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07mk


				

				

				

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07mk


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 15:35:57 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Weekly Finance Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This sounds interesting but I'm not sure I grok your idea. Please say more?




Everyone likes to believe themselves high status, despite the fact that, definitionally, only a small fraction of everyone can be high status. Conveniently, there's no simple metric that we can measure in any human by which we can determine their status. There's not even a set of metrics that we can input into a formula. But there are some metrics that are better than others, and money and looks are two of the better ones. They're gendered, but also, we've been taking that gendered-ness away for quite a few decades by now.


One's savings is obviously related to money, and weight is obviously related to looks. Managing either well tends to require learning a lot about the underlying systems in which these things exist, which inevitably also comes with it realization of one's own place in that system relative to others. Which translates to knowing more about one's own status. Which means risking learning that one is lower status than one believes oneself to be. Which is really unpleasant. So many people opt not to take the risk.


Managing my own weight was one of the harsher examples of this in my life. I was easily intelligent enough and educated enough about biology to know how to do so, but I didn't do so until my early 20s, when the simple painful physical reality of living as a big fat fatty person of obesity was too overwhelming for me to ignore anymore. I believe that my avoidance of doing the basic research on this topic was primarily due to trying to minimize my own knowledge about how ugly and low-status I was turning myself through my decisions about diet and exercise.


There's also the more generic "people hate taking responsibility for their own future" that's just common among everyone in every context, which I think is synergistic to this. If you learn more about how to properly manage your savings, you might learn that you have more control over it than you thought. And with control comes responsibility. And who likes the idea of failing and then having no one to blame but oneself? So why risk thinking that way, when you can just use your ignorance to blame [the system] for your failures?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm more a friend in need is a friend in deed [sic]. Though I don't actually know what the hell that means.




The phrase, as I understand it, is "A friend in need is a friend indeed." The way I always understood it is that friendship isn't a transactional relationship where you log who did what for whom and try to even it out; it's one where you support each other because you love each other as friends. So it's only when a friend is in need that you can truly be their friend, by sacrificing something to help him out of that need; otherwise, you could just be leeching off of them. I'll also add that, I thought a line from John Wick 4 captured the same idea pretty well, when Wick, chased around by assassins, turns to one of his old friends for protection and apologizes, and his friend just responds, "Friendship means little when it's convenient."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I heard that one of the major problems with 21 was that 18-20 year old males are really really useful in war, and so drafting them was too useful to get rid of. And it seemed rather unfair to them that they don't have all the same rights as those of majority age. Perhaps they could get the rights but not the responsibilities? Perhaps 18-20 year olds should have the option of of opting out of selective service but then they lose the adulthood rights until 21?


Of course, the fact that the US still limits alcohol consumption to 21+ is another quirk. Then there's also the fact that 18 is likely not the lowest age at which males become really really useful in war; would 16 be more reasonable? What about 14? 10-year-olds have smaller fingers which could be really useful for some things in life-or-death situations involving machinery, and not to mention much lower calorie needs, and they could probably follow orders well enough...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is an instantiation of a generic problem I see on the left, which is that, in practice, there appears to be no real way to repudiate or police the most extreme parts of the ideology. I think there are many causes of this problem, including the overarching one that the left has an orientation towards breaking boundaries, which cashes out in refusing to have standards*. So imposing things like "reasonableness" or "checking if the consequences of following through on such things leads to desirable outcomes" is deemed as oppressive and appropriately censured/censored. Associated with this is that the modern left has gone all-in on identity politics, which is definitionally a rejection of valuing ideas based on how they interact with objective reality but rather based on the identities of whose mouths those ideas came from. Thus, as long as one can find individuals with the right melanin content and gender identity and sexual attractions to deem some idea as true or even sacrosanct, then It Is Known.


I've said before that, when gay marriage was actually controversial, I scoffed at the notion that this was a "slippery slope" that would lead to [horrors beyond comprehension], and that I've learned since that I was completely wrong. Any push for a meaningful change to society that doesn't also have twice as much focus on determining and executing on how to stop that push seems likely to inevitably lead to a fall down the slippery slope.


* In practice, de facto standards inevitably form, of course. To be more detailed, it's that any imposed standards can be effectively argued against in a way that is orthogonal to actual truth or reality or usefulness.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly Finance Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A lot of people just aren't really taught, so they go with "well, I heard this is good and simple"




This is just a restatement of how little care people put in, not an explanation, though. Because, even as-of 20 years ago it was essentially trivial to teach oneself how to properly manage one's savings, and yet so many people even today stick to "well, I heard this is good and simple."


