4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
<3
User ID: 355
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Estimates for deaths that are more or less directly downstream from British colonialism also range in the tens to hundreds of millions, and it's not hard to draw direct connections between how British society at the time envisioned the relationship between adults and children, and how it envisioned the relationship between colonial master and colonial subject. On the US side, the Civil War was about in the middle of the Victorian era...
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
There was this cluster of reports carried by the WaPo and most major German papers. The Russian reaction at the time was that this is a lizard-cutting-off-its-tail release meant to pin it on "rogue elements in Ukraine that nobody with agency can be held responsible for" and the operation was actually executed with US backing. The reaction was mokusatsued in Western media.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
This poem circulated on twitter as the worst poem ever written
What's the poem? Twitter stopped showing any responses/in-thread posts to users who are not logged in, and I can't find a working nitter instance anymore.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Yeah, but he's barely active anymore and really seemed to be at death's door in his most recent appearances. I imagine he gets a pass because of that and because how much of a childhood idol he was for many elites.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
It would be going way beyond things like incorporating open Nazis in the ranks, blowing up Nord Stream 2, shelling Belgorod, trying to kill Dugin and killing his daughter by mistake, or blowing up Vladlen Tatarsky at a cafe.
You are saying that now, but many posters here said the same thing to argue that Ukraine would never blow up Nord Stream 2, before the articles saying it was likely them started appearing - it was all about how it would be stupid of them to engage in a terrorist attack against the infrastructure of one of their most important backers, and people in Germany would never forgive them if that turned out to be true, all for dubious benefit. Then the articles came out, and it was predictably crickets; ask anyone here or in Germany now and they'll affirm that surely Ukraine can't be faulted for protecting its interests like that (and are you really sure it was them anyway?).
People consistently overestimate how much they would actually be willing to apply principles if it turns out those principles favour the enemy team over their own. Condemning your in-group is painful, and people will be looking for any excuse to not do so, and anyhow we have the best excuse-printing machines in the world. If hypothetically this attack was actually ordered from Ukraine, is there any evidence that Russia could realistically obtain and present that would convince you of that, assuming Western media and governments just stuck to the line that it was independent ISIS adherents? Any statement procured from the perpetrators themselves can easily be dismissed as the product of torture or bribery, and supplying money and weapons untraceably in a country like Russia is trivial. Knowing this, though, any hypothetical Ukrainians considering to orchestrate such an attack would not need to include Western displeasure in their risk calculus at all - as long as governments and media in the West stay broadly on their side, no such displeasure can possibly manifest over this.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Russia: ISIS did it.
Where? I can't find anything to the effect on RIAN or further down the human centipede of news.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Russia blaming Ukraine indeed adds little information, but I don't see how you arrive at the conclusion that them making a break for the UA border doesn't mean much. We have plenty of non-ISIS cases where terrorism was committed by Muslim-aligned peoples and where ISIS claimed responsibility, and while the constellation of details is too rare for concrete precedent of "true perp backers claimed ISIS", surely it's a common pattern for more general crimes. On the other hand, do we have precedent of non-UA-backed terrorists running to UA?
Also, what do you rest your claim that it is "much more IS's MO" on?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
The warning, as far as I remember, didn't name any potential perpetrator and was so conspicuously broad and scarce on details that it's actually hard to read as something that would help the addressees and hinder the terrorists.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
assassinate the wrong person by mistake sometimes
For what it's worth, I don't think it makes a huge difference whether they hit Dugin or his daughter, and Fomin was clearly the intended target (with the 42 other injuries being considered acceptable, considering the MO of bombing a public appearance in a closed room). You might argue that hitting anti-Ukrainian agitators and their audience does not imply willingness to hit random civilians, but few people would have been willing to make that distinction e.g. for the Charlie Hebdo attack (plus I heard diffuse statements that at least one of the concerts yesterday may also have been linked to some anti-Ukrainian agitation).
IS claimed responsibility
There are plenty of historical examples of them claiming responsibility for things they didn't do (some parallel comment brought up the Las Vegas shooting). Not that they wouldn't have the motive and means, but the details here so far don't seem to line up - above all, I can't think of Islamic terrorist attacks consistent with the pattern of perpetrators running and, upon being caught, claiming they were anonymously hired to do it for money, while this is the general pattern for Slav-on-Slav terrorism in Russia including in particular the cases that have been attributed to Ukraine beyond doubt. If all we have in favour of the ISIS theory is "perps are vaguely Muslim", "ISIS claimed responsibility" and "main backer of an alternative suspect agreed with the ISIS claim", that is not particularly strong evidence.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
If Chomsky emerged into the public sphere now with the set of views that he holds, chances are good that he would quickly be branded right-wing.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
The telegrams are now showing footage that purports to be questioning one of the guys they caught. The core claim seems to be that he was recruited on Telegram after following some preacher, was offered about $5k with half transferred as an advance, and the weapons were provided by the recruiter.
