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4bpp

Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs

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joined 2022 September 05 01:50:31 UTC

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4bpp


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs

				
				
				

				

					3 followers  

					follows 2 users  

					joined 2022 September 05 01:50:31 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 355


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Throughout the 20th century, they also managed to stay nominally neutral and peaceful in most major conflicts (while, perhaps not entirely deservedly, staying clear of the Swiss smell of profiteering off others' misery too), and gained a certain reputation for individual activism for the greater good (Fridtjof Nansen etc.).


Is there even anyone who would be a more credible arbiter?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I find Hossenfelder absolutely insufferable. Sure, she sometimes talks about interesting things, but her whole personality seems to have been consumed by a massive persecution complex since long before she quit academia (and, indeed, I reckon her not entirely voluntary departure was the social immune system doing its job). Some of her earlier videos had her explaining why exactly she came to hate her workplace, and it entirely had the energy of the sort of person who would go to all the seminars, eat 60% of the snacks, complain to the organiser that she didn't like them, and then when her turn to organise came around just scream "WHERE IN MY CONTRACT DOES IT SAY I HAVE TO DO THIS" at the head of department. Probably had a story ready about how the seminar snacks are really important for her blood sugar and therefore she should be consulted about the selection too. Now that she moved on, her content flywheel seems to disproportionately rely on peddling malicious gossip and peanut-gallerying.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


so much that even leftist Europeans who today condemn Trump realize their by-then-former allies have gone too far.






But Europeans should really ask if they want the US to leave them alone entirely, because sometimes by their own standards,




I do not feel that Europeans nowadays generally have standards beyond tribalism either. They were cheering when the leading candidate got excluded from elections in Romania (likely with significant American fire support), and they will cheer if this happens to AfD or FN or whomever.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You haven't had a president who did the equivalent of the Charlie Kirk thing, though. Maybe AOC is capable of something like it, but "I punch you now because you might punch me afterwards", while painfully common, is not politics that leads to a good equilibrium.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, if you hold your president to the standard of a tiktoker...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why do people use Canadian/Dutch/Swiss euthanasia services when they could just off themselves? Why is the right-wing set so offended by the existence of those if offing oneself is an equivalent option? Clearly precommitting to having someone else do it is psychologically a lot easier.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


and that there may be others who are in some way deterred, even marginally, from future criminality




This is one of the parts where death penalty advocates really lose me. I've done my share of fantasising about the sort of actions you only admit to taking in Minecraft (TM), and I'm very sure that for each of them the certainty of a swift end by firing squad would be greatly encouraging compared to the reality of a lifetime in a US supermax prison. I might be somewhat persuadable by statistics showing that death penalty candidate criminals really prefer life imprisonment, if those exist, but in this particular case the perp was a jihadi! Throwing away their life is their whole schtick.


I can understand death penalty advocates feeling moral revulsion at criminals being kept alive and healthy on their dime, but hoping for increased deterrence to me really seems like an instance of "what feels good must be good" just-world fallacy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Harry is the self-insert, so his identity and traits barely matter to the interpretation. The story reads as "(You) should pine for hot blonde pureblood women", not "hot blonde pureblood women should get with filthy impure men". In a properly SJW view, suggesting that Harry should prefer female Malfoy over a hypothetical overweight black Hermione itself is problematic - there's a reason why it is generally said that (mixed) Barack Obama choosing to marry (fully black) Michelle was a tactical move.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What's the archetype here, the young coquette who machine-learned that a certain kind of awkwardness that comes naturally gets her male attention? That would be fair enough for the Turgenev paragraphs, but I don't really see it in the female Malfoy samples, unless you want to lump together any and all forms of non-self-aware romantic behaviour (I think even saying "affection" here would be reading too much into Turgenev as quoted).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the degree of focus on the Second Coming differs quite a bit between the various branches; it's well-known because a certain common type of modern US Evangelical is obsessed with it, but more of our Christian posters seem to be various forms of traditionalists who as far as I can tell don't put a lot of emphasis on it.