My pet theory is that people (certainly including myself) have weird hangups when it comes to things that clearly affect their status that prevents them from wanting to know too much, and so they proactively prevent themselves from learning even the most trivial of things. I see this in weight and diet as well, where people are hesitant to do the most basic work of measuring calories in/calories out before just declaring it too hard for them to lose weight.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Porn flicks surely feature promiscuous women sometimes, but do they do so at the same sort of dominant rate as the gender-swapped version? Porn has become so diverse and large and also are extremely under-studied, so I don't know exactly. But, in general, men tend to care much less about the actual backstory of the women in the porn and much more about their looks and personality. And the personality tends to always be some form of "extremely eager to have sex with [viewer character]," I believe, but that's orthogonal to promiscuous. There's certainly cuck/ntr porn that's popular, but I don't think, in general, women commenting that you're the 6th man she's banging tonight is all that common or something that would tend to make some given porn better for most men, the same way that some man being a werewolf/billionaire/doctor would make some given romance novel better for women, all else being equal.


Personally, I have no trouble finding porn where there's no implication whatsoever of the woman (or women, as the case tends to be) has any sort of sexual history besides what happens within the bounds of that particular video, which strictly involves 0-1 males. As such, this type of porn where the women aren't known to be promiscuous appears to me fairly popular.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But you're not comparing a "nice" man and a "not nice" or "less nice" man, you're comparing him with an "evil" man. In practice, "not/less nice" cashes out to something like "has judgment and standards about whom he is nice to." Which seems pretty evident to me to be more attractive to women.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've never heard it referred to it as The Snatch. It sounds like the title of the porn parody.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Not sure Alex Cooper is a great example. She has good genes. Probably legitimately top 1% in looks and has over a $100 million after tax. I would marry her.




Hm, as always with this topic, it does seem to me that people draw a ton of conclusions based on the apex fallacy. It's hard to avoid the reality that people you notice are, definitionally, people who are high status enough to be noticed, and, as such, do not accurately reflect the reality of the everyday person. What sucks is that the one societal institution that has the responsibility of cutting through the bias and fallacies to get at the truth of these things has so completely discredited itself that it has become worse than worthless for it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


also seemed to involve way too much of the, "oh yes, the Emperor's fine and gaudy new clothes look especially extravagant today," style of discourse for my taste.




That's a brilliant description of how so much of everyday conversation is demanded to go by "normies."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My guess is that they'll rise in status, but not popularity. Like plays and operas relative to films and TV shows, or handcrafted furniture relative to IKEA.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Bostonians often openly admit that the nationwide reputation of Boston drivers as being especially awful is true. Is this just a form of self-aggrandizement, and, actually, every locality believes their drivers have reputations for being the worst?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly Finance Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's going to be so hilarious if violent video games turn out to have caused the cure of cancer.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 22, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nah, that's not the Chad solution — the Chad solution is to start overusing the em dash even if you've never used them before and have to ask AI how to find it on your phone keyboard. It doesn't just show that you don't care about being mistaken for an LLM — it shows that you revel in it! And the best part? You're not just using em dashes — you're weaponizing them. And honestly? That's the real Chad move.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sounds like something the hole digger would say to avoid consequences for their actions.




I mean, if you want to go down that road, I'd just say that those in glass houses ought not throw stones. But that's really irrelevant. It doesn't matter what something "sounds like" in terms of who or what they would say. What matters is if it's true. I'm not sure how it's not obviously true that improving oneself to become better at climbing out of a hole is a far better use of one's energy when one is in a hole than bitching at the hole-digger. Obviously, one could do both, but also, the response to recommendations to do basic financial planning indicates a whole lot of not doing the former.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm not sure why exactly, but corporate policy seems to be that (even setting aside sponsored results) the algo knows what you want better than you do. And the algo is getting worse.




The version of this that I hate the most right now, merely due to exposure, is in Windows, where the bottom-right notification pop-up gets selected or ignored if you click on the area just a few pixels out of it, as if I had accidentally clicked just outside the borders of it. No, I clicked on that specific pixel on purpose, because that pixel had the specific UI element that the pop-up box covered up that I wanted to select! If I click on a pixel directly adjacent to the pop-up box, I want it to be interpreted no differently from if I clicked on a pixel 500 away from the pop-up box. The only justification I can think of is for touchscreens, but those pop-up boxes aren't exactly tiny, and making UI behave differently based on input device (mouse vs touchscreen) is something that should be very very possible in Windows.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm going to need a minute to process that.




