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Butlerian

Not robot-ist just don't like 'em

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joined 2022 October 11 15:37:12 UTC 

				
User ID: 1558


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
Butlerian


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Not robot-ist just don't like 'em

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 October 11 15:37:12 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1558


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm a little disappointed that "AI safety" is so strongly associated with Skynet-style scenarios, instead of concerns about (in my view) more plausible near-term AI risks like this (and others - social unrest from sudden mass unemployment, expanding surveillance capabilities, etc).




How ironic, I'm a little disappointed that anyone bothers to waste an iota of intellectual effort on those nothingburger risks when Skynet-like scenarios are potentially bearing down on you.


When the Skynet term in your expectation function has a probability >0 and an expected utility of minus infinity, worrying about the small stuff like "They took our jerbs" is imo a bit dumb.


Plus I can always just... choose not go into the pleasure cube, whereas I can't choose not go into the paperclip nanobot.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Nobody ever ran for office cause of Jane Austen.




Maybe not, but don't you think maybe that a lot of women took a chunk out of the national birth rate because of it, which is much more macro-historically important?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I cant point to any character defects, but I agree that there must be something there




Maybe you should be looking for character defects in the women of their cohort.


If the men aren't married, but the defect doesn't lie in them, then by process of elimination...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


were both pretty disappointed at how phoned-in it seemed to be. Mexico has a huge variety of interesting baked goods, yet they chose a taco as the technical challenge? It's an extreme stretch to call that baking, and it felt like they were just too lazy to google "popular baked goods of Mexico."




This seems unfair to GBBO. Sure, the show's producers could have googled "obscure Zapotec cuisine no-one except you and your Mexican wife recognises", but then the median viewer's going to be muttering at her TV something along the lines of "Oi wot's all this shite made outta rattlesnake meat, I 'fort it's Mexican week? Where's the bloody tacos?"


GBBO's not an educational Attenborough documentary, it's not supposed to teach anyone anything, and therefore their Mexican food is REQUIRED to be tacos because that's the only Mexican food that British people already know of.


It's be like having French cuisine week and no garlic snails. It's just not credible without them!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Generally I'm paranoid about approaching women, because I feel like maybe they think I'm a creep and they're just too polite to say so. My biggest concern isn't that they dislike me per se; it's that maybe I've hurt the woman without realizing it. I'm very sensitive about that.




The only cure for this is practice. Many years ago I almost threw up with anxiety before my first dating-app date. Now, women are disposable playthings to me and I have absolutely no concern for their feelings at all beyond the instrumental requirements to get them to sleep with me. At a point you come to regard each one as an entertaining brain-teaser (how do I need to rotate this Rubix cube to get it into my bedroom?) rather than as a person to whom the Golden Rule applies. This makes dating totally stress-free because you just don't care if you go down in flames.


TL;DR: There's nothing to make your first forays into the pitiless jungle psychologically easier, but each foray makes the next one easier.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Rowling, and women, have power. If they are choosing to not lend it to trans women they are doing harm to them.




I can't tell whether you're saying this as an articulation of what anti-JK-ists believe, or saying it unironically yourself, but either way, it's inaccurate in the same way that "You have money, by not giving it to me you are impoverishing me" is. Not helping != harming.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is a massive strawman. Do you really believe that there's a meaningful number of pro-life advocates who want to ban race mixing




I don't believe there was a meaningful number of 1750s voting-reform advocates who wanted 18 year old non-landowning born-out-of-wedlock black women to vote.


But that's where we ended up by following (the coherent extrapolated volition of) their 1750s logic.


So the answer to your question is "No, but I know a slippery slope when I see one"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


For me, it was fascinating to discover how males and females consider history, especially when the topic of "in which historical epoch would you like to live?" and every woman answer "now".




You mention a degree of incredulity at the homogeneity of this attitude, and I think that points to a specific insight. Other commenters have suggested that "2023" is indeed the right answer for everyone, men and women, because... there's more Marvel movies to consoom now, I guess, and only edgelords would disagree. And that may be true, but it misses the point that you always get some male edgelords who get autistic about DEUS VULTing with the Crusades or Smashing The Fash in 1917 Petrograd, and are willing to stick their neck out and say "Yes the spiritual interesting-ness of the times exceeds the appeal of being able to go see Ant Man: Quantumania". Even if it's poorly thought out; even if they're almost certainly, objectively wrong; they'll speak the words, publicly.


