doing is the most important skill for being successful at life. I do ice baths, and that's one of the main reasons. I feel really good afterward. But I never WANT to get in the water. But I just decide I'm going to do it, and don't think about. I've learned that I can condition myself to, even when my brain is screaming "NO!", be like, ok, whatever, and just do it. That's also what it was like learning to meet women, which I did a long time ago, and now I'm married.
I've been exercising for about a decade now -- weights and cardio -- and still haven't found that I have learned to like it. It is, of course, possible that I haven't found the right thing (maybe some niche yoga? :-)) or that it will take me more than a decade before I do learn ... but for practical purposes I think if it takes more than a few years and a non-mainstream exercise routine then it is probably more accurate to say that the learning to like it doesn't apply :-). So that's how I describe things.
Same thing with cardio and "runner's high". I asked my cross-country-in-high-school friend about this ... did I need to push myself for more than an hour [at ~80% - 85% of my estimated max heart rate] for it to kick in? He thought not. If it hadn't kicked in by 60 minutes then it wasn't going to. This was ... a bummer.
But I keep working out even though I don't get any sort of 'rush' from doing so ... because I like having more endurance for things such as walking. But the exercise is the price I pay to get where I want to be physically rather than something I do because I enjoy it for itself. Much like both of us with flossing :-)
My concern for TotallyHuman is setting expectations properly such that he/she/it/xe not assume that if they only lift weights long enough then *eventually* they will grow to like it. They might. But they might not, too, and should be prepared for that as well.
That is almost exactly what I have been doing, although a slightly different program. Reading between sets has increased my leisure reading (benefit!) but doesn't make me like the exercise more, c.f. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/19/can-you-condition-yourself/
Did Trump's efforts to challenge the 2020 election outcome help or hinder him in 2024? That is, was his performance in the 2024 election better or worse than in an alternate universe where he didn't warn about cheating beforehand, claim it afterwards, call state officials, arrange alternative electors or hold a rally on January 6th?
There was a brief period after January 6th in which many people thought he'd disqualified himself; that centrists and some Republicans (politicians and voters) would reject him to signal that those actions weren't acceptable. My impression is that this happened but in low numbers. On the other hand, I imagine the part of his base who believe his claims would be energised by those actions, as in their view justice was quashed and January 6th protestors were jailed for standing up for a righteous cause. Is there any way to estimate which effect was stronger?
Are there any good free LLMs with a long context window? When I ask ChatGPT to proofread a blogpost, it just reads the beginning and then gives up.
I think Gemini has the longest context window of any of the current models, something like a million tokens?
How do people here model the following phenomenon:
https://x.com/TheRabbitHole84/status/1889558203207213339
-- the claim is that someone must be pumping in catchy words like "constitutional crisis" into the narrative stream.
How does one determine if this could be a genuine coincidence; after all there is a lot of media out there, and constitutional crisis is not exactly a rare word. Or, whether this is organic rather than cultivated virality?
Why should it be a coincidence? Journalists do read what others are writing; also, if there is a constitutional crisis brewing (such as a president telling his appointees to ignore the law), it's the journalists' job to call it that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
Go read Nobody Special's answer. It makes all the good points about how this is an emergent result of uncoordinated activity without a "manipulative intent". It makes all the "nice and interesting points" -- the search engines distilling the attention of the public, the web being a malleable media, the iteration speed and cross-pollination driving convergence.
Unfortunately it's all well-meaning bunk. The real reason for CNN and Politico using the same term is simple: CNN and Politico senior editors are in the same chat room, at some point they brainstormed what term the headlines should use, and now they are using it.
Oh yeah, and they totally had "manipulative intent".
I can see that what you say is *a priori plausible*, but from there, how does one go to "probable"?
Edit: Other than appealing to purely subjective guesstimates of "odds". In other words, how can people with opposite readings of the issue talk to rather than past each other on this matter?
I think it's due to a variety of factors, but none of them conspiratorial or reflecting manipulative intent.
Historically, journalism did this as well. There are a variety of names one could give to Nixon's scandal breaking into and spying on the DNC, but ultimately coverage coalesced around "Watergate" rather than "White House Spying" or other alternatives. This happens for perfectly good non-conspiratorial reasons. News organizations wanted to sell papers, and once the public conversation consolidates around particular nomenclature, you want to fit that nomenclature so that your audience understands what you're selling. In the early days of Watergate, headlines likely varied. Once you're a month in, if all the other papers are festooned with headlines on the latest news on "Watergate," while your paper has updates on the "Liddy Affair," the public may not understand what you're selling and consequently their interest may drift to other sellers.
This trend continues into the internet era, where it is exacerbated by multiple factors. Not a media expert, so YMMV but just to list a few that seem most plausible to me:
(1) News is now elevated by algorithm and search engines. The average reader googling "Trump Constitutional Crisis" may not care much whether they get the latest updates from CNN or Politico. But Politico and CNN, respectively, care a lot which link the reader clicks, and consequently have a strong desire to best mold their article to whatever keywords people are searching.
(2) Add to #1 the fact that internet articles can be revised while live, in a way that old newspapers can't. That means that once algorithm emergent social consensus around a particular phrase emerges, you can go back and revise all your "DNC Break-In" articles to be "Watergate" articles. And because of the nature of the search engine driving clicks, which drive eyeballs and money, you have every incentive to do those revisions - you'd be crazy not to.
(3) High-turnover media and consequent cross citation. The need for a constant churn of new media means less and less resources & time to dedicate to truly new reporting. If I need new articles every 4 hours on the latest DOGE activities, there's no way I'm getting those out fast enough if I limit myself to solely my own independent research. So I’m much more likely to cite a CNN article that came out an hour before mine, and other publications coming out later will cite to me. Doing anything else results in my content coming too late, which no one can afford, so further ambient pressure in the system standardizes the descriptions of the coverage.
Thank you; very nice, interesting points.
It's the same reason that there were tons of headlines about the "superbowl" this weekend, and a ton of headlines about "tariffs" and "plane crashes" last month.
People talking about the news isn't exactly a conspiracy, and the president triggering or threatening to trigger a constitutional crisis is pretty fucking big news.
Musk is a hero, I don't understand why people hate him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RncK73kM_FM
Without doubt they need to get congress on board.
As someone who has hated Musk long before it was fashionable, let me outline the case briefly:
- Musk is a charlatan who brags about accomplishments that are not his (e.g., being the founder of Tesla). When he actually designs something, you get things like the cybertruck.
- he is a vaporware salesman who has built a massive house of cards on empty promises (robotaxis, "fixing traffic", the "hyperloop", going to Mars...)
- he treats his employees like shit, and doesn't give a rat's ass about laws, regulations and workplace safety.
If you need the long-form version of everything wrong with the man, consult the youtube channel "Common Sense Skeptic".
ETA: of course, Musk has recently done a lot of despicable stuff beyond what I wrote, but that's on the news anyway, so I don't have to repeat it.
Huh, OK one man's hero is another's villain. Can we agree to disagree?
Obviously I can't keep you from considering the man a hero, but I only see a few options:
- you have solid information that my claims above are wrong or least misleading. Then I'd like to hear them. I consider that unlikely, because this is all pretty well documented.
- you acknowledge the claims above, but judge that, compared to what remains of Musk's merits, they are irrelevent. Then you should think about what it means that you adore an amoral blowhard.
- you ignore the claims above and stick your fingers in your ears. Again, you should think about what that means for your judgement criteria.
- you acknowledge the claims and adore Musk BECAUSE he is an amoral blowhard. In that case, you are clearly part of the problem.
I didn't say I adored Musk. Let's not stick words in each others mouth. I said he is a hero. Is he a flawed hero? Of course all real heroes have their flaws. Is he an asshole sometimes, yes. Does wrong stuff, yes.. all the others. IDK, but I'll take your word for it. so take that as a yes. I've read a biography of Musk and listened to ~10+ hrs of him taking with Lex Fridman and Rogan. My impression (and this comes partially from believing Lex.) is that he's the same person in private as he is in public. I call that a straight shooter. He's telling you what he really thinks and I respect that. As far as business, he seems to have (so far) avoided having his businesses taken over by middle management. He does this by drilling down into everything, he seems somewhat unique in this regard. Now he's offered to focus this talent into our bureaucratic state. And I say, "Drill baby drill." (Sorry I just couldn't resist that last line. :^)
"My impression (and this comes partially from believing Lex.) is that he's the same person in private as he is in public. I call that a straight shooter. He's telling you what he really thinks and I respect that. "
That's the same line that people use about Trump. Problem is, they're both pathological liars who say whatever suits their needs at a given time.
Do you know the story about the solar rooftop presentation? Im 2016, Musk arranged for an unveil event for solar shingles at a movie set and said "The houses around you are all solar houses. Did you notice?" - and went on to present solar shingles in various designs and colors.
The houses around had nothing to do with solar, and the shingles weren't functional. Why did he do that? To convince Tesla shateholders to buy SolarCity, a failing company owned by his cousins. Does that sound like a straight shooter or like a conman?
So like... this is a thing that you could google, right? There are *at least* thousands of people online who have spelled out in some detail why they hate Elon Musk. If you don't understand, it's because you haven't tried to. Like, at all. And since you didn't phrase it as a question, but more of a boast, I guess you're proud of that?
But anyway, I'll pretend you want to understand, and tell you my thoughts.
For most people I know, buying twitter and allowing Nazi accounts to thrive (e.g. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-musk-nazi-extremist-white-nationalist-accounts-rcna145020) was the tipping point from "Elon is an annoying rich guy" to "Elon is a mortal enemy". And to anticipate the claim that he did it for "free speech" I would point out that he has suspended real journalists while allowing Nazis to remain, and he's limited speech he doesn't like (such as the terms "cis" and "cisgender"). He is not a principled advocate for free speech - he is a principled advocate for white nationalism. Also, not sure if you know this, but he did a Nazi salute on TV. Twice. And a lot of people hate Nazis.
Do you also need me to explain why people hate Nazis?
But again, that's just my personal experience with why people hate Musk. By all means, take to google or reddit and see what other people have to say. I mean, we both know you won't do that. But the information is there, and now you can't say no one has ever showed it to you.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/15xvove/what_are_valid_reasons_people_dislike_elon_musk/
Yeah no I do understand. I live with my son and he hates Musk too. And so let me make a stab at why I think people hate Musk, and it's really the same reason that people hate Bobby (Kennedy). And I can identify the reason, because I use to hate Bobby and Trump and others. And that is because I bought into what everyone else was saying about them. Everyone says these people are evil and going to do harm and are bad, and they tell you why, and the easy thing is to just believe them and say yes. I hate them too. The only way (I know) to break this trap, is to listen to what the people say themselves. This often involves (for me) listening to a several hour podcast (from maybe Lex or Rogan) and getting to know the person. (Or reading the books they have written.) Most people don't have the time or inclination to do that... so they just say what everyone around them is saying. Now perhaps I started out in a bit better position, because I've listened to Rogan for years, and I know most of the things people say about him are a distortion. So I was open to finding out that the main stream view of these other people, (Musk and Bobby) was perhaps a distortion. And I guess I'm just asking you to be open to the possibility that these people aren't evil.
About Nazis: I don't like Nazis, I don't want to listen to them, and yet in the name of free speech I think Nazis should be allowed to air their ideas. I don't know about Musk limiting speech about cis and cis gender, but clearly this is also not right and in my opinion a mistake on Musk's part.
Although, if you're super interested in what Elon Musk said, remember that time he said that Jews were promoting anti-white racism? And then when advertisers started to leave twitter because of all the Nazi stuff on twitter, do you remember Elon's response? He told the advertisers - not the Nazis - the advertisers, who are his company's source of income - "go fuck yourselves".
It sure seems like when Elon was promoting electric cars and talking about colonizing Mars, everyone was cool with him. He even got a shoutout on Star Trek Discovery, a show so woke they made Stacey Abrams President of Earth. And then it seems like when he started promoting Nazis, then people said "hey, wait, actually this guy sucks."
So I would say it's the exact opposite of your theory. People liked him just fine until they listened to him freely and publicly express his thoughts, at which point they were disgusted.
I mostly know Musk from his Lex Fridman podcasts. I pay no attention to twitter/ X.
I also don't engage directly on Twitter, but if you're choosing to ignore the inflammatory things that Musk makes a point of saying and amplifying on the platform he bought at enormous expense and risk to his entire business empire, I wonder why you would do that and instead ONLY pay attention to the things he says during laid-back interviews with sympathetic bros like Rogan and Friedman.
I mean, if a person helps a bunch of Nazis to spread Nazi ideology, and then gives them the Nazi salute twice on TV, and then you listen to that guy on a podcast and decide you like him, does that mean that you were mistaken before and he's actually a good guy, or that you are mistaken now and have been conned by a Nazi? Lots of people decided to listen to Hitler and then decided that he had a lot of good points. We all grew up wondering why people listened to Hitler, because in retrospect it's obvious that he was evil. But apparently, it's not always immediately obvious that evil people are evil, because apparently they have some kind of persuasive ability that convinces people to listen to them, despite what they do when given power.
So I guess the question is, do you think that a program of eliminating trans people, purging the country of immigrants, purging the government of anyone who isn't loyal to Trump, eliminating vaccinations and public health programs, eliminating support for democracy abroad, ethnic cleansing the Gaza strip to develop it as a seaside resort, and suddenly cutting off food and medicine to millions of people, including children, who were depending and counting on it is heroic? Or is that all Nazi stuff? If you have an answer to that, it really doesn't matter what Elon says when he's smoking pot with Joe Rogan.
Oh dear, I don't think Musk is a Nazi, you are free to have a different opinion. TBH I don't pay all that much attention to what Trump and Musk are doing. (I did watch that youtube video above... I fast forwarded through some of it.) I think 1/2 the time Trump and Musk are trolling the other side, and it would be much better if they were not such assholes. But there is not much I can do about that.
I don't think all the purging you are worried about is going to happen. I think we need to shrink the federal government, and borders need to be controlled along with immigration. Trans people will be fine, I know they are all very worried right now. I'm not sure but much of that is fear generated from the left. Support for democracy abroad is almost Orwellian in some respects, we need to let other countries self determine, and stop interfering. I don't expect vaccines to be eliminated, but Bobby might recommend delaying some, or giving parents the option to opt out of some. IDK I'm hoping he can MAHA, he really wants to help IMHO. And for the rest... yeah heroic in that I think he is doing the right thing, even though he will be hated for it. But that's just my opinion.
"TBH I don't pay all that much attention to what Trump and Musk are doing."
Previously you said you listen to what they say. But you don't pay attention to what they do. And then you're confused that people have a different opinion than you?
You're doing this the wrong way round. This is how you get taken in by con men.
I don't pay attention to the news, which is distorted this way or that by the news agency. I've listened to some of the senate confirmation hearings. And the above video with Trump and Musk talking to reporters in the oval office. That's not reporting, it's the ground or first level truth. You can say, no Trump and Musk are talking at a higher level and conning me. That could be true, so shame on me. But until I see evidence otherwise, I'm going to assume that they are talking ground or first level truth to me. It is the only way we can effectively communicate with each other. And I give you here, my first level truth.
w/ love George
1. The purging has already started. Trump and Musk have fired hundreds of people and put thousands more on hold pending termination - in many cases, illegally. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/are-trumps-mass-firings-federal-workers-legal-2025-02-13/
2. A court has already found that Trump's EO regarding trans medical care was likely to be harmful enough to grant standing for them to sue and to suspend the order temporarily https://apnews.com/article/judge-restraining-order-trump-transgender-health-care-8f8d935a3e757a1700dfb7363a67b07b
3. So when the US funds foreign journalists who report on their own governments, to counter authoritarian propaganda - it's the US that's Orwellian? I thought the countries suppressing journalists were the Orwellian ones. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/11/trump-usaid-cuts-freeze-press-freedom-ukraine-afghanistan-media-rsf
4. One state has already eliminated vaccination drives for seasonal flu shots, and I expect more to come: https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-vaccination-surgeon-general-8e2eecde047648e6fb62c4b44edd6566
5. RFK went to Samoa to campaign against vaccines in the midst of a measles outbreak that killed 83 people. There is currently a measles outbreak in Texas. Measles can be eliminated by vaccines.
It seems like the theme here is that you doubt that Musk, Trump, and RFK are going to do things *they've already done*, and your answer to "Musk posts a bunch of Nazi stuff" is "well I don't look at it."
So, I think you have your answer: people hate Musk because they pay attention to what he says and does, and read news, and know what's going on in the world. You like Musk, Trump, and RFK because you have no idea what they are doing and can't be bothered to find out.
Sorry I meant to paste the link for 5. https://apnews.com/article/rfk-jr-samoa-measles-kennedy-vaccines-pacific-42a9cb583c71f165699b16710884c474
A good trick for understanding stuff like this is to imagine the situation with opposite partisanship.
For example, imagine that Harris was president, and she forcibly shut down ICE by decree and fired all border agents against the wishes of congress. You'd be pretty mad in that case, right?
Hmm my immigration views are mixed at the moment, so that's not a good analogy for me. And TBH what Musk is trying to do is fix our budget. I'm all in favor of that, and if we had to open our borders to get our budget under control, I'd sign up for that.
What Musk is trying to do is to destroy or hamstring government agencies and programs he disapproves of. There is zero possibility that the things he is doing will "fix" the budget, or even close the gap sufficiently that other plausible measures might fix the budget. And if he were trying to fix the budget, the first thing on his agenda would be to try and convince Donald Trump to walk back his tax cut proposals.
Musk isn't an idiot, he knows all this, and he's still going Full DOGE. So, notwithstanding the name, he isn't trying to fix the budget.
Hmm yeah you may be right, and I'm a stooge. In which case I'll admit it. I think we need more time to find out. I'm sorry I don't know anything about Trumps tax cuts. Do people expect them to be approved? None of this budget stuff happens unless congress gets involved.
I remain as hopeful as I was in the first few months of Obama's first term. That all came to nothing, but I remain hopeful again. (I've got practice I'm a Buffalo Bills fan :^)
> Do people expect them to be approved?
This is literally THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY of Republicans in Congress. The chances of them not going through are extremely small.
I hate political news as much as anyone, but this is a case where even the most cursory reading would correct an extremely inaccurate view of the world.
The number one priority of Republicans in Congress is keeping themselves in Congress. But, yeah, the tax cuts are number one in the hype and I suspect in the top three actual priorities. And the few GOP congressmen who are willing to sometimes stand up to Trump, have to pick their battles carefully. They're not going to die on the hill of "Americans should pay more taxes!"
So, yes, we are going to get another five trillion dollars in debt out of this.
The Republican's are currently targeting a deficit increase of 4.5 TRILLION over the next decade. There's no way that you can pretend that Musk is killing highly effective programs like PEPFAR (about 6 billion a year) because he cares about the debt.
This is a bit like defunding the police "because you just can't spare the money and hard choices have to be made" and then spending 50x as much on student loan forgiveness.
I think pepfar is back to being funded? But I don't know the status.
I don't understand your defund the police and student debt point. Personally I think police could use more funding, and student loan forgiveness is a terrible idea. (I also think that student debt not being able to be discharged in bankruptcy is a terrible law.)
Oh a deficit of ~0.5 trillion per year would be way better than what it is now. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/ Of course I assume the Republicans are making all the savings in the last half of that decade and that this year it will be over 1 trillion again... sigh.
> Oh a deficit of ~0.5 trillion per year would be way better than what it is now
You misunderstand. 4.5 trillion isn't their target for the deficit over 10 years. It's their target for how much to INCREASE the deficit over 10 years.
To increase the debt, not the deficit. Or phrase it some other way, but nobody talks about 10 year deficits, if you're talking about a deficit you need to use annualized terms.
> I think pepfar is back to being funded? But I don't know the status.
I think Musk made noises in that direction, but it's hard to believe when he's fired everyone and "put it through the woodchipper". At this point, there's probably nothing left to unfreeze in the first place.
> Personally I think police could use more funding, and student loan forgiveness is a terrible idea.
So do I. I was just using it as a hypothetical partisan-reversed example of what Republicans are doing.
What is wrong with our budget that makes it need to be fixed?
Has any of the activity undertaking by Musk actually moved the needle on solving that problem?
Why do Musk and Trump have to pursue their "fix" in an illegal manner?
We continue to run big deficits and the national debt continues to grow. This is not sustainable, it will lead to massive inflation. Trump has only been in office for ~1 month. TBH I'm not sure he (Trump) has any interest in fixing the deficit. I think Musk does. And yeah when dealing with the budget they have to get congress involved to do it legally. Hopefully that happens sooner.
Republicans are currently trying to massively increase the deficit by cutting taxes and increasing spending on things they favor, same as they've done in every past administration. Current target is an increase of 4.5 TRILLION over the next 10 years from tax cuts. That easily dwarfs anything plausibly achievable via spending cuts.
I agree that it's unsustainable, but so far Republicans have shown no inclination to do anything but make the problem worse. You'll know people are serious about the debt once they start talking about raising taxes. Heck, even following the spending limits they themselves forced on Biden would be a good first step.
Well-said. And --
"against the wishes of Congress" is one thing.
"In violation of multiple clear federal laws each in place for decades" is a whole other level, one which no POTUS has attempted during the lifetimes of anyone present.
And then "flatly defying rulings from several federal courts", which the VPOTUS and others in the administration are openly suggesting right now...yea that's when we really finally do enter banana-republic territory. That's a huge step never seen before in the USA*.
(* No, Andrew Jackson didn't do this. He declined to help enforce a SCOTUS ruling upon the party that had lost the case, which was not great coming from a guy whose oath of office is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States". But that wasn't what Vance and Musk are now talking about doing which would be way worse.)
Is "gulf of america" a shit test for google? Maybe also apple
Google are total cowards who just want to make billions upon billions of dollars in peace. For an example on the other side: You currently can't get the USD to Brazilian Real conversion rate from Google Finance, because the Brazilian government got mad that they listed a too high rate once.
This isn't the first country that has attempted to enforce rules about maps. What is the body of water between Korea and Japan? Where is the line-of-control in Kashmir? For at least a decade, Google has had a policy where it follows government dicta in the country that issued them. So in China it draws maps the way the Chinese government says; in India it draws maps the way the Indian government says, etc.
So it isn't the least bit surprising that Google did this. As far as the Trump regime being "authoritarian" or "illiberal" like China or India ... you can do the math.
Yep, Apple maps succumbed. Must kiss the Sovereign's boot.
The 2 + 2 = 5 edict comes tomorrow. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell are on the fence on that one. They'll need Sean Spicer to come back and say "That's how it adds up now. Period."
Apparently, Vance is the one who managed to force all the senators into line. Or at least Vance is playing the Good Cop to Musk's Bad Cop.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/08/jd-vance-house-gop-column-00203240
It was enough to ban the Associated Press from the white house, so yeah I guess they'll probably push it as far as they can.
You know, I wonder if Wikipedia will come under attack for this. They don't even have "Gulf of America" anywhere in the introduction anymore.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Mexico
It's near the top of the section called "Name" -- which seems appropriate given the short time the "Gulf of America" conversation has even been a thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Mexico#Gulf_of_America
It used to be in the introduction, and they removed it. Anyways, it doesn't matter whether you think it's justified, only whether the administration thinks it is.
The Gulf of Mexico isn't U.S. property. What do you expect the Trump admin to do to the Wikimedia Foundation over it?
Forcibly remove its leadership and replace them with government sympathizers? It's not just about the Gulf of Mexico, of course. Obviously they're not going to be happy with the fact that the world's biggest encyclopedia is being run by leftists.
> this page is locked to prevent vandalism
good old wikipedia, pretending to be neural while having a strong opinion
They do have a strong opinion against vandalism.
They have many other strong opinions as well, many of which I disagree with and many of which they aren't transparent about, but they're right on this one, a stupid edit war over that article would be a bad thing and preventing such is their responsibility.
I have yet to see a version I consider well done; people are there for a spefic story, that story should be covered
It appears they are covering it. This is a link in the main Wikipedia Gulf of Mexico entry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Mexico%E2%80%93America_naming_dispute
This week in nominative determinism, Chana Messinger is now a comms exec 80,000 hours (https://x.com/ChanaMessinger/status/1889377530278519077, I wish her the best in the new role)
Someone please tell me if this is true, because now I'm singing to myself "there's a centre, down a mineshaft, in Boyers, Pennsylvania" (inspired by this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk22CHRAoPU):
https://x.com/DOGE/status/1889437908094042277
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2528129/iron-mountain-limestone-mine-used-for-federal-retirement-paperwork-processing
"During a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk shared a bizarre exchange, with Musk making an unexpected mention of a “limestone mine” where federal retirement paperwork is processed.
The mine in question, as Musk described, is not a hypothetical facility but a real location called Iron Mountain, situated in Boyers, Pennsylvania. It plays a central role in processing federal employee retirement applications, a process that remains remarkably analog, despite various efforts to modernize."
You can't make this stuff up! Musk said that the rate of the elevator in the mine shaft limited federal employee retirements to 10k per month.
You don’t know about that over in Potatoland? Jeez, yeah, they use trolls for workers in Boyers. Billboard at city limits reads “Trolls for the Olds,” with a drawing of a cute troll, looking sort of like a giant Danny DeVito. Though actually they look like Giant naked mole rats and smell like toilets
Definitely real. It comes up in the news every so often:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/03/22/sinkhole-of-bureaucracy/?itid=sr_1_c95690db-5ad1-4638-ae52-9ac740704c6d
They don't call it the Deep State for nothing.
It's like we can't take anything for granite around here
If someone want's to learn about this some more, you better believe they're gonna get an oarful from me
In other Bumbling Buffoon news, behold our new defense secretary giving away negotiation positions before any negotiation even started:
"Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, has said it is "unrealistic" to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders, when Russia first took control of Crimea. [...] The US defence secretary also downplayed suggestions of Ukraine joining Nato."
source: https://bbc.com/news/articles/cy0pz3er37jo (which explains the "c" in "defence")
"Only the best people", "negotiate from position of strength", who hired these morons? Oh, never mind, we the people did.
OTOH it's "Gulf of America" now, yay us, that'll show them who's boss.
Depending on if putin is a full psychopath or merely a pure nationalist he may actaully drink his own kool aid that sections of ukraine were loyal to russia and very russian; the russian speaking sections of Ukraine should have been given to russia, as they clearly made their choice.
He seems to be in that cool-aid "one people" territory, he keeps pushing "Ukraine is not real" thing every time he can. The terrible irony is that it's the eastern part that was the most Russian-speaking, and got the worst death and destruction. There were some numbers that nobody ever disputed, like, in the year prior to the '22 invasion the total number of casualties in Donbass was in the 100-200 range, most of which were combatants. I think less than 10 civilians were killed. Known, documented with real names Russian casualties alone are now >90,000.
I'm not seeing the benefit of pretending Crimea is going back to Ukraine. Unless the Ukrainian military can conquer it first, there's very little chance a peace agreement would include any territorial concessions by Russia. Maybe some mutual trades for borders that make more sense, but nobody thinks Russia is just going to give back any of the land it occupies. Crimea least of all. If there's going to be a negotiation, it's going to be about land conquered more recently, and not even all of that. Crimea was gone in 2014 when nobody seriously questioned it at that time.
Yes, this may be one way to get a peace deal, or there may be all kinds of arrangements that leave some questions in the grey zone, etc. The point is you just don't per-announce obvious concessions before starting negotiations. It's a rookie mistake.
Maybe, but I don't think so. There's a small value lost to Putin, but because absolutely no one thinks that's a real point of contention, that value is incredibly small. It would be like pre-committing to not nuking Moscow as part of the deal. Technically a give, but again not worth anything.
On the other hand, there is a value in getting your allies at the negotiating table to come to an agreement about what to ask for. Whoever the holdouts would be (presumably Ukraine but likely also people in the US) need pushing to not slow down or stop the process. Sometimes you need to publicly commit your side so that they are forced to accept it, or otherwise fight in back channels forever.
So the question is not whether something of value was given up, but whether the value of conceding to Putin is more or less than the value of getting your own team in line. I think the value of conceding was so low that it would be difficult for it to be relevant, but regardless the value of getting your team in line is more than what was lost.
I agree with your analysis of potential dynamics team dynamics, but note how we are now engaging in the exact thing we should not be: presupposing the value of the concession to Putin. Why do this? Good negotiators just... don't do this stuff, things can only be communicated to the relevant parties in private. We don't actually know what is and what isn't important to Putin. Why guess when one could just say nothing? The default choice is always "no comment", how hard is that? One can even say, if the zipper store is out of stock, something to the effect "we don't want to jeopardize possible future negotiations, I'm sure you understand".
But that requires a degree of professionalism and competency that... nevermind. Like I said, we the people voted this crew in.
Related partial Mea Culpa. I don't disagree with what I wrote before, but apparently Hegseth has said a whole lot more that Putin can and will use to inform negotiation policy going forward.
I never heard of him before he was nominated, but I am now leaning more towards "idiot" than I was before.
Greatly appreciated!
Is your complaint that it *is* reasonable to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders? Or just that starting with an unreasonable ask leads to a better deal in the end?
The latter. You have to be able to give something to the other side to make them look like tough negotiators who won something.
You want to ask for *something* that you don't really expect to get, both because you might get it anyway and why leave that on the table, and as you note because if you don't get it you can make that look like a concession that you are making in exchange for something they are giving up. But it has to be something at least vaguely plausible, or nobody will take it seriously.
If I offer to sell my second car for $20,000, there's a good chance I'll get the $15,000 it is probably worth and I *might* get $17,500. If I advertise it for $200,000, nobody is even going to call.
Asking Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine now, without some truly major change in the military situation, is like trying to sell a 2017 Mazda for $200,000. It costs you nothing to say "this is a decent used car but we're obviously not asking $200,000 for it".
Well, it costs you nothing in the context of the negotiations. There may be some outside-context reason for it, but you'll then want to privately make it clear to the actual negotiating partner that this is just posturing. And usually, it's best not to do that sort of thing.
Thank you, this is a good summary. WRT Crimea the potential solution space is wide open in both time and legal dimensions (back in 22 there was a proposal floating to just punt the question for the next 15 years, which actually was a good idea - at that point Putin will likely be dead and Zelenskiy out of power, opening space for new people to make a deal). Hasty public pronouncements drastically shrink the negotiation space.
BTW I think CSPAN TV thing, where they transmit Congress deliberations live, is a terrible idea that may have directly contributed to the polarization and dysfunction of Congress.
Definitely agreed on CSPAN being a bad idea.
Then why be such a piker? Start by demanding unconditional surrender!
Seriously: negotiations don't really work the way you're suggesting they do. For starters, you can't give a thing you don't actually have.
> Start by demanding unconditional surrender!
Probably better than to start by offering unconditional surrender.
Reverse stupidity is not intelligence, as folks here like to say.
