Crake
Protestant Goodbot
No bio...
User ID: 1203
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
What's the point?
I don’t want any increase of geopolitical tension between China and the west but I think there are substantial reasons to want this to become the widespread consensus.
Biotech is an existential risk that people and governments are not concerned enough about. I think it would be very good for that to be a more widespread concern.
A practical goal would be banning gain of function research. Or more realistically, banning gain of function research that claims to be being done in pursuit of some kind of medical goal. I don’t really think you’ll be able to stop it from happening in military labs. But research that dangerous shouldn’t have the veil of claiming that it is being done in order to protect against viruses. And, you shouldn't be able to do it in labs with the security levels of the Wuhan labs.
The smallest practical goal would be removing American funding from Chinese gain of function research. It appears to be undisputed that there was at least some money coming from America and funding labs in Wuhan that were researching novel coronaviruses. That should obviously stop.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
It also probably didn't help the box office of BROS that its target market --- young urban progressives -- is the same one most hawkishly cautious about COVID and the least likely to return to movie theaters out of what now could be ascribed to superstitious fears of deadly illness.
I really don't think this is a thing. Everyone I know is a young urban progressive, and many of them are the conspicuously political type of young urban progressive. While they all liked to talk about how covid was terrifying and we needed vax mandates - both in person and on social media - most of them stopped caring after less than 12 months.
We are way beyond that point now, and I don't know a single "young urban progressive" who avoids going to rowdy parties. Maybe they wear a mask on public transport to that party, but that's it. Most of them will happily share a joint with strangers at said parties. None of them are concerned about covid in a way that would stop them from going to a public event they had any interest in.
If young urban progressives didn't show up to this movie, its because they, like everyone else, was not interested in the movie. Not because of covid concerns.
I've yet to see anyone be swayed on the issue no matter how convincing the data. Personally, I doubt there's any data that could sway me in the other direction either.
I was swayed. I was radically concerned about covid and pro lockdowns. I was reading Chinese news and told all of my friends that covid was going to be a huge deal back in the first december before it really showed up in america. To the point that my girlfriend said she was going to stage an intervention because I was taking this too seriously. My friends all thought I was being crazy.
Then when it did pop off I helped convince the business I worked at to go fully remote, and fled my city with my gf to live in a rural area (obviously my views were aided by the fact that I have the resources to do that and it wasn't a real hardship for me).
I was, for a LONG TIME, one of the most intense about covid safety in my social group. I was wildly cautious about my own exposure. I don't think I ever judged people who were less cautious, but that didn't stop me from supporting the more consensual lockdowns at least. And I certainly avoided hanging out with people who weren't extremely careful.
But my mind was changed entirely. Not necessarily by any argument anyone made. But as the months passed it became clear that covid was not the black death and that lockdowns weren't doing anything good. They only hurt the young to protect the very old. I watched people I knew get covid and saw that it wasn't a severe disease. And towards the end of the winter of 2021, my perspective had done a 180.
I fully recant my original position. My reaction was too strong, and the lockdowns, etc, did nothing but harm. I really regret my original position and feel kind of stunned by what it says about my psychology that I became so intense. Some part of me still does think "the big one" is out there in a lab somewhere, so it's not like I've fully moved on from the preoccupation with potential plagues.
They really are the ultimate scissor statement
Maybe but I live in a super blue bubble, and covid fanaticism has died out rapidly and is almost non existent now. Sure, you're supposed to get boosters and claim that covid was a big deal. But many don't get boosters (I don't and have successfully convinced my very blue family to avoid them). I have also found that saying it wasn't a big deal ever and that we made a mistake, has not made any of my friends particularly bothered.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
10mo ago
I think that the way you feel may be a normal response to the world you were raised in, but I suspect it is an indication that that world is pretty unhealthy. It seems like a symptom of a profound alienation. Historically, male or female would be a genuinely meaningful category that placed certain rights and obligations on you. I'm not sure that the elimination of that has been psychologically good.
I can relate. I don't feel an automatic urge to identify as a Citizen of my country. It's just something I happened to be born with and while I appreciate the huge benefits it provides me with, I don't feel responsible for the actions of my native country or a strong sense of association with other nominal Citizens. But that's probably a really bad thing. Citizens of a healthy nations automatically partake in the daily plebiscite. I should feel a strong alliance with my nations and my fellows. And most of all, it would be great if my country applied some meaningful obligations on me.