Considering the timing and the guy's demeanor, I think the "legitimate ISIS" story should be losing a lot of probability mass, unless you postulate this is not really one of the shooters - leaving the Ukrainian intelligence and Russian intelligence strategy-of-tension explanations as the two most likely. The speed with which the Americans committed to the ISIS story speaks in favour of Ukrainian involvement a bit. The option that they were larpers can't be quite dismissed yet either - in that scenario I guess the guy being interviewed was previously beaten and/or bribed into giving this story off screen.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
It kind of fails to meet the MO of either of the two attacks you linked in that instead of taking hostages or doing anything else that implies indifference towards their own survival, the attackers hopped into a car and made a dash for the Ukrainian border. Ukraine has previously recruited assets inside Russia for terrorist attacks (Dugin's daughter, Fomin) with the promise of helping them escape and rewarding them afterwards; it seems quite plausible that they could've picked up some ambitious Tajiks too.
As for the motive - it might just be plain hatred of the enemy, but I also suspect that their leadership still believes that broad Russian support for Putin is predicated on him delivering stability and prosperity and would collapse if this perception were to fall apart (see also the recent nontrivial investment of scarce materiel to bring heat to Belgorod). As with the Nordstream case, they might correctly assess that as long as a minimum of deniability is maintained, the Western media and hence public is exceedingly unlikely to turn against them over it.
(That being said, I don't think it's implausible that it was actually a bunch of high-fidelity ISIS larpers that just unilaterally decided to run for Ukraine because they figured it was the place most likely to give them a heroes' welcome, either. To be bona fide Islamists, though, their MO is way too divergent; the ISIS responsibility claim, if it's actually authentic, is more likely to be their usual throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks tactic.)
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Zig died to me when the lead developer came out with a declaration of intent to ban (full-fledged) recursion or at least discourage it using cumbersome syntax (the proposal appears to have been shelved, but only with a "we'll come for you eventually when the time and Overton Window are ripe" note). Every modern language seems to have at least some domain in which the programmer is deliberately hobbled in the name of "safety"/his betters' strongly-held opinions about what he should and shouldn't do.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
This all reads as "cultural victory of the nerds, as delivered by an evil genie" to me. I read for fun, don't like relaxing on the beach or partying, and travel for the same feeling of immersive escapism that I would have gotten out of a good book or game while shutting out as much as possible of the "real world", and have been earnestly telling everyone I want to go into academia so that my work is my hobby is my work and "work-life balance" is just for the poor suckers who sold out 8 hours of their every day doing something they hate since long before this HN grindset hustle culture took root. Now, suddenly, I'm surrounded by all these people who apparently feel compelled to pretend to be me, because it's the cool thing - and they hate every moment of it, and respond to any displays of the preceding genuine sentiment roughly in the same way as one would to a teacher's pet or the guy who honestly believes in Our Corporate Mission and excoriates the cynical coworkers who just want to collect a paycheck. At best, I get reactions that parse as "wow, you're trying harder to pretend than I ever could, I should learn from you".
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Why can't I let the other shoe drop and say that "theism is literally false" is also a story about the world that we are better off believing and acting on? In fact, this seems like a natural extension of the "science discovers things that are literally true" act. Sure, this line of argument pressures that there is some "out-of-character" meta level of cognition on which you perform this cost-benefit analysis and are essentially a radical agnostic, but that doesn't mean you have to drop into OOC every time some theist comes along and demands that you explain yourself, any more than a good theatre actor would stop acting and instead break into a rant as to why he needed the job every time someone in the audience indicated they were unhappy with the play.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
It's a bit unfortunate that we likely aren't going to see the natural gender-flipped example, with media consumed (primarily) by women being pressured by a political interest group to make the men depicted in it more average. This would have to look like every k-drama started changing its male characters to balding dad bods and genuinely (rather than a cutesy female-fantasy version of) awkward spindly nerds with bad skin.
It seems evident to me that people aren't generally consuming fiction to see "normal", outside of some narrow domains of high art where the normality is made worth seeing by the abnormal level of insight by the author. To mandate that fiction depicts normality is political interference, with historical precedent all looking like things like socialist realism (not that its depiction of people was actually that representative in reality).