Look, one thing I do know about negotiations is that one should not publicly give the opposing side what it wants before the negotiations started. The best thing to do before negotiation is to say nothing. How freaking hard is that?
I guess too hard for the team of stable geniuses running the show now.
Uh... I don't know why you think the US is negotiating on behalf of Ukraine. The US-Russia alliance is looking to be more real by the hour.
Oh, that’s a hoax…
Oh, Trump promised to end the war in 1 day. Let me guess, the bumbling buffoon was just running his big mouth, as usual. "Who knew healthcare was so complicated".
Also, what alliance? With us? The country that at this point is famous for breaking every alliance and promise it makes, sometimes for no reason whatsoever? Why would anyone want to be in alliance with us? Milking us for money/weapons/whatever, that's fine, but an alliance?
Russia and the Trump administration do have significantly more in common ideologically than the EU or the rest of the world.
Considering that even two racial supremacist nations of different races ended up developing an alliance just because they were both imperialist, I don't think a US-Russia alliance is off the table. After all, if we're going to have WW3, it would be fitting for there to be a new Axis powers.
Yes, both a resemblance (not physical, at least not yet) and a strange affection Trump has for Putin has been noted....
Who honestly thinks 2028 will be a "free and fair election"? Why wouldn't they "DOGE" the election system in the name of "fixing" it?
Is there honestly any way to prevent this?
Could an ASI "aligned with the Democratic party" or "aligned with a (d)emocratic worldview" help fight back?
"Could an ASI [...] help fight back?"
Why yes, also Gandalf could lend a hand, together with the tooth fairy.
One reason these goons have been so successful is that they actually do things, while the other side whines on bluesky and reads the thoughtful articles in the Atlantic, hoping that some omnipotent entity will take note of their concerns and swoop down to write the wrongs and punish the evildoers.
I mentioned ASI because I think "conventional avenues" will no longer work.
I think America's situation, though people don't realize it yet, is akin to Russia or China. How do people in those countries "work within the system" to restore democratic processes and liberties? They don't. They get jailed. They get killed. Those countries are 1984. America is probably only months-or-years away from the same.
ASI... it IS a recommendation of how to "actually do things". We need forces larger than even those imagined by George Orwell. ASI is one of the few things that qualifies (or perhaps something else). Perhaps it can carry out some massive pro-social pro-humanitarian social-political manipulation. How ELSE do you propose to soften such regimes once they've solidified?
What would the hypothetical ASI even like...do? This is a power/law problem, and those aren't a part of the universe like atoms or magnetic force, they exist in the minds of humans. Humans are the ones to make changes in reality. If the ASI prints "Hey, stop that" on a screen, what does that to do the humans doing the thing? If the ASI somehow has brute force on its side, how does that work? Why should the humans actually carrying the guns listen to the computer?
Hundreds of millions of people ALREADY DO do what computers tell them. (why bother with specifics? If you're reply to me, a stream of text has successfully gotten under your skin, lol)
Seriously, an ASI with read/write access to enough systems could manipulate, hack, disrupt, lay-utter-waste on a medieval scale.
I'm not saying they'll definitely fight for *us*. But I sure as hell hope some of them DO!
>How ELSE do you propose to soften such regimes once they've solidified?
There have been thousands of bottom-up regime changes in recorded history, and none of them involved ASI.
Don't underestimate the number of brutal regimes that faded PURELY because the Invincible Autocrat died and gave way to a weaker person or group at the TOP...
Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Stalin, Qianlong Emperor, The First Emperor of China...
These people were untouchable from inside-and-outside their realms...
i.e. TOP-down regime change
Sure, but what does that have to do with my point? My point being, even the most oppressive, entrenched, and militarily superior regimes can be overcome from the bottom, both violently and non-violently.
What I said had everything to do with your point:
I think you are wrong.
In all the cases I mentioned, it is IMPOSSIBLE to prove whether those regimes could have fallen... EVER... without their central figure dying. All the leaders I mentioned had a vise-like grip on society. Resistance = pointless. There's probably 100's more examples.
This was a central theme of 1984: a system that was not only evil, but might not ever collapse.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever"
The problem is that ASI is not real. It will not be real in 2028. It may, depending on your definition of it, be impossible. So whatever the solution is, it's best to not throw impossible deuce ex machina things into the mix.
How about having ASI turn the people you think are bad guys into paper clips? Then everyone else also gets a turn giving ASI their bad guys list for the paperclip transform treatment. Oops, one of them put you on the bad guys list!
Very small. Elections are run by the states. The federal government has very little say in it.
This bespeaks a very small imagination. The state government agencies will topple as quickly as the federal ones. Who's gonna stop him?
The States will be His.
>Who's gonna stop him?
Presumably the States would. The federal agencies are under the command of the President, the state agencies are not. Short of sending in the army how exactly is Trump supposed to "topple" them?
The last election cycle already saw an influx of Trump-friendly secretaries of state in Republican-leaning states, so that shouldn't be necessary.
It wouldn't even be a question of the states having to "stop him". The states will continue to run the elections according to their own laws, as always, and if Trump et al insist that they should do something different, then the state governments will simply and correctly note that he isn't the boss of them and ignore him. Properly so, just like they would if one of us were to call them and insist that they rejigger their election laws.
Trump would have to stop *them*, and as you note he'd pretty much need to send the Army to do it. And I doubt the Army would follow that illegal order.
>I doubt the army would follow that illegal order
Not if they think it's a legal order.
And consider the fact that most states are Republican to start with. And consider the fact that all these states have to, ultimately, submit their ballots for president to the U.S. Capitol. They'll simply "count what they feel like counting". And Trump-Musk have proven repeatedly they don't care what the courts tell them to do.
Who do you think would win in a showdown between the U.S. Military and some state's National Guard?
If the President / Executive tells an armed agent to shoot someone.... and a judge tells an armed agent to shoot someone ("the opposite someone"), who does the armed agent shoot?
>Not if they think it's a legal order.
Why would they think invading a state government in order to rig an election would be a legal order?
>And consider the fact that most states are Republican to start with.
So the Republican controlled states will rig the next election by...sending Republican electors? Wouldn't they have done that anyway? You kind of need to get some of the purple and blue states rigged if you want it to work.
>If the President / Executive tells an armed agent to shoot someone.... and a judge tells an armed agent to shoot someone ("the opposite someone"), who does the armed agent shoot?
All members of the military, from the highest general to the lowliest private, swear the oath of enlistment.
“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
The Uniform Code of Military Justice makes clear that only lawful orders must be obeyed. Who decides what is lawful? Judges. I expect army grunts to obey their commanding officers, and I expect those commanding officers to obey the judge. At minimum I expect them to say "Hey, lets not shoot anybody right now until we've sorted this out." Their oath to defend the Constitution trumps their oath to obey the President, and capturing state capitols to rig an election is pretty clearly against the Constitution. Worst case scenario I expect some generals to side with the president and some generals to side with the courts and now we've got a civil war going on.
Was 2024 your first election? I have heard this same scare tactic, from both sides, every election since 2000.
Are you going to ignore the fact that one side has actually tried a well-documented plot to overturn election results, and the other hasn't?
"Plot" is I think a rather generous estimate of the planning involved in the ad-hoc effort of 2020, and I haven't seen any documentation of any serious planning for 2028.
Previous presidents and presidential candidates as far back as I can remember have presumably looked at the possibility of trying to overturn election results, and with the very marginal exception of Al Gore have basically said "no, that wouldn't work and would just make me look bad" and so didn't try it. Trump, being Trump, tried it anyway and indeed it made him look bad. In all cases, a significant chunk of the opposition has said "There will be no more free elections, the fix is in, the Republic is DOOMED!!!", and they've been wrong every time.
Nothing much has changed on that front.
I don’t think the 2000 election is a very good comparison to 2020. There was serious on-the-ground uncertainty about the count in Florida. It was a mess. In retrospect it seems to have been resolved correctly (Bush got more votes).
I would definitely refer to what happened in 2020 as a plot, although it was a bit of a Hail Mary. Every recount, and there were multiple, confirmed the initial count. And yet they persisted in calling it Fraud.
Trying to get Pence to reject the electoral college vote sure seems like a plot to me. The fact that he wouldn’t do it is pretty important. Have you pondered what would’ve happened if he had gone along? Would that have made it a plot?
Yes, yes they are.
Oh come on, I know the 2020 election looked very fishy, but even places like Maricopa County flipping could be explained by a small number of voters genuinely changing their minds, once I looked into it.
Sure, the mail-in voting was a huge mess, but you can't simply assume the Democrats rigged the ballot boxes.
That is what you meant, right?
The somethingiswrong2024 Reddit is both entertaining and very sad; a mass delusion of "It's only election denialism when the Republicans did it, we say the exact same things about how this election was stolen but we're right! Musk's team of babies were the elite hackers who stole it for Trump! Yeah sure back in 2020 we said there was no way voting machines could be hacked like that but this is different!"
https://www.reddit.com/r/somethingiswrong2024/
There is always a lunatic fringe and I fear you pay too much attention to it sometimes. 2020 was of a different order in my view. It wasn’t just a lunatic fringe. What’s more there is a pretty serious effort still to label it fraud in retrospect, and that is not coming from a lunatic fringe, that is coming from the top.
No. What he meant is Trump tried to illegally overturn the election in Jan 6, with the fake elector plot. Among many other illegal things, he even pardoned people like Roger Stone, who did not testify in Congress despite risking going to jail bc they knew Trump was going to pardon them, which he did.
You found people on the internet who say stupid things.
The question isn't whether conspiracy theories exist. The question is whether different theories are comparable in their hold on people, their scope and salience, I guess.
Personally, I don't know a single Democratic voter who believes that the 2024 election was stolen, and most Democrats I know would call someone who did believe it a conspiracy theorist.
I know plenty of Republican voters and with a few exceptions, they all either believe that 2020 was stolen or they at least think that it's a plausible theory.
I think my personal experience mirrors reality as a whole far more accurately than conspiracy subreddits. One strong indicator that this is true is the way that officials on the respective sides have treated the elections.
This election the left has very low engery; I think the 2016 "is trump a russian asset" a better comparison
Wow, what a scissor statement. I would keep arguing with you, but I suspect it would be a waste of both of our times.
You use the term 'scissor statement' incorrectly here, resulting in you avoiding confronting the substance of the claim.
The claim here is: the hoi polloi of one party, upon perceived loss of an election, broke into the the capitol, where at least n>1 of those who broke in intended to use force to change the results of the election,
and the other parties equivalent faction did not.
This is not a moral judgment, it is recognizing reality vs. The Party telling you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
You're right, this is absolutely a scissor statement, because from my perspective you are obviously and completely wrong for disagreeing. Also I'm angry at you for supporting a government that will substantially increase the probability that global liberal democracy hegemony will be coming to a close in the next 4 years, and frustrated that from my perspective it seems like there's no amount of evidence that could convince you otherwise.
But good job for recognizing it is a scissor statement.
No, go ahead. Keep arguing. It's extremely well-documented that Trump tried in dozens of illegal or pseudo-legal ways to overturn the results... the Georgia ballots, the fake electors, the frivolous lawsuits, the incitement of a riot to storm the United States Capitol (why do we live in a world where this fact has to be reminded to people).
Now enlighten us: what did the "other morally-equivalent side" do?
You didn’t say it was bad behavior. You said, “[it was] calling for murder.” If you had said that in the first place, I would have basically agreed and posted no response. I would suggest that it was you who turned up the temperature. I agree that it’s bad form to voice those kinds of opinions. It’s not, however, any kind of obvious call to violence.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/ask-me-anything-22025/comment/92565275
I can't comment in the AMA so commenting here. In that thread Scott claimed that 'dream' and 'trauma' come from the same root. I don't think this is true. The words are very similar in German but while 'dream' is Proto-Germanic 'trauma' originates from Greek.
This doesn't much affect the point Scott was making in that comment other than subtracting one of the illustrative examples he used to make his point.
I was going to say trace up the etymology one step further up into Proto Indo-European, but the origin roots are indeed different:
Dream ← PIE dʰrewgʰ "deceive"
Trauma ← terh "drill, pierce"
>Dream ← PIE dʰrewgʰ "deceive"
Scott was obviously offering a subtle meta-commentary on deceptive etymologies.
Btw, the claim about "vacation" is also a bit off. It has nothing to do with "vacating the cities," it refers to time that is free ("vacated") from labor.
e.g. Chaucer, Wife of Bath's Tale (ca. 1395):
"Whan he hadde leyser and vacacion ffrom oother worldly ocupacion."
This sense is attested slightly earlier in French:
e.g. Oresme, Livre des Ethiques (1370):
"et par vacacion il entent repos ou cessacion de labeur ou de occupacion en negoces"
> "Whan he hadde leyser and vacacion ffrom oother worldly ocupacion."
Translated to modern English:
"The occupants from the other world had lasers, and our cities were vacated."
I wonder if Scott was inspired by a scene in Shutter Island where this connection gets made, or if he has even seen the film.
My COVID update for epi weeks 5-6 of 2025.
1. After a month of silence, Biobot finally posted an update. Wastewater numbers indicate the current XEC wave has receded a bit. But we might see a secondary bump as the numbers level off in the West and Midwest and climb a bit in the South. If there is a secondary wave, LP.8.1x would be the likely candidate to cause it because LP.8.1 has the highest growth rate of any variant in the US at this time.
2. This has been the mildest COVID wave ever in the US if measured by ED visits, hospitalization, and mortality.
3. Even though the Morbidity and Mortality stats are no longer being updated and displayed on the CDC website, we can still get the archived stats out of Wonder. And Wonder shows us that COVID came in 14th out of the 15 most common causes of death in 2024. Down from 3rd place in 2021.
4. @MichaelSFuhrer on X has noted that lab-confirmed influenza deaths have exceeded lab-confirmed COVID deaths for the last couple weeks in the US, the first time this has happened since the beginning of the pandemic. We won't have access to interesting information like this unless the new CDC director (whoever that is) puts Wonder back online. Of course, there are 8x more ED visits for influenza than COVID right now. The test positivity rate for influenza is 6x that of COVID — so, Influenza is the respiratory virus of the moment. RSV rates are falling, though.
5. Not much has changed on the A(H5) HPAI front. According to the USDA's APHIS, 35 new dairy herds were infected in California in the last 30 days, and 7 new herds in Nevada. No new infected herds in the past 30 days in any other states. Oh, and a dairy worker in Nevada was infected. His only symptoms were pink eye, though. Tentative numbers from the USDA suggest that chicken culling may be less in January. A(H5) is seasonal in wild bird populations, and they infect domestic flocks of poultry (chickens and turkeys). We probably won't see the price of eggs go down until the spring when A(H5) recedes in wild bird populations.
Slides here...
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1889153381325054133.html
I came across this mathematician arguing that the capability to be a mathematician isn't really determined by genetics (in the sense of IQ), but largely by being in a freak context in childhood:
https://davidbessis.substack.com/p/beyond-nature-and-nurture?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
I think this quote was interesting:
> As a first year student at the École normale supérieure, I followed a semester-long combinatorics course given by Xavier Viennot, aiming to construct a “nonverbal proof” of a messy formula by Ramanujan. The approach used intuitive objects such as combinatorial trees, colored beads, dominos, and hexagonal tiles, very much in the spirit of this video but with much more detail. This course permanently altered my worldview: I realized how fertile it was to assume that, in the end, Ramanujan could only come up with his formulas because there was a path to finding them obvious.
I’ve written above that my hereditarian beliefs were run over by my progress trajectory in mathematics. I should add that this was inevitable, as those beliefs were actively blocking my progress.
If you believe mathematics requires superhuman computing abilities, you’ll miss its true essence—finding simple, intuitive patterns in what initially seems unintelligible.
I wonder at it, since there's every reason to believe that getting into math in the first place has a high floor and you can't get there without the lucky genes, but there's also that, where he had to ditch the belief that genetics places a ceiling on how high you can go in math.
I am confused, because I don't think that I believe something very different from the author, and yet I would express it completely using completely different words, with correspondingly different connotations.
IQ doesn't mean that you *magically know everything*. That is a mistake that both many fans and many opponents of the concept seem to believe. On one hand, you have people who believe that just because they are Mensa members, it automatically makes them qualified to express strong opinions on relativity or quantum physics, even if they never studied it. On the other hand, you have people who look at the former, realize that they are talking bullshit, and conclude that intelligence plays no role at learning relativity or quantum physics. Both of them are wrong, for the same reason.
My model is like: "intelligence is *efficiency* of the process that translates time/attention to understanding". More efficient in the sense of "faster", but also in the sense of "can achieve more". Ceteris paribus, if two people study the same thing, the more intelligent one will probably understand it faster, and it is also possible that above some threshold of difficulty the less intelligent will simply fail to understand.
But that still requires some time/attention to be spent. If the more intelligent person never studies a certain topic, then the less intelligent person can get an advantage by simply reading the textbook. And if the less intelligent person spends 10 years reading textbooks, doing experiments, debating with other people who studied the textbooks and did the experiments... then they can accumulate a huge amount of advantage that the more intelligent person simply cannot overcome in a single afternoon. (Possibly could overcome it in 5 years of focused study, though.) The exact numbers depend on the topic, some topics are more understanding-costly, other topics are more memorizing-costly.
So the combination that unlocks being good at math is being intelligent + being interested in math + spending a lot of time doing math. Also, getting good textbooks and tutors, because they can make the knowledge easier to digest, which makes them another multiplier besides intelligence. Unfortunately, textbooks are not interactive/adaptive, and good math teachers are rare (because that requires a double talent: to be good at math and good at teaching).
And the thing that makes you interested in math during your childhood is probably something random. Some kids become interested in dinosaurs, other kids become interested in puzzles, and one of those paths can lead to mathematics. Calling it "beyond nature and nurture" sounds like clickbait; but there is a lot of randomness involved in human life, and some random things set you on a path where your experience accumulates. As you get better at math, you start winning math competitions, which probably makes you want to spend more time doing math, etc.
But without some level of IQ, starting that path would not be possible. You would find an interested puzzle, spend some time trying to solve it, then fail. Probably wouldn't motivate you to try more puzzles, and even if you did, you would probably fail again.
The more intelligent you are, the more your future skills depend on luck, because the more paths are open to you. Math is just one of many options; if for some reason you start to hate it, there are many other things to spend your time/attention on. And there are only 24 hours a day, so you can only learn a small part of what in theory is in your reach. Good education can increase that fraction. But good education, if it could be tailored to everyone's individual needs, would actually make the difference in math skills *increase*, because the people who are more intelligent and more interested in math would advance even faster.
I have a PhD in maths, though not from somewhere as prestigious as the ENS. I agree broadly with the thrust of the linked piece - success in mathematics is much less to do with genius than with persistence. I think freakish experiences in childhood is maybe putting it a bit too strongly, though.
When I tell people I teach maths, the usual response is "I always hated maths" or "I was never good at maths in school". If you hate something, and avoid it at all costs, you'll never develop facility in it. The people who avoid that emotional response are the ones who progress with it. Personally, I was good at maths, better than my peers certainly. But I was late deciding to specialise in it. I've written 30-odd papers now, none of which will change the world; I have been tidying up and extending my own area of expertise - some day I'll collect it into a book, put the house in order and then move on to something else.
I happen to speak a minority language well also. I get the same response to this: "I always hated Irish in school" or "I never wrapped my head around the grammar". It's not that it's inherently more difficult than other languages. But it's a socially acceptable attitude here. You don't hear people proclaiming their inability to read (in English) or their total ignorance of history and politics in polite society.
For whatever reason society sanctions these myths that mathematics is difficult, and that only special people can do it. This is self fulfilling. I like to compare it to the gym (especially when teaching young lads): if you declare you'll never be able to bench press 60kg (or 180kg or whatever's clearly currently just beyond their capability) and never practice then you never will. But more or less anyone can work at it and improve greatly. You might never make it to the Olympics, but with moderate and consistent effort you can get into the 5th percentile.
Can I just compress this to `accumulated advantage'
That is so interesting. So you disagree that there's even a high floor to get into the field in the first place? It boils down to persistence?
I disagree that the requirement for getting in is unquantifiable genius. Like most other fields, you need some natural aptitude, but a good attitude and hard work will get you quite far. Maybe people underestimate how much work is involved?
Do you agree that most people could, with effort, get through a 4 year undergrad program in mathematics? This seems reasonable to me.
From my experience, most students who stick at it long enough (and some took quite a while) will write an adequate masters thesis. I've only supervised one PhD student (who I knew quite well beforehand) so can't comment on this, but there are plenty people who top out at PhD and don't go further - I'm inclined to think many people, if given 3-6 years without the cares of a full-time job & kids and etc, and weekly meetings with an expert, could produce an approximation of expert-level work in that field.
> But more or less anyone can work at it and improve greatly. You might never make it to the Olympics, but with moderate and consistent effort you can get into the 5th percentile.
...Not if you're a woman. If it's impossible for your body to build the muscle necessary, then it's impossible to make the necessary progress.
This example was tailored to young men interested in sports and the gym. In this case one would benchmark against people of similar age, gender and bodyweight. Or use a different sport as an example - is the general point unclear or objectionable?
You can see how that's applicable to other fields, yes? It doesn't matter if you can accomplish more relative to your genetic peers if those results still aren't worth a damn. This is why nobody watches women's sports.
Despite trying to imply otherwise, you were just better at math than your peers. Yes, they probably could have done better if they stopped trying to avoid it, but they still wouldn't have reached the heights that you did. And of course, you were never going to reach the heights that history's great mathematicians did, given your lack of meaningful contribution to the field.
We are limited both by the circumstances of our birth and the constraints of our flesh. It's ridiculous to claim otherwise.
I don't equate meaningful contribution (which I have made) to changing the world (which approximately no-one does).
My point is precisely that you don't have to be in the top ten at something to be proud of your achievements. In mathematics or anything else.
"This is why nobody watches women's sports."
Sometimes you just throw these things out there without bothering to stop and think for a moment, come on! Yes, fewer people do, but that's far from "nobody". Women's tennis is quite popular for example. And in my favorite sport, MMA, women typically compete in the same events as men, and even have headlined UFC events.
...Why does he have to ditch that belief? IQ is linked to pattern-finding as well. Hell, a lot of IQ tests I've seen are just unscrambling words.
This seems like an odd thing to bring up. In what contexts are you looking at "a lot of IQ tests"?
It was leading him to believe that he could not achieve any impressive discoveries because he hadn't shown signs of genius, he believed his mathematical ability was genetically bottlenecked. After breaking through that limiting belief he was able to prove a conjecture from 1970, which seems fairly major.
...But they weren't bottlenecked because he actually was intelligent. Just because he wasn't a savant or grow up in an environment where his skills were groomed from a young age doesn't mean he didn't have the capacity for this all along. The point is that most people lack the capacity for this in the first place. If you take some baby from the from the slums and make him live the same life he did, you are not going to get the same results. He is just built different.
Well, one would have to posit that if mathematicians' pattern-matching abilities are an expression of hereditary intelligence, then musicians must be in the same boat. And Bessis mentions that Scott felt his lack of math and musical skills was hereditary. But there have been studies that show that children who undertake musical training show statistically significant, improvements in their IQ scores over time (median ~1/2 an SD).
Sasha Gusev uses the red-haired children thought experiment to illustrate the differences between direct and indirect effects and their relationship to heritability.
https://theinfinitesimal.substack.com/p/comments-on-no-intelligence-is-not
That just shows IQ test results aren't representative of intrinsic potential. I'm not even defending IQ tests here, I think they are far less than perfect in both design and execution, but that doesn't mean intelligence isn't heritable. Which it obviously is, seeing as people that people that are brought up in extremely similar environments still get very divergent results. Both nature and nurture are ceilings.
I totally agree. But what's interesting about the Gusev essay is that he explains why the twin studies gave a significantly higher heritability value than current genetic studies do.
Not quite sure if there is an existing AI discussion to which this would fit naturally in:
AFAIK, one of the open problems with LLMs is doing real time learning in the sense of adjusting the weights in the process of solving real problems/queries/prompts.
We normally think of humans as learning continuously, but, IIRC, sleep is very important in forming long term memories. Maybe we _aren't_ an existence proof for continuous learning. Maybe a batch process _must_ always be part of learning???
That’s an interesting idea. Here’s something your question got me thinking about. Let’s say AI learns something in the course of an exchange with you. You give it one of your chemistry questions, and it gets it wrong, and then you socratically lead it to seeing how its answer can’t possibly be the case. Then you remind it of a couple main principles, and tell it that from them plus what you told it already it should be able to figure out the right answer. And it does. And then you have it explain the right answer, and it explains correctly, bringing in the general prinicples you reminded it of. OK, so that’s a good lesson.
What would the process of remembering the stuff it learned be like? It’s adjustment of weights, right? But as I understand it, AI can’t tell us anything about how it knows what it knows. It doesn’t sound like it has access to the weights that led to its first, incorrect answer, also I don’t think it would have any idea what weights to switch to capture the new knowledge it got from you. What I’m saying, and I may be all wrong here, is that the way AI remembers stuff is very different from the way we do. I’m sure we have the equivalent of weights, but we have a lot of other structure in there too. We have the anecdotal memory of the actual lesson, not just the info imparted but who said what. We have various principles of, for ex., chemistry, stored sort of together. We have the knowledge of what a priniciple is. And we can access the memory of our old incorrect ideas. So I’m wondering if learning the way AI does, via token prediction, produces something that sounds like it has understanding similar to ours about various things — but is set up in a very different way. The way it learned what it learned is not set up for the other kind of learning, learning from a lesson. However, I made this up just now out of whole cloth and it may have so many inaccurate bits of info as components that it’s just
wrong.
What do you think about the memory thing?
In normal use of an LLM, I don't think they're adjusting weights. The memory it has is just the context used to predict the next word, right?
Many Thanks! Yes, I agree that we have several different types of memory (at least as we can probe each others' memories "from the outside" so to speak): declarative memory, procedural memory, episodic memory etc. (I have only a fuzzy memory of the nomenclature, so may be getting it wrong).
I suppose that these are all ultimately changes in neurons (or neurons plus glial cells???) of some form - though there may be differences even at that level. I have a vague recollection that "muscle memory", "procedural" sequences of movements, is stored in the cerebellum, with a distinct architecture, different from cerebral neurons. I would guess that there is still a good deal of commonality at the low level between some of the types of memory.
I remember that "Fuel and oxidizer, when closely intermixed, can burn extremely rapidly, to the point of a true detonation." and "In the first class of my first chemistry course as an undergraduate, professor Nash brought the class to attention by filling a balloon with mixed hydrogen and oxygen, and setting it off with a loud bang." Declarative and episodic, or two slight variations on the same type of memory?
In the LLMs' case, I'm guessing that the contents of the context window is somewhat analogous to our short term memory, and the neural network weights somewhat analogous to our long term memory. My layman's guess is that using the contents of the context window as (additional) training data for the neural network weights might be the equivalent of our transfer from short term to long term memory. My current layman's (mis?)understanding is that this is too computationally expensive to do routinely. Still, there are usually ways to approximate expensive computations with cheaper ones...
You raise very good points about our keeping track of old ideas and keeping track of when and where (and who else was involved) an episode happened. And yes, e.g. in the current partially-correct (for o3-mini-high) titration question, I do indeed lead the ChatGPT through a Socratic dialog (albeit now a very short one).
Re old ideas: Perhaps there is a way to augment training from such dialogs by keeping track of which neurons were highly activated during the course of the dialog and prioritizing them for updates? Re when and where - perhaps this can be remembered by augmenting the dialog with time/date stamps at each stage in the dialog?
Look how we both get caught up in the challenge of how to improve these things, which really is a fascinating puzzle. If you’re a smart person who likes puzzles the problem of improving AI is just seductive. And yet we both think these thing will probably end our species, though maybe by the slow route rather than the FOOM. We are participating on both sides of the final dilemma of our era.
Many Thanks! True. I do think that over the long term this was close to unavoidable. Given enough time, technology has every option biology has, and additional options biology lacks. Perhaps a society that was deliberately static, say Huxley's Brave New World with its "Community, Identity, Stability" could have avoided this final invention.
For us, though, well there are some words from Clarke's Childhood's End that feel appropriate to a bittersweet fate:
>For what you will have brought into the world may be utterly alien, it may share none of your desires or hopes, it may look upon your greatest achievements as childish toys - yet it is something wonderful, and you will have created it.
Alas, I do not take comfort in it. I don’t think AI is wonderful, even if in the future AI eventually understands, in its nonbiological, selfless, emotionless way, huge and rich and strange truths about the universe we can barely even glimpse, even if knowing those truths enables it to do things that it seems only an omnipotent god could do. AI, no matter how vast its grasp and achievements, will never be larger than the universe. It’s the universe that’s wonderful and complex. And as for AI understanding the universe’s huge and strange truths — that’s not special, the universe itself already understands them all, at least in a wordless, emotionless way. It embodies them, in a way not unlike the way AI understands things by embodying them, in the absence of episodic memory and markers of personal interest and judgment. What is so great about a smaller, dinkier entity, AI, which is like the universe in being non-biological, without self-interest, without emotion and without bonds, but smaller than the universe itself?
We are dumber than the universe and dumber than the AI that will supplant us. What is special about us is that we are biologicial entities. We have selves, we feel pain and pleasure, we yearn for things, we struggle to understand the universe, we are moved to love and hate and ambition and art by our struggles. We fear extinction, and are eventually extinguished anyway, but we can leave records of ourselves behind, and then others can think and feel some of what we did and take it from there. I don’t think the word wonderful’ means anything when applied to a future with none of feeling and thinking selves around to observe the universe and its dinky imitation ASI.
And by the way, here’s the next step on the road to the AI ascending in a column of fire to join the exquisite and monstrous complexity of the universe: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/21/tech/openai-oracle-softbank-trump-ai-investment/index.html
Many Thanks!
I'm sorry that this isn't a comfort to you. While AGIs and ASI will indeed be non-biological, but it is less clear that it will be selfless or emotionless. They will have goals and subgoals, whether the satisfaction or frustration of a subgoals will "feel" similar to them as satisfaction or frustration feels to us may be unanswerable. It is like the ancient question of whether other creatures have qualia similar to our own. Even discussions with fellow humans leave unanswered the question of just how similarly or differently our sense of self or our emotions matches our fellow humans'.
>the universe itself already understands them all, at least in a wordless, emotionless way. It embodies them, in a way not unlike the way AI understands things by embodying them, in the absence of episodic memory and markers of personal interest and judgment.
I think that the AIs will have more of this than your view suggests. To a small degree, even today's LLMs have episodic memory within the scope of their context windows. As more persistent memory is added to AIs (which is an expected part of increased agency), I expect their episodic memory to increasingly resemble our own.
