No, it's not. We're talking about businesses with razor-thin profit margins and manufacturing chains spread over three continents - losing these and producing no home-grown alternatives might be a disaster but at worst removing global free trade takes us back to 1940 not 1440.
Corvos
5mo ago
lol, Democratic Patronage Network. If nothing else, I admire your rabid partisanship.
It’s not wrong, though, is it?
Corvos
1yr ago
To be clear, I am speculating that a group descended by several generations from people taken captive after being conquered in war, or as the result of a successful raid, are likely to have worse outcomes than the children of the people who won those wars and committed those raids. Do you disagree?
I am not asserting that losing a war brands a group with the Mark of Perpetual Loserdom.
I appreciate the detailed writeup. I will freely concede the following points: your analysis is probably correct, and the ICC's verdict is probably tendentious and politically motivated.
I am, I'm afraid, arguing vibes. The USA's pitch to the world over last half-century of so has been something along the lines of:
"We're here to help. Previously, empires were allowed to bully and exploit smaller countries, but we're different. We intend to put in place a world order that will allow (and require) countries to cooperate and trade with each other on equal terms. We intend to police the world if necessary, but not to rule it."
Given that, for America to exempt itself and its vassals from the international court with jurisdiction over
(a) The crime of genocide; (b) Crimes against humanity; (c) War crimes; (d) The crime of aggression.
and to explicitly threaten employees of the court is a very bad look. It makes people start to wonder why America feels that laws around genocide and war crimes are "inapplicable or inappropriate" when applied to America. It brings back memories of the invasion of Iraq. It also brings back memories of things like the unequal extradition treaty between America and the UK. It's as though Bill Gates declared that he was too important to be bound by laws against murder, or at the very least demanded the right to determine whether those laws were being correctly applied to him and his friends on a case-by-case basis.
it would be immoral to force nation-states to be governed by agreements they did not agree to
Precisely as immoral as it is to force people to be governed by laws they didn't sign.
In short, does America sincerely believe that it is too important and powerful to answer to anyone else? America's behaviour suggests that the answer is yes, and any intimations otherwise is 'who, whom' propaganda. The more America resorts to economic and diplomatic coercion, the less interested everyone else is in helping to maintain the system and America's place in it.
Having said all of that, I think that international law is an extremely flawed concept. The idea that one government can enter into an agreement that is considered binding on subsequent governments decades later seems ludicrous and anti-democratic. As with most law, it's ultimately a fudge for applying coercive power in a manner that is mostly accepted and results in minimal fuss. I wouldn't bear America any ill will for saying, "our voters are pro-Israel and we feel the need to act accordingly, regardless of international law" provided that they extended the same courtesy to everybody else.
Corvos
2yr ago
Wouldn’t work. Trump’s ego is too big to work with genuinely competent people long-term. Same problem with Boris Johnson: ultimately he couldn’t bear to share the stage with Cummings. (Other problems too, but that was a biggie.)
If you want to work with good people, I think you have to be able to give public credit where it’s due, and you have to tolerate some genuine pushback from your advisors.
Corvos
6mo ago
While I agree with you about China and the dangers of a lopsided population pyramid, it's also true that we really don't want 8 billion people on a planet with limited temperate zones. I don't think it's fair to look at the problems that have resulted from trying to manage a delayed, sticky system that's tied deep into social and mental structures and where both surges and declines cause undesirable affects, then say 'see, this proves that having more children is never a bad thing'. The fact that pessimism has caused problems does not mean that blind optimism is desirable.
Going to push back a bit on "the early 90s [were] the true golden age of the West". The way I remember it, there was a lot of abundance but also a deep ideological conformity and a corrosive cynicism. I remember the 00s better but I remember it as a time that was resolutely anti-ideological, such that any hint of sincerity was mocked and any possibility that we hadn't discovered the only philosophy man would ever need was almost incomprehensible. The great questions of life were regarded as solved or irrelevant.
Our current crisis is unpleasant in many ways but at least we know the wokeness exists. It's something that one can recognise when implemented, it's something that you can identify with or stand against (even if one is afraid to stand against it publicly). There is far more, and better, free thought now than there was in the 90s and 00s.
If you have to choose between China and America and you're not in the Politburo, America is loads better even if you don't like some of the things America does.
At the very least, this is not an indisputable fact. I've known various Chinese in and out of the country and I've visited briefly; China had much tighter security and much more overt control of information than America, but it was, basically, just another country. The people clearly didn't consider themselves to be living in a dystopia. Nor were they smiling and desperately terrified like somebody in North Korea.
