FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Well, you're certainly in the right place, since this is a subject we've discussed here at some length over the years.
Have you read Zunger's Tolerance Is Not A Moral Precept, or Ozy's Conservatives as Moral Mutants? If you're looking to understand the breakdown of liberalism, those two would be my pick for the best place to start.
People act according to their values. When people share coherent values, they are able to live together and cooperate. Liberalism axiomatically assumes that at least a supermajority of humans share coherent values by nature. This is not actually the case; Liberalism evolved in a highly homogenous environment, and mistook the homogeneity of its specific host population for a universal constant of human nature. The truth is that human values drift over time, and can easily reach mutually-incoherent states. By claiming tolerance as a terminal value, Liberalism greatly accelerates this drift, and when values become broadly incoherent, it simply breaks down.
The second mistake Liberalism makes is assuming human will can be constrained by rules. It assumes that if you just find the right ruleset, people will have no choice but to be good. It constantly appeals to norms, to process, to procedure. Unfortunately, it has no conceptual hook for "manipulation of procedural outcomes", and so its rules decay over time until they lose all credibility.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
I am comfortable predicting that this will not happen.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Ok, well if, to you, democratic control means the military and spy agencies can’t have classified sources, methods and documents, then you’ve lost the plot.
We are not discussing the military and spy agencies. We are discussing the department of funding Trans Opera in Ecuador. I defy you to argue why USAID needs to keep secrets from the American public.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Then your feelings need calibration, because it is actually an argument against government secrecy regarding the distribution of foreign aid. I am actually not that fond of the other sorts of Government secrets either, but I can recognize that with regards to war and espionage, unilateral disarmament would be unwise. But this is not war or espionage. This is the expenditure of taxpayer's money, purportedly for straightforward humanitarian purposes.
There is no actual need for the people in charge of distributing food to the Ivory Coast to be provided with super-secret-squirrel information about "the actual situation on the ground", given that they are supposed to be directed by the State Department under the leadership of the President. If secret information indicates that they should do things in a specific way, they can be directed to do things in that specific way with no explanation as to why.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
We're just over a week into the administration. Legislation doesn't move this fast. Further, it seems to me that these actions can serve as a proof of concept, which congress can then cement at their more measured pace.
Further still, while the GOP has largely been conquered by MAGA, there are still significant pockets of resistance to be mopped up. Try to do all this through the legislative branch, and you drastically increase your attack surface.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
You know, I accept just about all the rest of the post. But this is silly. A US agency needing to distribute food in the Ivory Coast needs to understand the actual (unvarnished truth of) the situation on the ground there, at the very least so they don't hire a boat to go dock in a harbor right before the rebels grab it or try to truck it through some area where the government has (in fact, but not avowedly) lost control.
I see no reason why this requires keeping secrets from the American public. If the unvarnished truth is inaccessible to the public, how can they meaningfully exercise democratic control over these expenditures?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Your preferences are being checked and balanced at this very moment. 51% of the people having unlimited power is certainly preferable to 10% or much less of the people having unlimited power, which appears to have been the situation prior to the last election.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
My understanding is that the rifle was destroyed by a shot from one of the local police officers on the ground.
- sniper is aimed at the gunman.
- Gunman opens fire
- police officer on the ground reacts, aims, returns fire, hits the buffer tube jamming the rifle
- notable pause
- sniper shoots gunman
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
IIRC, we have in fact requested that people refrain from using this forum to post erotic fanfiction about political or culture war figures. It came up during the Sam Bankman Fried fracas.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't terrorism strictly about using violence to cause political change?
List of politicians killed during the 2024 Mexican elections. And that's just the politicians killed. You can murder normal people to cause political change too, and they do with some regularity.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Making your own black powder is entirely legal. IIRC, the manufacture and storage limits are something like 25 pounds before the law requires licensing, though I'd imagine your home insurance might have some objections in the event of a house fire claim. Tutorials on making high-quality powder are available on you tube.
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
According to some video and media reports, the Secret Service counter-sniper on a nearby rooftop was aiming at the shooter, perhaps before he took some or all of his shots.
“The counter sniper appears to be looking through his scope as if he's scanning for something. … And then, when the shots are fired, takes out the shooter from his position almost immediately,” said Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of Intelligence & Counterterrorism until 2022. “So we have to fill in those gaps. What happened during those seconds? What were the communications? What did he see through the scope, and did he act at his first opportunity? And we'll learn that later.”
I'm still waiting. The evidence as I understand it is that the Secret Service sniper had the assassin in his sights and not only allowed him to fire multiple shots, but only fired after a non-sniper engaged the assassin and disabled his rifle.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Makes me a little curious if the government cuts involve cleaning house for the Secret Service…
I would sincerely hope so. It keeps getting glossed over in these discussions, but I still haven't seen anything remotely like an adequate explanation of the events surrounding the Butler assassination attempt, and barring some extremely rigorous explanations or an ironclad paper trail detailing how the Secret Service has been an elaborate bluff all along, "the secret service intentionally attempted to allow an assassination of a presidential candidate" seems to me the the most likely explanation.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
That's not clear to me, but then, my sense with Trump generally is that we're flying blind. If this is a bargaining position, what result is he trying to extract from Canada?