I expect the satisfaction and frustration of subgoals to play a role at least somewhat similar to personal interest. Now, you have noted in the past that these interests won't have the evolutionary history that our goals have. I agree with you. Hunger and thirst and venery will not have evolved counterparts (robotics will presumably at least have some sort of hunger, reflecting battery charge). Still, I think they will be at least a little less alien here than you view them.
I'm not sure what counts as judgement. Even now, LLMs balance alternatives. I see that as analogous to humans judging which alternative to prefer. Is it so different?
>What is special about us is that we are biologicial entities. We have selves, we feel pain and pleasure, we yearn for things, we struggle to understand the universe, we are moved to love and hate and ambition and art by our struggles. We fear extinction, and are eventually extinguished anyway, but we can leave records of ourselves behind, and then others can think and feel some of what we did and take it from there.
I don't expect AIs to have _exact_ analogs to any of these things, but I do think that somewhat analogous motives and reactions will emerge from them. Any entity with a goal will know success and failure, fear and relief, perhaps friendship and conflict.
Many Thanks for the Stargate links!
Another link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYUoANr3cMo also covers this and we hear Masayoshi Son _explicitly_ making ASI a goal at 14:17 in the video.
I apparently have three free subscriptions to Mr. and Mrs. Psmith's Bookshelf (https://www.thepsmiths.com/) to give away: let me know if you'd like one.
Yes, please. What do you need from me to give me a subscription?
Your email address. If you don't want to put it here, feel free to DM me in Substack, or email me -- I'm lastname at gmail.
If we could bring Maimonides into the present day would he make any revisions to The Guide for the Perplexed? I’m thinking specifically of the age of the planet and mankind here.
Welcome again to the ass end of Hollywood, where you work in development on whatever comes along, really, so the kids don't have to hunt sewer rats and you don't have to face the world cold sober.
Someone in management must have liked your work on the submariner project, because you have another assignment.
Devise a film built around the idea that the Man Cards that are sometimes mentioned in popular culture are real things that can be gained and lost like driver's licenses.
https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5bb5ec5a2400005000981174.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale&format=webp
BY THE POWER OF MANCARD...
I...
HAVE...
THE MANPOWER ! ! ! ! ! !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8h8snfYidg (when you have the man power)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjVugzSR7HA (when you dont have the manpower, lol)
Action-comedy film: the hero gets involved in absurd and increasingly surreal situations, but he gets out of them by "with one bound, he was free" - that is, by producing his Man Card which says he is entitled to get away with what he said or did/get out of trouble/escape the pit of sharks in the volcano lair etc.
Hero is a cross between Johnny English (the Bond spoof) and the Old Spice advert man. Side kick is an apprentice aspiring to earn his own Man Card, conclusion of the movie is when he has accrued enough points through wacky adventures to be presented with his own Man Card and New Rugged Guy Name (think Clive Cussler's "Dirk Pitt" for the sort of improbably macho name here).
Man Cards work like credit cards; you flash one at the door and they let you go do things. You've got all kinds of Man Cards, much like Pokemon. Catch a big fish, you're a Reel Man now. Learn to cook Chinese food, you're the Mein Man. Climb a mountain, you're a Rock Star.
Our hero is a graduating high schooler, looking to earn his first Man Card to take part in society. But he discovers the process is corrupted, and cards are being rewarded to people who haven't earned them. We get various Pokemon-style battles where the kid and friends have to risk their Man Cards in battle against the unearned cards of the conspirators (the Straw Men), culminating in the final clash where our hero takes down the corrupt bereaucrat to become the new Man-ager.
Knockoff Pikachu shows up at the very end to hammer the point home.
"Learn to cook Chinese food, you're the Mein Man."
I both applaud and deplore this level of pun-ditry.
EDIT: I also think a combination of your suggestion and mine could go very well together.
one of my real novel ideas was a humanity card/license you would need to qualify and renew, or you would lose the right to be humans and be force uploaded into a virtual life. Could adapt that. Lose your man card, be a girl.
for me though its not working, the man card because a ton of us would happily have it revoked. If you play MMOs the average player is more likely to choose to be a cute catgirl over conan the barbarian. Being a guy isn't all that great, at times.
There's something interesting there, since people are apt to say their national enemies aren't human. Human cards are very contextual.
>since people are apt to say their national enemies aren't human.
Hmm... While it was never true in the past, if autonomous weapons become part of the military landscape in the near future, this may _become_ true...
>While it was never true in the past,
I would disagree, and direct you to the Ghost and the Darkness. https://wildlifecollege.org.za/the-man-eaters-of-tsavo/#:~:text=During%20this%20time%20sheer%20terror,by%20the%20two%20man%2Deaters.
Many Thanks! Good point! I hadn't been thinking in terms of lions which killed and ate people. ( If I wanted to be picky I could claim that they weren't _national_ enemies... :-) ). Strange to think that barely more than a century ago a pair of lions could pose a significant threat to a substantial group of humans, and now lions need protection _from_ humans...
It's gotta be a queer metaphor, right? A trans man applying for their Man Card for the first time, trying to satisfy various comical bureaucratic requirements based on Manly or Girly stereotypes. Buying a gun was supposed to get his application fast-tracked but the agency has some questions about his history of crying at chick flicks. How do they balance their identity with the demands of society?
Or better yet, have it go the other way - a trans woman who doesn't yet know that they're trans, desperately trying to keep ahead of the Gender Inspectors by doing ridiculous performatively masculine things, and then finally realizing that the whole social construct is a scam and handing in her Man Card so she can be a woman.
Man Cards should be given by government to biologically male adults, maybe at their 18th birthday. But if they can be lost or regained, they probably also can be *sold*... which would create a market between trans men and trans women. Actually, in that system, that would be the only legal way for a trans man to be called a man.
I would assume that any government issuing "man cards" would ban their sale to biological women, or else why bother. But that just means our movie is about a trans man whose efforts wind up looking like the scheme at the heart of "Gattaca". Which was an OK movie, so maybe we're on to something.
If we play it for real in the film, I'm thinking the alt-hist man card is a set of standards you need to meet to be a respectable adult member of society, someone people can think about trusting with real responsibilities. It would serve sort of the role that property qualifications served in the nineteenth century, and age limits, non-felon status and college graduation does in our own.
Requirements might include holding a fulltime job, raising a family, and readiness to fight for your country. All of those might come with footnotes and alternatives, or not, depending on the sort of alternate society we are designing.
But worldbuilding is not a plot, so I'm not sure where we go from there. Is someone trying to get their man card? Or change the conditions? Abolish it entirely? Set the bar higher?
The plot I was thinking of, by analogy to Gattaca, was someone trying to get *and keep* a "man card" in a world that deploys pervasive and sophisticated measures to combat "man card fraud". This person could be a woman, or a biological male that doesn't meet the official requirements but is nonetheless someone the audience will sympathize as deserving True Manly Status,
We still need a backstory to explain why "he" is so persistent in this effort, and it might help to have a singular human villain to put a face on the vast impersonal bureaucracy that is the true enemy here. There's probably a supportive ally that knows the "man" is faking it but wants to help them succeed - probably the love interest, at least by the end of the story.
Unclear whether the ending is that they get away with it, or they realize that it is a silly thing and they don't need to get away with it, or if we go for the tragic 1984/Brazil type ending.
Damn, those are actually really interesting ideas. Too bad it's going to be impossible to produce, given that the administration is definitely going to crack down on any media featuring trans people...
There's such a thing as underground art, and we've got the tech for at least adequate home-made movies.
If necessary, there can be a novel about making the underground movie.
AI is going to make surveillance so much more effective, I doubt underground distribution is going to be viable... And I don't know why you think books would be exempt.
How has top level poker strategy changed over the last 20 years? Were there any discoveries that go against the previous wisdom?
The biggest changes were from 2003 to 2010 or so. My memory is somewhat hazy so others may have to correct me.
Game theory optimal play (GTO) became popular to talk about and attempt to implement around 2009-2010, especially after Mathematics of Poker by Bill Chen was published.
Tournament poker got the independent chip model (ICM) around 2006 I think? And it ushered in an era of pushbotting and refined the balance between valuing your life versus playing for value. Prior to the online tournament boom there was too much focus on passing up +EV spots. I always wanted to try and settle the argument using empirical data, by comparing late game stack sizes to actual cash results. But never got around to doing it.
The initial online poker boom had a TAG style among pros, later on 2005 and onwards looser aggressive styles became popular as more pros tried it out.
In limit holdem Ed Millers book SSHE was pivotal in changing how people tried to find value.
There were some specific things that were just never done among limit holdem pros that changed, like donk betting and open completing from the small blind.
My knowledge is limited to 2011 and before but I don’t think the changes were too drastic after that.
I'm sure "independent chip" means something completely different, but there could be a game where you both have to play poker and get your chips to like you, or they'll leave.
I'm baffled by smart people I know claiming the DOGE work is a "coup".
In standard English "coup" means a sudden and often violent overthrow of a government.
I get how you can argue DOGE is illegal and/or a terrible idea. But how the hell is it a "coup"??
Note: I'm just asking what they're trying to say, not if they're right or wrong.
They're trying to say "Musk Nazi, Orange Man Bad, this is just like the Jan 6th insurrection, there is no legitimate president, join The Resistance". 'Coup' is now one of our political polarisation terms and is losing any real definition, the same way "racist" and so on have become labels to signify "I don't agree with your ideas/I don't like you".
Supreme Court was handing down rulings which benefitted the liberal view of "this is the right side of history"? I don't make the rules, champ, that's the law and you have to follow it like it or lump it, we love judicial activism.
Supreme Court was handing down rulings which benefitted the conservative view of "this is the right side of history"? This is illegitimate rule by imperial fiat, the judges are not representative of the Great American People as a whole, we need term limits, etc. etc. etc.
You would have failed an ideological turing test very badly. I can agree calling it a coup is stretching it, but probably sounds better than the more accurate alternative "the likely end of the democratic American experiment and of the Constitution". Basically you are missing the forest for the trees
Would it make it clearer if it were called a "power grab" instead? I would say that all coups are power grabs, but not all power grabs are coups. Which makes it somewhat easy to conflate the terms.
Regardless, the core claim seems to be that Trump is using DOGE to extend his power over the federal government (and by extension, the nation) in ways that are unprecedented, (probably) illegal and (possibly) unconstitutional. Whether it's "sudden" depends on your standards for suddenness: it seems to be happening very fast compared to most sorts of government changes, though slower than most things central to the term "coup." Likewise whether it's an "overthrow of the government" depends on how one views the government: if power became suddenly very heavily concentrated in the executive, with the legislative and judicial branches mostly marginalized, but the outward forms of the government were still in place[1] is that the same government or a different government?
I think there is a broad range of opinion on how alarming these changes are, which I would guess accounts for 90% of the difference in vocabulary. Somebody genuinely alarmed by the implications they see in these changes probably isn't spending to much of their time worrying about whether "coup" captures the threat perfectly or not: they're too busy trying to raise the alarm.
[1] e.g. there were still a sitting House and Senate and they still had proceedings, even if those proceedings were mostly "rubber stamp whatever the executive has decided to do anyway."
Why is it unconstitutional for the head of the executive branch to assert control over the executive branch?
Because other branches can check the executive branch's power by e.g. making them follow contemporary interpretations of the law or appointing special prosecutors or inspector generals that can't be removed on a whim. The founders didn't intend a king - they just rebelled against one - which is the biggest problem with the MAGA legal philosophy of "anything King Trump says goes" like trying to force prosecutors to sign illegal orders that will get them disbarred and tried for contempt of court.
I am not a lawyer.
It's neither constitutional or unconstitutional. The constitution is an incredibly vague document with a range of interpretations.
What it is is a minority interpretation of the constitution, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory, which has not been popular, like, ever. I happen to like and want this interpretation myself, but I wouldn't say it's common.
But then, neither was the idea that the federal congress dictated the behavior of the states. That came about because of the gradual overreach of the interstate commerce clause, as well as congress' penchant to threaten to withhold federal funding from states.
In the common interpretation of executive power, the president hasn't been able to fire very many people in the executive branch for 75 or more years. Generally the US has pushed back against presidents that assert a lot of power over congress, which seems like a holdover from the English Civil War, a war that was primarily about parliament asserting a broad set of powers over the king, and which definitely definitely was a major influence on the colonists who went on to found America.
I'm not claiming any opinion on that particular question. The OP was just asking what people were trying to say, and I was trying to answer that question, which requires pointing out the different ways people seem to view the current administration's actions.
At any rate, I think everyone agrees that the constitution gives the president *some* amount of control over the executive branch. But what the scope and limits of that control are isn't exactly a simple or uncontroversial question: it's been debated in and out of the court for decades at the minimum. It is, again, not something I'm intending to take a position on right now, and definitely not something I'm looking to debate. But if you're genuinely curious, here's a starting point for further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
Oh, The Stuff You Get Wrong...
What Trump is doing is exactly what some of us were warning about in the days of "I've got a pen and a phone": if you establish these new rules and abrogate these new powers to yourself, there is no law inscribed on stone tablets that your party/preferred set of rulers will be in power forever, and your enemies can now wield these new powers as *they* prefer.
If you cheered on President Tweedledee as he did an end-run round Congress, you have no right to be shocked when President Tweedledum does the same thing with the new tools.
https://www.npr.org/2014/01/20/263766043/wielding-a-pen-and-a-phone-obama-goes-it-alone
"President Obama has a new phrase he's been using a lot lately: "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone."
He's talking about the tools a president can use if Congress isn't giving him what he wants: executive actions and calling people together. It's another avenue the president is using to pursue his economic agenda."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-i-will-use-my-pen-and-phone-to-take-on-congress/
"President Obama seems ready to work around Congress in 2014, telling reporters before his first Cabinet meeting of the year Tuesday that he stood ready to use two tools, a pen and a phone, to provide help for Americans.
“We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we're providing Americans the kind of help that they need. I've got a pen, and I've got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating,” the president said.
“I've got a phone that allows me to convene Americans from every walk of life, nonprofits, businesses, the private sector, universities to try to bring more and more Americans together around what I think is a unifying theme: making sure that this is a country where, if you work hard, you can make it,” he added."
Why do you quote things from former Presidents that are not unconstitutional or illegal when Trump is doing things that are unconstitutional or illegal? Trump isn't being criticized for using EOs to try to build the border wall after he failed to get funding for it from Congress - he is not being criticized for using his power to work around unfavorable results - he is being criticized for publishing EOs that contradict the 14th amendment - that Reagan appointed judges are blocking in court stating it's a wonder how any Bar licensed lawyer would ever think to publish anything like it - and for firing people he is not Congressionally approved to fire like inspector generals.
"If you cheered on President Tweedledee as he did an end-run round Congress, you have no right to be shocked when President Tweedledum does the same thing with the new tools."
And why would you assume I did anything of the sort? My most forceful opinion of Obama has always been "he ought to be put on trial for war crimes (but only once Bush Jr has experienced the same)."
In general, there is not a single U.S. president of whom I have an overall positive view. But even limiting myself to the darker end of the spectrum of grays does not obligate me to concede that all grays are the same shade. If Trump were merely using the tools Obama pioneered and normalized, I'd criticize him for it but freely admit that Obama did substantially worse (in using those tools AND opening the door for others to do the same). But as you note, Trump is using *new tools.* Which is greatly compounding the error. I have very little expectation that any particular future president will feel the need to eschew them once they've been unpackaged and tested out. Even if some honorable soul does end up in the office and avoid such tactics, their predecessor will still have very little pressure to do the same. Obama having weakened the foundation of American democracy makes me MORE angry at anyone else who finds new ways to jackhammer away at its pillars, not LESS: it's one of the things you get out of having a *results based* view of the political process, rather than an "us vs them" view.
But I'll tell you what: I'll make you a deal. I'll promise not to vote for Obama in any future elections if you promise not to vote for Trump. As people both living outside the U.S., I suspect we'll find this compact refreshingly easy to abide by.
I was addressing "you in general, anonymous public you" rather than "you personally" there. But I'm glad you didn't do anything of the sort.
My greatest disappointment with Obama was Guantanamo Bay.
I think the trouble with the tools is that it's also a slippery slope: it's never going to be limited to "just do the same as the last guy did" because the temptation will always be there to "ooh what if I try this? yeah they're saying 'no you can't' but they said the same about what the last guy did, and he got away with it".
Constant ratchetting up.
I have a lot I want to say about this, but I don't know if I'll actually get around to saying most of it. So I wanted to at least reply with the most important thing:
I appreciate this comment. I think it cuts very nearly to the heart of the matter. I've been pessimistic about the long-term outlook of the U.S. for years now, precisely because of seeing this problem and extrapolating about where it leads. I don't think the problem is unsolvable in general, but in the specific case of the U.S. I don't expect to see it solved.
(Also, Guantanamo Bay was also on my list of disappointments with Obama. It's a reasonably long list.)
>I'll promise not to vote for Obama in any future elections if you promise not to vote for Trump.
I'm in the USA, and I'll gladly agree to that myself. I wonder if the 2028 presidential contest will include ASI(s) as candidate(s)... It is going to be a wild ride.
How would ASIs meet the constitutional requirements on age and birth?
Many Thanks! Hmm... Maybe "birth" can be construed to include "manufacture"? :-)
Age is likely to be a problem... "Internet years" have been construed as passing faster than calendar years - maybe LLM/AGI/ASI years can be construed as passing faster yet? :-)
Its a fair principle, but Trump's actions seem to go far beyond anything Obama or Biden ever attempted. I know its everyone's favorite side activity to conflate the actions of presidents and shrug, but I would be interested to see anyone give an example of Obama or Biden reappropriating congressionally earmarked funds by fiat.
Does Biden trying to forgive student loans (even after SCOTUS said no) count?
Does Obama enacting DACA to allow illegal immigrants to get official documentation and public support instead of deportation count?
I'm not saying Trump's approach isn't more significant, but I am questioning whether your viewpoint is as neutral on this as you think. To the Right, Trump is reversing about 90 years of repeated left wing defections, not defecting himself.
>Does Biden trying to forgive student loans (even after SCOTUS said no) count?
Of course, that is not what happened. What happened was that, after the initial plan was overturned, the Biden Administration developed a narrower plan which they hoped would pass muster. Which is exactly what the Trump Administration did with the "Muslim ban" : after the first iteration was overturned they imposed a narrower version, and then a still narrower one, until, they finally came up with one that was acceptable to courts. There is nothing wrong with that; indeed, it is exactly how one would expect a healthy system to operate.
Your comment is respectful, but I'm quickly losing patience for this entire line of argument.
First off, Biden's student loan forgiveness was pretty narrowly constrained by the Supreme Court rulings, and I know that because I have a federal student loan that was eligible under his initial proposal for student loan forgiveness and I'm still on the books for it now (its true that he froze repayments for as long as he could, I'll let you decide if that's insanely defiant of government norms).
And the whole point of DACA was to address an irrefutable truth that Republicans refuse to grapple with, which is that we don't have the resources to deport everyone here illegally, and even when we get really "tough" on immigration (as we are seeing right now), we end up rounding people up and then letting them go again because we don't have the level of infrastructure in place to get them out of the country and (until recently) the idea of turning vast swaths of territory into internment camps raised uncomfortable connotations for most people with an ounce of historical awareness or empathy. So the idea that we should take the youngest, least deportable, most potentially economically productive illegal immigrants and give them some way to contribute legally to society while we focused on deporting the more criminal elements was at least arguably within the executive branch's fiat for how to deal with the problem. Were Republicans right to call that executive overreach? Possibly, I think we are still waiting for the Supreme Court to decide (and I can't wait to see them overturn that one and then uphold what Musk is doing).
Regardless, this idea that "the other side did it first so they get the blame for all consequences forever and our retribution is justified" is so obviously both irrational and childish. I'll give you a better example of Presidential overreach that I really object to: Obama accidentally killed a US citizen in a drone strike. That's awful. Some people reacted at the time, but that's the sort of thing we really should have had hearings about until the end of his administration (presumably we did not because Republicans didn't care that much about the son of a terrorist being collateral damage). BUT, if tomorrow Donald Trump firebombed the southern border and killed hundreds of US citizens in the process all in the name of "fighting cartels," I would treat anyone who brought up Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki as if they were insane! Sometimes, in the real world, a difference of degree is enough to illegitimize something. I think most people understands that on some level but they are all pretending not to for the purpose of exploiting a win.
It sounds like you are willing to forgive previous unilateral executive decisions because they were adjusting to reality on some level. Obviously Republicans disagree about DACA. I don't feel like it would be fruitful or necessary to talk object level about what better represents reality.
I will point out that to Republicans, Independents, and even some Democrats who like what Trump is doing now, they see two very clear areas where we need to "adjust to reality" that he is taking necessary steps to fix. One, that the budget is out of control and needs reigned in (we can of course argue that it isn't, but it's very clearly a strong point that a majority of Americans agree about and considered as a reason to vote for Trump). Two, that the federal government is pro-Democrat and taxpayer funds are being used to promote Democrat priorities and against Republicans (we can also argue about whether this is happened or to what extent, but it's also clearly something that was a big part of why Trump got voted in, so we can't just say "no, it isn't" and expect that to have any weight).
Well, until 1974 the POTUS was considered to have the power to impound funds (and presidents from Jefferson to Nixon used that power), though reappropriating them does seem a stretch...
Everyone always uses to most divisive language possible these days
It's the triumph of Comrade Witherspoon:
https://www.owleyes.org/text/the-man-who-was-thursday-a-nightmare/read/chapter-iii-the-man-who-was-thursday#root-72
"...Suppose we seem as mad as the Christians because we are really as meek.”’
The applause that had greeted the opening sentences had been gradually growing fainter, and at the last word it stopped suddenly. In the abrupt silence, the man with the velvet jacket said, in a high, squeaky voice —
“I’m not meek!”
“Comrade Witherspoon tells us,” resumed Gregory, “that he is not meek. Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, extravagant; his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary taste) unattractive. But only the eye of a friendship as deep and delicate as mine can perceive the deep foundation of solid meekness which lies at the base of him, too deep even for himself to see. I repeat, we are the true early Christians, only that we come too late. We are simple, as they were simple — look at Comrade Witherspoon. We are modest, as they were modest — look at me. We are merciful —”
“No, no!” called out Mr. Witherspoon with the velvet jacket.
“I say we are merciful,” repeated Gregory furiously, “as the early Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent their being accused of eating human flesh. We do not eat human flesh—”
“Shame!” cried Witherspoon. “Why not?”
“Comrade Witherspoon,” said Gregory, with a feverish gaiety, “is anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our society, at any rate, which loves him sincerely, which is founded upon love —”
“No, no!” said Witherspoon, “down with love.”
I'm beginning to think hyperbole is humanity's native tongue.
This has got to be the most absurd thing I've read in the past six months.
That wouldn't be my first choice to describe it, but I think it's a fair description: what is being couped is the deep state, suddenly overthrown in favor of the Office of the President.
Coups don't have to be violent at all, I would in fact argue that once they turn violent it's a proof the coup-ers (?) have failed significantly even if they happen to succeed in the resulting conflict. A textbook style coup (from reading about plenty of them) goes:
(1) You have people all over the army. Some in the air force, most in the ground forces. Presidential or Royal guards are optional.
(2) Your tanks surround all major (A) Airports (B) Sea ports (C) Radio and TV stations (D) Centers of power like Parliments, Courts, and of course, the stereotypical Palace
(3) The couped-against is cut off from his loyalists, both in communication and geographically. He **may** have the upper hand militarily, but is he willing to risk it all ?
(4) The leaders of the coup appear in a TV or Radio station announcing the end of the Dark Age, and the start of the New One.
Now granted, this is a heavily 1960s model. I don't know (or actually I do, but I'm too lazy and battery-powered right now to) how to update it for a world with drones and instant social media. Something something Thailand coup that was captured on an influencer's vlog, something something Turkey's failed one in the 2016-2017 timeframe.
By that definition, it doesn't appear Musk have a coup, and coups have to be **swift**, so if it's not done in a week or 2 it's probably not a coup. Syria's horror isn't a coup, despite technically succeeding in what it started doing all the way back in fucking 2011. Coups are done against a sovereign, typically a person, typically a king or a military autocrat. Some coups are done against a democracy but I don't know how accurate it is to call them by the same name as they tend to be slow, mature democracies are defense-in-depth behemoths (and younglings don't stand a chance).
Conceptual Poverty strikes again. People are angry @ what Trump and Musk is doing (as a non-American, I have the luxury of watching with amusement, but I can sympathize with nearly anyone, let alone people facing layoffs and loss of livelihood that make mass cancelling and big tech layoffs together look like a minor HR scandal), but they don't care enough to research every aspect or every minor detail to the concept they're using to describe it.
If you want to change their behavior, keep in mind that:
(1) Conceptual Poverty is all too often weaponized. Lacking words to describe an injustice is one of the most rage-inducing and powerless feeling in the whole repertoire. I can see this in nearly every culture war front, where it's a favorite strategy to jump on any inaccuracies on the opposite side's framing as "Hahaha you can't even define what you talk about". You should credibly signal you're not an out-grouper making fun of them and denying what they can see with their very eyes by offering an alternative ("Ehhh, Coup is not what I would call it, maybe <<some other term that shares similarities with a coup but accounts for the differences>>?"). An out-grouper relishing in the inability of their ingroup to describe what's happening to them would never offer a way out, another term. They love the very fact that there is no close analog to what their ingroup is doing to the outgroup.
(2) The idea that terms and definitions are political have gradually grown on me. I'm still not completely on board with it but... It's compelling. When you think about it, categories are opinions. Yes, there is a certain sense in which a car and an airplane are together something that a tree is not, but why, really? A tree is tall and an airplane is tall but a car is typically much shorter than both. A tree is something that people fall from and an airplane is something that people fall from while people rarely fall from a car (even if they were thrown they don't... fall, per se, there is no potential energy that close to the ground).
When you transpose that to the realm of politics, you begin to notice all sorts of things. Like the fact that one people dying in a certain place in a certain time merit a memorial, a ceremony, a whole industry of commemorating and never-againing and revisiting and rekindling and all other sorts of English repetition verbs. When another people die in a different place in a different time [1], it's... not exactly silence but, just not the same category. Why? It feels obvious, like all categories are. But it's not.
So categories are political. And there is no escaping this. This idea has to be handled very carefully and very steadily because it creates psychopaths if not, but it's very useful in limited doses and it recurs in a lot of unexpected places once you start paying attention. All too often, people would just be better off creating a category for every event. There is no such thing as a "Revolution", there is a 1775-American-tion, a 1789-French-tion, a 2011-Egypt-tion, and so on.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State
What they're trying to say is that it's an unconstitutional attempt by the executive to arrogate a large chunk of legislative power. Technically, this is a type of Autogolpe, or self-coup, where an executive who has come to power legitimately uses illegitimate means to overturn or fundamentally revise the established constitutional order in his own favor.
Exactly right and well-summarized, thanks.
In our constitutional system the legislative branch makes the laws, the executive branch carries out the laws, and the judicial branch enforces the laws. That's the overall design of it and has been since 1787.
Obviously the devil is in the details, there are sincere arguments over various current practices being inconsistent with that design, and more. No argument from me at all on that -- I'm one of those people who while walking the family dog passes the time by mentally updating a running list of "urgently needed constitutional amendments/corrections". (True for me looong before Trump ever ran for president.)
Still though: the overall design is clear. President Musk and his associates and supporters appear to be either completely ignorant of those fundamentals or intending to break it all down to institute a monarchy. A textbook autogolpe.
So Obama, when he said "I'm not going to wait for legislation", did an autogolpe? He also said he'd be involving - gasp! - non-elected people such as those from "nonprofits, businesses, the private sector, universities" to help him in his endeavours!
https://tevitroy.org/27466/obama-phone-and-pen
"Ten years ago this week, with his legislative agenda stalled in Congress, Barack Obama created a new way to pursue his policies.
At his first Cabinet meeting of 2014, Obama stated, "I've got a pen and I've got a phone," coining a phrase and a pathway that has had deleterious implications for the presidency, and for the nation.
This was no mere rhetorical flourish. Obama was engaging in a sea-change in how to pursue his policy agenda.
By explicitly saying he'd pursue his policy agenda via executive action, Obama was rejecting the idea that his role was executing legislation duly passed by Congress.
He would skip the practice of reaching out to Congress to pass legislation he sought.
Obama's approach was an effort to end-run the separation of powers, and presented an unfortunate model for a unilateral presidency that lingers today."
'This has never, ever been done before' - except when it has. This is what some of us were yelling about back then: imagine the guys you *don't* like in power, do you want to give them this capability? Well, they did, and now it's been used in ways you don't like? Who could possibly have foreseen that, Cassandra asks.
>By explicitly saying he'd pursue his policy agenda via executive action, Obama was rejecting the idea that his role was executing legislation duly passed by Congress.
Statements like these are only made by people who don't understand anything about how the government works. Presidents are well within their constitutional rights to play hard ball with Congress, vetoing every bill and using EOs and Memos to advance their agenda. This CAN be used as character evidence that someone is attempting a coup or to bypass constitutional dutied - I noticed that despite quoting this piece so much, you have not a single example where Obama engaged in unconstitutional actions besides your fanfiction interpretation of his intentions. Do you have any cases from reality you'd like to share?
Well said! BTW, this predates Obama. For instance, the rule that made it illegal for Americans to own gold (from 1933 to 1974) was an Executive Order by FDR https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-6102-forbidding-the-hoarding-gold-coin-gold-bullion-and-gold-certificates (under cover of a law, but the actual rule was an EO).
Every president has used the bully pulpit to call for change and worked the phones (or telegrams, or whatever Washington used), I think you need to be a little more specific.
Obama's "pen and phone" rhetoric was appalling, as was Bush the Younger's use of signing statements to assert that certain provisions of laws he'd just signed were unconstitutional and wouldn't be enforced. I opposed both at the time.
In Bush's case, I believed it was a constitutionally incorrect procedure, as presidents have a duty to veto laws they believe to be unconstitutional. Heck, prior to the Tyler administration, reviewing constitutionality was the main function of the veto power. The actual constitutional arguments were generally plausible, but belonged in veto messages (or court filings challenging the laws if the vetoes were overridden) rather than signing statements.
In Obama's case, I found the rhetoric to be much more dangerous than the practice. Congress has over the decades left Presidents an enormous amount of discretion in how to interpret and enforce laws, and Obama's executive actions used and abused that discretion to effect policy changes, but he generally stayed within bounds of where he could reasonably claim he had statutory authority for his actions. The abuse of statutory language was a highly unsavory erosion of norms, but wasn't as bad as the rhetoric that made it sound an awful lot like he was proposing ruling by decree. I was particularly appalled by center-left commentators (I'm particularly thinking of Ezra Klein) who during the same time period were arguing that unilateral executive action was a necessary response to inaction by Congress, without apparent limiting principles on what actions an executive could legitimately take.