Meanwhile @No_one is literally arguing that America should keep any potential competitors 'in eternal poverty and civil war'. That strikes me as pretty shitty! Like, probably America is still the country that most of us would prefer to win a battle of superpowers if it absolutely must come to that, but that calculus changes very quickly if America starts throwing its weight around even more than it already does.
Corvos
2mo ago
Humans want good things and don’t want bad things, there’s no point blaming them (us) for that. But the correct prayer is ‘thy will be done’. One hopes that deliverance from a particular tribulation is God’s will but doesn’t demand that it be so.
Being a Christian requires believing that the grand plan on this world and the other is good, regardless of whether one happens to enjoy the role that we are given to play right here and now.
Corvos
2mo ago
It seems worth noting that I usually hear this argument being made by comfortable people living relatively easy lives (e.g. webcomic artists). People actually experiencing the kind of calamity people are talking about (earthquakes, war, disease) tend to find meaning in these events. See for example that famous book by an Auswitz survivor about the necessity of meaning for sustaining life.
Now, this is obviously an ad hominem argument about psychology propensities rather than whether God actually has a plan, but it does rather colour the conversation for me that arguments based on suffering are mostly deployed cynically by those who are basically ok rather than the sufferers themselves.
Apologies for double-dipping, but what I want to know from the new rules is, if I:
- put serious effort into a top-level post
- and I collaborate with AI at some point in the process to jump-start a paragraph or to suggest ideas or to correct style
- and I post it with the sincere expectation that it meets the usual bar and that others will find it interesting
- and I am intellectually honest and say that I used AI
what happens to me?
The vast majority of posts below are commenting on low-effort uses of AI to win slapfights on the internet but I want to know where the high bar is, if it exists at all.
The argument is basically solid, but the theoretical bits at the beginning and end use vague, grandiose language that sometimes pings my bullshit detector. To be totally honest, I’m not sure if that's Deepseek’s writing style or yours: you have a fairly flamboyant style when you get onto grand topics. I would be interested to see what happens if you add in a few more motte posters for style.
He did. It’s the old OKCupid data showing that, while male rate the average woman as averagely attractive, women rate the average man as extremely unattractive. And indeed any man below the 5th percentile or so.
Of course, it would be nice to have replications but there never will be, because if true this strongly indicates that any society where women are free to choose their mates or to remain single will be one where huge numbers of both sexes die alone. The latter choice was not possible in historic societies and is the main reason for our current predicament IMO. That is why I advocate for progressive and extremely high rates of taxation for single men and women approaching 30.
From the link:
Men don’t just find women more attractive; men’s ratings closely follow a bell curve, with 6% of women getting the minimum rating and 6% getting the maximum rating.
Women don’t just find men less attractive; the median and mode rating is 2 out of 7. Even more strikingly, the second most-common rating is 1 out of 7 — and near-zero men in the sample received 7 out of 7. (Over the years, by the way, I’ve repeatedly said “exactly zero,” but if you look close at the original post archived by Gwern, that’s not quite true).
The OkCupid results are far from unique. But the graphs are stark enough to inspire mutual anger. Common angry male reactions include: “Women have absurdly unrealistic standards” as well as “Women are just cruel.” Common angry female responses include: “It’s not our fault that most men suck” and “Why should I settle?”
But the only thing less constructive than anger is mutual anger. The data reveal an ugly truth that we all need to face. While there are several ways to capture this ugly truth, my favorite is just: The typical man disgusts the typical woman. You can expand this to: The median man moderately disgusts the typical woman, and the bottom quarter of men strongly disgust the typical woman.
[Various musings on how men and women can treat each other with empathy]
Update: Stefan Schubert points out that the OKCupid estimates of the male-female gap are unusually extreme. Emil Kirkegaard agrees after thoroughly reviewing a wide range of measures. True enough, but we should trust the OKCupid data more. The big advantage of the dating website rankings is that they greatly reduce Social Desirability Bias by getting both men and women in a “What do you REALLY think?” frame of mind.
Corvos
5mo ago
people directly involved admit that the Jewish lobby was decisive in the matter which had previously stalled after failing to get enough support. It is the decisive reason, they even admit this
In the interests of fairness, it would be quite nice to have a source for this, too.
Substack writers are all murderers, it's part of the signup process ;) You didn't know?
Corvos
1yr ago
I'm not wholly sure what you're trying to say.
Giraffes got longer necks because the ones with necks too short to reach the treetops died of starvation. In short, sexual selection is meta-Lamarckian (i.e. not Lamarckian) to the extent that successful variants reproduce and unsuccessful variants don't. Creating these conditions artificially was the core of classical eugenics, but I don't think it's what you're advocating?
