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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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				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 February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The critics had the whole season available to review.




And videogame journalists have the whole game to review, but a recurring feature of videogame reviews is that the reviewer obviously played a game with 100 hours of content for about 2 hours and then wrote their assignment.


People are lazy and cut corners in their jobs, c'est le vie.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not particularly easy to get through state legislatures, though. To actually pass an amendment it doesn't have to be popular with normies, it has to be popular with politicians.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Just look at the most prominent recent examples: if you look at NT Times articles/their comment sections, you can see that the mainstream left's reaction to pro-Hamas protesters or the whole Claudine Gay affair




I think your examples of "the left policing their own" are not examples of that at all. Both of these are better understood as examples of the Israeli lobby policing US speech, not as examples of the mainstream left policing its own extremists.


Mapping the Palestine question as a typical intra-left issue and then generalising it to infer that the mainstream left is broadly reining in the extremists is a bad model. More convincing would be some prominent examples of BLM types or authoritarian covid-safetyists or mass immigrant activists, getting overruled by moderates. But I don't think you're gonna find 'em.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


More well-paid white collar jobs in the form of DEI officials.




This only kicks the can down the road, though. Whites can squeeze out one extra generation of PMC jobbing by jobbing specifically as agitators for their own replacement, but when their children come up against a hiring agent thoroughly steeped in the parents' propaganda, there'll be no cushy jobs for John Jr.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Offering to euthenize veterans when they have the temerity to complain that their wheelchair ramp is taking a long time to install is not what I'd call "who's diseases are really bad".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It seems the height of intellectual arrogance to think you can reliably predict which events currently in the news will never have any direct impact on your life in the future




Sounds like an isolated demand for rigour to me. Just because we don't have a 100% cast-iron lock on future prescience doesn't mean we can't make reasonable predictions. Adopting your attitude would make investing impossible, for example: the commodity might go down instead of up, just as the news might prove relevant rather than a nothingburger.


But being neither Muslim nor Jewish and having only one friend who's either, I struggle to think of a plausible conduit by which shenannegains in the holy land could ever become relevant to me.


And anyway, OP's complaint seemed not so much "this is irrelevant" as "this is pushing actually relevant stuff off the front page of the BBC", which I feel is a stronger argument. To almost everyone in Britain, this coverage is essentially bread and circuses: a bunch of flashy explosions which has the convenient by-product of distracting them from their real, non-News-Problems with fake (as in, fake relevance) News Problems.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Affirmative action means Whitey's oppression is not small, it's negative. Young Earth creationists at least have the valence of time correct!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's really not any worse than various progressive ideas that are currently being pushed by academia




Exactly. Someone who believes the Earth was created in 7 days, 6000 years ago is substantially less dangerous (and, indeed, I would argue is substantially less delusional) than someone who believes whitey's oppression of minorities is the source of disparate racial outcomes.


EDIT: Apparently the new speaker believes both, so, heh, touché.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I know the “Russian interference” or “Chinese interference” is a dumb conspiracy theory but if I were a KGB guy this is exactly the kind of outcome I’d be aiming for.




The countries that actually influence US policy prefer to direct the golem rather than render it inert.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The dichotomy is 34M/21F


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Because it’s a man’s fault if women his own age refused to date him when he was younger?




Well... yes? The implication is (both from a broad feminist narrative and in this specific case) that if you can't get dates from women your own age, this is because they can see the red flags of your unsavoury character. The solution is therefore to Be Better and self-improve until women your own age DO want to date you. The solution is not to instead date inexperienced young things, these being the only things you can get, because their red flag detectors haven't grown in yet.


t. Man dating a woman 13 years younger than him right now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


have an internal party vote and then everyone is bound to vote for the winner on the floor of Congress or they get expelled from the party.




I was under the impression that this was a specific trait of Leninist parties, which might contain the answer as to why the US Republicans don't do it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Israel shouldn't lose points for preventing more Israelis from being killed and this making this comparison look bad.




How do you feel about the sentencing for murder being different from the sentencing for conspiracy?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Singapore doesn't have the human capital to become Singapore. It succeeds only because it's the one good harbour for 1000 miles on the busiest trade route in the world (and the colonial British built that harbour). "Muh human capital, muh good governance" is a PR stunt by the Singapore People's Action Party to try and make itself look good via narrative control, but it has very little factual basis.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Anyway, why would you ask the professor this easily searchable question - your laptop is right in front of you!




As a smart kid who did ask easily searchable questions even when I already knew the answer: you don't ask your professor questions because you want to know the answer, you ask your professor questions to prove you're engaged and interested so as to improve her opinion of you. As for slowing all the other kids down - sorry classmates, but this is a War Of All Against All, if your learning must suffer so I can get extra credit, then that is a sacrifice I am very willing to make.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You're omitting a rather large confounding variable here, namely that the people who aren't deterred by cigarette packaging are addicts who have had their neurological pathways chemically remapped in order to be compelled to purchase the product. Not so with "Breaded soy for frying".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think that a motivated lawyer can make the case that it does, and that a partisan judge will convict.


What's objectively reasonable don't come into it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You know that the Russian military is trying to wipe out a European ethnic group/nation like, right now?




I didn't know that. Can you elaborate?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you would have grown 5%, but due to X you only grow 4%, then 1% of growth has been destroyed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But it’s absurd to act like regulations and bureaucracy destroy wealth. They sometimes slow down its growth, but mostly they just distribute it.




You're making Bastiat's broken window fallacy.


You see the resistributed money go to the bureaucrats and think "Look, GDP!", but you don't see how that money would have been better used for more GDP in the hands of not-bureaucrats.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Spandrell fashioned an entire thesis around precisely this question: bioleninism


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The proof seems pretty clear (if it really is a very unique password that's even more a smoking gun than a very unique username).




I don't think this matters. He should still just flatly deny it, and say "Ooo, what a coincidence that someone else has the same password :^)". The leftists hate him already, rightists don't care already, but they DO care (for some reason) about having at least paper-thin plausible deniability, which is what a pro-forma denial verging on non-engagement supplies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


forced post-Covid amnesia is that the media went all in on lockdownism and that's increasingly embarrassing




I came here to post "Normies stopped talking about it because the media stopped talking about it", so in that sense I agree entirely. Absent the daily orders of What Current Thing To Support being beamed into their devices 24/7, the Normie does not support it, and so when the media messaging stops, the Covid hawks vanish.


I'll also give a moderate agreement on your reasoning as to why the media stopped. Reminding people about Covid might remind them of a glaring example of how Big Government (and it's Cathedral tentacles in academia, NGOs, media, civil society, experts) fucked up.  Which is a line of thought they want to assiduously avoid planting in the proles' heads, so better to just memory-hole the whole experience.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So all the graphs and quantitative data show there's no UK economic decline... and the response is that people write articles wondering how the economic decline has managed to hide itself from statistics?


Hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. Maybe there's just no economic decline? Hell, if we're trying to be rationalists, the decline's absence from the statistics means that DEFINITIONALLY there is no decline.


As many of the commenters on Scott's site speculate: one gets the feeling that "UK Economic Decline" is something that europhilic economists want to be able to talk about (and blame on Brexit), therefore they assume it exists as an article of faith and spend their time conjuring up epicyclic reasons for how those dastardly Tories managed to hide it from every single graph in the world by gaming the metrics.