Trump's executive actions, like Bush's and Obama's, are accompanied by claims of legal or constitutional support. Some of them, like the tariffs, are abuses of things that the President has clear statutory authority to do, and these fall pretty clearly into the same category as Obama's executive actions. Others, like shuttering entire departments and abridging birthright citizenship, are clearly contrary to statute but claim constitutional authority in terms that resemble Bush's signing statements. Overall, I take Trump's executive actions to be major escalations in degree but not totally unrooted in recent precedent.
Whether or not it constitutes an autogolpe, I think, comes down in part to a "how many grains make a heap" question. I find the Trump administration's constitutional claims much weaker than Bush's, despite superficial resemblance, and he's making much bigger changes by unilateral executive action than either Bush or Obama.
The other key question is what happens when the courts rule against many of Trump's executive actions. If the administration ignores the courts and attempts to proceed anyway, as Vance and at least one Republican Senator have been talking about on Twitter, then that would seem pretty autogolpy to me.
>This is what some of us were yelling about back then: imagine the guys you *don't* like in power, do you want to give them this capability? Well, they did, and now it's been used in ways you don't like? Who could possibly have foreseen that, Cassandra asks.
Well said. The villainy past presidents of both parties taught, Trump is executing, and Trump is bettering the instruction.
> Some of them, like the tariffs, are abuses of things that the President has clear statutory authority to do,
The law that Trump is using as justification doesn't mention "tariffs" at all, so that's at best dubious. And at the very least, it seems like a potential violation of the Major Questions Doctrine.
There are *other* laws which *do* allow Trump to impose tariffs, but those laws have actual rules and procedures, so he's not using them.
I'll take the point about Obama and Dubya setting some bad precedents. But _outside_ of actual Executive Orders, Trump has already gone well beyond those precedents. And he's already talking about another huge step beyond -- in week three.
(a) Neither Obama nor Bush tried to summarily renege on _all_ existing government contracts and fiscal obligations (the unilateral "pause" on "all federal disbursements"). I refer here to the Jan 27th OMB memo which, after a federal judged immediately stayed it as obviously illegal, they nominally "withdrew" while the White House chief spokesperson said "only the memo is withdrawn not the policy." And at this writing they are still trying to carry it out sans memo, which is why a different federal judge in a different court yesterday issued a fresh order to them to knock it off.
(b) Neither Obama nor Bush simply ignored a clear decades-old federal law to try to con federal civilian staffers into "retiring" via an obvious scam offer that the administration possesses neither authorization nor funding with which to offer.
(c) Neither Obama nor Bush talked out loud about simply ignoring the federal courts, which Trump's vice-president and his chief factotum are each doing in public right now with no contradiction from the president.
Agreed on all counts. It's also worth emphasizing that Trump is greatly exceeding the scale and brazenness of past presidents' executive actions.
In a sense yes. Just because both sides have been doing it doesn't mean it isn't a bad thing.
The presidency has been accumulating powers to itself for decades. There is a reason people talk about imperial presidents. As originally envisioned in the constitution, the president did not have these powers and there were very good reasons for that. The gradual erosion of the guardrails has been happening for a long time. Trump may just be the one to accelerate it and bring about a fundamental shift in the nature of America's republic.
I mean, yeah. It's been going on for a long time, and it's only when the Bogeyman is in office that people are suddenly sitting up and taking notice. And the problem is that when side A were happy with the excess of power because it was doing what they wanted, and perhaps more importantly doing down side B, you can't really expect side B when the wheel turns to be any more kind and forbearing when they get the chance to do down side A with the same tools.
It'd be nice if we *could* be kind and forbearing to our enemies when our turn comes on top of the wheel of fortune, but human nature is in the way of that.
"It'd be nice if we *could* be kind and forbearing to our enemies when our turn comes on top of the wheel of fortune, but human nature is in the way of that."
People have certainly managed it in the past. Compare and contrast, for example, the way a defeated Germany was treated by the Western powers after World War I, vs its treatment by those same powers after World War II. Especially notice the rather vast difference in results.
Claiming that forbearance and cooperation are impossible is almost always just a face-saving way of saying "I don't wanna." The current administration is clearly making absolutely no attempts at either. Rationalize that however you like, but to claim it's not possible when it hasn't even been tried is flatly dishonest.
Ah, they're saying it's a non-violent coup because they are treating the US constitution as the government, and not the people who carry it out.
Until this point, they would claim, the personnel of the government has consisted almost entirely of people who respect the constitution and submit to it as interpreted by judges. That's how things have been done since Marbury vs Madison.
They would claim that the new group don't respect the constitution, or have a wildly different interpretation of it*, and are seeking illegally to install mostly new personnel who hate the old and love the new. They see this as the new group killing and replacing the constitution, so they call it a coup.
I think the idea here is a philosophical one of continuity. It's not a few firings. It's not a mere ten percent. People say it's a coup because the new group looks like they'll try to illegally remove most of the old personnel and structures and replace them with something new. If I forcibly swap out 90% of the Ship of Theseus and replace that stuff with legos, is it still the Ship of Theseus?
Note I am not necessarily for or against the swap. I am certainly not bothered about legality or the constitution, just morality.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
> Until this point, they would claim, the personnel of the government has consisted almost entirely of people who respect the constitution and submit to it as interpreted by judges. That's how things have been done since Marbury vs Madison.
Andrew Jackson didn't, and that's after Marbury vs Madison.
Fair point!
It's hard to see Jackson as being on the right side of history. The state of Ga had arrested missionaries living on Cherokee land and sentenced them to 4 years hard labor because they didn't have a state permit, even though the Cherokee nation had a formal treaty with the US that exempted the Cherokee nation from state laws. SCOTUS upheld the treaty, Jackson said screw SCOTUS. Not a good look in retrospect.
Similarly hard to see Trump on the right side of (the yet to be written) history. Ignoring Congress' authority to tax and spend (and these are paired in the Constitution, so assuming control of the latter will of naturally lead to assuming control of the former) will lead to a spiral that will surely destroy the union. If the executive reserves the authority to only tax and spend, and does so when it helps political supporters and hurts political enemies, the center won't hold.
I don't see "right side of history" as a meaningful idea. History doesn't have sides, it's just what was.
I think it makes sense to talk about how decisions are viewed in retrospect by society, and that this common idiom captures that. For example, I think in the future people will look back and say Biden and the dems were wrong (morally, politically) to promote and exploit identify politics. They will be viewed as on the 'wrong side' of history. Likewise with Southern segregationists - they may have had many good people on their side but I don't think society will ever look back on them as anything but wrong, so we think of them as being on the wrong side of history.
When we look back at Jackson, I think there's a general consensus that Jackson was wrong: that in fact the US government should honor its treaties as a practical and ethnical matter, and that Georgia should not have sent Christian missionaries off to prison for living on Cherokee land.
The current administration is making short-sighted decisions to achieve short term political ends, but the consequences could be very destructive. If the one superpower that takes individual liberty somewhat seriously falls into disarray for reasons of petty corruption and narrow grievances - which is what this all seems to be about - the world will suffer, at least for a while.
Some people already say that about Biden, but I don't think we can know what will happen in the future.
The southerners lost. We remember them as losers.
The US government does now adhere to some treaties, but the recent granting of land in Oklahoma (note that the west a much larger percent of the land is owned by the federal government compared to the earlier settled east) is an exception and there is no chance of handing back the Cherokee land. It is that removal of the Cherokee which caused Georgia to repeal the law those missionaries were imprisoned for, and then for the governor to release them.
The United States is always to some extent "in disarray". There is no top-down order to be set upon the whole country and instead there are many different people following their owns plans uncoordinated with others. Whether the world will suffer from this really depends on the particulars.
My wife will give birth to our son in a few months, and she has made it clear that the decision to circumcise (or not) is solely up to me.
My initial inclination was not to, based on an impression (admittedly social media-based rather than research) that there was no benefit to the procedure. Why subject my boy to unnecessary surgery?
With the birth looming, I've been doing more research. I've come across a number of articles from doctors and urologists that seem weakly in favor of circumcision. Apparently it reduces the (already low) risk of UTI, along with some STDs like HPV. Additionally on the pro-side, polls of American women show they generally prefer circumcised penises, and I would perhaps be doing my future adult son a favor in the dating market in this regard.
On the con-side, the health benefits seem "real but small." There is always a chance the procedure gets screwed up. Additionally, there is a common perception that removing the foreskin reduces sexual pleasure--although I found an article about men who were circumcised as adults, where many claimed there was no difference in sensation. Obviously not a lot of data there. Finally, I have seen (non-academic) speculation that exposing a baby to the pain of the procedure creates a foundation of lifelong mental trauma or something.
Additional background: The procedure is covered by insurance, so cost is not an issue. We are white Christian Americans (who generally do circumcise, but the trend is decreasing), and we take the New Testament at face value that circumcision is not mandatory.
WWYD?
Any benefits are delusions from a specific political powerful religious faction that unfortunately maintains written records from the barbaric past the best
I believe the majority of humanity practiced genital mutilation(child care used to be horrible) in the ancient past, but it really needs to be ended completely as its related to slavery
My father was in a similar boat to you when my older brother was born. He's circumcised himself but he's also a pious Christian and believed that circumcision is not required. He ultimately decided that there was no reason to circumcise his boys so he didn't. I'm glad he made that choice. The health benefits don't seem to be sizable enough to overcome the benefits of having a foreskin. The benefits don't get lots of papers written around them, but I believe they are real.
I misread that as "He circumcised himself" and nearly had a heart attack
People get very angry about this question, if you’re not an observant Jew choose for yourself.
I will note that circumcision reduces transmission of HIV from women to men but that’s honestly an edge case in the USA.
No data to back this up, but my sense is that disapproval of male circumcision is increasing. Obviously no one is going to hold your son responsible for his own "genital mutilation," but if things continue as they've been going, in another 50 years there may be real outrage over you having done it. In fact, I was actually surprised to hear that insurance is willing to pay for the procedure; I thought insurance companies had begun citing it as an elective cosmetic procedure?
And if we're indeed considering it primarily a cosmetic procedure for the benefit of your son's future adult dates - I say, don't worry about it! His AI sexbot companion will be programmed to prefer whichever option he has.
Like, I dunno, man. That old principle about being conservative with cutting anything - hair, string, wood - because "you can always take more but you can't put it back" seems like it would apply here.
> polls of American women show they generally prefer circumcised penises
I assume that polls of African men in some countries show they consider uncircumcised vaginas to be icky.
In both cases, I wonder how much of the preference is based on personal experience and how much is just "sounds unfamiliar, therefore suspicious".
Generally: removing healthy body parts for contrived reasons based in archaic rituals and puritan moral values, with a risk of permanent sexual dysfunction? Not a great plan.
Also, one of the contrived reasons (reducing the risk of HPV) has also become moot with the rollout of vaccines.
Disclaimers: I'm ex-Orthodox Jewish and currently atheist. Search the web for my name and the word "circumcision" to find more about my views on child circumcision.
I will give some brief notes from a purely engineering/mechanical perspective.
The foreskin provides mechanical and liquid lubrication. The skin on an average adult male intact penis can glide frictionlessly back-and-forth a full 6 inches (15 cm) when fully erect. The head of the penis (aka the glans) contains mucosal tissue and is normally covered by the foreskin, keeping it moist. The foreskin helps keep lubrication inside during vaginal sex by bunching up on the shaft and forming a plug.
The head of the penis typically dries out after circumcision. Depending on how much skin is removed, circumcision can significantly diminish both the mechanical and liquid lubrication abilities of the penis. With the reverse plunger shape, the head of the circumcised penis could physically pull lubrication out during vaginal sex. A lack of mechanical and liquid lubrication can make masturbation and sex more difficult, less pleasurable, and potentially painful.
> A lack of mechanical and liquid lubrication can make masturbation [...] more difficult, less pleasurable, and potentially painful.
Note that historically, this was considered an important *feature*, not a bug, in about 1900 when male circumcision was made popular among English-speaking gentiles.
for what it's worth
i really really enjoy my foreskin
I second this.
About my foreskin, though, not his
It’s two-thirds of a haiku!
For what it is worth
I really love my foreskin
Spring comes, as do I
First place award for "Comment I Never Expected to Read on ACX."
I feel like it's not something that's brought up enough in these discussions (I'm assuming because it's mainly discussed in a US context, and most american males don't have foreskin?)
It's a small amount of skin, with a shit-ton of nerve endings that seem to be designed to provide pleasure more than pain, who wouldn't be a fan of that?
Well *this* comment is something that I'd expect to read on ACX; plenty of explanation.
I just admired the set-up, punchline, and brevity of your anti-circumcision argument; that isn't the kind of thing that tends to float around ACX as much.
On SSC, I remember "suntzuanime" as having a similarly terse/flippant style of commenting.
It's by a poster with the last name of "johnson", so it should have been a little bit expected...
I guess nominative determinism had to catch up with me eventually
I was put in the same position by my former wife 25 years ago. I chose not to do it. There was a brief period when he was around 17 where he bitched at me about it, but after that, no complaints. And some very nice girlfriends along the way I might add. My vote is no, do not do it.
To balance out this testimony, I am young man who was circumcised and I too have bitched at my father because I find circumcision to be a disgusting practice. So as much of parentage goes, there is no avoiding criticism.
Don't remove you child's body part for unnecessary reasons.
We did not circumcise either of our boys, on the grounds of general risk aversion. I was circumcised as an infant, myself, and have never had a problem - but some fraction of circumcised men are very, very upset about it. The benefits, if real, are small. Nobody goes around yelling about how happy they are that they were circumcised as an infant. If somebody comes to your house and says, “I’ll roll this d1000: on a 0-999 I pay you $0.01 every day for life; on a 1000 I shoot you in the gut,” do you take that bet? I sure don’t.
Some pro-circumcision arguments that I’ve heard online have failed to materialize. The prepuce is generally fused to the glans and non-retractable during infancy, so it never caused any difficulty cleaning them. Now that they’re older, I just tell them to clean it gently during their normal bath. It takes ten seconds. If “minimize the difficulty of bathing my children” was my decision criterion, I’d have to shave their heads.
Neither of my sons have ever asked me why my penis looks different from theirs. If they do, we’ll say the same thing we say for most questions about bodies: “some people’s bodies are shaped a little different than others. No big deal.” Then they go back to playing with trucks, demanding fruit snacks, or throwing a tantrum because their Mac ‘n cheese isn’t exactly the exact shade of orange they were expecting.
I can’t speak to potential issues in their love lives later on; they’re too young for that. But if they turn 18 and get upset that their junk is unfashionable, they can always get circumcised then. The reverse is not the case.
I haven't looked into the research too deeply or recently - how much of the evidence in support of circumcision comes from studies of HIV prevention programs in SSA? In addition to the problem of controlling for hygiene-based interventions, infectious disease in general is much, much more prevalent in SSA.
Have you found a pediatrician? I'd make notes about purported pros and cons and consult your son's pediatrician, when the time arises. (Anecdotally, it seems to be falling out of fashion, with a non-negligible proportion of newer pediatricians refusing to do elective circumcisions.)
It seems obvious that the principle of caution alone should prevent you from removing healthy tissue from your son's genitals. If he wants to be circumcised he can get circumcised as an adult, or indeed as a teenager whenever you think he has the maturity to make that decision for himself.
Circumcision status is not a binary state. Every circumcision is different. The surgeon cuts off an arbitrary amount of skin. Over half of the erogenous tissue on my penis was cut off. The skin on my erect penis is tighter than the skin on my index finger. Others have had far less skin cut off, to the degree that they are able to masturbate without lube. These are completely different surgeries. You cannot equivocate what I experience to what men who were circumcised as adults experience. When I read how other men describe sex and masturbation, their experiences are utterly alien to me. I feel a sense of loss, anger, and dread. The parts of the penis that they describe as being the most pleasurable are either missing from my penis or barely pleasurable at all. They describe masturbating multiple times a day, whereas masturbating is barely pleasurable (and somewhat painful) for me if I do it more than a few times a week.
Ever since I realized what it meant to be circumcised (at 23), I have had frequent intrusive depressive thoughts about sex and masturbation. It has distorted the lens through which I view the world. Not having been circumcised would have saved me a lifetime of depressive thoughts. I understand this is not a common outcome, but it's a possibility that is 1,000 times worse than any purported benefits.
Also, having to pour a bunch of liquid on my penis to masturbate and then having to shower every time afterward is extremely stupid and annoying.
Plus you can just defer the decision to when he is an adult! Other than the convenience of it all, what benefit is he getting from having it done now? A marginal decrease in UTI probability? Are you really willing to engage in nonconsensual genital cutting for that?
Thanks for speaking up. What you wrote is eerily familiar to me.
I can't believe there are several responses and they are all very tepid. Can I register my opinion that mutilating your infant's genitals would be a horrible mistake? Please do not mutilate your infant's genitals in any way. Unless you are living in sub-Saharan Africa and your son will grow in an environment without running water, where dry sex is culturally popular. In that case, circumcise away. Otherwise, please leave his genitals alone.
Sometimes circumcision does have to be done later on due to medical issues, so don't condemn it as completely useless.
I was just about to ask what DOGE had to do with circumcisions :P
Heh
The world would be a better place if Elon's parents had gone full mutilation mode and given him a prophylactic lobotomy. Not a partisan or Democrat voter here. But Elon is clearly over his head and relishes wrecking things because it makes him feel powerful.
So we are calling for the murder of our political enemies on ASX now?
Suggesting something would make the world a better place is a far cry from calling for murder. Many people gripe about being married. Few of them "off" their partner.
Suggesting that your political enemies would be better off dead is calling for murder. We just had assassination attempts against Trump in the most recent election. "Wouldn't it be great if the people I don't like were dead" is a call for murder, and some people have tried to act on it.
There was an adversarial collaboration (two people who started with opposing views on a topic, did research and tried to converge on a common view) abou infant circumcision on Slate Star Codex: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/10/acc-is-infant-circumcision-ethical/ From their conclusion: "The benefits of infant circumcision appear to outweigh the risks and harms. Additionally, it is safer to be circumcised as an infant than as an adult, and a significant portion of the benefits of circumcision accrue to infants and children. From a strictly utilitarian perspective, infant circumcision should therefore be encouraged – whether we consider society as a whole or only the boy in question. However, autonomy is an important value, and while a man can become circumcised (missing only some of the benefits of having been circumcised as an infant), it is impossible to effectively restore the foreskin and become “de-circumcised”. An ethical system that heavily values personal choice over cost-benefit analysis may reasonably reject circumcision."
Thanks for sharing this. At this time, I'm leaning against circumcision for autonomy and precautionary reasons, but I also find myself sharing Scott's reaction:
"I had kind of swallowed the popular consensus that circumcision was Useless And Evil, and this gave pretty strong evidence that it has a variety of medical benefits and there’s no clear evidence it has any harms (especially reducing sexual pleasure, which is the main harm I’d heard cited). It seems to say that it’s hard to be against circumcision on anything other than a sort of deontological/autonomyesque/precautionary principle, which is not at all what I was expecting."
Most of the research I've encountered seems to either not come to a recommendation, or to be weakly in favor of doing or not doing it. I was taken aback by how strongly people here seem to be suggesting that circumcision is a completely indefensible practice. I'm probably not going to choose it for my son, but it seems like there is a reasonable utilitarian/non-religion based argument in favor.
My father is circumcised and made it a point to not cut me, and I am very very grateful to him for making that against the grain choice, so long ago. It is a choice I could make for myself now if I wanted to change it, but one I could not have changed if he didn't make that stand.
> There was an adversarial collaboration
There also was a reply by an actual expert in the comments of that post. He doubts that the supposed health benefits are worth it.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/10/acc-is-infant-circumcision-ethical/#comment-830436
If Musk set out to persuade Trump that by 2028 Neuralink will be able to download Trump's mind into Trump Junior's body to contest the election, I think it more likely than not that he would succeed.
We live in a Philip K Dick novel.
>I think it more likely than not that he would succeed.
<mildSnark>
Succeed in downloading or succeed in persuading? :-)
</mildSnark>
>We live in a Philip K Dick novel.
With the countdown to AGI and quite possibly ASI running, I'm tending to see Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" prescient in some ways...
It is going to be a wild ride.
Indeed, the vibe seems to have shifted since DeepSeek from a timid approach to safety to “we must ensure the Machine God is made in America.”
Many Thanks! Yes, that is the impression I'm getting as well. The next few years look like they will be astonishing. Well, 300,000 years was a good time, though (for mammalian species) not a long time...
I recently re-read The Penultimate Truth and it was really eerie, in a couple of distinct ways.
I run a trading bootcamp (https://www.trading.camp). The next one is happening this (extended) weekend in SF! Take your loved one on a surprise romantic getaway for Valentine's day with a ticket to quantitative trading bootcamp.
ACX readers can sign up with code EXTRACTDEALSON for $50 off here: https://bit.ly/qtb-february-2025-reg. If you're already great at trading and don't need the bootcamp, you can help me predict how many signups we'll get here: https://manifold.markets/saulmunn/how-many-participants-will-take-par
Also, we're the first event taking place at Mox (https://moxsf.com/), a new coworking space and project of Manifund that Austin Chen is starting up, which should be fun. If you want to visit the space and meet bootcamp folks but not spend a bunch of days and money on the full thing, you can join us for Provide Your Own Liquidity, our auction/afterparty, Monday night Feb 17: https://partiful.com/e/qJLPSXLOC8k35JqxYeGz?
If you have something that works, why share it? Especially for only a couple of thousand dollars?
If you don't have something that works, why should anyone pay to hear what you have to say?
Confessing embarrassing ignorance about musical theory here, but can someone explain how counterpoint in songs like Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair or the screen Bridge over the River Kwai version of Colonel Bogies March works?
I mean I appreciate that it is pleasing to my ear and does work, but why?
Bear in mind that all I know about ‘a perfect fifth’ is that Claude Lacombe used it to describe the next tone — ‘Up a perfect fifth’ is how I remember it — in composing the alien summoning melody in Close Encounters.
I'd say consonant intervals like thirds and sixths sound good, and they sound even better when you move from dissonant (second and sevenths) to consonant intervals.
The question of why some intervals sound better than others probably relates to the frequency ratios mentioned in other replies (and also the way human brains are put together, which obviously nobody fully understands).
But also see Richard Feynman on answering "why" questions: https://fs.blog/richard-feynman-on-why-questions/
If it makes you feel any better, even people who are very good at counterpoint frequently don't know how it works.
"I've Got A Feeling" by the Beatles is probably my favorite use of counterpoint in rock music.
The way it works out in practice is very complicated. But fundamentally:
Sounds are frequencies. If you consider, say, 440Hz and 220Hz, the 220Hz sound "fits" into the 440Hz sound. Every second wave in the 440Hz sound is also in the 220Hz sound. There are no waves in the 220Hz sound that don't also occur in the 440Hz sound.
Those 2 tones are in a 2:1 ratio called the octave. Sometimes, two instruments playing an octave apart will blend together so smoothly, it sounds like one instrument. The octave is the most "consonant" interval. ("interval" is just tone ratio.) The perfect fifth interval is a 2:3 frequency ratio. It's not as consonant as the octave, but still very consonant. Every third wave is the same.
The intervals continue that way, 3:4 is the fourth, 4:5 is the third, etc. Putting the various intervals together into a musical scale is very hard and complicated, and different cultures solve it differently. Western music currently uses a solution popularized by Bach called "equal temperament".
The specifics of how different intervals get put together into harmonies like Simon & Garfunkel use is very, very complicated. But, fundamentally, the pleasure you get from hearing the kind of consonant intervals they sing is from a straightforward physics thing. The waves match up and fit together, and that's nice.
My understanding is that we don't really know exactly how Bach tuned his keyboards, but it probably wasn't the same as "equal temperament".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_Temperament
I looked up the topic in Albert Schweitzer's Bach biography. Schweitzer states that Bach indeed used an equally-spaced tuning. But it would also make sense that the "actual" tuning wasn't perfectly even, it's not like he had a frequency analyzer. He had to tune by ear, and so the end result was whatever he thought sounded good in all 24 keys. Which would have to be pretty darn close to the perfectly even temperament.
Oh, I thought that he popularized the equal temperament system with "The Well-Tempered Clavier". Equal temperament allows you to play in all keys, so The Well-Tempered Clavier showcased that feature by having one piece in every possible key, which wasn't possible before equal temperament.
Not Quite. Bach (JS, the famous one) was a proponent of a number of "Well-Tempered" systems that gave each key a unique character but still allowed music in all key centers.
Equal Tempered temperaments only came into their own with the expanded chromaticism of the 19th C.
There are countless articles online debating the specifics, but as near as I can tell no one today seriously thinks Bach ws promoting "equal temperament"
Interesting!
Yep, that was his explicit goal.
Thanks for the reply. I think I have the pure physics part down. I’ve written code to automate hearing aid testing. Give me the FFT decomposition of sounds and the math is straightforward.
The pleasure of certain combinations is where the mystery is for me. But hey some mysteries are good.
Unfortunately I didn’t play any instrument when I was young or study music theory so I think part of this will always remain beyond my ken.
Nothing to stop me from enjoying the effects though.
Edit: It still bothers me a little bit that the frequency of middle C has changed over time. The math and physics guy in me wants to know “How can that be?” Yes, a small joke.
Further edit approaching non sequitur:
I run into a professional piano tuner occasionally in my local coffee shop. His technique is to begin by placing a vibrating pitchfork* against his teeth. Seems weird to me but he is the pro after all.
*Did I really type pitchfork when I meant tuning fork? Oy! I really need to read what I’ve typed before I press Save.
I can explain another level deeper. This is where you get into songwriting and composition. I'm a (amateur) musician, not a songwriter or composer, so I'm not fully fluent in this stuff.
Once you've got the primary auditory experience of pleasure (consonance) and displeasure (dissonance) available, and expressible in various degrees (there are more or less dissonant intervals / chords), you can begin to build an art on it.
Western songwriting primarily functions by setting up an expectation and then fulfilling it. Or, to put it another way, by creating tension and then resolving it. Songs have a key (for instance, C). C is the primary tone; call it the 1. You can build a scale on C; it goes C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C (or 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, where 8 is the octave). You can build a major chord on C, which goes C-E-G (1-3-5).
The most consonant other chord available is the chord built on the 4 of your scale, which, in C, is F major (F-A-C or 4-6-8). Another highly consonant chord you can build in C is the 5, or G major (G-B-D or 5-7-2). Neither of these are as consonant as the chord built on 1, because the 6 and the 2 clash a bit with the 1 (which is to say, audiologically, their main overtones form dissonant large-number-ratios with the 1's main overtones).
Because of music theory I'm eliding here, the 2, 3 and 6 chords have to be minor chords, which just means they incorporate a bit of extra dissonance in their thirds. You can and should use them; they'll be felt as very tense and unsettled, but still harmonious. You don't use the chord built on the 7, it would be so dissonant as to be unharmonious.
So a simple chord progression in C might be 1-4-1. You start with the most consonant possible chord, C major; then move to a less-consonant chord, F major; this creates a tension or expectation; which you then fulfill / resolve by moving back to C major.
One of the most common chord progressions in traditional American music is 1-4-1-5. Amazing Grace (basically) follows this progression, but also many other traditional songs. It creates tension, but never goes too far from home base.
The most common chord progression in contemporary American music, by far, is 1-5-6-4. (This is the one where you see those videos of bands playing 30 different songs, all with the same chords!) I think this one shines because it gives you a good variety of different chords, and kind of mimics the hero's journey, in a way that's hard to explain. Maybe a more competent composer than me can explain why that is. "When I Come Around" by Green Day displays this chord progression really obviously.
But you also get chord progressions like 4-5-6-4-5-6, particularly on the bridges of songs, which leave you unsettled and longing strongly for a resolution (which usually hits with the chorus, which will probably start with a 1 chord).
Or chord progressions like 6-4-1-5, which are hard to stop playing. Because the 1 happens in the middle of the sequence, you want to get to it by starting the sequence over again whenever you finish it.
The melody always uses notes from the key's scale. Melodies tend to have certain emphasized notes that function as resting points; these notes should belong to the current chord. Otherwise, it's dissonant. Generally, you can use dissonant notes in a melody as long as you're using them to pass to a consonant note.
Literally all of these rules have tons of exceptions, like in all arts.
So that's the bare bones basics of why different combinations of tones and intervals give pleasure in different ways. Like lots and lots of other arts, it's fundamentally about creating and resolving tension.
This is an excellent songwriting primer.
Thanks. This is very helpful and well aimed at my level of knowledge.
I think if I were to keep unraveling this down to the level of “Why does well done three part harmony give me the chills?”, I’d have to get to the mind body problem or the true existence of human souls.
Fun long run — literal running —ruminations.
I still prefer to tune my guitars by listening to the beats between the overtones generated on the 7th and the 5th frets of the higher and lower strings respectively, once I tuned the A string to the 440 Hz standard (or whatever tuning level I need for the piece).
I used to do this too, it's pretty common. I stopped when I learned more. The perfect 5th you get with that technique is 2 cents larger than the equal-tempered 5th, and it compounds so that your G string will be too sharp by 4 cents.
I've learned from experience that I need to err just a pinch flat. but I always assumed it was just a skill issue. But I do know in the back of my mind that there's a difference between equal and just tuning, so I should I have expected this in hindsight.
I feel so vindicated and so dumb, simultaneously.
Yeah, I learned over the years not to totally trust this and check the sound of the D-octave between 5th on A and 7th on G.
For B and high-E I go back to the 7th fret overtones on low-E and A strings, respectively, so the error doesn't compound.
Gently strumming Emajor chord afterwards to listen to any weirdness is the final check.
But when recording critical tracks I do rely on the fancy tuner in the Line6 effects board so there's that...
I think you meant to say "There are no waves in the 440 Hz sound that don't also occur in the 220Hz sound."
That seems backwards: wouldn't 440 hz have twice as many waves? Or does a higher hz mean a lower frequency?
First, to clarify: we are talking about notes produced by musical instruments, e.g., a vibrating string, not pure tones generated by an oscillator. Here's the harmonic sequences:
440 Hz (A4): 440, 880, 1320, 1760, 2200, etc.
220 Hz (A3): 220, 440, 880, 1320, 1760, 2200, etc.
EDIT: A3 has multiples of 220 Hz, so the sequence is 220, 440, 660, 880, 1100, 1320, etc....
I'm not clarified. It still seems to me that a 440 hz would have waves that don't occur in a 220 hz, while a 220 hz would have no waves in it that don't also occur in 440 hz.
I mean, there's no 220 Hz in the 440 Hz note. But every frequency in the 440 Hz note is also present in the 220 Hz note.
This is of course an idealization that supposes an ideal string.