Corvos
1yr ago
What specifically does, say, a Filipino need to do to join a Western nation? Why can't they do that?
To me, they need to commit to propagating the culture of their new home rather than their old one. That means not hanging out with other Philippinos, it means speaking almost exclusively the language of the country they immigrate to, and raising their children with the same mores and customs as the natives.
In my experience, this is very rare. Learning new languages is very hard even when you have the time and money; it’s difficult to get by at first without help from ethnic support groups; and without introductions it’s hard to get into new social circles as a foreigner. The children also tend to feel isolated and retreat into their ‘parent’ culture (where they don’t fit either).
I say the above as someone who tried very hard and failed. I’ve only seen it happen successfully once. For this reason I’m very skeptical about the viability of integration except for minute levels of immigration.
N.B. It’s also much harder if you and your children are visibly different from the people around you.
Corvos
2mo ago
Being hard-hearted, the ethical path is to accept as members of their community that little children with cancer cannot and should not be the recipient of vast amounts of community support. People of my grandmother’s generation could and did accept that.
The existence of organisations like NICE in the UK also tacitly accepts this fact. One might say, “I’m not going to accept socialist government telling me what care I can obtain for my child,” but one might also say that telling parents that if they raise 500,000 dollars it will increase their child’s survival rate slightly is both futile and cruel, and preventing them from doing so is a mercy.
Now, God knows I understand why the parents don’t bite the bullet, but it’s basically the case.
So thought (and think) many pagans.
One could make arguments around more complex society leading to less agentic beliefs perhaps (implying Christianity is a religion for bureaucrats and managers?) or just that while medieval Christian societies tended to be pretty brutal they were a lot less brutal than the pagans. I have no idea really.
One point that might be relevant is that it was really easy to lose the favour of pagan gods. Maybe you were stingy with the sacrifices, or the other side were more generous, or you get fucked despite doing nothing wrong because Zeus fucked his milkmaid and now Hera hates you.
Corvos
2mo ago
The cynicism is in comfortable people deploying the actual suffering of others to bash Christians, often ignoring the sufferers’ own feelings on the matter and without displaying any interest in said suffering except as a handy cudgel.
I don’t mean that as an accusation of anyone here necessarily but it’s definitely something I’ve seen and it prejudices me against this form of argument.
Yes. That is why I no longer advocate for free speech.
Firstly, the ‘only government shouldn’t censor’ line seems totally arbitrary to me - it’s okay if Twitter censors and whips up hostile mobs, but then it becomes unacceptable if they talked to an FBI agent before doing so. And once you move to a more expansive definition the whole thing just falls apart. If I don’t like what you say, can I avoid buying services from you? Can I suggest the same to my friend? Can I tell people I don’t hang out with people who say X and they shouldn’t either? If yes, you have social pressure and AstroTurfed boycotts, which doesn’t sound much like free speech to me. If no, then my free speech is being threatened.
Secondly, it feels quokka-like to the point of being suicidal. Why on Earth would I give free speech to people who are openly organising to deny me of it? To destroy my culture and to harm me personally?
Ultimately might DOES make right (as the British-supporting Americans who were forced to flee from Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness learned). I would rather pursue might than argue about rights with people who have no interest in my wellbeing.
Corvos
3mo ago
Right, but a multiplicity of individuals makes a group. I’m sympathetic to their case but emigration is acting as a release valve for the kind of pressure that formed first world countries to begin with.
Corvos
5mo ago
It's interesting to see what kind of clothes people wear, even though they don't sew the clothes themselves.
Understanding the theory != agreement with it.
If your theory doesn’t allow you to predict (and preferably control) actual results then it’s dubious by default. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but disagreement is inevitable and appropriate. Micro-economics is mostly non-controversial for this reason. Macroeconomics is much more controversial. What inputs and outputs economic analysis should consider is incredibly controversial.
Presumably the African slavers who forced them into slavery and sold them felt otherwise.
In all seriousness, every pre-industrial civilisation relied on some system of forcing people to do back-breaking physical labour. Africa had slavery since Ancient Egypt invaded Nubia, in Europe we had peasants and serfs. Now we have robotics (lit. Workers in Czech) and machines. Soon we will have AI.
From where I’m standing, the devil’s bargain is importing an ethnically distinct forced labour class. Once you do, even post industrialisation it will be very clear who was on which side of the metaphorical or literal whip and those wounds aren’t going to heal with time. Especially when the forces that put A on top of B end up not changing.
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