(To @SubstantialFrivolity, I imagine they might see it as something that goes beyond mere "dealing with people", like "enabling".)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The problem here is that some of your interlocutors might be actual Christians, who would really rather die (along with everyone else) than abide unapologetic sexual impropriety.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There are absolutely people in math for other reasons than money, but among the countless mathematicians I've known very few have been motivated by anything that did not factor through being the first to prove/discover/define something that others care about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there a specific issue you have with something in the post, or is it a matter of him attacking a point you are strongly sympathetic towards in defense of a tribe you are strongly unsympathetic towards? His charges against Pinker seem fair to me, though I have admittedly not read enough of the primary source to be able to tell if they were cherry-picked from among otherwise stronger arguments (what I saw of Pinker gives off enough Gary Marcus vibes that I really can't get myself to read it in detail, and am inclined to think that just peddling it should relegate him to the trash heap of expired intellectuals despite any previous achievements, as was done with Linus Pauling, Brian Josephson etc.). Maybe the more magnanimous instances of anti-SJW Scott would have dedicated some space to a charitable theory of why Pinker's worldview can seem coherent from the inside, but I don't think Scott was consistent about doing that when facing more loathsome opponents in those days either.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The difference is that people largely only ever played chess for the love of the game. There are nontrivial numbers of people who do programming for the love of the game; in my experience, though, there are very few mathematicians who derive sufficient meaning from the "game"/process alone, and those who are are unlikely to find themselves in such high echelons of academia, instead gradually filtering out into other fields where you can continue pursuing it as a game (ex.: Martin Gardner, Greg Egan...).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do wonder how the reaction will be when, almost inevitably, some PhD student or postdoc gets scooped on a problem they had gone all in on and commits suicide. It's not like OpenAI seems to be following the standard process of extending feelers through the field to get in touch with any existing noosphere-homesteaders before solving these.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Have you heard about Poe's Law? Sarcasm doesn't work when it's equally plausible that you would say the same thing in earnest, and attaching a clichéd epithet like that without any deeper reasoning behind it is the sort of thing an LLM would do in earnest.




Anyway, unapologetic? Not at all. I just think it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make, even if it annoys you.




All's well. You're willing to annoy me with AI content, and I'm willing to annoy you by derailing your threads with speculations about AI content :)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The parent poster literally said "AI became the best mathematician alive". I was therefore not talking about my standard "for a successful mathematician". My standard for being the best mathematician alive does involve being as good as any other mathematician alive, which does in particular mean being >=Terry.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


when the designated Reasonable Skeptic of the rationalist diaspora




Who? Aaronson? The "took his family to Disneyland and aborted the trip after having a meltdown over seeing people not wearing masks" guy? He's many things, but nobody is designating him any combination of "reasonable" and "skeptic".


(By the way, concurring with @2rafa's suspicion below, after you have acquired your reputation as an unapologetic meat proxy, it does feel extra suspicious when you make such catchy irresistible logit-attracting utterances whose substance seems bizarre when you actually think about it.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nah. If you were human and that were your only achievement, then sure, the attention-deficient celebrity chasing normie press might lionise you as such, but those in the know would not rank you above people who have demonstrated a lifetime of consistent progress on hard problems and good intuitions (such as Terry himself, and several of his associates).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The question really is if it's a can of worms you want to open. Both the main US tribes have some group of well-integrated foreigners that they are cozy with and derive some benefit from, and which has a horse in some conflict the US is tangentially involved in; so far neither has turned this into a political playing ball, but you could easily see a tit-for-tat start where Mamdanicore Democrats and mainstream Republicans deport people over having the wrong stance on Israel/Palestine, which in the end would just leave everyone worse off.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Isn't it perverse, to begin with, if businesses that rely on cheap (or any) parking cluster where the land is valuable? If their customers drive to them, why can't you have them in whatever location in the customer's driving radius has the cheapest land instead? Most European cities, and many American ones, already work like that, with shops that cater to driving customers setting up on marginal land on the city's periphery (e.g. nestled between industrial parks) instead of downtown.