And it makes me sad, because I've always wanted to see gender roles become less rigid, not more. What I fear is that people who deviate from increasingly narrow gender roles are going to be funneled into an increasingly narrow gender role of the opposite sex, which is every bit as much oppressive as a father who berates his son for playing with dolls.
Why though? How has the reduction of the strictness of roles that modernity has brought on improved things for people?
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
Maybe kind of a fun flaming bag as far as that goes. It seems to have drawn mainly polite and somewhat interesting responses.
I don't know the users history that lead to previous bans though. And it clearly is an intentionally radioactive post.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
Yes, you definitely are off. Maybe some white liberals only support policies that hurt them in order to fit in, but in my experience a substantial, probably majority, group of white liberals believe in progressive policies with a religious energy.
They genuinely want to implement policies that would harm them unfairly. They would happily support something that will harm their own quality of life (even something that would do so in a more overt way than college admissions) in order to make a sacrifice to the good of the oppressed. Like a tithe
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
You describing this as poor etiquette potentially has some merit and I would be curious to hear more. From my perspective, I would not consider it poor etiquette if I was on the receiving end of the above post, as the scenario seems trivially easy to clear up (e.g. "Yep, looks like I was wrong on that point. My bad!"). I don't see making a mistake as indication of a personal failing so it shouldn't be something to be embarrassed by. To the extent that anyone who makes a mistake refuses to admit error, or to the extent a topic generates a pattern of errors skewing in the same direction, I think there is utility to shining a spotlight on it.
I agree with BadCivilization - it feels like bad etiquette to make a top post calling someone out this fast. I agree that people who make big claims as top level posts should respond to criticism. And I'm in favor of shining on light on people when they fail to respond. But this is too fast to accuse someone of intentionally ignoring your post. Give the person 24 hours, no?
I like arguing on the motte but I don't have notifications set up or anything. I don't think going dark during an argument always means I'm avoiding a strong point. I see this as a nonsynchronous medium. I would like to have a grace period.
I don't buy this. It only makes sense if Putin is on the absolute knife's edge of losing power already, and if that is the case, I don't think he'd have the power to secretly bomb the pipe without that being stopped or leaked.
Putin is in a precarious position but I think he still has control of many of the levers of power. The pipe existing gives him future options. He can turn it on or keep it off. That gives him leverage. I can't imagine that he would want to shrink his options is he still has the power to make that decision. And again, if he has enough power to blow it up, then he must still have quite a bit of power.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
It's pretty unusual for anti jaywalking laws to be enforced in America, even if it is technically illegal in some cities. Usually you'd have to be being intentionally disruptive before the cops would give you a hard time. The only city I've seen try to enforce it was DC.
It could be so much worse. There's nothing nice about it but it looks like a fine place to use as a base camp for enjoying the san diego weather and beach.
Or evolved in a lab but without active genetic engineering. You can infect lab animals and select for more potent viruses. And I think that is something that is done under the auspices of discovering potentially dangerous mutations that might occur.
That wouldn't leave any of the telltale markers of snipping and inserting genes, but could still lead to the creation of something nasty. And it would mean it was possible for the virus to be the result of human meddling, but not the result of an explicit attempt to hide that meddling.
Actively hiding the meddling seems really unlikely in the Wuhan labs, so if that's necessary, I think we have to default to the first option you provide, that it was found in the wild.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
11mo ago
It's probably not healthy but I am going to hear about the event a lot in the next few weeks and that breeds curiosity. I don't feel that strongly about it, but thought I might be able to get the straight easily here.
Africa was never really affected much by COVID, lockdown or no. It's a disease that hits the old and fat hardest, it targets wealthy countries.
Elias point isn't that Africa would be harmed by COVID without massive lockdowns, he was disputing the implications of your game theory claim. And I agree, I think your argument doesn't work at all.
You called aggressive lockdowns the cooperative move, which implies that aggressive lockdowns would lead to a better outcome if everyone who could make that move did. But this is not true. The only way widespread aggressive lockdowns could lead to a better outcomes is if it resulted in COVID being entirely eliminated.
