Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
It’s like a tour of duty. There’s lots of industries that are hyper seasonal and / or are intensive for short amounts of time.
Oil workers are like that, for example. Fisherman, cowboys, that’s just off the top of my head.
We've got plenty of this sort of seasonal work up here in Alaska — and not just the oil workers and the crab boats, but also a lot of tourist-adjacent jobs, ranging from seasonal airport baggage handlers to RV park attendants.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
As one of "The True Psychos," I'd personally like to thank you for laying this out so clearly and in such detail. AAQC'd.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1d ago
That kind of transactional relationship sounds like the opposite of normal and healthy.
How many accounts — real or fictional — about relationships and marriage have you read that were written prior to the 19th century? Or from a non-Western culture (like any where arranged marriages were common). Marriage being treated to a great extent like a sort of financial/institutional merger involving two families, or a sort of "mutual physical/financial support" arrangement first, with "mutual love and desire" being a secondary factor — indeed, as something a couple deliberately builds over time — seems to be the more "normal" attitude across the history of settled human societies, with the 20th century West "all you need is love" attitudes being rather the outlier.
Edit: see also OracleOutlook's longer comment below.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
I mean, can you name any former porn stars who have gone on to become high-status, influential people?
Well, depending on how you define "porn star" (and how much credence you give to Procopius), Empress Theodora immediately comes to mind.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2d ago
Outside of Aella, the whole SAM (Speaking with American Men) initiative is indicative of this line of thinking. SAM seems to be focused on how to "market" Democrat's ideas to men instead of finding ideas that men actually want. I don't know if this is just me or if anyone else noticed this or if I'm just recognizing too many patterns.
It's not just you; I did a post on my Tumblr last week noting it as one of the three recurring elements in discussions about SAM. It's also part of my teacher/classroom analogy, specifically, the 'well, if some of the kids aren't absorbing the lesson, it's because the teacher isn't presenting in properly — she just needs to figure out those kids' particular "learning style" and tailor her instruction accordingly' part. (I'm also reminded a bit of a couple of people I've known who unironically endorsed Orwellian "duckspeak" — though not by that term, of course — as the ideal of human communication.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3d ago
I do think a lot of the conversations that used to happen here have moved to TPOT and postrat twitter.
What is TPOT? As with acronyms in general, Google is pretty useless at figuring it out.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5d ago
I think you replied to the wrong comment (you appear to have wanted the one above the one you replied to).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5d ago
Has anyone else here not used "non-toy" AI? If so, why aren't you using AI?
Because what would I use it for? None of the common use cases I hear people here put forth for AI are anything I do with any frequency.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
But nothing ever really ends.
Tell that to the Tanguts, the Jangil, the Dorset, Homo floresiensis, or the dodos.
I don't actually believe that. The Blue Tribe has better liars, better loophole-finders, and above all else a much better social shaming apparatus. It has a nonzero ability to affect Red-aligned normies' worldview, while Red think-tanks are pretty useless at shifting Blue-aligned normies' Overton window. If everyone fights maximally dirty, then, all my personal opinions aside, I'm betting Blue.
Not to speak for FC, but that you think that this is the only possible battlefield on which the tribal conflict can play out is part of the delusion ("sustained by ironclad control of the knowledge-production apparatus" as it is). Setting aside the literal bullets possibility to avoid fedposting (though, in my view, it remains a likely outcome), there's also a number of domains between the two. One example: infrastructure.
Who grows the food? Who keeps the lights on? What would happen if someone were to shut down the water pipe to southern California, or collapse the aqueducts feeding NYC?
I have a civil engineer friend who has gone on at length — repeatedly — about the vulnerability of our cities, and how easy it would be to get urban Americans to "start eating each other." He argues that in many cases, it wouldn't even require active sabotage — just for a particular relatively-small group of almost-entirely Red Tribe men to stop showing up to work.
FC mentioned "thrive vs survive." Which tribe is better positioned to survive, and come out on top, in the wake of the sort of infrastructure collapse I've outlined above?
The way I see it, your choice is between selective application of the second amendment, and it simply being torn down.