One possible option might be to help accelerate the decline of the Liberal party and make the Conservatives commit as allies to Trump personally. That might make sense; I think the general international consensus has derived a very large part of its power from being the party of "normality", so ending normality might work directly against them if it can be done without excessive cost.
Mainly, I'm interested in people nailing down what they actually see happening and what they expect the results to be. I personally have been at least loosely thinking of these as permanent measures, with the goal being eventual re-industrialization of the US, but will happily admit that I might be wildly off-base with that.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
This seems like you're setting up a situation where "if I don't see utter economic catastrophe as predicted by the most histrionic leftists as a result of these tariffs, it'll prove once again that economists, the establishment, and anyone else who disagrees with me is wrong, and my vibes are always right".
In the first place, I'm not perceiving the predictions of doom to come from "the most histrionic leftists", but rather "the most histrionic economists". Secondly, it seems straightforwardly useful to positively identify who the "most histrionic" people are so that we can stop listening to them. I learned that Paul Krugman was one of these people based on his predictions in 2016, and I'll never take anything he says seriously again. How is this not the straightforwardly correct thing to do?
It seems very clear to me that this policy is far, far outside anything the Economics consensus considers reasonable. If you disagree, the obvious next step would be for me to look for prominent economists predicting doom; I have not looked yet, but I'm confident they won't be hard to find. Do you think I'm wrong? "Less growth" doesn't cut it; we have "less growth" at home. Your list of mitigating factors seems entirely reasonable, but all of them apply just as easily to "this is a good idea, actually". Bad policies are bad because they have bad results, right? So what are the bad results we should expect?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Would this be a prediction that the tariffs don't actually happen, then?
As most are aware, Trump has announced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and 10% tariffs on China. It seems to me that it presents a number of opportunities.
Being a Rationalist-descended forum, many here believe in listening to experts, following the data, and trusting science to guide our policies. On the other hand, many others here have observed numerous cases where expertise and data collapse when confronted with unexpected real-world events, and have grown far more skeptical of expertise. I have stated previously that I have little faith in Economics as a discipline; I've seen a lot of failed mainstream predictions and what at least have appeared to be failed policies. These new tariffs are the largest and most consequential policy departure from consensus economics in living memory, and as such they present a profoundly valuable natural experiment. For my entire lifetime, the consensus of economists has been that tariffs are a rotten economic policy, that they stunt economic growth and induce stagnation. These tariffs are very large, are aimed directly at our three largest trading partners, and arrived with very little warning; while Trump had stated his intentions clearly, Trump says a lot of things and no one actually expected this to happen. As such, it seems to me that we have an unusually-good natural experiment here, and we should be exploiting it for maximum value.
Simply put, what happens next?
The proof of a theoretical model is the ability to make accurate predictions. Predictions of large-magnitude changes are more valuable than predictions of small changes. Naïvely, it seems obvious to me that large policy changes should have large effects, and this is very clearly a large policy change. If consensus economics is valid, it seems to me that they should be able to predict with reasonable accuracy the consequences of these new policies, and that those consequences should be unequivocally negative. What negative outcomes should we expect, specifically? There was some discussion last week about whether or not our last attempt at tariffs caused the Great Depression; is that the expected outcome here?
One of the old Rationalist traditions is betting, and it's been a somewhat contentious topic as our community has drifted further from the mother country of Scott's comment section. Some people, myself among them, really don't like betting. Happily, this experiment comes with its own betting baked in: what should we expect the stock market to do as the consequences of this policy change roll out? If the economic consensus is valid, what better bear signal could there be than an unexpected, dramatic departure from sound economic policy by the world's dominant superpower? A quick googling tells me that the markets are down generally this morning; should we expect this trend to continue? How do people here intend to manage their investments, given these events?
For reference, previous discussion of the tariffs from last week.
Albeit pre-dating HIV. "It was right all along, it just took all but the last 40 out of the ~100,000 years of behaviorally modern human history to prove it" proves too much.
It seems to me that you have the argument backward. It was claimed 60 years ago that the previous 100,000 years of accumulated human wisdom about sexuality was fake and retarded and should be discarded in favor of unlimited license. This was done. The result was a more or less immediate collapse in family formation, precipitously declining birth rates, severe and lasting social dysfunction, and an incredibly lethal global pandemic, among other significant social ills. There was also a quiet epidemic of state-sponsered child sexual abuse, but eh, who's counting.
Advocates of the Sexual Revolution claimed it would make everything better. Instead, it has pretty clearly made most things worse in ways that even strict materialist rationalists are having a hard time ignoring.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Believe me, these days I do indeed mostly talk to machines. They are not great conversationalists but they're extremely helpful.