Elias' point is that there are many players (countries) in the game who are not capable of making the move you call cooperation. Even if every country capable of long lasting China style lockdowns actually did implement them, the virus would have plenty of reservoirs outside of those powerful countries. Many regions on Earth simply could not maintain strict lockdowns, so the virus would remain there. As you point out, those regions would not have particularly bad outcomes, as they are generally young, but that doesn't stop the virus from spreading there, it only lowers its death toll. So eventually, the powerful countries capable of strict lockdowns would remove those lockdowns and the virus would quickly return, spread from the reservoirs in poorer countries. Exactly what happens to China when it lowers it's guard would happen everywhere else, COVID would rip through the population, a population that is notably now more vulnerable to the virus because the strict lockdowns they've endured have prevented anyone in the population from developing natural resistance from surviving an infection.
The game as you are describing has these features:
-The cost of "cooperating" is extremely high.
-The benefit of cooperation only occurs if almost all players cooperate.
-A large portion of the players in the game are not capable of choosing to cooperate.
That is a game where choosing to do what you call "cooperate" is strictly the wrong choice. And in a situation where the cost of choosing to cooperate is borne by vast numbers of real people, it is not at all a benevolent choice as cooperation usually implies.
As the virus cannot be eradicated by strict lockdowns, all that can be achieved is delaying the inevitable deaths from the virus - this a fact clearly illustrated by exactly what happens to China when they reduce their anti covid protocols. Maybe you could argue that at least for the period that strong powers are maintaining strict lockdowns there will be a lower potential for the virus to evolve, but this is still simply delaying the inevitable. Eventually the lockdowns will have to be loosened, the virus will rip through the mostly unexposed populations, and we will be back to the exact same place we started. At which point the virus will start evolving and spreading as normal.
The only case in which strict widespread lockdowns would make sense is if the major world powers decided to essentially invade the entire world and impose lockdowns on the countries that couldn't otherwise afford to implement them. Something that would be unthinkably expensive and difficult, and also would be incredibly bloody and evil.
Covid lockdowns have a place, and that is when a local area's hospitals are overwhelmed. At that point, strict localized lockdowns make sense in order to buy time for the hospitals to deal with their current patient load and maybe accumulate more resources for the future. But strict wide lockdowns do not make sense for covid, and viewing them as a benevolent move doesn't make sense when a large portion of player simply cannot choose to cooperate.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
I would be pretty upset if my kids were childfree. I wouldn't try to coerce them away from that decision, but I would feel like I had failed on some level, or that society had failed them. Family formation is a pretty core value for me. Is that wrong?
I don’t see the problem. Yes morality is relative. Yes my moral values are not materially truer than yours, so what? My morals are my morals, and they are correct, for me. I will act accordingly. I see no reason for this to collapse into nihilism.
“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
I know lots of bootcampers at fang companies making more than 200k.
They were the most talented of their classes but they made it.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
Can anyone here recommend a specific translation of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics? I read it in college and want to reread it, but when I look at the different editions, I don't know how to pick. Any suggestions from someone with a more extensive philosophy background?
Thanks!
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
I think a large contingent of people at the parties I go to drink that much at parties but don’t drink much at all other times. It’s definitely binge drinking but I don’t think it’s that unusual. Alcohol use disorder sure, but it’s common at parties in my experience
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
Yeah but that only helps people with ideological dietary restrictions. It actually is bad for allergy sufferers because legumes are one of the more common allergies. Peanuts and soy being the obvious culprits, but legumes in general being fairly common.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
Imagine if a democrat arrested 20 republicans for possessing an illegal firearm because they misunderstood an ATF statute and the ATF webpage said that particular modification / accessory was legal. And when Rs got mad about it, a democrat said "think on the meta level - from a pure signaling standpoint - if we want to prevent people from knowingly committing gun crimes, we have to arrest people who commit gun crimes, even if they possess a defense.".
That doesn't sound like an insane tactic. Making things uncomfortable for gun owners who have accidentally committed a small offense still makes things uncomfortable for gun owners. How does it not make sense?
Then, if what you are saying is true, when the conflict is over, the jews will once again control isreal and re-install an apartheid state.