Or we can get non-selective application of the second amendment after we crush the Blue Tribe, by (per Sun Tzu) ignoring all that social shaming/Overton window/think-tank space in favor of a battleground that favors us.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
Counterpoint: I wish a mothafucka would. Unfortunately right-wing nationalist violence often seems to manifest as mass shootings carried out by clearly mentally unstable people that target the entirely wrong targets. I.e. random people in a school or grocery store instead of assassinations targeting politicians, the leadership of NGOs that help illegal migrants illegally migrate, etc
First, this reads as a touch fedpost-y (I say as someone who's eaten some bans for the same). Secondly, I don't recall where I've read it, but I know I've encountered at least a couple of people on the right arguing that the Labour Party of Norway was noticeably weakened by their loss of up-and-coming young talent at Utøya, and thus, contra Yarvin, Breivik did make a difference for his side. (I'd argue that this is actually why Yarvin spent so long pooh-poohing ABB, because — particularly after listening to him on podcasts — so much of Yarvin's political program seems to be aimed first and foremost at preventing this sort of thing — for entirely understandable historical reasons.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
Perhaps, but Moldbuggian solutions in particular seem, at least to me, more about making High Modernism more efficient — and cementing the power of technocratic Blue elites — through eliminating (the pretense of) democracy (and the Landian variety is anti-human).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
To actually take it seriously as something that matters in the world, including the present day; and not just treat it as a creation myth — something of the long, long ago — to serve as an alternative narrative to Genesis.
In slightly less broad terms, to recognize things like Darwinism meaning you can have telos without a (conscious) telos-giver (what makes an adaptation an adaptation?); or to reject the creationist-adjacent idea that evolution is always so "crude" and "random" that even the smallest amount of Intelligent Design will always do better (that's how you get High Modernism). Back in the last century, quite a lot of effort into AI was about trying to work out how to Intelligently Design a mind top-down, while others worked on more evolutionary, bottom-up methods like neural networks. Well, who proved more fruitful there? Or recognizing that there isn't one single "environment" to which creatures — or social institutions — adapt, but countless local ecosystems. Just as there's no "perfect bird" — only birds perfectly adapted to particular conditions in particular places — there is no single "ideal government," only governments ideal for a particular people, in a particular place, with a particular culture, at a particular time in history. (I seem to vaguely recall de Maistre having said something relevant to this point.)
It's about recognizing that the idea that some armchair "experts", with just a couple months of mental work, will necessarily "outdo" the products of evolution — whether that's the folks confident about vast enhancements without trade-off via genetic engineering, tankies who think that this time their socialist central planners will beat free markets, or Seeing Like a State-style High Modernist social engineers.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
That might be a subcategory of what I'm talking about, but not everyone goes as far into laissez-faire as they do (after all, we're social animals, and building cooperative communities is part of our extended phenotype).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
13d ago
Is there a general term for the sort of broad political position of 'secular/atheist individual who believes in Darwinian evolution so deeply that he is led to reject liberalism, high modernist utopianism, and much of the "Enlightenment" project'?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
13d ago
Count me as another one who found this through the AAQC roundup.
As an inhabitant of the state with the highest population fraction Eastern Orthodox, I feel like I should say something here; but I don't exactly have much relevant first-hand knowledge, except to note that our Orthodox population is, as one might expect, disproportionately Native (what with many of their ancestors having been first evangelized by Russian Orthodox missionaries, back before Russia sold the place to the USA).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
Maybe incel isn't the correct word stricly speaking. It's just coded in the sphere of ideologies such as red pill, mgtow, mra, pua, etc.
Again, what does that have to do with whether it's true or false, correct or incorrect?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
a very incel coded conclusion.
You use the word "incel coded" (and "incel worldview" above) as if said modifier implies, or is synonymous with, "incorrect." It's a sneer masquerading as argumentation.
If a conclusion is true, then it is true regardless of how "incel coded" it is.
What does it add to the conversation, except as a verbal "boo light"? I mean, at best it's Bulverism — "You only believe this because…".
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
23d ago
And wouldn't it still be useful to be able to spin up an arbitrary number of genius AIs to think about any problem you wanted to?
Sure, but more in the "putting people out of work"-style future (a la Tyler Cowen's "Average is Over"), than anything like the revolutionary futures envisioned by singularitarians.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
26d ago
I'm very not certain, but I seem to recall a study they did on female teenagers back when they attempted to educate them on the benefits of abstinence by making them carry around a toddler-like doll for the entire day. IIRC, the result backfired, as the teenagers reported wanting to have children more afterwards, not less.
It was a 2016 Australian study; this piece discusses it. (I previously brought this up on the Motte here)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
26d ago
Yes, the decline of alloparenting and loss of opportunity to develop child-minding and child-rearing skills shouldn't be underestimated. I made a similar point here 5 months ago (along with discussing children's toys and sex ed classes fighting teen pregnancy).
I'm reminded here of Arnold Kling's "Where are the Servants?" from back in 2011:
In an economy where some folks are very rich and many folks are unemployed, why are there not more personal servants? Why don’t Sergey Brin and Bill Gates have hundreds of people on personal retainer?
