Blueberry
5mo ago
Regarding "Those who Walk Away from Omelas": The older I get the more I suspect the people who walk away are in the wrong.
For example the map in this old article which became a meme:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html
Great-Grandfather: Allowed at age 8 to walk six miles to go fishing.
Grandfather: Allowed to roam in the woods.
Mother: Allowed to walk by herself to the swimming bath.
Zoomer Kid: Only allowed to walk to the family house street.
In a sense past generations larger freedom was bought by Omelas-sacrificing of children lives.
This picture was posted on the chess subreddit and I can't stop laughing and thinking about it:
https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/12r6psl/a_story_in_two_pics/
The right picture is Ding Liren, who is currently playing in the World Championship against Ian Nepomniachtchi, when he had something of a mental breakdown which lost him Game 7. He played fantastic as black until he had a small advantage, but then he froze, he blundered his remaining time because he couldn't bring himself to make a move. He just couldn't. He was paralyzed by his fear to overlook something and losing the game. Which ironically lost him the game. When he finally moved with 0:45 seconds remaining for 8 other moves (Nepo had 12 minutes left) he was visibly lost and depressed and he just got through the motions until he lost the game. Anish Giri commented that Chess is not a physical sport, so you don't normally see when someone collapses, but this was a collapse.
The left picture is Gigachad Magnus Carlsen, soon Ex-World Champion but still nonetheless best player in the world, arguably maybe best player ever, better even than Kasparov and Fischer at the height of their time, who has the time of his life partying with the Botez sisters and GM Aryan Tari, drinking shots and having fun playing Chess while everyone is dancing to cheesy Europop bangers.
When he mouseslipped and only got second place in an online tournament he exlaimed to the laughter of all: "I quit the fucking world championship for this?!"
"He should be ashamed for this. What a nonsense."
vs
"this is a fever dream of a stream tbh"
"Fever dream is the best way to describe it. Magnus is having so much more fun, has plenty of money, and has little left to prove. Seeing him vs Ding and Nepo right now makes it clear to me he made the right choice for himself"
vs
"what a time to be alive"
In your life try to be like Magnus, even if you are like Ding. It looks way more fun and you can wear cool sun glasses.
Blueberry
8mo ago
Not sports, but kissing „mates on the same team“:
Blueberry
10mo ago
My moral calculus is different in that I care about future potential. Babies have their whole life ahead and murdering them snuffs out so much potential possibilities. Children are literally the future!
That is why I fundamentally disagree with Singer and find it a great tragedy that western countries locked down young children, despite them not vulnerable to Covid, and who then missed school years and crucial socializing with friends and forced them masking up, just to protect 80+ year old geezers.
Another aspect is that infants are helpless and innocent. Because of that I have much higher empathy and instincts to protect them instead of an adult who can fend for himself. Not-yet-sapiency is in that respect a bonus.
Thinking about Covid more I would even go further: The lockdown and other measures lowered birth rates. Even this (only virtual) loss of life I value much higher than the protection of senior citizens. Maybe my main objection to Singer ethics is that they are individualistic and are not strengthening, but weakening the tribe.
Blueberry
6mo ago
Presumably a rocket just fired is still full of fuel. The aftermath pictures don't show much blast damage, instead it burned out.
Blueberry
3mo ago
The dysgenics is trivial to solve with embryo selection
The obesity pandemic is also trivial to solve with people eating less. Mass migration would be easily solved if a wall would be build at the Mexican border.
Even if an easy solution is known, even if the solution is proven to work, it can be very very hard, often impossible, to implement it.
Blueberry
6mo ago
Kirsten Roupenian says she learned about Alexi Nowicki "from social media". (Good old online stalking.) But I don't believe it, it seems like she said it to distance herself while the details are too intimate, my bet is that Roupenian must have read through Charles phone or knew him more. Doesn't have to be romantic, maybe she was just a friend to which he poured his heart out in a vulnerable moment. Frustrating that the "encounter" is not clarified.
Anyway, I found this poignant:
We are all unreliable narrators. Sometimes, to my own disappointment, I find myself inclined to trust Roupenian over myself. Had Charles actually been pathetic and exploitative, and I simply hadn’t understood it because I, like Margot, was young and naïve? Had he become vengeful and possessive after we broke up, but I’d just blocked it out in order to move on with my life? The story is so confident and sure, helping the reader to see things Margot herself does not. In December, David told me that Charles kept his old iPhone even after he got a new one so that he could look back at his old messages with Kristen from time to time to see whether he had actually been an asshole. Sometimes it feels easier to believe the story that everyone knows than the one they don’t.
Blueberry
1yr ago
Russia just dismissed the dude that organized the super clean double retreat across the dnipro
Who was that and why was he dismissed?
Blueberry
23d ago
India is really interesting. I just looked up a map of rich/poor Indian states, but for example Tamil Nadu, which is shown as quite wealthy, has relatively low Brahmin but high Dalit demographics. I would have expected the reverse.
Interesting, the Samaritans are the closest (virtually identical because of endogamous marriage) to the ancient bronze age Canaanites:
Blueberry
6mo ago
The question by CrashedPsychonaut was why the UN were in any way justified to authorize a partition and the simple answer is that they were and are not. But if you deny this „top-down imposition“, and you can’t rely on a hegemon to keep the status quo as the British are leaving, you will instead have a bottom-up solution: civil war.
I don't really know what he thinks, he seems to be obsessed with the Ukraine war and the Gaza conflict (RT galore) but thinks it is stupid to fight (and die) as a low level grunt?
https://twitter.com/bronzeagemantis/status/1711513938511196289
The “Bronze Age” ruler would have smashed your idol group identities in a thousand pieces. Literally every state and group today is fake. And my book isn’t about celebrating your preferred ethnic pathic affectations when they engage in chimpouts or fake modern wars.