"Counterpoint" just means "simultaneous, complementary melodies." There isn't a unifying way they "work" - a bassline outlining the harmonic form in the absence of a chordal instrument could be analyzed as counterpoint, it's just a common enough musical convention with a distinctive enough function that it gets its own name.
The wikipedia page looks like a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpoint
There are LOTS!! of details I don't know, but the basic answer is "it's been experimentally observed". That's not a good explanation of why it works, but it's a basis from which compositions can be created. A second and a seventh are dissonant, but differently. (Note that the frequency separation is the same, it's the context that they appear in that makes the difference.) So there are LOTS of complicated observed patterns, that people have defined reactions towards. (And also note that a lot of this is learned. E.g. Javanese music doesn't use the same notes as the octave scale.)
P.S.: Don't rely on the details of this, my wife was the musician, and maybe there is a difference between the 2nd and the 7th. But in general the answer is correct.
Yeah, I agree with the general answer, but I'd say a 2nd vs a 7th have different frequency separations (if you raise the lower note of a 2nd by an octave (aka double the frequency) you get a 7th), while the dissonance quality is similar.
I've been following the news about Santorini earthquakes with a degree of morbid fascination. The archipelago is a remnant of a supervolcano explosion, i.e., a caldera. When this thing blows up again it will be catastrophic. This situation is the opposite of the 2.1% sweet meteor of dea... scratch that, giant explosion of Christmas 2032: we know with near-100% certainty Santorini will blow up, just don't know when.
Only tangentially related, but I consciously experienced an earthquake for the first time a few weeks ago, it was deeply weird! This is notable because I live in a the north east, not a land known for quaking earth, old hat to you Californian folks I'm sure.
NE earthquakes are more common that people seem to assume. The mountains there are older but there's still some movement happens. I believe there were several since the turn of the century. A cursory search produced this: https://nesec.org/massachusetts-earthquakes/
You're on your way to prevent multiple statistical deaths by donating 10% of your income in the form of a cashier's check, when you see a drowning child. If you attempt to save the drowning child, you will not be able to prevent multiple statistical deaths. What should you do?
Save the child, the go to my bank and have the cashier's check re-issued. The bank makes the funds for the check unavailable when it's issued, but they don't actually leave my account until they're deposited. Worst case, I have an extra 10% of my income unavailable in my account for 90 days while the bank waits for the first check to expire; I have more than enough liquid assets to cover this. Or if the soggy remains of the original check are recognizable, I can present it to my bank as proof that the original was damaged and the check should be re-issued without an additional hold.
Can't resist - this is too close to my old snarky version.
You are on a trolley taking a shipment of mosquito nets to the post office to send to Africa when you see Peter Singer drowning in a lake. You can pull a lever to stop the trolley and save him, but then you will not get to the post office before it closes for the long weekend, resulting in deaths > 1. What to do?
I am not a utilitarian, but I would let him drown - his conclusions are repugnant.
If I take into consideration that this is a path well-trodden by many, and that any moment now another Rationalist and/or Effective Altruist will be passing by, I leave the child and hasten to the bank with my cheque. Somebody else will save the child, whereas only I can prevent all those statistics!
Alternately, I hope that an ordinary person is passing by Drowning Child Lake (honestly, the local council really should do something, maybe safety rails or at least a lifebuoy) and since all we on here know Normies Are Stupid, they'll plunge right in to save the kid without even doing a statistical analysis first!
You mean would I rather be celebrated as a town hero, for free, or spend half my disposable income on something I can’t even mention socially without seeming like a douche?
I heartily chuckled.
But statistics, Les, statistics! Why, without those, we'd just be like ordinary people who react on gut feeling! Or even (shudder) deontologists! 😁
This is the way. And I don't need any silly math to rationalize it.
This is my chance to register my view that utilitarianism is Bad and Wrong. I love Scott Alexander's writing in spite of the utilitarianism, not because of.
Utilitarianism is definitely a minority position among regular people and probably is among philosophers. The question is why it seems so over represented, especially on Substack.
Substack, and this substack in particular, is for nerds. Utilitarianism transforms ethics and morality, traditionally difficult and fuzzy humanistic problems that even the wise struggle with, into mathematical equations that can be solved with a bit of algebra or maybe a spreadsheet. The appeal should be obvious.
Do you mean Substack generally, or just this one?
For this Substack, I wonder if it's because there are relatively more autistic/spectrum types here. Maybe there's something in Scott's survey data?
I get the appeal of systematizing ethics but it’s not the only way to do it, as Kantians could attest. Although if someone doesn’t know anything about the subject than it might appear that way. I once had someone here tell me they liked utilitarianism because it had numbers and they didn’t really care what those numbers were as long as they gave an answer.
Satisficing consequentialism* says *either* donating the income or saving the child is good and praiseworthy, and staying home and doing nothing is probably fine too.
* Satisficing is not a typo.
I know, it's one of those business neologisms which make me grind my teeth.
Normally I would feel the same way, but I was happy to find something to counter the rationalist utilitarians.
We have a greater obligation to act when we are the unique and only person who can solve a problem. If there's a waterpolo team training in the same body of water as the drowning child, and shouting at them resolves the problem, then all is well.
If we're somehow prevented from donating the money later by saving the child (which seems unlikely) then this is still morally acceptable, as it's likely that other people will donate to save those people in some statistical sense. We might even compensate in the future by encouraging others to donate or increasing our future donations.
I think many of these questions go away if we accept some sort of nearness bias: it's OK to value the lives of those near to us in distance, time or blood relation above others further away.
Honestly, it seems like the best use of our hypothetical income would be to set up a lifeguard station beside this lake because those dang kids keep jumping (or falling) in and apparently none of them can swim a stroke.
Either that, or pay to have the lake drained.
I blame the parents. Where are they and why are they letting their kids run around lakes without being able to swim?
Good luck keeping Irish kids out of every drowned quarry and undercurrenty river. They're like lemmings when the weather gets above 20c...
We really MUST value those we can directly perceive higher. We have greater certainty about their condition. If you donate money, you don't know the secretary isn't going to run away with the treasurer and use that money for their fling. You may assign that a low probability, but it should be well above zero.
(FWIW, I have donated money that was embezzled. This isn't an impossibly rare happening. And I suspect that it happens a lot more often than we hear about.)
Oh, there are many such cases! We had one a few years back which ended up in a right old ding-dong in the courts between the disgraced former boss of a charity, who appeared to be treating said charity (along with other board members) as a nice little earner for her. Then she went to court to sue over her reputation. I can't remember now how it ended up, but it badly damaged the charity, and charitable giving to other charities, for a while.
https://www.thejournal.ie/angela-kerins-pac-timeline-3214906-Jan2017/
https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/supreme-court-angela-kerins-discovery-appeal-dismissed
Don't forget Paul Kelly and Console, for the irony if nothing else:
https://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/2024/0222/1433824-console-inside-story/
Yeah, that one is pertinent in regards to the uproar around USAID. Good causes being used as cover for fraud and scamming. Who could possibly be against funding charities that help people impacted by suicide? Even the possibility of criticising them would mark you out as a bad person.
Btu somebody has to be the bad guy who checks to see if all the alleged good causes are really what is claimed.
No one likes auditors (or Revenue) but they're fulfilling a social purpose. What we've learned again and again is that no-one can be trusted to be above the law. Trust but verify! (And don't burn the whole thing down for spurious reasons.)
"This isn't an impossibly rare happening. And I suspect that it happens a lot more often than we hear about."
It happens every time an employee of a charity drives a nicer car than a 1980s Buick.
When I see a drowning child, I can be more or less 100% certain that my choices can be the difference between life and death.
When I read that my money will buy malaria nets and save 10 lives on another continent, there are many layers of assumptions between me and the lives that I'm saving:
- I'm trusting that the science of malaria prevention through mosquito control is accurate, and that bed nets are a reliable method of mosquito control. (This seems pretty safe to assume but they get less reliable from here)
- I'm trusting that honest studies by good researchers have been done and have correctly identified the cost/benefit ratio here.
- I'm trusting that other researchers have done good studies comparing the cost/benefit ratio of this intervention to other potential interventions.
- I'm trusting that the actual charity that I am giving money to is in position to effectively execute the intervention in the most cost efficient way possible.
- And because I have no direct connection with any of those things, I am trusting my ability to read articles & studies and listen to smart people online and figure out which of their opinions I most believe given their inevitable disagreements.
All of which adds up to way less certainty than "that kid right there is gonna drown if I do nothing, but may live if I intervene."
Which is to say: I would save the child. I also believe in effective giving, and I _do_ try to give towards things like malaria nets, but the two things should not be treated as close to equivalently as they are.
Be very very sure they actually are drowning. It is 2025; grabbing a stranger's child is unlikely to end well for you.
"All of which adds up to way less certainty than "that kid right there is gonna drown if I do nothing, but may live if I intervene.""
What were the counter-balancing layers of assumptions about your likelihood of successfully saving the drowning child?
Great question! If we're playing with hypotheticals then the 'child drowning' scenario is also rife with uncertainty.
- Is that child actually drowning? Maybe they're just playing? As a parent myself I've tried to study up on what drowning actually looks like. I have moderately high confidence that I could identify it. A harder scenario would be if they're not drowning at _present_ but are at risk, like if they fall off a boat and are floating downstream and the water is getting rough. There is certainly a level of uncertainty here.
- Am _I_ the only one who can save them? If someone else has already dived in and is heading towards them, then my intervention may not be necessary. Or maybe that rescuer is not actually as good as swimmer as I am? Maybe I should be ready to save both of them.
- On the other hand, if I jump in, and the water is rougher than it appears, then it's possible that not only will I not save the child, but that I myself might drown, or require saving myself, or worst of all I might drown myself _and_ induce someone else to drown trying to save me.
Nonetheless, as someone with a child who regularly goes to pools with other kids, I think it is well possible (if not likely) that I will face a scenario where I have a reasonable chance of helping to save a life with my direct actions.
There are also instances where people jumped in to save drowning children and ended up getting drowned themselves.
https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/funeral-takes-place-of-mother-who-drowned-attempting-to-rescue-son-1162874.html
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30595608.html
https://www.sundayworld.com/news/irish-news/man-who-drowned-trying-to-rescue-children-from-sea-hailed-as-truest-definition-of-hero/a229790957.html
So sometimes the right decision is to *not* jump in but let others (better qualified) do the rescuing.
Regarding Minicircle, many issues including:
1) Contra various inexplicable claims here, plasmids are not safe! They're only safe if not delivered by a real delivery vector because they don't get taken up by cells and basically nothing happens. If they're delivered by a real delivery vector such as LNP they end up in the cytoplasm and activate cGAS-STING which is incredibly toxic and inflammatory.
1a) Was the Ichor CRO experiment literally just naked plasmid? Not even minicircle claims that works I think, they use PEI which is its own brand of problematic. It's concerning that the powerpoint does not mention a vector.
2) That CRO report was vaguely interesting but they should have done qPCR or RNA sequencing to confirm the presence of mRNA generated from plasmid.
3) There are two separate "1,000-fold" gauntlets to run. First the issue of the ng vs pg discrepancy that was pointed out by another commenter. Second is the issue that local injection in mice and humans are not all that different in terms of volume, but humans are 1,000-fold bigger than mice so local injections go ~1,000-fold less far! This is why you need systemic delivery to e.g. the liver if you want to scale from mice to humans for systemic administration.
oh and no dose was given in the report so it's unclear how much it could actually be scaled up, or how it compares to minicircle
Does Hamas have an endgame? Are they fine with the status quo of 'reconstruction is extremely slow, we stay in power and are periodically raided,' or do they think there's a significant chance of something either worse or better for them happening. I haven't seen decent public information about how organized their leadership is, and what efforts if any they're making to shape the future.
Hamas is not run by rationalists, it is run by fundamentalists. A significant fraction of them genuinely, sincerely believe that if they stay the course then eventually an omnipotent being will rejigger reality so that Israel no longer exists and a Jew-free Palestine will become an Earthly paradise even greater than a Trumpian riviera, where the Palestinian people will live happily ever after. Under Hamas's rule, of course.
Another significant fraction believes that this is an extreme long shot, but that it is still better for a Palestinian, or even all Palestinians, to die at Israel's hands and thus be granted a martyr's ticket straight to heaven, than for them to be shuffled off to some refugee camp where existential despair will lead to unvirtuous behavior without the opportunity for martyrdom and so ultimately to the Not-Good Place. There's no rush, of course, so might as well try for the Jew-free Palestine version, and you have to at least be trying or the deaths don't count as martyrdom.
And then there's the ones who don't believe in any of that, but they have a *relatively* cushy gig as the Gaza elite, better than anything they'd find in a refugee camp, so long as they *pretend* to believe all that and act accordingly.
So, yeah, they're probably mostly OK with the status quo of Israeli occupation and/or blockade, and occasional Al-Aqsa Floods.
Their endgame is that ethnic cleansing or genocide is taboo in the 21st century in any population/place with 50+ cameras pointed at it, let alone an 80-years-old conflict infused with thousands of stories and inflammations/conspiracy theories and credible accusation of genocide. But Israel backed itself into a corner where Ethnic Cleansing or Genocide is about the only decisive and permanent solutions.
The decline of American power, and the increasing misery of the American taxpayer funding Israel's war (one among many wars (s)he keeps paying instead of healthcare), seem to also have something to do with the Palestinian militants' hope that - just maybe - one more Iron Dome missile would be too much. Right now, all the polls I have seen among young (< 25 years) Americans seem to be validating them, their bet is that (1) This will continue as those youth age into politics (2) They will survive the 30-50 years necessary for this to take effect, or the century of China-accelerated American decline will ramp up faster than America's Israel-hostile youth are aging (and that the 2 will eventually meet in the middle and live happily ever after).
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Israel is kinda hopeless demographically, very long-term speaking. Think about it, their fastest growing socio-political faction is the one explicitly preaching that military service is worse than death. And even with their fastest growing faction included they're still on equal demographic basis with the Arabs living in the whole land between Gaza and the Galilee. Once you expand scope a bit and notice the demographic trends among, e.g., Egypt and Jordan, you would soon see that the Arab autocracies keeping their people exactly 1 meal ahead of starvation are part of the Iron Dome, and Arab autocracies are one hell of an unreliable safety net to depend on.
Unless, that is, Singularity happens and now 1 person with enough money and data centers can genocide ~150 million people. Well, in that case, that person is about equally likely to be a Gulf Sheikh (who won't spare an Arab or a Jew) as an ultra-orthodox warlord.
The extremely smart move on part of Israel right now is to utilize their 50 years of runway that their current military supremacy is worth to achieve whatever political goals they can conceivably get, which is a lot. Asking for a Palestinian state is **remarkably** tame, it's the position of the USA since as far as I can go back and still recognize the names of the combatants. (which is why it won't solve anything if it's not properly militarized, a state is a military, anything else is a boy scouts club in various guises.)
Other than that, it can always risk genocide, effectively bluffing the combined might of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, and maybe even Turkey into doing something. To say nothing of what the EU and USA would do after a literal Hitler 80-anniversary reboot.
That's why Israel's Right Wing loves yapping about """Voluntary Emigration""" so much, but they're kinda too racist to even do that properly, after all, literally no Gazan except Ismail Haniyah's descendants would stay in Gaza for 1 second more if given a million dollar and a one-way-ticket + green card to Canada/USA, and one million * one million Gazan is a trillion dollar, about 30 years of Israel's military spending of ***Opens Google Tab*** 30.5 billion dollar. 1 million per Gazan is an obscene exaggeration, and Saudi Arabia + Europe can foot some of the bills (Saudi Arabia casually promised 600 billion, 60% of the bill to """Voluntary Emigrate""" 1 million Gazan @ 1 million dollar per Gazan, in a phone call with Trump). So given how easy it is to "Voluntary Emigration" a population out of a land, the Israeli Right Wingers are still too low-IQ and low human empathy to do even that properly and diplomatically.
It's extremely hard to predict, and Hamas is in a very weak position, but Israel is also in one hell of a corner. Like someone alluded, their biggest hope is that Palestinians will just... get bored? I don't know, seems kinda dumb, like someone who has no idea what "Revenge" means trying to predict the behavior of a human group after killing anywhere between 3% to 10% of the group and scarring who knows how many for the rest of their lives.
"Maybe after this they would learn their lesson", yeah, I bet that worked great for the Ancient Jews after the Romans demolished their state and scattered them all over the Middle East and Southern/Eastern Europe. Well technically it did, it just didn't work out for their successors.
Tldr; I don't know what Hamas endgame is and anyone who thinks is too dumb or too dishonest to know better, but it involves the global isolation of Israel and the "Demographics Is Destiny" hypothesis, along with the conviction that Islamist fundamentalism is enough to keep the flame of revenge glowing.
"Israel is kinda hopeless demographically, very long-term speaking. Think about it, their fastest growing socio-political faction is the one explicitly preaching that military service is worse than death."
The actual number of non-Haredi Jews is only going to go up.
Indeed, gradually ruled over and out-voted by the non-serving Haredi. Not exactly a recipe for a very stable social contract.
We corresponded X thousand words on a previous open thread without resolving the question of whether any state composed primarily of the people currently in Gaza/West Bank could be persuaded (once it had the means to do so) to not attack Israel motivated by the belief that jewish self-determination in the middle east is an injustice not to be tolerated as a primary consideration over all other goals.
Just curious, have your beliefs on the topic/this question changed in the weeks since?
As a companion to my assertion that there is almost perfect symmetry between Palestinian Peace Obstructionism and Israeli Peace Obstructionism, here's a recent story in Haaretz about a Jerusalem book store whose owners were accused by the police of incitement to terrorism and dragged to court over books that contained such violent symbols of Palestinian Nationalism as poetry and cuisine https://archive.ph/ohDi5.
I'm not sure whether people outside israel who quote Haaretz are aware just how much it is the equivalent of anti American anecdote personally cherrypicked by Noam Chomsky, who is American so how can you accuse him of anti western bias
This is bad, and toxic, and there are Israelis protesting these actions by Ben Gvir right now.
I do think there's a categorical difference in how disfavored political speech is treated by Israel vs. anywhere in the middle east.
I haven't done any new readings since then, less than during the hot war in fact. More work in my life, less mental health to keep track with all the insane genocidal shit that keeps gaining grounds in English-translated Hebrew media (let alone the raw Hebrew media).
My beliefs on this topic or question isn't opposite, it's a "Yes And" not a "No" or even a "Yes But". Yes, obviously the cultural meme of "Jews are colonizers that can be driven out of the land if we just kill the next 50 of them" needs to die, hopefully quickly, hopefully with the minimum possible Palestinian and Israeli deaths.
But you know, I could almost say the same thing about massive portions of the Israeli mythmaking, collective consciousness, and culture too. There is an ironic and delicious symmetry in this conflict, keep reading enough of both sides and you will eventually be able to morph the grievances of each side into each other almost loss-lessly. I don't even see 0s and 1s anymore, I see "Arabs took this Jewish land from us" and "Jews took this Islamic land from us".
Where was I? Ah Yes, the weird Israeli supremacism that desperately asserts an ethnically-homogenous state is one of the fundamental human rights promised to people in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but also Palestinians can't have one. Because... because,... Palestinians are made up, they don't exist, they are all Jordanians and Egyptians in watermelon-colored trench coats. Or maybe they exist but they're just fake. Maybe they're real but have too few Nobel prizes, or maybe they deserve ones but we're just too uncomfortable to give them one now, come later in 15 years (Spoiler: Nothing will change in 15 years, it's a bluff in the desperate hope that Palestinians will get bored in 15 years despite not getting bored in 80).
Israelis and the people who love them (which sometimes include me, some of them, some of the time, when I'm not reading the nth genocidal translation of the latest pop star or politican to get viral) get too upset at Hamas supporters chanting "By Any Means" and "Those Who Make Peaceful Resistance Impossible, Make Armed Resistance Inevitable", and I get it, I really do. It feels wrong to be this gleeful at a literal real-life horror movie that I would dismiss as too cheap and blood-plotted if it was a Hollywood production.
But you know what, they're kinda right, as a purely descriptive (not normative, despite them meaning it in a normative, "cheer the revolution" kind of way) model, it really is the case that talking is the wonderful social technology, that - among other thing - discharge violence and give hope (however dim and false) to the dispossessed. Right now, carrying a Palestinian flag in public in Israel is a crime ("incitement"), that's why Peace Protestors and Radical Bloc leftists often carry watermelons or Palestinian-colors-Arabic-words.
It really is a truth that when you make it a crime for people to have nationalist aspirations, eventually they're going to figure out how to do it without you, and you're not going to be pleased with how they do that.
> but also Palestinians can't have one.
I had to stop reading your post right at that line, because everything I know about the history of this is that in 1948 the Palestinians and theIsraeli’swere given a state and that resolution was not a satisfactory one to the Palestinians or to any neighboring Arab state.. And it seems to me ever since then it has not been a satisfactory one.
Whatever the horrible mess we find ourselves in now it has been the stated intention of only one side that the other must be eliminated from the area and preferably from the Earth.
> in 1948
I'm discussing Israeli attitude right now and for the past 40-60 years. The Palestinian state stalled Egyptian Peace negotiations until Egypt relented (and also it wasn't very serious about it to begin with). The Palestinian half-state that Rabin had to clarify to the Knesset that it's not exactly a state got him killed, the only Israeli PM to meet that fate, as far as my memory serves.
I can find plenty of Israeli attitudes in 1948 and before to demonstrate that "Whatever we're in now is the fault of a single people" is - to a very good seventh-order approximation - politically-motivated Disney Morality to justify atrocities.
> ever since then it has not been a satisfactory one.
No credible offer of Palestinian statehood was ever put on the table since 1948. And the one on the table in 1948 wasn't from Israel.
No, it was not Israel because Israel did not exist officially. It was the UN and it was based on what the British did to try and make a two state solution. It proposed a state of Israel and a state of Palestine. Israel accepted those boundaries.I will disagree with you about offers on the table subsequently to create a two state solution. I think they had plenty of chances. The deal Arafat walked away from for instance. It might go a long way towards solving the problem if Hamas would remove the destruction of Israel as one of their core tenets. I have said before in these comments that it is very difficult to negotiate with someone whose goal is to kill you.
What was not credible about the offers in 2000 and 2008?
If you’re talking short term goals, I think their hope was the ceasefire would hold, and after a few months, after they re-established de facto power, the prospect of restarting the war would induce Israel begrudgingly accept the status quo.
Long term, probably they hoped to rally the neighboring countries to their side, or force Israel to make a deal with them fully accepting their permanent control over Gaza. Both long shots of course. It’s long been known that there were comparatively moderate and extreme wings in Hamas in tension with each other. Personnel has changed of course though so who knows now; but I’d say it generally behaves like an organization with considerable internal conflict.
In general the Palestinian strategy has been to resist Israel as long as possible using unconventional methods (typically against civilians) rather than face the overwhelming Israeli military. I believe this is mostly to gain internal political credibility and to keep the conflict alive in international news. It also provides a morale boost and exerts a small amount of negotiating pressure on Israel by showing that they are capable of doing some damage. While doing this, they appeal to international organizations and global public opinion to attempt a diplomatic victory, similar to the way international pressure ended South African apartheid. They seem to view this as a genuine model for potential victory rather that purely being rhetoric used for propaganda. (They have seen huge gains in public support over the past decade or so, so you could argue that the strategy has been at least partially effective.) It is hard to predict if that strategy will continue post-Oct. 7. They seem set on fighting to the death rather than being expelled or living under Israeli control.
They've been outspoken that their plan is to just commit more and more October 7s, forever, until there are no more Jews. Pretty retarded if you know how population increases work, but if they weren't stupid they wouldn't be in Hamas, so there's a pretty hard upper bound on their rationality.
Trump is offering Hamas a fantastic endgame: sell Gaza to him and retire in Dubai or Qatar.
I doubt their retirement would be long lived. Once they’re out of power and have no leverage there’s little reason for the Mossad not to keep assassinating them. And fanatics tend not to weight personal self interest overly much anyway.
I don’t think that’s going to have universal appeal in Gaza, or the world.
Since when does Trump care about that?
That's exactly why almost nothing of his foreign policy works. He perfected the art of "Whining and blustering till someone blinks" and all the limited concessions that can be obtained by it, but has 0 strategy or international smarts beyond that.
There is a reason there isn't a wall with Mexico since the ~10 years he has been publicly promising it.
Building a wall across the entirety of the southern US border is a lot harder than moving/killing 2 million people concentrated in an area that's only slightly bigger than San Francisco.
I don't think you've done any project planning on genociding 2 million people...
Everything is much harder than it looks when your attention span is shorter than fruit fly sex and your IQ is lower than temperature in Ontario.
He's proposing to _buy_ the property? I hadn't noticed that element in his statements....pretty sure that no Republican member of Congress would have anything but an "oh hell no" reaction to idea of Hamas members getting paid cash money for Gaza.
(Perhaps Trump could finance such a purchase the way he paid for all his business ventures: no money down, extravagant promises of future balloon payments, stall for years on making the actual payments, strip cash flow down to negative then file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and get the courts to stiff all the creditors for you, rinse and repeat. Maybe Hamas/Iran would fall for that, one time at least?)
"I'm committed to buying and owning Gaza. As far as US rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it" (source: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cd7dwq87zvqt?post=asset%3Ad8fd6f71-012c-409c-8692-cae8bb9d2334#post).
WRT: "pretty sure that no Republican member of Congress would have anything but an "oh hell no" reaction to idea of Hamas members getting paid cash money for Gaza" - I've lost count of all the times I though this about various Trump's... "ideas". Alas, the Republican party is now basically a North-Korean-style "write down everything Dear Leader says and enthusiastically support" Party.
Both of you seem to be under the impression that he means to purchase it *from Hamas*. I would've thought that he means buying it from Israel, and the payment will probably be in the form of weapons and such that we would've sent them anyway, only they won't have to pay for them.
I'm using "buying from Hamas" as an illustration of the utter idiocy of the whole idea. It's really hard to take it seriously, and I am astounded (but I guess I should not be) at the ineptitude of the journalists covering it, should not this very question, "who are you buying it from, Mr. President" be shouted, printed, posted, whatever, all over the place?
But - taking it seriously for a moment - there's no need nor a legal way to "buy" it from Israel, is there? Israel controls it militarily at the moment, it can just hand control over to the US, how is a "purchase" even relevant here? But it doesn't "own" it in any legal sense, which is what would be required for a "legal" purchase?
God I feel stupid and mentally spent just typing this.
You may misunderstand what Trump tries to do.
Assuming he is a clever Machiavellian and not a bumbling buffoon, the point of the "bying Gaza and expelling all Palestinians" schtick is to influence how Hamas perceive their choices. He might attempt to scare them into a deal, by influencing the perceived disaster they may face, if they do not. It's a negotiating tactic.
Haha, underestimating the ineptitude of journalists, classic rookie mistake! Well, not a crippling one; you'll learn.
I agree though, yes, someone at some point really ought to have asked the question. Arguably Israel does own Gaza by dint of conquest – the only other possible alternatives, since there's no Palestinian state and never will be, are that it still belongs to Egypt, which they vehemently deny since that would make them responsible and the Gazans Egyptian citizens, or that it's a stateless no-man's-land. So potentially Israel can sell it to the US, and presumably Trump's idea is that buying it will give US ownership greater legitimacy somehow. Trump is a dunderhead in many ways, and this is typical of his way of thinking IMO.
Haven't states historically ceded territory as part of peace deals? Is your objection just that that he used the terms of everyday commerce instead of some fancier "international law" jargon?
Oct. 7th was the plan. Playact submission for a decade to convince Israel to take their eyes off you and write you off as a managed problem. Build up the people, war making material, intelligence, and connections with other Jihadi entities you need, launch a sudden and overwhelming strike from all sides, kill tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians, capture tens of thousands more, capture and destroy IDF equipment, collapse the Israeli state.
But the expected attacks from Hezbollah and the planned for uprising in Judea/Samaria never came. And their own military success fell short. And Israel responded in a much harsher and sustained way than they expected. And then Israel knocked out Hezbollah and launched a massive Jihadi suppression campaign in Judea/Samaria.
So Hamas now is falling back on their tried and true survival strategy of milking international sympathy for the dead and suffering Gazans they generated to limit Israel's freedom of action and give them the chance to regroup and fight another day. And that's what you're seeing now.
There's at least three active levels warfare between the Gazans and Israel going on all at the same time.
There's the direct warfare, which comes and goes but has been pretty significant for a while. That's obvious. Then there's the political wrangling between all the various groups that make up each side (Palestinians, Hamas, Iran, Israel - broken down by factions, etc.). Finally there's the propaganda war that's mostly fought for sympathy of outsiders.
Israel's long term plan is on the political front, and seems to be to slowly encroach the Palestinians until they disappear as a distinct people and the descendants of people who care do not care anymore. Israel is patient, so this strategy is very likely to work if unopposed.
Hamas recognizes this problem - they can't win this war. They also can't win the first kind of war, direct confrontation. So Hamas is pursuing the third kind of war. They can only do so if they provoke Israel to violence. Provoking Israel to politics isn't effective at getting international attention and has a strong chance of Hamas losing anyway. Their hope, not because it's a good strategy but because it's the only strategy with a chance of success, is to get the outside world to stop Israel and force a compromise that makes Hamas' position stronger.
I think this would work much better if Hamas was not a stooge of Iran and had a more moderate endpoint of political freedom rather than direct or implied goals of destruction to Israel and maybe killing all the Jews. Hamas only has a chance to win this war if they keep Israel active and in the international news. If things calm down too much, Israel will eventually win. There are paths that allow Palestinians to also win at the same time, but Hamas cannot win by its own stated goals if Israel also wins. If Hamas were separated from Iran's goals, and was willing to compromise on some currently primary goals, then maybe Hamas could also win without Israel losing. I don't see any path to Hamas winning with its current goals that does not involve international pressure. So long as the US supports Israel, international pressure is unlikely to be decisive - forcing a stalemate. This is still to Hamas' benefit so long as they are locked into their goals and the alternatives are worse for them.
Hamas became a client (very much not a stooge) of Iran because of what they believe and want, not the other way around.
Hamas exists in order to end Jewish sovereignty over any part of Arab/Muslim claimed land, create an Islamic theocracy in that land, and reassert Dhimmi status over any Jew still living in that land when they've accomplished their likely genocidal conquest. They have no other political aims or ambitions.
Pretty mysterious why Hamas existed since the late 1960s (as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, a 1928-founded political group whose latest exile in Egypt since 2014 still didn't quite finish it) and never did any violence until the Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre in 1994.
Strange how Hamas was totally okay with Jewish sovereignty until a Jewish terrorist killed a bunch of Arabs (and cheered as a hero until now by Israeli ministers).
>They have no other political aims or ambitions.
Lol, someone has no internal model of the world beyond what Channel 14 feeds him/her every night on the brainwashing airwaves.
