ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
No bio...
User ID: 1012
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Adding Asian and Hispanic numbers to International would get you over 50%, assuming they all claim to speak a language other than English at home. Sounds like the kind of thing that might net you extra Diversity Points on your application?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
My recollection is that (3) is actually just more of (2).
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
And here I thought I was alone. He's long on chest thumping rhetoric and cherry picking and short on defensible positions. I wasn't impressed with his writing when he posted here (although I often share his feelings), so I'm confused about his substack success. The "catgirl" shtick is IMO distasteful, but reading his comments a while back, there are at least a handful of folks who think he's really that OF girl in his profile pic, so that probably helps. Anyway, "don't hate the playa, hate the game" as they say.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
This is the main reason I don't want dogs around me and my family much anymore. A lot of dog owners seem to have zero appreciation of how disturbing it is to experience this.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
If they can’t even put up with being greeted by a friendly dog, they are likely not going to be an easy person to be around.
The irony is killing me.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Cool, I'll probably check it out then. I'm interested in the context in which the book was written.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
A pharisaical association, then?
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
You know, I started to write a post but I think my thoughts just boil down to the same old idea I always reach about GDP and economic measures, which is: economic measures have a narrow definition and meaning and are useful when used in a very specific context, but our society overuses them as a measure of societal health and wellbeing because we've lost all moral common ground as a society save for a horror of poverty and physical suffering. And so, because the means to alleviate poverty and physical suffering (wealth) is the only metric we can all agree on, it de facto becomes the sole axis on which to measure the health of a society. Laymen mistakenly think that this is because The Science has proven that GDP is the best metric, but it's really just an accident (or maybe a legacy of Marxist economics, I dunno).
There's no objective definition of "the economy," but people act as though there is. Like many other soft "sciences," (looking at you, social "science"), the common usage of "the economy" smuggles in assumptions about what has value. In a 4x game framework, modern economies would have resources like "oil," "metals," and "information." But in a medieval economy (let's borrow CK2), it might have been "food," "artisanal wares," "piety," and "prestige" or something. If the Duke of Aquitaine's realm produced 9 trillion tapestries a year and had a glut of food, but there were no churches and his family was widely derided, I don't think he would consider his realm fully productive.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
How was After Humanity? Any new insights based on recent developments, or just an exposition of the core theses of Abolition of Man? I've never heard of the author, Michael Ward.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
There's a difference between not wanting "low human capital people" (as the kids say these days) to come lower the average quality of life in your town/city/country, and, say, proposing grinding up all the Congolese into Soylent Green while telling them it's nothing personal. No microscope required, it's quite visible with the naked eye. In fact you'd almost have to be trying not to see it.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
Maybe he meant family annihilator.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
I don't blame Todd. His sick days don't roll over.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
FWIW half of my office is out sick, enough people that we've had to cancel end of year events due to lack of attendance. Seems like it's really getting around this year.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
- Do something monthly and then combine it all after 4 years and give it to her (maybe add 2 months for an even 50 months). It could be writing a little postcard, or a note, or whatever would have sentimental meaning
- Plan and save for a luxurious trip that has symbolic importance for the two of you, like where you proposed or first met
- Make a scrapbook or photo album for each season and write a sentence under each photo that you stick in it
I enjoy romantic gestures and I've had success with them in my decade plus of marriage, FWIW. IMHO the key is not originality, but sincerity.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
I don't think there's enough American patriotism or anti-Chinese sentiment to go around to keep the economy afloat without seeing blood in the streets
This is also my prediction. The only thing MAGA Americans love more than America is consooming large amounts of low quality goods. Conservatives aren't patriotic or nationalistic enough yet to stomach a reduction in their consumption of cheap plastic crap and electronic gizmos in order to benefit their fellow Americans.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
I buy beer from Trappist monasteries.
Because the IQ stats are fake. They're obvious nonsense if you've ever left a tier 1 city and spoken to actual Chinese people in Mandarin, which I have. The vast majority of China is either Soviet dystopia or 3rd world hellhole. There's plenty of low IQ behavior on display. Going off vibes and Lived Experience™ I would wager their average IQ is around 95 or so.
If China becomes a dominant power, it will be by virtue of having a ton of warm bodies, a large overall number of >120 IQ people simply due to population size, and a very powerful government apparatus unhindered by Western moral concerns and that rules over a populace that has long been content to submit to authority as long as at least a little of the sweet corruption money trickles down. You don't need to have an average IQ of 104 to win if you have those advantages.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
it's a real thing
Yeah, real in that people make the claim. As @hydroacetylene pointed out, tons of people also claim descent from Muhammad. This lineage also has a wiki page, does that prove that it's "real?"
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
This doesn't seem to be the case in China. Even today, there are people who can trace direct male lineage to Confucius who lived around 500 BC.
I saw one of these guys in Qufu when I was a student. He was writing and selling calligraphic scrolls on the side of the road. He had a sign with his portrait on it and some official-looking, diploma-like certificate stapled to his sign. "Wow, is he really an actual descendent of Confucius?" I asked my professor, who was born and raised not far away. "Probably, I don't know. There are a lot of them." she replied. She seemed completely unimpressed. And that was when I began to wonder if I was a bit naïve.
Westerners often credulously believe claims like this because (1) Chinese have a radically different view of "lying" that Westerners don't have natural defenses against unless they've lived in China or a similar third world country, (2) Chinese (individuals too, not just the government) find it in their interest to promote stories that prove China's equality or superiority to the West, (3) all the sources that would debunk nonsense claims like this are written in Chinese and this unable to diffuse into the Western consciousness.
"China" does not have 5,000 years of history any more than "France" has 3,000 years of history.
Chinese did not invent soccer, or sashimi, or beer, or the seismograph.
Chinese cannot trace descent from antiquity with a level of confidence that would be taken seriously in the West.
"Truth" in China is not the same as "Truth" in the West.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
In blue tribe areas maybe, but support for punishment (as opposed to rehabilitation) is still quite strong in red and purple areas IME.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
After learning about how difficult it is for sub 80 IQ people to function in society, I honestly became open to the idea of some form of light slavery or second-class citizenship to prevent them from causing too much harm to themselves and others. Sounds terrible, but so did institutions before we had tent jungles and streets filled with poop and needles.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
6mo ago
Is he just saying whatever he thinks will be most convincing depending on the context to arrive at the conclusion he has already decided is morally correct?
Probably, because the idea underlying Scott's belief that imprisoning people is equivalent to torturing children is that those people are blank slates whose actions can be >80% (but for convenience just round up to 100%) attributed to socioeconomic factors and "um, purely socioeconomic factors" and so they have no real moral culpability for their crimes. But that sounds too insane to state directly outside of rationalist circles so you have to reach for an argument that normies are willing to consider. I agree that 2014 Scott would have been a lot less sloppy.
It definitely sounds clever. He's good at rhetoric.
More options
Context Copy link