Both in the comments there, and in responses I remember reading elsewhere, some posit cultural factors (I recall someone elsewhere recounting a passage from a history book talking about the culture clash when a European aristocrat visiting a wealthy American in the mid 19th century tried treating an employee like a European domestic servant). But plenty of people point out that the same services are still available to the rich, just in the form of specialized firms. To quote commenter "mark" on that page:
It’s a definitional issue – what is a “servant” vs “employee” vs “contractor”. Think of administrative assistants, personal trainers, personal chefs, cleaning services, car services, handymen, private plane pilots, personal book keeper, family wealth manager (the “family office”) and so on. Would you call them “servants”? I suspect not. But all they do is provide personal services to higher income people who have specialized their labor towards a lot of income. You can call them “small business owners”, “contractors or “employees”. The differences are modest. Maybe “servant” connotes livery, a small room in one person’s mansion etc. But in the old days “servant” was just another word for employee – “master – servant” relations was another phrase for the employment relationship.
And Bryan Willman:
I’m no billionare, though I have known a few.
But there is a squad of people who maintain my lawn – I don’t call them servants, or retainers, I call them the landscaping company, and I hire them for that specialized task like all the rest of their clients. The “manage the staff” bit that a butler (I think) would have done is dealt with by me hiring the company – that company’s management deals with everybody else.
Likewise the house cleaners (again, a company that specializes in that.)
No so different, the garage I take my cars to for maintence (they give me a ride to my office), my Doctor (who is no retainer but certainly provides personal medical services better than any King of England got until fairly recently.)
I do, in a sense, have “retainers” – but we tend to call them lawyers….
I have an accountant, whom I share with his other clients, but is very much paid to tend to a particular part of my affairs.
Bill Gates has private planes, whose pilots are most likely provided by a service like netjets even if the plane isn’t leased out. So there’s a “family transportation staff” even if none of them see a check signed directly by Bill.
You don't have a gardener, you hire a landscaping service to come by regularly. You don't have maids, you hire a cleaning service. Instead of a "lady's maid" taking care of your hair, you've got a hair dresser. You don't have a coachman, you call up a car service. And instead of nannies, you've got daycare.
From other comments there:
Dan Hill:
As Don Bordreaux points out that they probably buy many of these services in the marketplace, rather than employing people to provide those services as rich people used to do.
That’s a function of two things; how efficient and liquid markets now are at providing these services and the significant fixed costs (and legal risks) in being an employer in a modern regulatory environment.
Bottom line, I’m pretty sure one way or another these guys do not mow their own lawns, wash their own cars or clean their own toilets!
Tracy W:
I’m a bit puzzled by your terminology. The labour market is as much a market as the appliance market. Perhaps the main difference is standardisation – if I buy a dishwasher I can get a pretty good idea of the quality by recommendations and reviews of dishwashers, if I own a good dishwasher and I suddenly lose it (say to a home fire), I can buy another of the same brand with reasonable confidence that I’ll get another good quality one. But people differ more, my neighbour might employ a great maid, but her sister might be hopeless, and if I employ a fantastic maid and she quits for whatever reason, I can’t just go out and hire another version of her. (Not that I employ servants, but I have for example noticed far more quality differences between different waiters than between different dishwashers of the same brand.)
More from Bryan Willman:
“Help” is NEVER CHEAP, unless the help ALREADY KNOWS WHAT TO DO.
It’s not just minimum wage, or government regulations and burdens.
It’s that for very many tasks, I can do it faster than I can explain it. That’s not true of landscaping or house cleaning, but it is of many many other tasks. No matter how I value my time, paying somebody else to listen to me explain it and then do it, all more slowly than I could do it, is a loss. Worse when they have to ask me questions about it.
Now add management of people, the risks and hazards of having people around (being sued for something, having stuff stolen, people quarreling with one another, people forgetting their keys, etc.)
Note that most of these issues apply even if the wage rate is 0. That is, I would refuse to have people come “help me” for free.
The person who had a staff in Thailand (which was a pain) only had to put up with that due to lack of appliances and weirdness of the transport system. Who today would hire a dish washer for their household? Somebody to manually do what the clothes washer does?
…
Two more items to add to the thread.
1. My accoutants and lawyers give me a body of advice which can be summed up as “NO EMPLOYEES EVER”. There is a minimum cost associated with having an employee – a minimum (long) list of things one must do and do right to avoid fines, surprize costs, meddling, and sometimes jail. Hiring all services out to companies side steps all of that.
People who already have companies with employees have a much easier time adding a personal assistant using that same infrastructure.