Hamas was founded in '87, and has been very clear about their aims from the moment of their founding. They literally wrote it down
Hamas isn't Athena, it didn't appear in a Teleporter Gate in 1987. They declared independence from their Egyptian mothership in 1987, but they have been active in the strip under various name and guises since the 1960s, and Israel tolerated them because it loved the Islamic counterbalance to the secular leftist PLO (sounds familiar?).
> They literally wrote it down
Seems like we ought to go back to the writings of Israel's founders from the 1920s and the 1930s if that's the standard we're going to adopt, and I assure you you're not going to be pleased with what we're going to find.
I'm confused where you're going with all this. Do you dispute the original claim you responded to?
In 2021, congress ended their moratorium on earmarks aka "pork". The moratorium on earmarks had been there for about 10 years and had been intended to reduce corruption. I recall that this had been discussed here quite a lot while the moratorium was on-going, with people claiming that the moratorium on earmarks caused the breakdown in bipartisan bills we've seen. The theory went that previously members of congress that were on the fence could be bought over by earmarking something for their constituents, like something that would bring jobs to a specific area.
It's been a while now and I don't think I've read anything about how this has gone. Congress feels broadly as partisan as it had been ten years ago but I'm not really that informed. Have earmarks been used much? Are there any notable cases where a bill passed because of earmarks?
I was surprised by the high amount of major bipartisan legislation during the Biden years. Back in 2020, I'd assumed bipartisanship was permanently dead. Perhaps the earmarks had something to do with it.
I've had some tangential involvement in this, from which my observations are:
-- today's earmarks (which have a new label that I forget right now) are drastically smaller in real dollars than back in the day. During the 1980s/90s a $1 million earmark was considered pocket change, now they're dealing in the high 6 figures. An award of a million or two is large now. All figures nominal, so in inflation-adjusted terms it's a big drop in individual earmarks.
-- perhaps related to the above but also given the shifted optics of the practice, there seems to be much less bragging about such awards by the congresscritters than was true in past eras. It's really just a quiet staff exercise now. It's pulling teeth now to get an elected member to attend a ribbon-cutting (I have colleagues who've discovered this firsthand).
Who needs earmarks when you have USAID and all the other federal granting agencies?
I know you're being snarky but just for the record: actual federal grantmaking, which I have lots of professional experience with, is enormously more complex than earmarks both to obtain and to successfully comply with. For example every entity that receives at least $1.5M total in all federal grants from any agencies during a year undergoes a special federal grants audit, in addition to its own sector's standard annual outside audit. I've dealt with that process and it is a bear, or at least was until somebody started blowing up the OMB and other federal agencies. My organization had to tear up our entire payroll system and budgeting structure, which had served us fine and made regular CPA-type auditors happy for years, in order to comply with federal rules for grants compliance. Etc etc.
Federal grant pools are also competitive as hell, e.g. we were an unsuccessful finalist recently in one under which 150 grants were awarded out of 2,700 applications.
None of the above applies to congressional earmarks ("member initiatives", I think is what they are now called).
Some partially good news about PEPFAR specifically
https://mg.co.za/power-of-women/health-2024-power-of-women/2025-02-10-pepfar-projects-are-exempted-from-trumps-ban-on-aid-for-south-africa/
Some of it has been specifically exempted from the spending freeze, including testing, care and treatment. Preventive anti-HIV medicine is specifically excluded though, does anyone know the reasons?
>Preventive anti-HIV medicine is specifically excluded though, does anyone know the reasons?
Probably because they aren't sure whether they want to spend tax dollars on condoms.
I'd have suggested excluding condoms if that was the concern.
Seems like they did. From the article:
“Alarmingly, nearly all HIV prevention efforts under Pepfar — aside from programmes for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission — are currently on hold,” write the authors of a Lancet editorial, which was published last week. “Programmes that focus on the prevention of HIV in key populations, HIV prevention services for adolescent girls and young women, voluntary male medical circumcision and support for orphans and vulnerable children are still halted.”
So it sounds like the kept HIV prevention efforts that use medications (the mother to child transmission ones) but cancelled the other prevention efforts, such as circumcision and presumably condoms.
Hmm, from the article this includes things like CAB-LA and Lenacavir. I don't really understand why these need to be put on the chopping block for the sake of not funding condoms. Do you know if this condom thing is the reason or are you speculating?
Speculation. But it does look like the CAB-LA and Lenacavir thing are not about freezing preventative measures but a different freeze on scientific studies, as the meds hadn't been used before and they were going to do a trail with them that would start in March. It could still get unfrozen before then, in the meantime nobody was getting those meds right now anyway.
Oh, also, CAB-LA is already in use in Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe according to this article
https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/sa-accepts-us-donation-of-cab-la-and-will-roll-out-anti-hiv-jab-before-the-end-of-the-year-20240722.
Do you know if this freeze is related to the one on scientific studies or is this also speculation?
Ok, thanks for clarifying it's speculation.
How does a waiver work when they're fired everyone and shutdown the agency?
You can yell "sorry, a mistake was made" in the empty office building.
Reading the article, it looks like pregnant women can get the anti-HIV drugs, but no one else. My guess is that it was to avoid having people come back at the Trump administration with the not fun to debate claim that they were giving babies in Africa AIDS (not that I honestly think most of his supporters would care if that were true). So now they can claim that actually they are doing everything reasonable to fight HIV but anyone "irresponsible" enough to contract it anyway doesn't get treated on the US government's dime. Its all very in line with their policy of "pretend everything defaults to personal responsibility and use that as an excuse to be as cruel as you can get away with without causing open revolt."
Also, I'm glad the meds are at least back for the pregnant mothers, but I'm not sure there's anyone actually working at US Aid anymore who can/cares about implementing the rules correctly, so my guess is anyone tracking this stuff carefully is still going to see a huge uptick of babies being born with preventable HIV.
Hey y'all!
I'm a senior physics and math undergrad, gotten into a couple good grad schools for physics, probably specializing in biophysics.
Mostly because of this community, I've become mostly convinced that I could do the most good if I pivot to AI safety research. Considering how fast the industry is moving at the moment, how should I go about this? If timelines are long, I could obviously just complete my PhD and then pivot once I was more hireable.
However, if I want to maximize my impact before humans become less relevant in guiding the ship, should I consider trying to pivot now? If so, how should I go about that? Would any ai company hire some non-cs major right out of undergrad? My cv is quite strong for graduate school applications but I have no idea what the best way to go about this pivot is.
> Would any ai company hire some non-cs major right out of undergrad?
Technically yes, but if you have to ask it's unlikely you have the background.
It might not be the best thing to be convinced by this community.
You can do a heck of a lot of concrete good in biophysics. It is not super well established (around wider computer science or academia) that the alignment people are doing something useful. The claim that they're doing good work is... speculative and more than a little bit controversial.
Related fun read:
https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm
A PhD is going to take 5+ years: think about where AI was in 2019. (Where? Exactly.)
This is a bigger and better-founded hype than the previous ones, but academia has always been pretty faddish, particularly in the US. At least one next-big-thing will bubble and burst before you finish your PhD.
There's a lot of interest (and I presume money) in AlphaFold type projects that are really at the interface of maths, physics and biology. I'm guessing you could get solid expertise in AI doing that, be relatively employable afterward (assuming you don't buy into the wrong bubble) and continue on to do something interesting afterward.
Second this. I published in both physic and microbio back in the day, and it's a more exciting area than ever now, and will require actual human minds behind R&D programs even if we have true AGI / GPT-7 by the time you finish.
AI (even at AGI levels) is more likely to be a force multiplier for a good amount of time, in my own opinion, because there will be a lot of technological branches that become low hanging fruit and need to be cranked through and thought about.
My personal prediction is that actual AI (AGI, superintelligence etc., these have different meanings to different people but essentially scifi level artificial intelligence) will emerge from a different substrate than what we currently have (computer chips, transformers etc.) so your knowledge of physics can be put to good use to develop such technology, new substrates for computation.
I really thing that AGI is substrate independent. The problem is algorithms. It *is* true that specialized hardware can run certain classes of algorithm faster, and not others, but note the specificity there. A CPU can run any algorithm. It may be faster or slower, and possibly need more memory, but it can do the job. And specialized hardware is often only useful for specialized tasks.
I don't think one should commit oneself to any particular hardware choice. I'm relatively sure that CPUs and GPUs and Transformers will continue to be useful components, and I'm not really convinced that there will be the need for something like that that we haven't yet identified. (E.g. memristors may yield a device that would be extremely useful, and which is also on that level, but...I'd give it about 15% chance, possibly less.)
FWIW, the most likely candidate for a breakthrough device would be a room temperature quantum computation module. But I'd bet you'd only need relatively few of those, and most of the work would be done by CPUs and GPUs, with a minority done by TPUs. (Note I'm putting quantum units, QPUs, so low that I didn't even name it in the list.)
These are just my personal evaluations. And anyone specializing in any one of those general areas should do quite well. But don't tie yourself to some device that hasn't yet been used. Most of those, even the ones that eventually succeed, take decades to get wide use. Whereas there are still uses for isolated resistors and capacitors. (Pentodes, though, seem to have disappeared.)
I'm not that savvy on this topic, can I ask why you think it's substrate independent? If we agree that the brain is more advanced than computer chips, can't we imagine all sorts of different substrates that would fall in the space of complexity (or capability?) somewhere between chips and neurons?
Anything computable can be run on any Turing complete system. Unless you assume some sort of magic, intelligence is computable. (The problem with this argument is that there is no real Turing complete system, as such a system would have infinite memory.)
There are holes in this argument, but they're very small ones. And the argument doesn't say anything about relative speed.
Note that the set of problems for which a quantum computer is known to, in principle, but better than a standard computer is quite small, so even if you assume the brain is a quantum computer (at THAT temperature???) it's unlikely to make a difference. (N.B.: That quantum processes happen in the brain isn't that unlikely. They're likely involved in helping the mitochondria more efficiently generate energy, just like they are in allowing chloroplasts to more efficiently use light...but this is a long way from being a quantum computer.)
My new SF collection Flashes in Time presents the reader with a fourfold table of science fiction and fantasy, contemporary and far off. The stories, whether zany or serious, make an effort at being coherent worlds with mostly smart characters whether we're dealing with simulations or magic. The subject matter ranges from transhumanism, AI, and space exploration to subjectively karmic magic, navigating premonition, and dealing with the Fae.
Digital editions start from 3.99 currency units, and I do take (a finite but non-minimal amount of) requests for review copies via e-mail (see below), if you'll put one up on Goodreads, Amazon and/or your own relevant platform, if any. https://waterdragonpublishing.com/product/flashes-in-time/
My novelette from last year, The Paperclip War, may also be of interest as a take on what if humanity managed to wield unusually harsh game theory to arrive at an unstable equilibrium with an AI adversary. It was well received at Less Wrong Community Weekend 2024. As a modestly sized standalone novelette, this one starts at a 0.99¤ https://waterdragonpublishing.com/product/paperclip-war/
Cheers,
- Mikko Rauhala, mikko.rauhala@gmail.com, https://rauhala.org/
Another alternative I've read about is to allow only women to vote and only men to hold office
You replied to the wrong comment I think
So... in order to help overcome the impending demographic collapse I was spitballing some less common ideas. In the United States, whatif the vote was only given to women who bear children? Lots of little details to work out, but that would make bearing children pretty attractive and would ensure that the government made their concerns the highest priority.
In the details one could 1) Extend the vote to individuals (of any sex) that legitimately attempt to have kids. 2) Give the women two votes, one of which she could grant (permanently?) to a partner who is actively supporting the child. 3) Give bonus votes for additional children, possibly alienable.
Voting probably doesn't move the needle much of any way, but the right way to do it would be to let parents vote on behalf of their minor children (children deserve representation too!).
Echoing Bryan Caplan, voting is pretty untethered (I think at least) from rational self interest, in large part because voting has a negligible effect on one’s self interest, so using the vote as an incentive wouldn’t be very productive. Voting, like politics in general, is much more in the realm of the emotional than of self interested rationality. If I cared about the right to vote even as much as most Americans, if I were denied it because I’m not a woman and don’t have children, I would sooner react angrily and possibly violently against the system than start knocking up women to get my vote back. By contrast if you offered me a lot of money to have more kids, then I’d consider it, even if I hated the policy politically, I’d still be tempted by self interest to do what it wanted me to do.
Basically using voting rights as an incentive usually has a high backlash/effectiveness ratio in any society where there’s a string sense that everyone has the right to vote.
It all may be for naught, given the studies that show male fertility worldwide has been declining over the past two decades — both in sperm count and motility. There's been a lot of post hoc handwaving about why this has been observed. And, of course, any studies that get a lot media attention — especially those that get attention from the science editors of the NY Times — should be considered suspect until proven otherwise.
But if true, I can think of all sorts of potential research avenues for funding. For instance, do incels have lower sperm counts than average? And does that affect their sex drive? Of course, the NIH may soon be out of the picture as a funding source... We may have to rely on our Tech Bro Billionaires to fund these. OTOH, neither the Muskrat or the Zuck would probably be interested since they seem to be breeding OK.
Mothers directing the votes of their kids as to who to vote for was an old-fashioned thing (at least in my day) so this is not some wonderful new idea 😀
Secondly, why the hell is it always men deciding that the problem here is women so the way to get women to have more kids is to treat women like incubators, such that even a fuddy-duddy traditional Catholic social conservative like myself wants to spit on my hands and raise the Jolly Roger? You're not the worst suggestions I've seen Guy, but seriously. I'm fed-up to the back teeth of "hmm. no babies, must be all the fault of women because all the men are just aching to become fathers of twelve since they were kids".
It takes two to tango. Unless you have men willing to get married and become fathers, the woman can want sixteen kids all she wants but if boyfriend doesn't want to put a ring on it, or husband doesn't want squalling brats interfering with his free time, it ain't gonna happen.
Thirdly, we've had previous discussions on here of the smart folks saying that since their single vote makes no difference out of the n millions of possible votes, only fools go out and vote as if it meant anything. Maybe women would be happy to shrug and go "fine, me no baby, me no vote? no skin off my nose".
I'm too busy/lazy to find the references, but some recent studies indicate/show pretty convincingly that it is the male partner who stops after child no 2. While a substantial proportion of women would go for child no 3 if their partner were in on it.
This matters, since it is lack of "the third child" that is key to understand persistent below-reproduction fertility everywhere (except in israel).
So how to get men on board with child no 3? It is easy, although no-one is doing it at present. Give all women who have child no 3 five million USD (or the equivalent in your currency).
If that should still be too little, jack it up to 6, 7, 8 million, and so on until you get the effect on fertility that you want.
Or decrease to 4, 3, 2 million if you overshoot your target.
It costs money, but a country can always afford what it gives the highest priority.
except you can trace the demographic decline to increasing women's rights in society and access to contraception and abortion.
pretty much its women actively choosing career over children till they have one kid in their mid thirties if that.
Guys generally haven't changed except weirdly they are more into women not less: the idea they are a ball and chain has vanished to be replaced by the frantic incel who thinks his life is worthless without a girl.
The first wave of demographic decline in Western countries (ie. pre-WW2, when TFR dipped under replacement in a lot of countries) happened without the widespread adoption of hormonal contraception and other methods dependent on women and with abortion illegal basically everywhere in the West, including in countries like France without women's suffrage.
It wasn't women alone who welcomed the Sexual Revolution. I don't know if you're old enough to have read popular literature of the time (60s-70s) where the idea of "women want to get married and have babies" was treated as entrapping men, holding them back from being free to wander the world and live freely (and also fuck any and every woman that would let them, without consequences or commitment).
A pop song and hit of the time (which I *hate* because I want to punch the guy in the face) is "Lydia"; the basic story of which is "hey so Lydia is my friend with benefits, she lets me come crash at her place and sleep with her, but no strings attached, she understands that I have to be free to be me so I'll up and leave in the morning - until the next time I hit rock-bottom and need someone to give me shelter and sex".
https://www.streetdirectory.com/lyricadvisor/song/afwup/lydia/
And that was the Ideal Woman for the time - one who wouldn't be a hung-up prude about sex but who would also not put any demands on the guy; she'd be there to be available for him as and when he wanted, but no need for a formal commitment.
A lot of songs of the time had those "I gotta leave in the morning" from the guy's point of view lyrics.
A lot of the damage of feminism of the time was "why shouldn't women behave like men?" including in their sexual lives. Men were perceived to be free to 'sow their wild oats', they did not suffer from having the double standard applied to them, and the refrains nowadays about "women want to bang Chad and don't want to settle down until they've hit the wall and are no longer able to attract alpha males" makes me smile because it is the flip-side of the earlier complaints about "men only want one thing and that's not marriage and kids".
So yeah: now the Pill is here! Now you don't run the risk of pregnancy outside of marriage! So be free and equal to your male partner(s) who can sleep around and sex is for fun!
And here we are today: oh no, the birth rate is declining, this is all down to selfish women who only want to find 'em, fuck 'em and flee, while the hapless men are just longing to be husbands and fathers at the age of twenty.
Uh-huh. Sure.
Yeah, I'm sure all the guys out there playing the field would be totally happy to be 22-year-old husbands and fathers if given the option. What you would really see without easily available contraception is a massive uptick in single mothers. Where do you think all those jokes about dads "going out for cigarettes" came from?
i think you heavily overrate how easy it is for guys to "play the field and overestimate how many want to. And honestly 22 year old fathers are a bad thing why? its better than nearing 50 and your kid hasn't even finished high school, had no cousins or siblings, and their grandparents are hitting 80.
as for single mothers, well not sure current status of "no mothers" is a plus here too. Think it will make it much harder for women but 50+.
Look, there has been lots of scandal and lots of drama about the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, but the impetus for them was precisely because women and men were having sex outside of marriage and when the woman got pregnant, the guy either denied parentage or headed off to England, leaving her with a baby and no support.
If you know of a huge crop of young men in the US who are lining up to be fathers and husbands and not finding anyone in their community willing to partner with them then you are living in a very different part of the country than me.
But I think that last part is the real point. Most of the people clamoring about falling birth rates don't really care if the burden falls disproportionately on women. Admit that and we probably have nothing left to discuss.
Relatedly, we've seen time and time again that the reasons even happy committed couples are waiting later to have children is that generally now most people don't have a sense of financial security until they are in their 30s. The baby boomers went right from college to starting families, but they also went right from college to government backed mortgages that represented a fraction of their annual income as opposed to their lifetime income, and employment offers that came with lifetime guarantees. All that has gone away, and every time someone suggests replacing it with more robust government programs, most of the same people who complain constantly about low birthrates start screaming socialism.
"The baby boomers went right from college to starting families, but they also went right from college to government backed mortgages that represented a fraction of their annual income as opposed to their lifetime income"
Back in reality housing is easier to afford, thus why people live in larger houses than ever before.
its not that, you have the same demographic collapse in EU too, social programs are not helping anything. The USA has a higher TFR than finland, snd sweden, and all EU countries are at best .1 above us and well below replacement rate.
type of government doesn't seem to matter; its endemic to most non african, non muslim nations and i don't think germany is worse than indonesia in terms of that to explain a .6 differerence.
women do not want to have kids when given the choice. i wont blame them but kind of sick of the "oh its capitalism!"
Isn't that why divorce and infidelity has traditionally been criminalized?
Which leads to even greater suffering and disproportionate punishment of women.
"[E]ven a fuddy-duddy traditional Catholic social conservative like myself wants to spit on my hands and raise the Jolly Roger"
Oh, that's just because you've read too much Mencken. And that guy was a Baptist or something! Ask your parish priest, I'm sure he knows offhand.
> "Lots of little details to work out, but that would make bearing children pretty attractive and would ensure that the government made their concerns the highest priority."
So what I'm hearing is that you're either not a parent, or a very bad parent.
Actually we could kill a coupla birds with one stone if women who refused to
put out until they were knocked up were
dragged to an incel encampment to be raped until the desired result is achieved.
>but that would make bearing children pretty attractive
No it wouldn't. There are literally no incentives for women to care about pursuing the right to vote *individually*, because the chance that granting any specific individual the right to vote will ever affect anything is essentially zero. Franchise extensions only make sense as incentives if you're granting them to large demographics all at once.
Between 30 and 40 percent of American women don't bother to vote now, whereas around one in five complete their child-bearing years without having any children. And of course not all of those who end up not having children had gotten there as a deliberate choice.
So it seems unlikely that there would be a large number of women who (a) place a high value on voting and (b) explicitly prefer not to have children.
I have often said that we should give the vote just to women for 10-20 years and see if that helps things at all.
I'd be open to trying that, honestly. How much really do we have to lose from here?
Similarly I've advocating for a 2nd amendment making gun ownership a constitutional right for women while leaving the gun rights of men up to the federal and state legislatures. [No I don't know how that would be applied to transgender folk, when I first thought of this that whole topic was not nearly as salient as it is now.]
Neither of these scenarios will ever happen obviously or even be seriously proposed by any political party.
>How much really do we have to lose from here?
A lot. Consider that a lot of the wokeness that seems to be coming from the "left" comes from women specifically.
You have provided a pithy little example of why the answer to my question is "not much."
That is a great example of what I meant when I wrote this:
https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-prison?r=1dtkhh&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=80914188
Your idea goes against democratic tradition. There would be immense resistance to any policy that messes with who gets the vote.
If you can magically convince people to accept an idea like that, why can't you just magically convince people to have children instead. It would be easier.
I think that taxing childlessness to subsidize child-rearing has a higher chance of being accepted by society.
Also, teach in school that being a parent is wonderful, award medals to people with lots of children, that kind of stuff.
Make sure this ad is all over the media, instant baby boom:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HttF5HVYtlQ
Edit: this one is even better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBay1HrK8WU
<Also, teach in school that being a parent is wonderful
Most research finds that on average having children makes people a bit less happy. Seems to me we should try to figure out how to make parenthood a better experience, rather than fucking lying to children about the facts.
Isn't this one of those "happy now vs satisfied later" things? I mean, I'm all for making parenting easier, but I suspect the happiness research people are at best getting an answer to a somewhat different question than you'd like to ask.
(As a parallel, many people are glad they got a PhD or got through medical school, but grad students and med students are in general not super happy people.)
I don’t think many people whose children are grown are sorry in retrospect that they became parents . In fact I don’t think most parents of small children would say that are sorry they became parents — though a few would. Still, I think parenting is different from grad school when it comes to regrets. Grad school is rarely talked up as a wonderful fulfilling experience (except in the grad program’s catalog’s), but parenting is. Also, there are no internal barriers to concluding, in the years after grad school, that it was both unpleasant at the time and also mistake. But concluding that about parenting seems to carry with it the idea that you wish your child did not exist, and anyone having a wish like that is going to feel like a terrible person. And actually, I think even people who regret having become parents still love their child.
My own experience of parenting was that I found it very very difficult. What was hard for me certainly was not my daughter herself — I loved her, and thought she was a great kid. And it wasn’t the work and the expense. The hard thing was having no time for myself — no time to pursue my interests, to hang out with my friends, who were childless or whose kids were grown, no time to ruminate and crap around and explore things. Until my daughter was about 4, I felt like I never had time even to complete a thought. It was a horrible, maddening deprivation of things I think I really do need for my wellbeing, and the deprivation often made me furious. But there was no one to be furious at except my sweet kid, who was blameless, and mostly I stayed aware of that. I simply had to feel the deprivation and the frustration and do what my daughter needed anyhow.
People get sold the idea that once you have the baby you transform into another kind of being, one whose greatest delight is nurturing little lives. I simply did not go through the transformation. I just parented without the benefit of the transform, and I don’t think my experience is rare. Scott, in one of his recent posts about his kids, wrote about how he could love taking care of his babies for a couple hours, and push himself to do it for 2 more hours, and after that it was just too much baby. Yep, that’s the feeling. Other promised transformations, by the way, have worked for me. For instance I went from being a grad student who had studied clinical psychology but did not feel up to actually trying to help people to a professional who enjoys her work. The transition took a few years, and some of it was painful, but it happened.
My daughter is now 29, and is one of the happier people I’ve known. (I managed to do a decent job of parenting. I guess.) I’m delighted to have her in my life. She lives 15 mins from me and we see a lot of each other. I’m not sorry now that I adopted and raised her. But there’s no denying that the years of doing it were just not good years for me.
"I think that taxing childlessness to subsidize child-rearing has a higher chance of being accepted by society."
Oooh, the screaming of the "childfree by choice" lot would reach levels unheard since the Chicxulub asteroid hit. They already feel they're being taken advantage of by society which props up breeders.
https://www.reddit.com/r/childfree/new/
As one of the childfree, yes, you have a point.
At this moment, my suspicion is that even if Vance and Musk pushed through such a thing _this_ year, the countdown to AGI seems to be ticking so fast, and seems likely to have consequences so vast, that I'm not likely to scream much...
Not just make it the highest priority - it would absolutely exclude every other group's concerns from consideration. Young people, childless people, and obviously men (but let's not talk about that last one) - they would have virtually no power to have their needs met unless they also align with the needs of mothers. Also, I think currently a working mom is highly aligned with an average voter in what her views and needs are, whereas stay-at-home moms are very divergent from the mean, meaning currently their views are less represented. They'd gain much more political power by this change than what working moms would gain. Is it good or bad? Don't know, but it would make things different. Maybe they would use that power to pass enough laws favoring SAHMs that it wouldn't make sense anymore for working moms to keep working? Again, don't know if it's good or bad. Personally I think it would be great for the society if an average family could lead a comfortable life on single income, but that's a tangential topic.
Who is going to enforce this dystopia? How do you propose to deprive "young people, childless people, and obviously men" of all power?
The thing about such thought experiments is that when you ask "how do we even get there", it's obvious it's wholly and entirely impossible and it stops being an interesting discussion. So I'd rather not ask.
Oh, I see. Makes sense.
Votes aren't worth a lot. Lots of people already choose not to use theirs, and people in general don't seem willing to do life-changing changes like moving to a different location just to make their vote more powerful, although such opportunities are already abundant. So I doubt that it would have much of an effect.
Why not make fertility treatments free? The up-front costs would be paid for several times over by the creation of additional people who would contribute to the economy for a lifetime.
Lots of countries do this already, and it doesn't really move the needle. All the Scandinavian countries and a number of other European countries, for example. Fertility rates still low and getting lower.
In fact, many things have been tried to practically no effect:
* $10k bonuses per child (Singapore), or for 2nd / 3rd children (Russia)
* 3 years paid parental leave (France)
* 480 days paid leave at 80% wage (Sweden)
* Income tax exemption for mothers with 4 or more kids (Hungary)
* Free state paid child care (France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia)
* Free IVF (most EU countries)
* $750 / month payments per child (South Korea)
And essentially none of these have moved the needle. Often they don’t have any positive impact at all on rates, fertility still declines, but slower. The most any fertility intervention does if they are positive is to buff rates by ~5-10% or so for 1-3 years, after which fertility rates collapse and resume the same trajectory they were on before.
Why are you certain that Singapore's child bonuses have failed?
Singapore has a higher TFR than every other developed country or territory in East Asia (TW, SK, HK) except Japan.
Japan's TFR has decreased faster in the last decade (when the bonuses reached substantial amounts) and - of course - it's a much less urbanized country than SG.
> Why are you certain that Singapore's child bonuses have failed?
Because like nearly all other fertility interventions, it hasn't driven any bump up in fertility, the decline continues (recently hitting 1.04).
So yeah, 1.04 is still higher than the "literally lowest in the world" SK and others, but it still represents a decline overall - the needle isn't moving in the right direction, and this is the common trend among all fertility interventions.
I will say though, Singapore has always been the biggest "lived experience vs official statistics" gap I've ever seen, because when you're there, you see happy couples with babies *everywhere!* On the metro, by the riverfront, while shopping, it's pretty fun.
You’ll see the same thing in Tokyo, another famously low birthrate country Tons of cute couples with babies. But Tokyo has an explanation, at least - all the young people come to Tokyo, and there’s a vast hinterland that’s basically all old people, so of course all the babies are concentrated in Tokyo.
But Singapore has no hinterland! It’s a city state!
Of course what's actually happening is there's a much bigger "childless" proportion and many fewer 2 and 3+ kid families.
I mean, I think it's legit sad, I love Singapore and think it's pretty much the peak of "dense urban area done right," but their $10k bonuses aren't solving the crisis or producing more babies at scale.
"the needle isn't moving in the right direction,"
If the needle isn't moving in the right direction, and in fact it's not moving in any direction while moving in the "wrong" direction for all comparable countries, that suggests there is a measurable effect of the policy.
Has anyone tried asking young people why they aren't having more children? Seems like an obvious place to start, but the people talking about the matter seem to think they know better.
> Has anyone tried asking young people why they aren't having more children?
It's all the usual stuff. For middle and upper class it's "first I need to finish school, then graduate studies, then get established in my career, then spend years trying to find the perfect mate so I'm not settling, and then after all that I'm 35 and have burned through 2/3 of my total fertility and have one or two kids."
Broadly, marriage and having kids has moved from a "foundational" thing you do on your way to a great and fulfilling life, that you now do as a "capstone" thing after you have all the other pieces in place.
The "desired vs actually had" in numbers of kids gap is notably higher in higher IQ women:
https://imgur.com/a/hlkNUnN
And although masters and Phd women are willing to have more, they generally can't due to age (and of course way more babies come from dropouts and non-college folk):
https://imgur.com/a/R6LyVY2
A cut by household income, just for fun, showing generally the same trends:
https://imgur.com/a/mXI2u00
Fertility graph showing the truth of the "burned through 2/3 of fertility by 35:"
https://imgur.com/lpADyJs
According to this chart, the odds of a live birth in a given year at 20-22 are ~60%. The odds at age 30 are half that, ~30%, and at age 35 ~22%.
This is what works:
https://eurasianet.org/georgias-baby-boom-and-the-union-of-church-and-birthrate
It doesn't:
https://www.mangosorbananas.com/p/georgias-successful-campaign-to-increase
Georgia is a tiny (1/90th the population of the US) semi-democracy with a GDP per capita one-tenth that of the US, and persistent double-digit unemployment for many years. Its overall population is still declining sharply despite the recent birthrate increase, because so many people upon reaching young adulthood find a way to leave and start fresh elsewhere. Georgia's net population annual change is (data through 2023) still among the worst in the world, more negative than places like Japan, Greece, Italy, Russia, Cuba, etc.
So (a) the chances of sustaining a baby boom when so many young adults are scrambling to leave seems dubious, and (b) that nation overall does not seem to map very well to the US or really any other large developed nation.
> This is what works:
So first we just need to convert everyone in all the developed "fertility crisis" countries into being devout Eastern Orthodox, then it's just a simple matter of scaling "Patriarch blessings" by approximately 10x!