Blueberry
1yr ago
I wouldn't have guessed that after all that effort and filtering she fell in love with that guy. And they only got one kid. But googling around they still seem to be married, so it worked for her?
Blueberry
1yr ago
I looked a source up, ignore the tweets, the picture with the graph is from the Economist:
https://twitter.com/NxlAnglo/status/1616874516566736900
You are right, Jewish fertility are astonishingly stable if one looks at the last 40 years instead of zooming into recent trends. In the 90s secular fertility also dipped under 2.0, so is not a new thing. But 10 years ago it was again slightly above.
The discrepancy between the normalcy of 3 kids families and a fertility rate of a third less, is I guess because childless women are less visible? Maybe they also emigrate?
To simplify it: A Napoleon movie which isn't done by the French for a French audience is cultural appropriation.
Also Napoleon was 29 in Egypt campaign and 35 when he crowned himself Emperor. A younger sexier actor should play him.
Zoophilia and meat eating are made comparable by Singer because he frames it as such. He illustrates that himself as "Imagine that you are an animal etc". But if one rejects this framework, if I imagine myself as a human, than it is effective to cut short engagement by having a simplified emotional response, eg by being shocked or mocking the idea. Taboos (an old fashioned word, you can also describe this category as "infohazard" or maladaptive training data which derails your brain software) are best preserved not by studying them in ever increasing detail, but by making them unthinkable.
For example a different framework could be: "Moral is that which makes my village survive the winter and makes my tribe/family/progenity thrive". A diverse diet does that. Romantic/Erotic attachment to animals does not and triggers disgust (maybe even genetically encoded?). It is noteworthy that the recent rise in veganism was not caused by the old arguments against animal harm like "imagine being an animal", but by new egoistic pro-human arguments like "veganism is more healthy" or "red meat causes more colon cancer" or "vegan calories can feed the world cheaper" or "western diet produces too much CO2, destroys the rainforest for cattles and we should switch to something more sustainable".
Blueberry
1yr ago
Hersh is 85 years old and did go a bit into conspiracy theories:
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden
The problem with his sources is not anonymity, but that it is singular: He only has one source. Rumors need at least to be double-sourced before they are print worthy.
But hunter-gatherers are primitive and elephants are animals. From noble man I expect more.
That Hamas murdered civilians on the music festival and paraded a half naked dead women around really moves the needle on my moral compass.
BUT, this is also a false dichotomy. There are not only two sides: Beside Hamas there is the Fatah-ruled Palestinian National Authority. While there is surely a lot to criticize them for, the GDP in the West Bank is twice as high than in Gaza strip. And Israel itself has plural opinions (I think Netanyahu is done after the crisis, this was a colossal failure of government on every level.)
She says she is a very online person and can deal with the hate, so she will be fine.
More interesting I found the exchange between gwern and Scott on /r/slatestarcodex
Gwern argued that dateMe.docs are a waste as they repel more than attract, Scott disagreed strongly and they are a good tool for filtering and have a high chance to find romance (Also Scott revealed that a few years ago he had a poly thing with her, so of course he took her side). Both didn't budge.
Gwern also linked to the inventor Putanomonit (who stole it from Aella really), who has a blog post about how dateMe.docs should not be used as "advertisment" (the same as a tinder profile) but as an application (send to a specific person/group of people).
https://putanumonit.com/2022/09/02/date-me-doc/
The issue at the heart of date-me docs is the same as that of dating profiles: the first thing they put forward about you is your desperation to find a date and inability to do so through the usual channels. This desperation and frustration are the absolute least attractive things about you. And while on dating apps this is ameliorated by the fact that anyone reading your profile admits to being in the same boat, putting your plea for TFW GF on platforms like Twitter where people go for mockery and indignation will, in fact, likely earn you some mockery and indignation.
Blueberry
1yr ago
Note that I'm not touching on the moral aspects of the war, just on the operational ones.
It is noteworthy that a private military company (Wagner) is doing a lot of the difficult front fighting, and the normal Russian army is just following later.
https://twitter.com/MihajlovicMike/status/1612936331587649537
What is interesting is that Soledar is basically PMC against the western-backed (equipment, weapons and above all intelligence) military: Wagner group distinguished themselves as a true crack fighting force, in many aspects better than the French Foreign legion.
Is the private sector also in war more efficient than state bureaucratic militaries?
Blueberry
3mo ago
sounds more like Wini, Widi, Wicky
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet …
Vici is related to victory. And the hard c=k is manly.
Blueberry
5mo ago
Looking at successful religions, dietary restrictions and the conspicuous observance of them seems ritualistically important in binding people together
I think this is also part of it. There is the "Veganuary" in January which is even tried by flexitarians/carnivores and sort of like Ramadan or catholic lent. And the dietary restrictions by the more fanatic minority have outsized influence on the more tolerant/flexible majority, which pushes culture in one direction.
It is a bit of virtue signaling (the vegan has bragging rights over the vegetarian), a bit atonment for our sins (at least eating vegan Pizza with fake cheese feels that way), good old market capitalism (aside from fake cheese many products got crazy goods. I don't care if I eat real chicken nuggets or plant based nuggets), but it is also development of a shared culture and being part of something bigger (which is universally regarded as good or at least not bad, which is nice). Also the small talk aspect, one can share recipes and cooking tricks.
This cuts both ways: Imagine being so inferior to the IDF that your brave warriors are killed by women
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-769134
Of course because of the fog of war the article is propaganda and scant with information about casualties.
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