Corvos
10hr ago
For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!
Not say this? For starters? Israel was actually doing pretty well with restraint and measured responses right up until Oct 7th when they (somewhat understandably but very foolishly) let Hamas provoke them into an orgy of violence that makes them look like just another band of murderous ethnic psychos.
Corvos
11hr ago
I think it makes sense in the context of a) a confusing world and b) a general understanding that humans and animals are usually more comfortable in their native environment.
So e.g. nobody blinks twice if you say that humans (or tigers) need a green environment and lots of sunlight, because we evolved to expect these things. Likewise, mildly more controversial, the similar arguments made in favour of exercise and combat sports.
From there it doesn't seem inherently unreasonable to say, 'Look, you're designed to breed. You may think you would be happy with porn / in a monastery / DINKing but your brain and your body expect kids and the longer you ignore that impulse the more you're going to regret it later'.
THEN of course you get all the complications around group reproduction. Obviously you have Palestinians literally saying the battle for Palestine happens in the womb, but you also have the demographic tax pyramid where a failure to reproduce can collectively screw over your entire society. Of course it's up to people who much they care about that, but I don't think that caring more than zero is invalid.
As a biologist it seems entirely obvious to me. Biologically people are the end result of an optimisation process running many hundreds of millions of years with the sole goal of shaping you to reproduce your genes. You exist only in as far as your ancestors were able to reproduce. Your body and your mind are incredibly strongly shaped for ‘what is needed for you to reproduce’. It makes sense to call the utility function through which you were ‘designed’ your purpose, biologically speaking.
To be frank you are an educated man and know this already, and I assume your statement of bafflement is a refutation of the idea that we should care what evolution ‘intended’ for us.
To which I can only reply that my brain was shaped by these same processes and I & many others find ourselves caring regardless of whether you do.
Corvos
18hr ago
Two big paradigm shifts came from China: reinforcement-learning self-training, and mixture-of-experts for LLMs.
That would seem somewhat appropriate, until they can return and rebuild with the men. Chastity shows a level of seriousness and an awareness of the sacrifices others are making.
Corvos
2d ago
I meant he was going for 2 by wearing the fedora. Better a weirdo than a weirdo who’s taken correspondence courses on how to look like a DC mover and shaker.
Corvos
2d ago
This reminds me of Scott A saying that in terms of giving a good impression:
- it’s great to be cool and charismatic and self-confident
- it’s… fine to be normal and a bit diffident and insecure
- it’s really bad to be a slightly shy and insecure person pretending to be cool and charismatic and self-confident
Corvos
2d ago
I can’t imagine that Anthropic would voluntarily sell exclusive access to the US government.
Corvos
3d ago
Speaking as someone who’s weighed up automating some processes versus hiring some manual workers to do it, there seems a world of difference between “we’d rather automate this because hiring a team will open us up to lots more compliance, plus it’ll be really inconvenient if they drop out or aren’t any good or demand more interesting work or we decide to end the project” versus hating people and wanting them to suffer.
Corvos
3d ago
In complete seriousness, I don’t think you understand the visceral worries that parents have of whether their children will do well.
Your economic analysis of what would happen to the money is correct but I know enough parents to know many are genuinely trying to do their best for their children rather than living out some pompous caricature of the PMC, and are desperately afraid their children will fall into an unhappy state.
You may think those fears are misguided but parental worry is something that it’s hard to reason away.
Corvos
4d ago
Eh, the male equivalent is the treatment of idols and people like that. Less an Anglo thing but actresses (and actors) have often been expected to comport their sex life in such a way as to not shatter the fantasies of their fans.
Elder Race is one of my favourite books and I don't recognise this description at all. There's one bit where she realises she's formally put herself in the debt of an ancient and largely incomprehensible (to her at that point) being. Since she's very sheltered and inclined to think in story plots, she wonders if this is going to be a story about how a princess got spirited away by a wizard. Nothing comes of it because he's a clinically depressed basket case who regards her as primitive, and because he's still kicking himself for totally fouling up a budding romance with her long-dead great-great-grandmother.
The plot is mostly about her growing up and getting a clue, while he reconnects with humanity. (Also realising that being a 'wizard' is much cooler than being a shut-in old man and the Ethics Committee can go hang, they’re all dead anyways.)
I can’t speak for his books in the generality but Elder Race doesn’t have any of that kind of thing, or even any romance.
It’s primarily a story about the (platonic) relationship between an ancient nanoaugmented ethnologist stranded on a colony world that has regressed to medieval tech, and the spunky princess fifth in line who’s going on a Quest in order to make people take her seriously and thinks he’s a wizard.
The other novella I read, The Expert System’s Brother, doesn’t have that kind of thing either.
Corvos
6d ago
A pretty loaded bet, I think, they charge a big premium. It makes people feel safer though.
Corvos
6d ago
Do you, though? Look at Chinese open-source AI. It's un-cucked (along the lines most of us here care about) because what the Chinese government really cares about you don't, and vice versa. Likewise Japanese manga and anime provided an escape hatch for every man sick of relentlessly feminist media. Things like Sci-Hub and Pirate Bay are based in the 'stans and the Netherlands respectively. Do you really want your countrymen to get final see on everything you're allowed to access?
Corvos
6d ago
They have submitted to the authority of the government. They’re arguing that the government’s demands should be reasonable, untargeted, and not sprung on us out of the blue.
Corvos
6d ago
Some restaurants or hot spring resorts have "no foreigners" or "Japanese only" posted at their entrance.
FWIW in practice that means, "guests must speak Japanese and respect Japanese mores". If you're fluent to a reasonable level and behave yourself they're perfectly happy to have you.
Lotharios existed in every age. And doubtless so did women overeager to use them to beat all men over the head.
I don't think folk songs about Casanova and his disciples prove much about the majority of men who broadly loved, married, and procreated on schedule.
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