What I think you're seeing with women is probably not some deeper or more clear-sighted shared awareness of either the rising tide of technological progress nor the snowballing gynocentrism of society. What I think you're seeing with women is the greater conformism of their gender. They know that "Now" is the answer that all their friends will say, that you might get cancelled if you don't say... so that's what they say. They gain nothing from being an edgelord because (as has been rehashed on these pages and infinitum) women get points/mates/security just for existing. If you want anyone to notice you as a man, you must stand out from the crowd, and this is the biological basis for male edgelord-ism.


That the answer "2023" is plausibly correct in an objective sense is a coincidence. They say it because it's conformist, not because they have deeply considered the pros and cons of ACCELERATE


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Epistemic status: rampant speculation


To an extent, transgenderism is attention-seeking behaviour. Or at least... validation-seeking behaviour. The insistence that others recognise them as the opposite sex and use their pronouns points to a people whose self-image relies on the affirmation of others. Indeed, it occurs to me that the frequent insistence in trans discourse (which I reject, but it nevertheless points towards their motivations) that "sex and gender are different, gender is a social role" bears me out on this - trans people want the social role of the other sex, to which the attitudes of others are not merely important, but definitional.


Anyway, this overriding concern for the affirmation of others, I imagine, overlaps somewhat with the urge to blog. Here one intentionally opens themselves up to outside scrutiny, curating a window into your field that other people can peer through and read your hot takes.


So it's not that cissies(?) are discriminated against in the blogosphere; it's that the cluster of personality traits associated with trans is somewhat overlapping with the cluster of personality traits that would make someone want to blog.


In conclusion: if anything could possibly be attributed to a selection effect, then it's a selection effect.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this line of reasoning does not demonstrate what you think it demonstrates.


If 0% of the men are defective and 60% of the women are insufferably defective, then the 40% non-defective women get married to 40% of the men, leaving 60% of the men who can't find a woman that's not insufferable.


So you'd still get unmarried men despite there being no problem with them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The biggest handicap to Ukrainian victory at this moment is the strange reticence of some western politicians to cheaply win a decisive victory over a long term adversary.




The strange thing to me is this Bizarro-world some some people are living in, where Russia is the West'l long-term adversary.


Other than CNN telling you that it's so, is there actually any post-1991 evidence that Russia is, in fact, our "long-term adversary", or is it just something that certain people keep repeating to try and meme it into truth?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They reiterate that the end result of the research is WORLD CHANGING. I'm sure it's worth bajilions of dollars. So if it's that valuable, just tell people what you're working on and what it's worth.




As a practicing academic research scientist, perhaps I can shed some light on this. The short answer is that no-one believes you when you say your end results will be world-changing, so good luck getting funding for even so much as a dinky thermal element radiator.


Scientific funding bodies are staffed by a mixture of know-nothing bureaucrats and ex-scientists turned people managers, neither of whom have seen the business end of a revolutionary scientific discovery for decades at best. No practicing scientist gets any money unless they can present these grey beancounters with colourful diagrams of massaged "preliminary results" which purport to show that a revolutionary discovery is Just One More Grant Award away: and so, cursed by the incentives foist upon them, practicing scientists have to enter a rat race of hyperbole, the end result being that everyone is claiming to be revolutionary at once. This in turn makes the beancounter's incompetence a self-fulfilling prophecy: their inability to assign monies to measured, meritorious proposals means no-one bothers writing measured, meritorious proposals, and the process devolves into a competition about who can spam the most outlandish over-promises, shiny diagrams, and ESG buzzwords. Making skepticism about revolutionary claims retroactively correct.


So the fact that scientists on top of a world-changing discovery are forced to rely on warm mercury backwash from a mine because no funding body will give them $1000 for a space heater is... extremely plausible to me.


EDIT: The above probably constitutes sanewashing. For the record I think the even more plausible explanation is that lazy showrunners didn't give it any thought beyond Corpos Bad, Hard Scientists Bad. The plot device actually does make sense, but my opinion of the show is sufficiently low that I think them correct only by accident.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Even when TheMotte was on Reddit, I never used Reddit for anything other than... interacting with TheMotte (OK, OK, I lurked some porn subs too). So for someone with very little experience interacting with Reddit, can you explain to me how the proposed changes would actually be expected to affect the modal Reddit user?


Because I expect that the modal Reddit user doesn't even know what an API is, and certainly never previously paid for it. So messing with its price ain't gonna affect him or her.