2. A fair part of the current “rich” are folks who are geeks like me, often from modest backgrounds, who made fortunes in the PC revolution (and to a lesser extent the .com bubble.)
There’s a whole host of “fancy services” some of these new rich just don’t care about. Another set that involve human interactions they are uncomfortable with. (Remember, we’re talking programmer geeks here. We can be way stranger than most people realize.)
In short, hiring somebody directly is legally and financially scary, requires out-of-the-ordinary personal interactions, and may have low perceived effective returns.
The modern way is more efficient, taking advantage of specialization and centralization. (Of course one can make the case, as Yarvin once did, that this is the sort of area where increasing employment might be preferable to raw economic efficiency.) Further, the burden of finding and sorting out quality staff, of dealing with all the tax and regulatory burden of employment, the employer liability, et cetera, is borne by the landscaping/cleaning/daycare/whatever service instead of the rich person.
Thus, as Steve Sailer notes:
Life is better for rich people than ever before. They get all the advantages of being rich, including all the personal services they want when and where they want them, without the old-fashioned disadvantages like having to dress for dinner to set a good example and discussing things “not in front of the servants.”
Edit: here's a follow-up of sorts from Kling on his Substack "Servants to the Rich, 1/18" in 2022:
Some of the components of the twentieth-century middle class are declining . The percentage of the work force that can be called manufacturing production workers is down. Many mom-and-pop retail businesses have been defeated by Wal-Mart and Amazon.
Ten years ago, I wrote Where are the Servants?
In an economy where some folks are very rich and many folks are unemployed, why are there not more personal servants? Why don’t Sergey Brin and Bill Gates have hundreds of people on personal retainer?
Perhaps we are now living in the New Servants economy. Tyler Cowen has a series called “those new service-sector jobs.” My favorites include Coffin Whisperer and Wedding Hashtag Composer. The demand for such services can only come from people with excess wealth, and the supply comes from people who realize that their best source of income is to cater to those with excess wealth. This is very different from the age of mass consumption, when Henry Ford tried to manufacture cars that his workers could afford.
Actually, I think that the biggest engine of the trickle-down economy is the nonprofit sector. I don’t have data on this, but I suspect that if you ask the next 10 young professionals you meet where they work, at least 3 of them will reply that they work for nonprofits.
In the 1970s, the catch-phrase “petro-dollar recycling” became popular among international economic technocrats. The idea was that oil-rich countries accumulated substantial wealth, and this wealth would somehow find its way to poor countries, primarily being channeled as loans.
Today, I think that what we are seeing is “techno-dollar recycling.” Winners in technology and finance have accumulated substantial wealth. This wealth finds its way to young professionals, primarily being channeled through nonprofits.
(One interesting bit — for me — that really dates the piece is from the very end:
And here is Sam Harris interviewing, and slobbering over, young billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. Not once does Harris ask the question of why it is more ethical for Bankman-Fried to donate his money in an unaccountable way than it is for him to invest his money in profit-seeking business. I don’t count on Congress allocating resources wisely, so I don’t favor wealth taxes. But I don’t count on any billionaire allocating resources wisely without any feedback mechanism.
I find Bankman-Fried scary, and my guess is that I would find other billionaires with his approach to altruism just as scary. I don’t think that any one person has as clear a picture of morality as Bankman-Fried and Harris believe that they own.
Yeah, we saw how that turned out, didn't we?)
What arguments convinced you both that this relationship would be asymptotic or at least have severely diminishing returns, and that we are at least halfway along the way to this asymptote?
Mostly personal observation of the utility (or lack thereof) of the higher levels of human intelligence versus the average, combined with general philosophic principles favoring diminishing returns and asymptotic limits as the null hypothesis, along with a natural skepticism towards claims of vast future potential (why I'm also deeply irritated by Eric Weinstein's whole recurring "we need new physics" riff; or similar arguments held forth by, say, UFOlogists).
Edit: consider also, as toy examples, the utility of knowing pi to an increasing number of digits; or the utility of increasing levels of recursion in modeling other agents and the speed of convergence to game-theoretic equilibria.
But does the UAE scale? Further, the UAE isn't exactly a democracy, especially not one with birthright citizenship. I've seen some open borders advocates argue for a "billion immigrants" America that follows the UAE model (Nathan Smith for one), but none of them seem very clear on how to get there from here — well, beyond something like just throwing open the floodgates and hoping that the resulting effects force our political elites to make the desired changes and adopt the desired system in order to keep the country from collapsing (and the answers to "and if that doesn't work?" tend to be rather disheartening).
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