I heard you can do that in just 5 seconds if you just run really really fast. Like, really fast.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly Finance Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Nobody is coming to save us.




Time to be the change I want to see in this world!


"Claude 6.9, generate a step-by-step plan that a sub-100 IQ individual with ADHD and chronic procrastination issues can and WILL follow for starting my own company that will produce GPUs that are compatible with current standard PC hardware and software, at performance levels roughly equivalent to current top-of-the-line models produced by existing companies in the field. Starting capital: about tree fiddy. Make no mistakes."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is correct, but also, the context of this is specifically about how boomers are conspicuously ignorant of the way things have become harder for young adults now compared to when they were young adults, which appears to me entirely a social media attention economy rage-venting phenomenon.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly Finance Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm a pithy person. What about just $aturday?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 22, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's not right, I say! Worst offender and probable source of the trend: Fortnite




My guess is that Gears of War was really the source of the trend. I recall it was a major splash back in ye olde Xbox 360 dayes as an exclusive (by Epic, the same devs as Fortnite, no less) that really showed off its power as well as the online functionality. Up to that point, I think almost every popular online shooter was first person (Halo, Quake, Epic's own Unreal Tournament), and Gears of War really stood out, and its success resulted in a spate of games coming out right after that aped its over-the-shoulder camera style.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Those statistics must have been stuff like games won, right? If you have a reward function that is 1 and 0, you compare two almost identical competitors that are 1% apart in underlying performance, and you run that function for 10 years, you're see a massive reward advantage stemming from the 1% difference.




No, it's not games won; in fact, for players in general of any team sport like baseball, wins tends to be considered pretty close to irrelevant for measuring individual performance. Notably, Martinez did not lead the league in wins that year, but there was no question to anyone that he was by far the best pitcher in the league. In that era, Earned Run Average (ERA - lower the better) used to be considered the best stats and Martinez had an ERA of 1.74, while the second best in the league had 3.7, with the league average being 4.9.


Since that time, more advanced stats have been developed. For those, Martinez had a Wins Above Replacement (WAR - higher the better - average of all players, not just pitchers is defined to be 0) of 11.7, versus the 2nd place's 6.2, with the league average for starting pitchers at around 2. For adjusted ERA+, which is an ERA-based score adjusted for strength of opponents and size/shape of stadiums and quality of defensive teammates and such (higher the better - average of all pitchers is defined to be 100), he had a score of 291, while second place had 133.


There's no single stat that we can point to as the true productivity of a player in any sport or of a human in any field, but, by most stats that baseball fans consider to reflect that productivity, Martinez was better than the 2nd best by a gap greater than that between the 2nd best and the average. That's where the "average" is among people in the top <1% among all humans or even among all healthy young males.




Biologically I just don't see how Pedro Martinez could be 9 SDs from the median while the second best player is only 2.5 SDs from the median. Very unlikely.




Sure, but you don't need to understand the how. No one truly understands the how. What matters is the is, and he is (or rather, was).




Not intrinsically, I think when you study rich people you find top 1% genomes (or less, even) who are laser-focused on making money in some niche. I would say I'm skeptical about value of their niche and more focused on from each according to their ability, to each according to their reproductive value. A lot of money making niches seem to be randomly determined and not truly valuable.




There's nothing intrinsic about any of this. Productivity is as productivity does. If you want to have some sort of top-down command economy where your judgment is deemed the Correct one in terms of employees in what industries are deemed Valuable enough to deserve Lots of Money, you're certainly free to want that. But, again, arguments against instantiating those wants is written in blood, often the blood of those who wanted it, and of their loved ones.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly Finance Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I was watching a Gamers Nexus video ranting about Nvidia abandoning the PC market. He was enraged, and I felt his rage. I like PCs too! I'd like to enjoy building a new one again, with brand new screaming fast parts I'm excited to take for a spin.




I wonder if the GPU market will bifurcate such that AMD just takes over the PC gaming sector, with Nvidia just abandoning it altogether. I don't know what the state of things is with respect to AMD's chips running AI, but as of a couple years ago, it seemed to require a ton of hacks to make it work at a small fraction of the speed as on Nvidia's chips. But AMD's chips still render games nearly as well as Nvidia's.