Would you mind elaborating on this? I am in the somewhat uncomfortable position of thinking that a) Superintelligence is probably a red herring, but b) AI is probably going to put me and most people I know out of a job in the nearterm, but c) not actually having much direct contact with AI to see what's coming for myself. Could you give some discription of how AI fits into your life?
My position is that "human beings who deserve to live" should be coterminous with "human beings", as otherwise it tends to contract precipitously.
I disagree. Human beings who try to kill me no longer "deserve to live". Human beings who commit murder no longer "deserve to live". Human beings on the other side of a war no longer "deserve to live", even if they aren't trying to kill me at this moment and haven't killed anyone yet. Likewise, I no longer "deserve to live" for the same reasons; if one of them shoots me through the skull, they have done no wrong.
Nor does it end there. Honorable, sane men observe the Birkenhead Drill: "women and children first", and do not recognize claims that those called to perform it are excused because they "deserve to live". In war, we expect men to obey orders, even if those orders would result in their deaths, and again no excuse that they "deserve to live" is allowed.
But this conversation started not over killing people, but over whether it is acceptable to let people die of their own bad choices. And the answer is that yes, this is entirely acceptable. It is preferable to dissuade them from destroying themselves through bad choices, but some people will not be dissuaded, and it is deeply just for people to receive the consequences of the decisions they've made. To do so is to treat them not as sub-human, but as fully human. And this goes doubly so for "well-being". Humans do not "deserve" well-being in any meaningful sense; if a man does not work, he shall not eat, as even the Communists were able to recognize. Those who engage in selfish, destructive behavior to the detriment of those around them certainly do not "deserve well-being". Even those who engage in foolish behavior can find themselves no longer "deserving to live"; if I smoke a pack a day for twenty years, that is no great sin, but it would be foolish to grant me a lung transplant, and especially foolish to do so on the understanding that I will continue to smoke a pack a day in the future.
All the above ignores Mercy, and that is because Mercy is not deserved, nor can it be mandated, only freely chosen. Attempts to implement it through anything other than individual choice are profoundly destructive to any sort of human society.
My position is that "human beings who deserve to live" should be coterminous with "human beings", as otherwise it tends to contract precipitously.
It also tends to contract precipitously when stretched so far that people forget that the consequences of our actions are inescapable. People often make choices that intentionally inject pain and misery into the world. When they do this, they often suffer or die as a consequence; this is often an entirely acceptable outcome, and sometimes a straightforwardly preferable one. Pretending otherwise, and sacrificing value to give them an endless series of Nth chances is rarely a good idea.
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
You do a disservice to the author to use this as an argument for unlimited mandatory mercy. He is right that many are too eager to deal out death in judgement, but that does not mean that all men deserve to live, only that determining who does not requires humility, wisdom, deliberation, and a leavening of mercy.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
They may not be suggesting it now, but if you normalise regarding certain people's lives as a less sacred value than property....
If you show up with a mob and try to burn my house down, I'll kill you, and I will almost certainly not be prosecuted for doing so. Is this an example of "regarding certain peoples' lives as a less sacred value than property"?
Drivers have an elevated chance of dying or being crippled in car crashes. Wingsuit enthusiasts run a much higher chance of dying or being crippled in wingsuit crashes. We maintain an insurance system for drivers, but do not maintain one for wingsuit enthusiasts. Is this an examples of "regarding certain peoples' lives as a less sacred value than property"?
Do you believe that choices made shouldn't influence apportionment of consequences of those choices?
A principle which, if carried to its ultimate conclusion, leads to 40-50% of babies dying before their fifth birthday.
Handy that we are not restricted to ultimate conclusions, then, and are entirely capable of balancing competing interests.
Given those grim statistics, I hardly think that Nature is a good guide to right and wrong.
One of Nature's more useful qualities is that it IS. It provides a default. We can diverge from that default if doing so seems preferable, but that does not give you or anyone else grounds to demand a divergence. You do not get to claim that Nature is unjust in any meaningful sense.
there is also a difference between "prioritising Alice over Bob because Alice has a 90% chance of survival while Bob has a 2% chance" versus "prioritising Alice over Bob because Bob is a member of a group we don't like".
Just so, though I get the impression that we differ on who Alice and Bob are, and to what degree they are culpable for the percentages in the first place.
Homogeneity is relative, and does not preclude warfare; see the Civil War for a pertinent example.
"Freedom of Religion" seems like a good idea between Christians, with some Jews and vanishingly few Muslims and American Indians thrown in. It does not seem like a good idea if half the population are Aztec Blood Cultists. And indeed, we see the principle decay along these very lines, because the values that endorsed the principle are not in fact universally applicable. People are not in fact willing to tolerate anything other humans are willing to call a "religion". Those who coined the phrase did so in reference to their own, highly homogenous context, on the assumption that their present conditions would obtain in the future. They were wrong, and so the internal contradictions come to the fore until the principle has entirely self-destructed.
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