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
The rate at which this went out of fashion differs wildly between countries. As recently as 10 years ago, my dad had some renovations done at the grandmother's flat in downtown St Petersburg which left him with a bunch of rotten window frames in the [upper floor] place. His solution was a quick trip downstairs to get "the alcoholics" at the bar across the street to carry them down ("alcoholics", in Russia, are a socioethnic group much like "drifters" or "gypsies"). My understanding is that three dudes did it for the equivalent of something like $10 each.
Perhaps relatedly, in the late 2000s, Germany (where I was living then) had a very prolific online marketplace for carpooling - if you were going from city A to city B, you would just put up an ad saying when and how many people you'd take for how much, and people could contact you via the website. It was vastly cheaper and more convenient than the train system (and the cheap intercity bus network was not as developed as it is now; I figure this contributed to the website's demise), and the cross-section through German society I encountered on those is a story for another time, but one thing that is memorable is that once I casually mentioned that I was taking such a ride to some very typical Middle American internet friends I had made on the phpBBs, whose response was one of concern bordering on panic ("you'll be robbed and left for dead in a ditch somewhere and nobody will know"). It took a lot of convincing them that everyone does those things over in Europe and bad things generally don't happen (and I might have mildly offended them by repeating the standard Euro talking point that it's not like the carpool people will have guns). I still think that societal trust in the US would be in a better place if they didn't have mass media with non-stop dastardly-crimes-in-your-area programming.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Sure, but how intense does starvation have to get for this effect to overpower the fertility penalty of affluence and stability? Most African countries were outperforming industrial ones even in peak famine conditions.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Firstly, this seems to be proving too much - if being forced to sell has no cost, why would anyone hold (especially once you consider risk and concave value functions)? Secondly, there are surely indirect economic impacts too - this sort of measure would open up the Overton window to other protectionist measures against Chinese corporations, including ones that can't be so easily sold or spun out.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
There's a reason CCP propaganda mouthpieces are trying so hard to stop it: because having an easy way to reach US voters is a tremendous asset in sabotaging an adversary, or otherwise getting them to do what you want.
Or they might just be concerned about the economical impact this would have on them?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
What sort of argument is this? The correlation between birth rate and affluence is pretty much a straight negative globally. Are you going to argue Nigerians in the US are poorer than Nigerians in Nigeria if the former have lower birth rates?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
Isn't that basically what the post you are responding to said already?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
I don't know what I did to deserve the flippant attitude you've been displaying since the start, but two can play that game, so I'll try to use simpler words just for you.
addresses something I never said
You don't think "animals don't do bad things" is a fair reading of a list of "I've never seen [animal] do [bad thing]" that you clearly didn't pick for being true and where calling out something in the list for being wrong just made you answer with that "missing the forest for the trees" comment? Please tell me what the actual intended meaning of that post was in terms of what it said (retconning something poetic about what mother nature gave her creatures doesn't count, since none of that was actually in the original post).
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
Your statement, as I understood it, was that intelligence is not an unalloyed good because intelligence enables agents to do more damage. You sought to back this statement up by a list of claims about bad things humans do but animals (as an extreme example of something much dumber) don't.
In response to this, I claimed:
(1) animals still do bad things (that was my first response);
(2) the bad things that animals do are not actually better than the bad things humans do (this was my second response), and hence I disagree with your argument against intelligence being an unalloyed good.
Specifically, I argued (2) by saying that a calculus of badness that says that the bad things that animals do are less bad than the bad things that humans do may have implications that I certainly don't agree with, and I would be surprised if you agree with them either. Is a lion that roars at a weaker lion to chase it away and then steal its prey "better" than a human that robs a bank? If yes, why? If you say this is because the bank is worth much more than the dead antelope, is a marauding band of soldiers in the 17th century that burns down a wooden farmhouse with no plumbing or electricity (worth maybe $50k on the modern market) also better than someone who robs a bank today for $1m?
Take the transitive closure of the inference steps you are doing here, and you basically arrive at "groups that are definitionally unsuited for governing roles should not self-govern". This may sound attractive to you as long as you can model the qualification as a one-dimensional parameter like IQ, but what if society develops sufficient complexity that a caste emerges which is (genetically, socially) optimised for politics in particular, rather than general intelligence? Would you then also consider it a failure of the system if any group is represented and governed by people who are not members of the caste of Superior Politicians, and thus either a born Superior Politician's potential was wasted, or administration is suboptimal? In that case, you've basically reinvented one standard argument for a medieval aristocracy.
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