One major problem is that local GPUs seem heavily likely to be relied upon to do generative-AI-related processing in future games, and so Nvidia seems likely to have the edge for PC gaming GPUs as well. I personally got a 4090 back when that was still top-of-the-line, explicitly because I knew I wanted to use it for generative AI - I never even considered getting an AMD at all, no matter how much of a better deal it might be for my gaming needs. And that pattern could repeat over and over again going forward.


We might need a sort of government-mandated splitting of Nvidia in the future or something, though obviously that has its own issues, and the cure could very well be worse than the disease.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 22, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've heard it said that the most popular watch in the world is the Apple Watch, and it seems believable. So perhaps, in the future, when people say "watch," they'll think of mini-tablets with a strap for the wrist, like how when people say "phone" now, we think of a mini-tablet with a cell connection, not something attached to the wall with a keypad or a rotary thingy. But if they're really that popular, I feel like it's hard for them to signal anything. I think Apple Watches are square or rectangular, versus many other Android smartwatches having round faces, so perhaps having a round-faced smartwatch will signal being a tech leader-type. Though, since they're not that expensive, it could just signal being a nerdy Android-type in general.


I personally don't like smartwatches, primarily because I personally don't get value out of having notifications available on my watch rather than my phone. And also because they require much more maintenance than dumbwatches - you need to charge them multiple times a week, if not every day. A trivial inconvenience, but an inconvenience nonetheless. That said, I did buy a cheap $10 smartwatch from AliExpress, because smartwatches offer 2 obvious huge advantages in terms of use and looks: since they sync with a phone, they always have very accurate time, and since their dials are actually fully functional LCD screens, they have near-infinite flexibility in terms of the look. Unfortunately, the cheap one I bought doesn't actually offer that near-infinite flexibility and only allows you to download from some set of dial designs they have, which number in the hundreds, but that's basically zero compared to the possibility space. I use it primarily for just setting the time of my other watches when I don't want to take my phone out of my pocket and open the clock app.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 22, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If you're wondering why others in-universe believe an android has qualia, I believe "anthropomorphization" is sufficient as an explanation.




I'm not wondering why this, because I do find "anthropomorphization" sufficient. It's a separate criticism I have of the game, that this explanation isn't properly told or explored. It's a very minor criticism, though, since it can largely be just accepted as part of the premise. Though this, too, I thought was poorly done in terms of world building and making believable types of people in terms of their reactions to androids that appear nigh indistinguishable from humans even in behavior.




As for why the player should believe an android has qualia, that's what my argument is for. We see through its eyes and witness it breaking through its programming. That's the most evidence we could possibly get. If it's not sufficient for you, nothing is.




I'm wondering why the player should believe that all androids have qualia. I don't see how seeing through something's eyes and having it break through the programming is such definitive evidence of the in-universe android having qualia. Seeing through something's eyes merely tells us something about where the virtual camera is. The virtual camera is not actually something that's part of the world and reflects artistic decisions rather than some underlying reality about the world. Though it certainly can indicate that the director wants us to feel that we're experiencing the same things as some conscious being within the world.


Breaking through its programming is actually evidence, though that in itself isn't sufficient, as the discussions about modern AI show. It at least shows some level of free will and agency, and notably this is one major thing that Westworld leaned on to make its valiant effort to make the case that these androids have qualia. It wasn't good enough, because, as you've stated before, nothing is or could be (the problem of solipsism, perhaps). But the effort still counted for something enough to make the idea that these androids had qualia somewhat understandable. And even then, Westworld was reserved enough not to push into our faces sob stories about raped/tortured androids as if it expected us to automatically believe there was something to sympathize with (at least until season 2, which was largely a dumpster fire).


D:BH made no such effort, and it has been not at all reserved. It could have explored how the Deviants' behaviors could indicate a sort of qualia and presented a sort of believable version of events where every android was conscious but only Deviants had free will, or if normal androids lacked consciousness but Deviants gained it through some mysterious process. Or it could have gone full Star Wars and just made androids being conscious as just a premise of the story. But it didn't do any of these things (at least in my first 8 hours, which is enough), and the storytelling just appears as if the presence of Deviants is, in itself, enough to just convince the player that androids are all in a (ironically enough) I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream situation.