The changes sound like a problem exclusively for nerds and corpos who like to data-harvest off of the backend; something which has no effect on the modal user AND no effect on the stereotypical powermod who's there to defend Cathedral talking points. With these two vital demographics' interests therefore apparently having no intersection with this change, they SHOULD be completely disinterested. Can anyone explain / speculate how it is, then, that the nerds and corpos have managed to rile them into rebellion?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Bodycount is meaningless metric.




What an interesting hypothesis. It'd be a shame if someone were to... test it.


Let's say I have a graph that shows "Divorce rate vs. number of pre-marriage sexual partners". Do you think the correlation will be positive or negative?


The answer may surprise you! (Lolno, it won't surprise anyone)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And you would want your country to be hegemon over some clay because...?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's not like Germany is scared of Afghanistan sending gunboats down the Rhine thus they grant Afghan 'asylum seekers' leave to enter the country.




This feels like a Schelling gerrymander to me: you're finding a distinction, any distinction, between 1800s imperialism and 2000s mass immigration, and then claiming that constitutes the morally relevant crux difference when in fact it's an irrelevant difference.


The "bad thing that complainants are mad about" is "losing self-determination in one's homeland". Whether that happens via the application of gunboat diplomacy or not is at most an exacabatory factor. If Britain had signed sphere-of-influence treaties with the Princely States absent coercion, the people in those states would still have been mad then (and would remain mad now) that in 1800s their ancestors had to kowtow to whitey when he walked past.


Most of Malaysian politics these days revolves around Malays being mad that the Chinese - who immigrated legally and without Qing China threatening to invade anyone - keep taking over the economy. The fact that the Chinese got to Kuala Lumpur without any coercian is small comfort to the Malays who occupy the lowest socioeconomic section in their own country.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but really, at some point, you'd imagine sheer morale questions would make it hard for Russians to proceed




The Russian army managed to proceed westwards under literally Stalin, so I don't really think you can characterise the Russian infantryman as a creature with great susceptibility to morale damage. Lose: concentration camp. Win: gulag!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


have you no shame?




Affirmative action quotas are bad so I support them being reducto ad absurdem'd.


It's only shameful if these people both make a sham of AA by their actions and support AA (the spirit if not the letter) with their words. Because then it's self-serving hypocrisy.


But, like Ayn Rand on welfare, I have no problem with lily-white people taking Abo quota spaces. Because there shouldn't have been any Abo quota spaces in the first place, so this is just taking them back de facto if not de jure.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Was their credibility somehow based on not getting banned from Twitter?




Yes.


There is no such thing as credibility any more for the chattering classes; only popularity. And you can't be popular if no-one can see you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


By their revealed preferences, many (more like most) women rather enjoy being sex objects to the extent they can.




This sounds a bit isomorphic to "Men must want to wear a suit and tie and sit in a cubicle being a wagie for 8 hours a day, look how many of them do it!"


I work in my wagie cube grudgingly because I need the money. It is not beyond imagination that Instagram/TikTok/SnapChat thots have similar ulterior motives.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


and even if you think it's in pursuit of a pointless or harmful goal it is actual things being done and work produced.




The definition of a Bullshit Job, as per Graeber's original essay, is exactly as you describe: one in which the product is useless or harmful, not one where there is no work done at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If lion-keeping had a small chance of gestating a cure for cancer, would this change your calculus?


Your lion is high risk for your neighbours, but also high reward.


Alec Baldwin wasn't hanging around with loaded guns for shits and giggles: he was trying to make ART. Fairly prolefeed-tier art, true, but do you want to live in a safetyist world where no-one dares pick up a paintbrush for fear the chemicals in their paint might flick into someone's mouth and cause freak allergy anaphylactic shock?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's part of the ontology of what makes you British, like fish and chips or poor dental health. Rejecting monarchism causes an existential crisis in the British psyche - which would be bad enough on its own, but when one starts to think "OK, I'm No True Scotsman because I don't like the monarchy" then as a Western European this puts you dangerously close to being French, which the British (or post-British) psyche also recoils from.


If you don't yell God Save The King, are you really British? Or are you just some guy with a lame piece of paper signed by (chortle) Rishi Sunak that confers upon you legal citizenship on a rainy island?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ukraine doesn't have the ability to project power inside it's own sovereign territory, let alone under the Baltic sea.


It certainly has the motive, but it has no means.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm not even calling for the establishment of a race of Ubermensch, I want everyone raised up to as close to equality as possible




Why?


Seriously, why do you think it should be some sort of teleological objective of mankind to have everyone calibrated to be of equal ability?


Even if these abilities are high, this is still some kind of Harrison Bergeron dystopian shit.