But the problem is more fundamental. Any situation in which both jews and Palestinians cohabitate in isreal under a democracy will end with one group incredibly cruelly oppressing the other, or become unstable and turn to violence after which it will resolve back an apartheid state.
Unless you want to remove the requirement of democracy, the two groups will not live peacefully together.
A fair democracy will reflect the sincere beliefs of its constituents. The sincere beliefs of both the jews and the Palestinians are that the other group should be oppressed at best. That makes sharing a peaceful democratic state fundamentally impossible.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
4mo ago
Act unsympathetic enough, and your support will dry up no matter your ESG score.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you but are you saying that if a group that progressives are sympathetic towards acts unsympathetic enough their support will dry up, or is the "your" in your statement pointing at something else?
If you are referring to groups acting badly, that I think you're very wrong. What about the long term homeless? It's hard to imagine a group that could act more unsympathetically, and yet progressive zeal for protecting them could not be stronger. If anything, the worse their behavior, the more intense the progressive sympathy towards them appears to be.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
11mo ago
Right but despite it being added for that reason, it became a tool that allowed twitter to privilege certain people while claiming that they were largely impartial.
They attached benefits to verified users that gave those users a substantive advantage in the twitter agora over other users. Then they preferentially gave verification to users with the preferred left leaning (or at least non-challenging) politics, thereby amplifying the voices of cultural figures on the left over everyone else.
They used verification to launder this advantage and cover the political preference it represented. They could defend giving advantages on their platform to some people and not others by saying "well that person needs verification and that other person doesn't" or just "we're not sure if that person needs verification, but it's in the pipeline to be considered". The requirement for verifications were opaque and allowed them to pick and choose at will who got these advantages and refuse to give any explanation for who got them.
If the purpose of verification was just to prevent impersonation then the rules could have been made explicit. However that would mean that a lot of people who are outside the overton window - but not so outside the window as to be deemed bannable - would get verification, which twitter didn't want.
Decision making and instrumental intelligence aren't connected for everybody. Most people don't make decisions based on thinking, they are followers of one kind or another. They follow traditional rules, or what the boss tells them, or their priest tells them, or they mimic what the people right next to them are doing. This is totally normal and probably essential for society or any kind of human organization to work.
But those people can still be smart. Even if they will never have an independent thought about what they should do, they could still be incredibly talented scientists or technicians. And we want those people. If you were the boss, you would want smart followers. It's stupid to say "why would we care if a bunch of instrumentally smart people died because they were told to walk off a bridge" - we should care because they have useful skills to put to work. We should try to stop their leaders from telling them to walk off bridges.
I don't think it would even be good to live in a world were everyone thought deeply about what they should do. Such a society would probably be incapable of cooperation at scale.
I don’t think women don’t like conservative men. It may be true that they don’t like conservative men who feel the need to overtly signal that they are conservative.
On the internet there are a lot of men who are conservative in a way that is informed by their resentments. They feel that the leftist world order hasn’t taken care of them and so they reject it. Fair enough. Obviously women don’t like these men because they aren’t successful or confident or handsome. If they had attractive traits they wouldn’t be resentful in the first place.
But there are lots of successful and confident men who are conservative. Most of the more conservative men I know in real life fall into this camp.
These men are conservative by nature or upbringing or whatever. But they are successful and confident, so resentment isn’t part of their politics. I don’t see these men having any trouble finding girlfriends or hookups in real life. And I live in a very liberal urban bubble.
They date women who generally are more liberal than them because that’s ubiquitously the political ideology of women in young urban areas. But neither the men or the women care that much about their political differences.
The women don’t care because they want confident successful men and don’t actually care about their partners politics. The men don’t care because they want hot loving girlfriends and think their partners politics are irrelevant.
Notably, these couples tend to follow traditional gender norms in their relationship to each other. Even if the women are strident feminist on Twitter.
if the above is true, why on earth would a successful handsome conservative man sign up for a conservative dating site? They already get laid on tinder and can find girlfriends that are comfortable with gender roles through normal dating.
thiells website is going to select generally for men who aren’t just conservative but who are conspicuously conservative. And worse, who are generally not successful with girls. And that’s going to be obvious to women regardless of their stated politics.
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