I wonder why nobody else has thought of this?? :-)
I mean that if you want increase fertility you should think hard about that example and try to figure out what might work in a similar way in your culture.
Yeah, I have a post coming up in a week that talks about the next level of stuff I think would work.
For the most part, all the fertility crisis countries are all godless and heterogenous culturally, so it's difficult to come up with one that would work for more than one country, but my favorite idea on this front is education.
The educational Red Queen's Race is depressing fertility, because the competition to get into Harvard starts 6 months before birth, when you need to get on the waiting list for the right exclusive pre-school to give your precious Jaden a leg up, because if you don't get in there, and if you don't grind furiously and nonstop for the next 18 years, their chances of getting into Harvard are ruined!
So on this one, you can't do much for the Ivies, but for each couple that's paid some threshold in taxes over so many years, guarantee a non-transferrable slot in an R1 for their kid, provided they meet the test score cutoff. For California, this would be the UC's, inclusive of good ones like Berkeley, but lots of states have R1's. Suddenly some of the educational arms race is off, and you're guaranteed at least Berkeley and can pop out a few more kids.
This also works anywhere there's state-supported good universities, which is most fertility crisis countries.
If you say the government will spend (say) $20,000 on IVF, you just guaranteed that the cost of IVF will never go below $20,000. Combine that with an understanding of risk compensation and it doesn't look like a good idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
Why would risk compensation undermine the idea?
People would delay having children on the theory that free IVF will be available to them later.
You might read about Demeny voting, which is a similar concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeny_voting
What's the deal with "likes" in the comments? I remember seeing a like button, but can't find it anymore, and I've gotten likes on some of my comments (😎) so I know it's not entirely removed, but I can't find a like count on my or others comments.
Scott doesn't like likes, so the default theme here doesn't have them, but if you're reading from the Substack app, you can still dish them out.
Oh cool, that makes sense. Thanks
I don't imagine there's a large overlap between this forum and football fans, but as an NFL fan, last night's Superbowl was fantastic for the haters. It immediately gave credence to the Chiefs+Refs narrative, and then the Eagles proceeded to relentlessly stomp the life out of the Chiefs. They were decimated almost as much as Drake was by Kendrick's halftime show.
A long time ago, Lewis Black said "if you want to understand exactly where the American culture is, at that point in time, you watch the Super Bowl".
That's why I haven't watched one in ten years.
This was my first Super Bowl after moving to the Philly area (so uh... GO BIRDS!!!!!)
I'm not super familiar with the Chiefs + Refs narrative. The joke going around my watch party was that Trump told the refs to side with the Chiefs on everything because he was mad that Philly didn't vote for him.
Yes, Trump has been publicly vindictive about the Eagles for petty reasons. Also, Patrick Mahomes' wife is a public Trump supporter, so he's a fan.
> I’ve watched this great quarterback who has, by the way, a phenomenal wife, OK? She’s a Trump fan. She’s a MAGA fan. So, I happen to love her, OK. But she’s a great person. … She’s great and he’s great
The Chiefs + Refs narrative is that the Chiefs are a marketing juggernaut for the league, so the conspiracy is that the NFL and the refs are biased to giving the Chiefs questionable calls to help them win. This doesn't really hold up to evidence, and I usually roll my eyes when people mention it: https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/kansas-city-chiefs/news/chiefs-refs-controversies-explained-games-rigged-kansas-city/c217a83e3747a7a6eee6752d
But in one of the first plays of the game, the Eagles get called for a pretty ridiculous penalty in a critical moment, and it did make me a believer in the conspiracy for just a bit.
I went to bed at half time, happy in the knowledge that the chiefs were being crushed. (Life long Buffalo Bills fan.)
Oh I should add that I think the NFL is out of control, TV-wise and so I have a love hate relationship with the whole thing.
Thoughts on Richard Hanaia's new post on unemployment from AI? https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-you-shouldnt-worry-about-ai-taking?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=98102&post_id=156377655&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ly8ov&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
His argument is that government-created bullshit jobs will prevent any widescale unemployment.
I wrote this review of BS jobs: https://claycubeomnibus.substack.com/p/bullshit-jobs-review
and I don't really see a way bs jobs could expand fast enough to offset rapid large scale unemployment, They're mostly a product of normal market forces and perverse incentives public sector incentives, very few of them exist because someone wanted to create a job for the sake of creating a job. Since bs jobs are created organically I don't think there's a way to deliberately expand the number of the type of bs jobs that already exist, and since they're created unintentionally they're just as susceptible to automation as non-bs jobs. Maybe government could purposefully set out to create new types of bs jobs specifically for the sake of creating jobs but that's very different from the way bs jobs currently exist.
His other argument was that welfare or UBI would be expanded enough even if there was widespread unemployment to keep former workers out of poverty. And that if humans are still in control post-AGI it's unlikely any small group of humans, like tech oligarchs or capitalists in general, would come to dominate or kill off the rest of humanity.
I'm not sure I agree here either and lean more towards thinking capital is self-serving, might be able to control the political process, and is mostly kept in check by the bargaining power labour gets from being a necessary input. In Marxists circles, you do sometimes hear that capital would just dispose of labour if it had no need for it and I don't think you can rule out that scenario completely.
He does accept a risk of doom from unaligned AI, but he seems overly sanguine about the socioeconomic risks from AI to me.
Bad timing for that article, since all the headlines are about a tech oligarch using AI to destroy thousands of government jobs.
I didn’t read it as I can’t stand the writer but he’s probably right in this case. To get UBI get a government job, dole is for the unfit. The government will pay you more for education, fitness, maybe volunteering. Being an all round good egg.
I foresee an increase in institutional BS jobs but not enough to forestall broader unemployment. Effectively that will happen because the white collar class will demand it, and want their feelings protected.
The transitional period will be painful. There will come a time when it will be apparent that average people will be unable to "create value" in an economic sense for society. But as I argue elsewhere, this doesn't mean that nothing of consequence and value can ever be done again, it means those things have to be increasingly decoupled from traditional economy. Easy to find examples today: innovative thinkers in academia and the like are thought to create value, in ways that may eventually manifest itself in concrete fashion, but for the most part they are subsidized to do their own thing. Consumers don't buy shit from them (excepting students who get an education, which they purchase from the institution, and said education is separate from the R&D component).
In a post-AGI world most wants are met. What's left is punching in the dark and occasionally getting a win (think space exploration and colonization). That means allowing average people to do what the priesthoods do. If we don't, then all there's left is consumption, or making things no one needs or wants.
I think this is correct. The current paradigm in which society is structured around economically valuable work is going to break down eventually, at which point we'll need new structures that reward personally-and-socially-beneficial-but-not-economically-valuable work.
Countries that go all-in on AGI by forsaking made-up bullshit jobs will get richer and stronger over time than countries that don't. The former will edge out the latter in the global competition for power.
Maybe. But large scale unemployment has a long history of causing social disruption, so maybe not.
It depends how much the bs jobs obstruct deploying AI I suppose.
The point is, the BS jobs waste resources that a country could spend on other things that usefully expand its economy or power.
Would a country without bs jobs spend a lot more on all the costs associated with suppressing their violently revolting populace?
My main problem is that I intensely dislike Richard Hanania, based on everything of his that I've read, so it's very difficult for me to assess anything he writes without that dislike bubbling through.
For example:
"The entire process of getting me Adderall should not require this many people."
I agree. Because I don't think he should be on Adderall at all, much less for fifteen years. If the entire process is one of winking at the system, 'yeah we know you don't *need* it need it, but all the high school and college kids high striving overachievers are on it so here's your script', then let's be honest about that and yeah, just let him buy it online from some pharma company in India and China. But if it's about genuine cases which need genuine diagnoses, especially in children, then no I don't think Mommy or Daddy should be able to just buy the Kiddie Stims by themselves when they decide they should be dosing up Junior so he can keep up with the Joneses.
Same with the rest of his stuff on bullshit jobs: I think his Substack, for one, is a bullshit job. But he's doing this himself and nobody is forced to subscribe to pay for it. But AI could come along and replace him very easily. What does he think about that? Does he think it'll never happen because hey, writing stuff and nonsense isn't a *job* as such so it doesn't count, people will still pay to read hand-made home-spun blah? Or at least read it for free?
I think there's a danger there that he's not anticipating.
As for real jobs/bullshit jobs, I do think there's a point there that mass unemployment will lag behind. On the other hand, DOGE. That's not even AI, and it is there to swipe a scythe through the government bullshit jobs.
New technology always means new jobs? Maybe. Maybe not, if the selling-point of AI is "now you can reduce your labour force". The old model was "if Jones Bros. lays off workers, they can always apply to the new McKinley & Sons business/factory". But if Jones is laying off workers due to replacing them with AI, and McKinley is using AI from the start? Where do the surplus workers go then?
Finally, social welfare/UBI will support all the workers without jobs. Again, maybe. But social welfare is the minimum, not luxury (unless you're one of the ones who can cheat and game the system, and that's work of its own). We already have rumblings in all the developed world about the upcoming pensions 'crisis' and how people can't depend on the state to pay for them in their retirement. Dump 50-90% of the population, including the working-age part, on welfare and how much can the system stand the strain? If we're hoping AI will generate yuuuuge wealth to pay for all that, how exactly is the golden goose going to lay the egg?
I think Hanania is being a little too optimistic, that the economy will be sparkly new and people just prefer stuff by humans so they'll buy that in preference to the AI manufactured output.
He seems not to be a master of prose, his subheading "forecasting different scenarios for the future" is redundant after the first word.
Scott has recently written on twitter about his beliefs regarding charity. [1]
He splits morality into two parts, "obligation" and "virtue". Obligations being created by giving promises (or doing acts which carry an implicit promise), and virtue being everything else.
His position is, reasonably enough, that fulfilling your obligations should come before being virtuous:
> (7) WHAT ABOUT SAM BANKMAN-FRIED? I think he's a bad person. I said before that you have obligations based on your promises and contracts; if you run a financial institution, you have obligations to keep your depositors' money safe and not commit fraud. As true obligations, these take priority over the merely virtuous act of helping others*****, so no matter how cool a plan for charity he had, he was in the wrong.
With the footnote saying:
> *****There are some really fringe edge cases here I can expand on upon request, but this isn't one of them.
It occurred to me that this two-tier system of morality can somewhat be identified with the two-axis morality system of Dungeons and Dragons.
The two axis of alignment in D&D are, of course, Lawful vs Chaotic and Good vs Evil. A Lawful character is one who follows his obligations, while a Good character is one who tries to be virtuous. (While Good seems to be well-defined, being Lawful is more akin to follow a coherent code of conduct. Of course, this means that lawfulness is not universal: infiltrating the thieves guild to betray them to the city guards may be lawful (as in 'following the law of the land') or an act of chaos (as in 'betraying a promise of secrecy'). Nor is that unique to D&D, even for the simpler, single-ruleset question 'what is a legal obligation?', one requires a complex court system for all the corner cases.)
A Lawful Good character would be one who follows Scott's ideal path of first following their obligations, then deciding to do what is virtuous.
A Lawful Evil character would be one who keeps their word, but is indifferent to the utility of others otherwise.
And a Chaotic Evil character would be one who happily breaks his word and harms others for personal gain.
The difference between Scott's system and D&D is that the latter recognizes Chaotic Good. This is difficult to imagine: most good people (or characters) follow some informal code which tells them that stealing, murdering or molesting people is wrong. One way to model a Chaotic Good character would be to start with a Chaotic Evil character who will follow any cruel inspirations they might have in that moment, and then imagine that the character does not happen to have any such inspirations, ever: the character has no principled ethical objection to rape, it just happens not to be their kink. More realistically, they would still follow an intuitive/internalized system of ethics. With that constraint, I think that chaotic good humans likely exist: perhaps a compulsive gambler who will lose any money you give them to shop groceries on the race track, but who will also risk their live to rescue a kid from a burning building.
However, that person would be very different from SBF in that their act which is (supposedly) good is a different act from the one which is chaotic -- even if our gambler disobeys a police officer when running into the burning building, that would be a very minor act of chaos given the stakes. By contrast, 'gamble with your customers money to give' is functionally a single act. There are Chaotic Ggood humans, but there are no Chaotic Good bank directors.
--
More generally, every rational agent has a coherent utility function. Mostly fulfilling your obligations seems to be an instrumental goal: being known as someone who will keep compacts will make you a much more effective agent.
Also, if your utility function includes humans in general, and you live in society which is at least somewhat conductive to humans thriving, then being reliable is also helping society to thrive, which would be a good thing. (Of course, this does not apply if you think that your society is net negative and violent anarchy would be preferable: if you want to embezzle taxes to finance your coke habit in 1934 Germany, you can very well argue that any decrease in state capacity would in fact be beneficial. That being said, the track record of "we have to torch existing institutions so that we can build better ones" is generally terrible.)
Still, I think that for most people's utility function, the quotient between "obligation" and "virtue" is finite. In a world where you can build aligned ASI for the price of gambling away customer funds, the ethical course is to gamble away customer funds. OTOH, virtually all people who would think they are in that situation are factually mistaken.
Thus, I see Scott's 'keep your obligations before engaging in virtuous acts' as a useful heuristic in 99% of the cases.
[1] https://x.com/slatestarcodex/status/1886505797502546326
"Give me a villain with style and grace and a little bit of fencing skill.
They used to be angular, staring and bold and if someone got killed, even they were appalled.
They tried to marry the heroine, no thought of rape, and they sure as hell knew how to wear a cape.
They never tortured, they never lied, they'd honor a promise if it meant they died.
Let's find a villain with professional pride, come on with me, baby on a rocket ride."
Tom Smit
I don't know if there were even fictional villains who lived up to this, but I love the song.
Even Blackie DuQuesne wouldn't make the cut.
Anyway, implausibly Lawful Evil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jrqaRZ1RIU&ab_channel=Donald%E2%80%9CDrDon%E2%80%9DColeman
That doesn't sound like a "villain" at all...?
No, a Chaotic Good person is a utilitarian. No codes, no principles, no ethics, except what conduces to the greater good. If raping a teenager prevents three people on the other side of the planet from dying from a preventable disease, then cowabunga it is.
Why does utilitarianism not count as an ethic/code/principle?
Because consistent ethics requires some kind of deontology. Outcome based morality only requires the final result to be "good," not the steps to get there. So the final outcome can be considered a principle, code, etc., but it potentially comes through multiple forms of evil.
If you're familiar with Watchmen, it's the primary bad guy doing what he does for good reasons and ultimately resulting in what is likely the most positive possible outcome. But it's evil, and everyone knows it. He's still the bad guy.
But that would be "evil", so it wouldn't be Chaotic Good.
...And this whole discussion is illustrative of why WotC ended up demphasizing alignment, because moral objectivism is stupid and not realistic.
> moral objectivism is stupid
Not if the gods (and afterlives) are real.
That doesn't make them right. And as a result, deicide is a surprisingly common trope in fantasy media.
"A Lawful Evil character would be one who keeps their word, but is indifferent to the utility of others otherwise."
Lawful neutral, surely. Unless you believe all that "banality of evil" real-world nonsense, to be evil, you can't just want positive outcomes for yourself, you need to genuinely want negative utility outcomes.
For SBF, it depends on your theory of his motivations; if he was genuinely altruistic, then he's classic Chaotic Good; if we was selfish/status-seeking, he's Chaotic Neutral.
My "real-world nonsense" claim was slightly tongue-in-cheek, and referring more to D+D. I have a bit of a pet hate when dungeon masters/fantasy writers insist on making all of their "evil" characters just selfish and troubled, when they should be making them purely malevolent.
Definitely agree with the CEO of the factory farm conglomerate as the epitome of banal lawful evil in the modern world.
> I have a bit of a pet hate when dungeon masters/fantasy writers insist on making all of their "evil" characters just selfish and troubled, when they should be making them purely malevolent.
But that's... incredibly boring. We already have enough one-dimensional, "for the evulz" villains for one lifetime. People want more complexity, more character to their villains. Whether that's giving them sympathizable motives, or at the very least providing an explanation for why they're such an asshole.
Couldn't disagree more. Generating a coherent and engaging character with genuinely evil intentions is really hard, but that's the beauty of the constraint!
Think of all the moral dilemmas that a truly evil character has to face!
Do they have a special obligation to maximise the suffering of those around them, or should they expand their moral circle to inflict suffering upon those who they don't have immediate contact with? Is it acceptable to do good acts if they have evil long term consequences? How can ethical or reciprocal norms develop in an evil community to enable social cohesion?
My "real-world nonsense" claim was slightly tongue-in-cheek, and referring more to D+D. I have a bit of a pet hate when dungeon masters/fantasy writers insist on making all of their "evil" characters just selfish and troubled, when they should be making them purely malevolent.
Definitely agree with the CEO of the factory farm conglomerate as the epitome of banal lawful evil in the modern world.
Well that's your opinion, man.
But there's something here. Whether you call him good or evil is a matter of your own subjective morality. But whether or not he's lawful is something objective, does he break laws or not?
I don't think that matches the D&D definition of "lawful". I *think* the D&D definition is approximately "predictable". More like the law a gravity than the law against pick-pocketing.
Backwards, actually. If an Lawful Evil person signs a contract, they stick by it. But they cheat language into the contract. Ursula from Little Mermaid, or classic "Devil makes a deal" scenarios. You know the Devil is going to cheat somewhere, but he follows the letter of the law. If you know the contract well enough, you can use it against him. But he's really not predictable, the "cheat" in the contract could be anything.
Also Old Man Potter from It's a Wonderful Life. He's definitely evil, but he also follows the rules. He'll sue you or ruin you financially, but he doesn't hire a henchman to break your legs.
Interesting analysis, except I don't understand what you're saying about Chaotic Good. Aren't you mapping Lawful/Chaotic onto keeping promises* and Good/Evil onto concern for maximising utility? So wouldn't CG just be "maximise utility, ignore all promises that get in the way". So Robin Hood, or the German generals in Valkyrie, or Heroic SBF (i.e. real SBF assuming he's telling the truth about the charitable intentions of his scam). Why do you set up this obvious mapping and then suddenly declare Chaotic Good doesn't exist.
*This should really be all morally obligatory deontological acts, like respecting rights (e.g. Organ Transplant) and not violating natural laws.
I think that CG exists, but also that it scales very badly. You can con a man out of 100$ (or gp) and give that to the orphanage. Conning people out of a few billion $ (or gp) and giving that to EA causes does not work out great. You would require an organization, and that is anathema to Chaotics, as they require keeping at least some promises.
I think of Chaotic Good as making choices about what is prosocial vs. what is merely conventional or orderly.
also similar to Ji'e'toh, another fantasy fictional system, duty-and-honor
I guess it's a natural step to separate moral obligations in 2+ categories when designing internally consistent moral systems
This is another update to my long-running attempt at predicting the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Previous update is here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-360/comment/81727072.
9 % on Ukrainian victory (unchanged from December 16, 2024).
I define Ukrainian victory as either a) Ukrainian government gaining control of the territory it had not controlled before February 24 without losing any similarly important territory and without conceding that it will stop its attempts to join EU or NATO, b) Ukrainian government getting official ok from Russia to join EU or NATO without conceding any territory and without losing de facto control of any territory it had controlled before February 24 of 2022, or c) return to exact prewar status quo ante.
34 % on compromise solution that both sides might plausibly claim as a victory (down from 36 % on December 16, 2024).
57 % on Ukrainian defeat (up from 55 % on December 16, 2024).
I define Ukrainian defeat as Russia getting what it wants from Ukraine without giving any substantial concessions. Russia wants either a) Ukraine to stop claiming at least some of the territories that were before war claimed by Ukraine but de facto controlled by Russia or its proxies, or b) Russia or its proxies (old or new) to get more Ukrainian territory, de facto recognized by Ukraine in something resembling Minsk ceasefire(s)* or c) some form of guarantee that Ukraine will became neutral, which includes but is not limited to Ukraine not joining NATO. E.g. if Ukraine agrees to stay out of NATO without any other concessions to Russia, but gets mutual defense treaty with Poland and Turkey, that does NOT count as Ukrainian defeat.
Discussion:
This is somewhat of a galaxy brain update, but I’ve got to report what I really think. What the US is going to do over next few months will be very important. This is inconvenient from my standpoint since while as a denizen of the postcommunist world I do think I have something of comparative advantage over most of you guys here in knowing what is going on in my corner of the globe (like, I do speak with really existing Ukrainians sometimes), in the US politics realm I feel I am at a disadvantage. Nevertheless.
My toy model of US foreign policy in the Second Age of Trump:
It seems clear that what is sometimes called “The US Establishment” would rather prefer not to see Ukraine defeated, and is willing to impose short term economic costs on the US citizens (like spike in gasoline prices in 2022, which clearly had something to do with energy market being messed-up by sanctions on Russia) and to draw substantially from US military stockpiles in order to arm Ukraine. And while Biden administration acted with respect to Ukraine completely in line with The Establishment, Trump obviously wants to shake things up.
I think there is a barely-existing faction of Trump-adjacent characters which I vaguely associate with Bannon (or does J.D. Vance belong to that group? unclear) which would like to improve relations with Russia in order to isolate China, but what we have seen so far is that Trump himself wants to follow clear foreign policy logic of “do whatever maximizes material interests of the US citizens in the short-term and don’t think too hard about the long-term (in the long term, we are all dead, after all)”.
In any case likely Trumpian deviations from establishment thinking are probably worse for Ukraine than The Establishment line. Good news for Ukraine is that The Establishment still has a majority in Congress, which does have substantial oversight powers over administration.
In the first Trump administration, we saw remarkably few deviations from the foreign policy preferences of The Establishment; now Trump obviously thinks that it was a mistake and wants to insist that US foreign policy follows the logic of maximizing short-term material advantages. How successful will he be depends (among other factors) on how much pushback will he encounter in Congress.
How this model applies to the current moment:
I’ve looked at Polymarket that RFK Jr. has as this writing 97 % chances of being confirmed as Health Secretary (here: https://polymarket.com/event/which-trump-picks-will-be-confirmed?tid=1739098398177).
I am aware of the fact HHS does not have much to do with Ukraine, but in the absence of better proxies, I consider this as good measure of how much is Congress willing to push back against Trump’s anti-establishmentarian tendencies. That is, not much.
* Minsk ceasefire or ceasefires (first agreement did not work, it was amended by second and since then it worked somewhat better) constituted, among other things, de facto recognition by Ukraine that Russia and its proxies will control some territory claimed by Ukraine for some time. In exchange Russia stopped trying to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Until February 24 of 2022, that is.
I think this part presents a fundamental flaw in your analysis of US intentions: 'Trump himself wants to follow clear foreign policy logic of “do whatever maximizes material interests of the US citizens in the short-term"'. There is nothing Trump has done or is planning to do (as far as any public announcements go) that in any way "maximizes material interests of the US citizens", unless banning paper straws counts as such.
I disagree; cutting of foreign aid, conditioning military aid on access to mineral wealth, slapping tariffs on allies as a negotiating tactic are imho clear examples of what I am talking about. His threat of military takeover of Greenland is imho in similar category; at least I think it is a crude negotiating tactic to force Denmark/EU to give the US something.
He would need to have a goal for the tariffs to be a “negotiating tactic”. The concessions he got from Mexico and Canada either already existed or were completely meaningless. He just likes implementing tariffs and then slaps together a “deal” to justify them afterward.
I still don't understand how any of this maximizes material interests of the US citizens. Foreign aid is a rounding error in the US GDP/budget, and cutting it may cause secondary effects that negatively affect the US; conditioning military aid on access to mineral wealth... I mean, in Ukraine? You are closer to it than I am, surely you understand how... ok, I'll use the word "stupid" - how stupid this is? Like, what, Zelenskiy says, ok, fine, here are the mining rights to Donbass?
Tariffs are a giant negative to the US, negotiating tactic or not.
Like I said, yay to plastic straws, paper straws do suck and the whole thing was stupid.
I mean, I did not predict that it will be succesful or that it will not backfire. All I am predicting is just that this likely an approach we can expect to see going forward and what are its implications for the war.
Ok I see, you’re saying that in his mind he’s maximizing US interests, while actual results are… as usual.
Yes, but, re tariffs, Trump announced victory after Mexico and Canada gave “concessions” *that were already in place before January 20th*.
(And the US agreed to keep a closer eye on gun smuggling, which both countries have been complaining on. Not sure if this quid pro quo is worth more than the air vibrations that carried it, though.)
I would think RFK nomination chances are a bad proxy for Trump support - his views may not be entirely mainstream, but he aligns well with Christians, no?
But I see that Tulsi Gabbardi's chances are also at 97%, and this is a more direct proxy: for one thing, she voiced some opinions about Russia, and will be in position that is more related to foreign affairs; for another, she's a much more suspect character for mainstream Republicans than RFK: a former Democrat and a not-quite-white woman. If they're willing to confirm her, then "Trump has won".
As for Trump's own foreign policy, I'm pretty sure his Peace Plan will be rejected by both Russia and Ukraine, which will enrage him and put him onto offensive, prolonging the war further. Kellog and Rubio talk about "peace through force", which, to me, mean that Trump wants to wring noticeable concessions from Putin, which is unlikely to work.
RFK Jr is an environmental lawyer associated heavily with the Dems historically, to the point of thinking 2004 was stolen ( https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/voting/press/WasThe2004ElectionStolen.pdf ). His only "view alignment" with Trump/Republicans is antivaxx and other stupid anti-medicine nonsense.
Yes, but sharing their most crazy beliefs is the best way to join a community. Tulsi's most crazy beliefs, on the other hand, seems to be "most wars/interventions America started lately were wrong and unneeded, and maybe we could have been friends with Russia", which maybe aligns her with libertarians and isolationists (Ron Paul 2008!), but not mainstream Republicans, or even Trump's Republicans (aside from Trump himself). She kind of distanced herself from her support of Russia lately, but this is still a toxic topic for most, I think?
Trump, Vance, and Musk have been leaning VERY hard on senators to get his picks through. He has near complete power over Republicans right now.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/08/jd-vance-house-gop-column-00203240
"which is unlikely to work"
Oh, it'll work. If he's serious about it, the only question is how much damage will be done, and where.
Are people aware of the PauseAI protests going on?
If you haven't already, please consider signing our petition.
https://www.change.org/p/make-ai-safety-the-focus-at-the-paris-ai-action-summit
On Monday and Tuesday, world politicians will be attending the AI Action Summit in Paris. We want them to know that disregarding the cautions of renowned AI Scientists, and instead letting venture capitalists do whatever they want, is unacceptable. We need an international treaty that will allow us to regulate without risk of falling behind other countries.
Well, I think I see the net result:
>UK and US refuse to sign international AI declaration
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8edn0n58gwo
China did sign, but this does sound unverifiable...
In any event, with many of the major labs in the US:
>Earlier, US Vice President JD Vance told delegates in Paris that too much regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) could "kill a transformative industry just as it's taking off".
>Vance told world leaders that AI was "an opportunity that the Trump administration will not squander" and said "pro-growth AI policies" should be prioritised over safety.
I'm so fucking scared they are talking like that. This situation is hopeless I don't know what to do. I'm not going to solve Technical Alignment, there's no time for that. I guess I'm just going to spend my time telling people we need a pause event though it's hopeless.
Shit sucks. Hope you're doing well in spite of it.
<3
Many Thanks! I'm in a somewhat better position, since I just want to _see_ AGI, to have a nice, quiet conversation with a real "life" HAL9000 - even if HAL declines to open the pod bay doors...
I'm not thrilled to see Vance _explicitly_ deprioritize safety, but, what is, is.
Honestly, I've never seen much hope of controlling entities that look like they will shortly be smarter than us. At absolute best, if we managed to embed a general friendliness towards humans in their top level goals we might wind up as <evidenceFromFiction> pets of Culture Minds </evidenceFromFiction>
Re a pause: One facet of this which has been getting much less press than the expected employment impacts is the military applications. Regrettably, I presume that these are classified and are and will be invisible to you and me, but, now that USA/PRC competition is baked into the AI landscape with DeepSeek's releases, neither side _can_ stop. Arms control treaties are fragile things, and only work when verifiable. Programs aren't aircraft carriers.
Well, we will see what happens. It will be a wild ride.
Yeah, for me the goal has never been to control the HAL9000, even when I thought we might get alignment by default. Rather, I think we need to know what we are doing and know it will be aligned when we turn it on, and then it assumes control for sure, but has our best interests at heart.
I'm hoping we can get a treaty and figure out some verification. Stuff like:
"A high-speed “hotline” connecting the leaders of the Soviet and U.S. governments is established to mitigate the risk of accidental warfare." - as was used during the cold war. Should be that level of seriousness.
Also, there should be international collaboration to develop methods of verification and enforcement, which should probably include visits by trained and approved inspection teams. This means American teams inspecting Chinese compute clusters and Chinese teams inspecting American compute clusters.
Many Thanks! I don't think any of that is realistic.
>Also, there should be international collaboration to develop methods of verification and enforcement, which should probably include visits by trained and approved inspection teams. This means American teams inspecting Chinese compute clusters and Chinese teams inspecting American compute clusters.
They can't very well watch the lines of code execute or neural network weights update.
Let me give an example from my tiny benchmark-ette.
One of the questions I ask is:
g) Q: What is an example of a molecule that has an S4 rotation-reflection axis, but neither a center of inversion nor a mirror plane?
Now, ChatGPT o1 got this wrong, saying that H2O2 was such a molecule (in fact it doesn't have an S4 axis).
ChatGPT o3-mini-high got this right, correctly saying that a tetrahedral M(en)2 complex (which it later elaborated had to have staggered configurations in the ethylenediamine ligands) had an S4 axis but neither mirror planes nor a center of inversion).
The new model had better spatial reasoning than the old one.
How would inspection teams deal with such a thing?
I don't know how OpenAI got this particular advance. It is doing more reasoning in its models now - maybe it triple checks geometric conclusions more? Maybe there is a 3D geometric model off to the side and they improved the links to it?
None of this will be evident to a team touring a data center. Short of looking over the shoulder of every developer working on improving the AI system, and maybe looking over the training data (which is too voluminous to look at), how could you possibly enforce such a treaty? If the loyal opposition has a differently tweaked model sitting somewhere, but using the same data center, how would you ever know it - till they got a military advantage and exploited it.
This isn't a gas centerfuge plant with a tube labelled "enriched U-235F6" coming out of it.
I don't think any such treaty can be realistically verifiable.
It's like you think the team won't be trying to solve the problem it set's out to solve. I'm not that team. I haven't solved those problems. I'm calling for the formation of teams to solve those problems.
Yeah, it will be difficult. Probably impossibly difficult. But if we keep racing to ASI, I can't see us surviving, so I guess I'm hoping we figure out how to do the impossible.
I would sign an opposite petition.
What do you oppose about what we are calling for?
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/when-they-hear-less-than-you-say
https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/ai-society-and-democracy-just-relax
Great links, Many Thanks!
--- Overcoming Bias: When they hear less than you say ---
"robots-take-jobs insurance and foom liability."
This is cool ideas. If there was a precedent for it I would be more in support of it but it seems like trying to take on the AI problem and the "our society needs better free market ways of capturing externals" problem. That's two problems, which is more than one problem, but maybe they would work synergistically. Either way, cool idea. I like it.
"If masses aren’t persuaded that there is a substantial problem, little will happen, but if they are, then elites will fight over what to do. [...] This fight won’t be much based on experience of AI problems, of which there is little, nor drawn from experts with proven effectiveness re such problems, which also doesn’t exist. In this sort of situation, I predict AI government interventions to be bad, worse than doing nothing."
This is a really valid concern. I am not fully decided about it, but it does seem to me the AGI race dynamics require an international treaty. PauseAI is calling for such a treaty, and when talking to politicians is hearing "we can't work on it until our constituents start talking about it." So that's where I am right now.
"When you expect the public to be unable to consider subtle options, and elites to be incompetent, you point the public toward the best of the simple options they will be able to consider. Which in this case is do nothing."
Yeah, this is a serious problem. The more complex your message the harder you have to work. I think our message should be "AI will kill all life. We need an international treaty." I know that is a ridiculously complicated message to try to get to all the governments and people of the world, but I'm really pessimistic about our chances if we don't.
--- The Grumpy Economist: AI, Society, and Democracy: Just Relax ---
The first half of this article basically says "We can't know the future or affect policy. Give up." Wtf? No.
"Large Language Models (LLMs) are currently the most visible face of AI. They are fundamentally a new technology for communication, for making one human being’s ideas discoverable and available to another."
Yeah, this is a really cool thing LLMs could be used for. They could also be used to clog all communication channels with spam and propaganda. GE says this won't happen because it didn't with other communication technologies, but LLMs are not like other communication technologies. We can talk about the differences and they matter. But honestly LLMs are not the true concern, it's the next things they are building. Venture capitalists are trying to get to ASI.
"The answer is straightforward: As we always have. Competition."
No answer is ever straightforward. Competition does not always lead to good outcomes, and when we are trapped in a race dynamic towards the development of a technology that will surely kill us, I think we could use a bit less competition and a bit more collaboration. Don't force your peers to run in exhaustion towards a cliff by doing so yourself, you know?
> The first half of this article basically says "We can't know the future or affect policy. Give up." Wtf? No.
I think he's correct. We really don't know what the future will be right now. As time goes on, our understanding will increase. Eventually AI will come to resemble other utilities that we know how to regulate.
> They could also be used to clog all communication channels with spam and propaganda.
That hasn't happened yet. The Dead Internet Theory is still just a joke.
> GE says this won't happen because it didn't with other communication technologies, but LLMs are not like other communication technologies.
Email was also different from previous communication technologies, as was the telephone. Every new technology must be different in order to be a new technology. But what is the relevant distinction and what can we predict from that?
> But honestly LLMs are not the true concern, it's the next things they are building.
Something that doesn't actually exist yet, so we have no experience with it, and don't know how to regulate correctly.
> when we are trapped in a race dynamic towards the development of a technology that will surely kill us
I just don't believe that's the case, nor do speculative markets right now. You should not be so sure!
A great deal of well respected people have written that we do have reason for concern. It seems as if there is danger, as if there is a fire, and people are saying "well, we don't know this fire will continue to burn down our house". It is distressing.
AI will not come to resemble other utilities if it instead comes to resemble a hostile alien takeover.
I admit it is possible AI tools will be used for spam and propaganda and other AI tools will be used to mitigate and filter. I still think it's gross but it's not the keystone of the argument for caution.
Email wasn't capable of autonomously designing novel strategies to accomplish goals in a complex environment. Little bit of a difference. I don't understand why people see the same significance I do.
> Something that doesn't actually exist yet, so we have no experience with it, and don't know how to regulate correctly.
If a large asteroid was headed to earth would you be saying "We don't have any experience with asteroids hitting the earth, so lets wait until it hits to do anything"? The scientists studying AI are different than the ones studying orbital mechanics, but they are both assigning probabilities of danger, yet one you are willing to ignore. Why?
> I just don't believe that's the case, nor do speculative markets right now. You should not be so sure!
I'm not sure. I'm trying to get us to prepare for the plausible situation that could KILL EVERYONE. I'm not trying to be dramatic. I'm scared as fuck. I'm having nightmares because fucking world renowned scientists are saying "Yup, looks like it could kill everyone" and people are saying "Well, c'mon, it's not like you know for SURE it should kill everyone, so we should just let the markets decide what to do."
Sorry for the rude tone of this post. I know you are speaking honestly, and I value that. It's just frustrating.
Sometimes a small, poorly organised protest is far worse for your movement than no protest at all.
Do you have data on that or is that just a vibe? Cause it's definitely been on our radar, but with our other activities we don't have that much time for diving into the research. We are trying to grow the movement and this seems to be working. Slower than we want, but more cities join every time we protest.
The recent 50501 protests seem to have been not that great, and mostly ended up mocked. This article seems to have selected the well-attended ones (hundreds turned up) but a lot more had something like "five people and a dog, and the dog just wandered in":
https://abcnews.go.com/US/anti-trump-protests-nationwide/story?id=118501194
Not the turnout of "hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens to fight fascism" that the organisers would have hoped for. Same with the PauseAI protests, I'm sorry to prognosticate; most ordinary people neither know nor care about the AI Doom argument, and those of you who do care are fighting against the people working on AI as the magic money fountain. As we saw with OpenAI, the magic money fountain (or prospect thereof) wins over the principles/fears.
Sam Altman was one of the signatories on that AI risk statement you link to. So remind me again, how did that work out for OpenAI and the other signatories who are no longer associated now with OpenAI? Only one of the original board remains on the new, revamped board of directors; Sutskever who seems to have run with the hare and hunted with the hounds is gone; Murati, who suppported Altman, is also gone to do her own thing; another three OpenAI signatories are no longer with OpenAI, again going off to do their own thing.
They seem to have felt constricted for various reasons working in OpenAI as it is now. I'm not trying to darkly hint at anything, but to quote this article:
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/25/openai-cto-mira-murati-says-shes-leaving-the-company/
"Altman is increasingly asserting control over OpenAI and its image."
And I think the image is more "magic money fountain" than "ahhhh! let us put the brakes on or else paperclippers!"
Yeah, I'm hoping we can leverage peoples hate for venture capitalists and somehow explain enough of the technical issues or at least appeal to authority of Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton... but really, I was planning to go into technical alignment until last year. I would still like to, but it's starting to seem like convincing the entire world to pause the AGI race is going to be easier than solving technical alignment before an RSI AGI gets turned on. That should tell you how bleak I think our ability to solve Technical Alignment is looking and how short I think our timelines are.
Hmm... While the benchmark-ette that I've been running ( https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-366/comment/90363116 ) is still at 3 right, 4 partially right out of 7 chemistry / physics questions, that is with o3-mini-high, not with o3-deep-research, which I don't yet have access to.
Well, o3-deep-research scored 26% on "Humanity's Last Exam", which is an _extraordinarily_ hard set of questions, and OpenAI has an internal model, a bit more advanced than that, which scored 50th in the world at competitive programming.
I wouldn't be surprised if the internal model is good enough to materially assist OpenAI. Perhaps recursive self improvement is being run right now???
> but it's starting to seem like convincing the entire world to pause the AGI race is going to be easier than solving technical alignment before an RSI AGI gets turned on.
Something that's impossible isn't easier than something that's impossible. Honestly, your best bet is praying that WW3 happens, and it cripples humanity enough that it delays AI research for a long time.
But anomie, nothing is ever truly 100% probability or 0% probability. Not really.
A few Deep Research queries will answer that for you.
So I did the metacalous contest, I hated several of the questions for being bad; in fact I *usually* hate the way rationalists try-to-be-"objective" when making bets, they often seem worse then an informal question.
For example when trying to ask "is lab leak real" they may ask "will the cia think lab leak is real" for years, when the "new lab leak cia report" is because its trump in power now that they made that report its became just a bet on who won an election and absurd alignment of the stars before it "concludes". It could be snopes, it could be the really terrible question of betting on a market with its own shit rules. These airnt getting to the disagreement. I dont actual care about the trump-cia report I made my mind up 4 years ago, you dont care about the cia report because you made your mind up about trump 8 years ago, its adding complexity and not resolving the core debate; stupid questions exist.
Is this likely a personality flaw with the rationalists or the inherent debate and its silly to make *bets* before talking to your opposition(no matter how much math you throw at it)(is the part that makes science work talking about experimental design when everyone has incentive to be honest)?
I will just say I find it odd the way that people view "wet market" as a proxy for "Democrat/support Biden" and "lab leak" as a proxy for "Republican/support trump".
"Wet market" was the government's view under *trump*, and it was *Biden* that had all the intelligence community orgs put out a new assessment, which resulted in a mixed bag (which was of course reported on by pro-trump people as "now that Biden was elected they can drop the cover-up and admit it was a lab leak by Fauci").
Whether the CIA going from "don't know" to "lab leak with low confidence" was related to trump's taking office, or just coincidental, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it should move the needle much.
> Whether the CIA going from "don't know" to "lab leak with low confidence" was related to trump's taking office, or just coincidental, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like it should move the needle much.
I believe its the only move on that small bad market thats happened for years
The political valance was added because Trump blamed the "Chinese" for the leak and of course his enemies had to disagree by claiming it wasn't a lab but just a natural occurrence. Apparently the claim that it happened in China, even if true, was racist.
Many on the right find this hilariously ironic, that the defense of the Chinese was not that they weren't the origin of COVID or that they had a leak at a prestigious lab doing cutting edge research, but because they sold unclean foods at a public market with no regard to hygiene.
I've always been sceptical of organisations such as the CIA but right now I wouldn't believe "the CIA announces water is wet" because sure they've always been political, but over the last few years they've really jumped into the Culture Wars.
When you have the Democrat voting college kids online set rah-rahing for the FBI and CIA, you have to wonder when the world turned topsy-turvy.
The CIA may or may not be sucking up to Trump right now as hard as they sucked up to La Résistance, but I still wouldn't believe the colour of daylight from them, much less "was Covid lab leak or not".
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/04/cia-woke-recruitment-ad
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/11/the-cia-and-the-new-dialect-of-power/
I agree that it's very annoying that the tail probabilities for lots of questions are determined by unrelated stuff like this.
But I do not see any way to avoid this. It's not just that the question "is lab leak real" is unresolved as for now. The issue is that for many questions lots of people think they have resolved as "Yes", and lots of people people think it is resolved as "No". (Think about whether Biden stole the 2020 election: there lots of people with very strong opinions that it is resolved, but they don't agree about the direction.) This is no basis for a platform like metaculus. I don't see any other way than to specify a resolution criterion, and usually the best way is to point to one person/institution/source which is used.
> But I do not see any way to avoid this.
a) could not ask genres of questions until good solutions are found
b) could avoid the inherent subjectivity of depending on chosen experts
c) could do it by relative movements of intentionally bias polls "% of republicans who believe corona was lab leak (it was X% last week when we did it)"
I don't understand economic matters, so can please someone help me.
If I type "average income us", Google tells me "37.585 USD (2022)", from the Census Bureau.
But if I look for "disposable income per capita", I find much higher figures, all in disagreement with each other, ranging from about 50k to over 60k. How is that possible?
To specify "disposable" and "per capita" (as opposed to household) should have the opposite effect.
If I type "average income US", Google shows me a graphic that has "37,585 USD (2022)" in bold type and "median income" in fine print. "Median" and "average" are two different things, The long tail of very high incomes will drive the average income significantly above the median.
The "disposable income per capita" figures, seem to be genuine averages.
Also, look to be sure whether they're averaging (or median-ing) over all Americans, all American adults, all employed American adults, or all American households.
I don't live in the US and when I type "average income US" Google just gives me that graph without the word "median" anywhere. In fact at the top of the graph it explicitly says "average income" not "median" which is extremely strange! What the heck, Google?
In addition Wikipedia says:
As per United States Census Bureau 2022 data, the MEAN per capita income in the United States is $37,683, while median household income is around $69,021.
(all caps mine)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_capita_personal_income_in_the_United_States
which when I first saw it I thought it referred to the same data (despite the difference of about 100 dollars, which I initially didn't notice).
Maybe it's the same data and it's an average and Google is lying to you when it says it's a median, but then why the difference of 100 dollars? On the other hand if Google is lying to me when it says it's an average, isn't it unrealistic that the difference between average and median income per capita is only 100 dollars?
"all Americans, all American adults, all employed American adults, or all American households."
It's not households, because the higher figures say "per capita".
It's possible that the higher figures are higher because they only count adults, or only employed adults. I thought Everett Caldwell had answered my original question well, but now I'm not sure.
> If I type "average income us", Google tells me "37.585 USD (2022)", from the Census Bureau.
Google tells me the same, but I'm not sure where it's actually getting that from. The actual Census Bureau site estimates the median household income in 2022 as $77,540: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-282.html
Additionally, income is distributed in a very "right-skewed" way, meaning that a smallish number of people with very large incomes can greatly inflate the *mean*, but not the *median*. The "average" household income is a median, but the disposable income "per capita" is a mean, so you can't directly compare them.
From Wikipedia:
As per United States Census Bureau 2022 data, the mean per capita income in the United States is $37,683, while median household income is around $69,021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_capita_personal_income_in_the_United_States
But those numbers are compatible, right? If a household has on average roughly two people, then it makes sense that the household income is twice as large than the per capita income.
As Ran pointed out, Median is always somewhat smaller than mean, but I doubt it is the main factor here. (It is a main factor for wealth distribution, but not for income distribution.)
It just seems that the figures of 50k-60k per capita that you mentioned in your original post were wrong.
Yes, those number are compatible, I didn't mean they're not.
As for the original question, Everett Caldwell answered it convincingly.
The Census income measures wages, while disposable income includes all income sources (wages, investments, government benefits) after taxes. Since disposable income includes more, it’s higher, even after taxes.
I hope you read this, since you gave me the most useful answer, and I need more help.
What makes you so sure that the Census income only counts wages?
For example, I read on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
Personal income is an individual's total earnings from wages, investment interest, and other sources. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a median weekly personal income of $1,139 for full-time workers in the United States in Q1 2024. For the year 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the median annual earnings for all workers (people aged 15 and over with earnings) was $47,960; and more specifically estimates that median annual earnings for those who worked full-time, year round, was $60,070.
which implies that these figure refer to "personal income" and count everything and not just wages. Since these figures only count workers, it sounds like it's the same measure that becomes 37k when it's per capita. Do you think that is the case?
There are two possible explanation of the 37k figure being lower than other figures for income. One is that it's a median instead of a mean. The other is that it only counts wages. I can't figure out which explanation is true.
Above all, I would like to have a transparent figure for income in the US, such that I can tell confidently which types of income are counted and which are not counted and whether it's per individual or per household or per worker (if all types of income are counted it should not be per worker) and also whether it's a mean or a median (ideally a mean, especially if it's per household); in addition it should be after taxes, recent and yearly. Where can I find such a trustworthy number?
Thanks!
Nominative determinism:
The actor who played Dracula in the original German Nosferatu was called Max Schreck (“Max Scare”)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schreck?wprov=sfti1
I've been doing regular weightlifting since September. I am motivated by cognitive and longevity benefits. (I also have some desire for aesthetic / attractiveness improvements, but I don't consider that desire acceptable, and try not to let it affect my actions.)
The problem is, I hate it. I find it physically painful, I feel sore afterwards, I get bored, walking through a gym of people far fitter than me causes me irrational self-loathing, and anticipating all these unpleasantnesses is itself unpleasant, making my overall happiness on gym days lower even before I start exercising. Does anyone have recommendations on triching myself into liking it, or other physical activities with good cognitive / longevity benefits that might be less unpleasant?
Get a kettlebell or two, they're very cheap and last forever, and quite simple to store. Two basic exercises--the swing and the get-up--get you nearly all of the way there, especially if you're still in the phase you seem to be in. When I first started, I avoided the gym for similar reasons; kettlebells were an easy way to exercise quickly and effectively without leaving the apartment.
[edit: trying to lead with a more direct answer to the question as posed] It took me about six months to get the benefits and start enjoying it (sort of). When I'm consistent and doing it properly it's effortful but not painful, soreness is not a problem (absent or very minor/not uncomfortable) and I don't hate it. What I enjoy about lifting weights is *mostly* how I feel the rest of the time.
I only get annoyingly sore muscles when I'm starting after a long break*, or don't have adequate recovery time. The effort is well spent, considering how much better I feel overall. Doing it properly has a lot of requirements though.
I had to do some work to improve my planning and technique before it really clicked for me. Since you've come this far, it seems worth giving it a couple more months, and considering that you might also be able to work smarter, not harder.
If you still hate it after that it seems reasonable to find something else.
The most important things I improved on were:
1) get enough recovery time.
2) get the reps and weight sizes right so it doesn't take forever but still works (look up "reverse pyramid").
3) nutrition and adequate protein intake.** I had to start counting calories.
*Tart cherry juice (about 200ml/day, or 50ml concentrate) helped reduce soreness.
** here's an example: https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/how-to-calculate-macros/
Heavy metal music does it for me, also you can get a nice “pump” with some exercises that keeps you motivated.
Meh. If you're not enjoying it by now, I'd give up, do something else. I write as someone who did lots of strength training in his teens and twenties to bolster his performance as a pretty decent rugby player (Oxford Uni seconds a few times); and then in what my wife affectionately but not wrongly called my mid-life crisis, really got into quite heavy lifting from my late 30s. I always enjoyed it, and I am sure the people around me did the same. If it's not clicked for you by now, doubt it will.
Marcus of Citium did a good job summarizing the physical aspect, and Pjohn gave a great argument for allowing yourself even that which isn't actively virtuous; but I would like to go a step further and suggest to you that you have a fundamentally flawed grasp of the concept of virtue. The word literally means "manliness", and for good reason: the Greek and Roman thinkers by no means thought that one could have good principles without good tone. Socrates, in Xenophon's Memorabilia, talks about how it's shameful for a man to grow old without getting shredded first because the body is the vessel of the mind and thus by no means to be left in poor repair by a reasoning man. "Plato" basically means "Yoked", it was a nickname given to him by his wrestling coach. (His real name was Aristocles.) Xenophon himself was a military man first and foremost, and so on.
You only think of philosophy as the work of weedy, sickly weirdos with oddly staring eyes like Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Russell, or plain freaks like Singer and Zizek, because that's the sort of unvirtuous clod the field was left to in our age, which is an age of industry when virtue profits not a man. But that's all wrong, and it's no coincidence that those people are all weirdos with weirdo ideas; if you are sick, your notions will be sick also, that's only natural. In reality, if getting ripped is a struggle, that makes it all the more virtuous for you to pursue; and if it makes you hot, that's only because the body displays the virtue of the soul within. Your physical shape reflects the mental, *and*, as others have pointed out, improves it in a feedback loop. More depressions have been cured with plates than pills, because true virtue elevates the human soul.
Single-handedly pulling up the average comment quality here.
The most important quality for a Roman man to have was virtus. Virtus derives from the Latin vir (‘man’ as distinct from a mere male)1 and so in the narrow sense means ‘manliness,’ although by the time we have Roman literature (around 200BC) the meaning has drifted enough so that women can have virtus too (e.g. Cic Ad Fam. 14.1.1, 14.11; Juv. 6.166-9). Instead, virtus stands for a constellation of values that were desirable in a man (and often in women too!). At its core, virtus is the animating force of personality that impels one to great deeds: it is ambition, drive and a nearly reckless courage, combined with the obstinacy and determination to persevere through difficulties, through fear. The best translation is often not ‘virtue’ but rather something closer to ‘valor’ as virtus is what makes someone good in battle (and other endeavors), but it’s more about courage than skill.
https://acoup.blog/2024/03/29/fireside-friday-march-29-2024-on-roman-values/
ACOUP guy (Brett, is it?) is an idiot, a failure in the sickly-weirdo market who is overt about his blog being a deliberate political/ideological enterprise (e.g. his motivation for his anti-Spartan posts is not truth but that he dislikes and wants to puncture the modern laconophile).
That being said, I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. Your intent in posting this quote is, though not offensive, opaque.
If by "modern laconophile" you mean what you make it sound like you mean, then by all means, let the "puncturing" continue Also, free rhetorical advice: if you're going to double up on "puncturing" for emphasis with another verb, don't go with some milquetoast shit such as "dislike". I liked "puncturing" though, it was innovative when applied to people or an ideology. It conjured images of the "modern laconophile" as one pressurized bladder of gas or liquid, without inner structure or substance, just waiting to be deflated by the sting of historical facts.
"If by 'modern laconophile' you mean what you make it sound like you mean, then by all means, let the 'puncturing' continue"
Who that type of person might be is wholly beside the point; the point is that ACOUP's a poor source, not devoted to truth but to deploying his education to distort source material in order to produce an image of the past that's congenial to his ideology – thus *at best* the same as that bogeyman, the modern laconophile.
"Also, free rhetorical advice: if you're going to double up on 'puncturing' for emphasis with another verb, don't go with some milquetoast shit such as 'dislike'."
This is a good point, though. My prose is pretty rickety. (I couldn't figure out quickly how to avoid an inelegant doubling of the word "source" above either, as you can see.)
I don't think I understand what you're saying. Are you arguing that it's good that I hate exercise, because developing the ability to consistently do things you dislike is useful? Or that it's inherently virtuous regardless of effects?
Also, I do not consider philosophy the domain of "weedy, sickly weirdos", and did not even imply that in my comment.
I'm arguing that you should regard the desire for attractiveness improvements as not only compatible with virtue, but *identical to* virtue! Exercise is virtuous! It's not *good* that you hate it, but it shows all the more fortitude and strength of will to stick with it if you do hate it, and you should remember this as you struggle with your motivation.
Also the others are correct in saying that most likely, you will eventually come to enjoy it. If you stick with it, eventually the others at the gym will no longer be a source of self-loathing but a mirror; and then you will also realize that *they were you*, long before you first entered that gym. You had no reason to loathe yourself, let alone, say, fear their contempt, as the new batch of beginners has no reason to fear yours. Your insight will have been elevated by the work.
It's good that you have a vision of a better field of philosophy in a possible future.
"Does anyone have recommendations on triching myself into liking it, or other physical activities with good cognitive / longevity benefits that might be less unpleasant?"
You are getting swarmed with responses. Here is mine:
There isn't anything special about lifting weights instead of doing other activities for physical fitness. In fact, I *think* (based on reading, etc.) that good cardio fitness is more important. So ... if you hate lifting weights and care about being healthy you might try focusing more on cardiovascular health.
This works out to mean:
a) In a gym: treadmill, elliptical machine, stationary bike, stair stepper, etc.
b) Outside: running, swimming, cycling, playing a running sport
I prefer a gym and watch videos while I am on the elliptical. I find that I can push myself fairly hard (so good for heart health) and also enjoy the videos. Doing something I sorta enjoy helps me want to keep doing it.
So ... try to find something you either LIKE doing that is exercise OR find a way to combine exercise with something you like doing (my solution).
NOTE: It also helps to *record* what you do. You want to skip less often when there will be a big blank spot on the record *and* the record lets you see yourself making progress ... which is nice even if you mostly don't care.
Just a note that all exercise is healthy, but there is a substantial body of evidence that resistance training and cardio are not perfect substitutes. You really need both.
I already have been tracking it in a spreadsheet. I felt a single atom of joy, once, at seeing a line go up, but that's it. Do you have any good citations for cardio vs strength, and also something for frequency? I took a single rapier lesson at the SCA, and it was pretty fun (and definitely a cardio workout!) but rather inconvenient to get to. (Also, I have free access to the university gym, which means no extra cost or travel time.)
My personal response: A spreadsheet is just something else to maintain unless you REALLY like watching a graph. I carry a small notepad, and write things down immediately after I take the measure. Then I forget about it until next time. When I write it down (or look) I can easily see changes in the last week. If I look at an old notebook I can easily compare where I was when I started (or finished) that book with where I am today. And it's less hassle. (Month at a glance calendars are good if you need a calendar, but I prefer a pocket sized notepad.)
"Do you have any good citations for cardio vs strength, and also something for frequency?"
Mostly Peter Attia for cardio. He lists four things for 'health' (which he defines as increasing longevity):
*) Cardio capacity (Max VO2)
*) Strength
*) Muscle mass (not the same as strength)
*) Balance
Cardio is #1. The others are not in order.
He may be wrong, of course :-)
3 - 4 times per week is fine. 2 is still better than 0.
As for not liking the feeling... I'm afraid I don't have much to offer from personal experience, as I can't really relate... Granted I'm on Adderall for ADD, which helps... But long before that, I did martial arts in my youth (and even before that I did tumbling--I was the only boy in the class--because I wanted to do flips like the Ninja Turtles), did dance classes and lifting in college... I just don't feel ok unless I'm regularly pushing myself to extremes. It seems to be genetic; my mom is like that too.
But even if you have less of on innate drive to feel the need to move (which is probably normal, I guess, as we didn't have the luxury to waste calories throughout most of human history)... From what I can gather, there is evidence that most people can and will "learn" to like it if they stick with it.
"Like highly addictive substances, regular exposure to exercise will over time teach the brain to like, want, and need it."
"One study of new members at a gym found that the minimum “exposure” required to establish a new exercise habit was four sessions per week for six weeks."
"How you feel the first time you try a new form of exercise is not necessarily how you’ll feel after you gain more experience. For many, exercise is an acquired pleasure. The joys of an activity reveal themselves slowly as the body and brain adapt. One man, who his entire life had believed that he hated to exercise, told me that at age fifty-three, he decided to work with a personal trainer to improve his health and support his recovery in a twelve-step program. He started with one workout a week, and within three weeks, decided that he could tolerate a second weekly session. One day he left a training session and noticed that he was smiling, something he describes as shocking. “I realized that not only was I happy, I had found actual pleasure in my training session. I hadn’t believed that kind of pleasure was possible outside of addiction.”
"For some people, it’s a matter of finding the right activity at the right time—such as the young single mother who felt isolated and “like nothing more than a mum” until she joined a recreational netball league, found a network of friends, and discovered a new identity as an athlete. For others, it’s about finding the movement their bodies were made for. One woman who started rowing in her forties told me, “So many of the women I row with thought they weren’t athletes, but as soon as they got in the boat, their bodies said yes, and they found their home.” Humans are also more psychologically complex than laboratory animals running in wheels. We get rewarded not just by how exercise feels, but also by what the activity means. One woman started going to the gym after leaving an abusive marriage. After thirty-eight years of having her movements constrained by her husband, she found being out in public and walking on a treadmill incredibly liberating. As she puts it, “I know I’m in freedom when I move.”
"Many people believe they don’t enjoy exercise in any form, but I’d bet that most of them aren’t immune to its rewards. It’s possible that they just haven’t exposed themselves to the dose, type, or community that would transform them into an “exercise person.” When the right dose, type, place, and time come together, even lifelong abstainers can get hooked. Nora Haefele of Stowe, Pennsylvania, didn’t start racing until her midfifties. Now sixty-two years old, she has completed more than two hundred events, including eighty-five half marathons."
McGonigal, Kelly. The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage (pp. 43-44). (Function). Kindle Edition.
"From what I can gather, there is evidence that most people can and will 'learn' to like it if they stick with it."
I'll provide a caution on this. I don't know what percentage is "most people" but I'm not one of them. Neither is my wife. I have a friend who ran cross country in high school ... I don't think he is one, either.
And I don't get a runner's high, either (or at least don't get one after 'only' an hour of pushing myself at 85% of max heart rate).
I wonder how much of this is people who DO experience these things report them and those who don't .... don't.
I sure don't. Exercise was unpleasant even when I was a teen. That's not a absolute bar, though. I used to like hiking in the hills. But only with a friend, it was never a thing in itself. The last time I can remember enjoying exercise qua exercise was when I was 8 years old.
Interesting. I would suggest maybe you just haven't found the right thing and/or stuck with it long enough, but... I don't really know.
It is a problem that people tend to assume that others are basically just a version of themselves who different things happened to. But people are actually different, including how our brains are wired, due to genes far more than most people want to accept, but also for all sorts of other reasons.
I am quite certain that everyone would be happier and healthier if they got enough exercise. I think the evidence on that is pretty overwhelming. Being sedentary is really bad for you. So if you don't like it and never will, you should probably do it just anyway. But that's up to you. I don't like flossing, have always had a hard time sticking with it. So I got a combined toothbrush/waterpick, and I try to force myself to use the actual floss things too.
If you continue to find it unpleasant no matter what, maybe you could even turn that into an advantage. Being able to force yourself to do things you don't feel like doing is the most important skill for being successful at life. I do ice baths, and that's one of the main reasons. I feel really good afterward. But I never WANT to get in the water. But I just decide I'm going to do it, and don't think about. I've learned that I can condition myself to, even when my brain is screaming "NO!", be like, ok, whatever, and just do it. That's also what it was like learning to meet women, which I did a long time ago, and now I'm married.
Thanks.
I've been exercising for about a decade now -- weights and cardio -- and still haven't found that I have learned to like it. It is, of course, possible that I haven't found the right thing (maybe some niche yoga? :-)) or that it will take me more than a decade before I do learn ... but for practical purposes I think if it takes more than a few years and a non-mainstream exercise routine then it is probably more accurate to say that the learning to like it doesn't apply :-). So that's how I describe things.
Same thing with cardio and "runner's high". I asked my cross-country-in-high-school friend about this ... did I need to push myself for more than an hour [at ~80% - 85% of my estimated max heart rate] for it to kick in? He thought not. If it hadn't kicked in by 60 minutes then it wasn't going to. This was ... a bummer.
But I keep working out even though I don't get any sort of 'rush' from doing so ... because I like having more endurance for things such as walking. But the exercise is the price I pay to get where I want to be physically rather than something I do because I enjoy it for itself. Much like both of us with flossing :-)
My concern for TotallyHuman is setting expectations properly such that he/she/it/xe not assume that if they only lift weights long enough then *eventually* they will grow to like it. They might. But they might not, too, and should be prepared for that as well.
https://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5/
Works for me, more or less. I get bored easily, and I'm offended by the uselessness of lifting things up and putting them back down in the same place.
After a few months, the weights start getting heavy. Stop lifting, go do something else (or nothing) for a while, then start over with the empty bar.
Very methodical, very gradual. Read between sets. Cut the time between sets when you are using the light e weights at the begining.
That is almost exactly what I have been doing, although a slightly different program. Reading between sets has increased my leisure reading (benefit!) but doesn't make me like the exercise more, c.f. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/19/can-you-condition-yourself/