FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
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
6mo 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
6mo 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.
I don't think they're founding their moral convictions on video games, only using video games and their connotations to smooth communication. It's no different than HPMOR, in my view.
I think you're underselling the phenomenon by just rounding all this off to crazy. I think it's entirely possible that Ziz and their accolytes have, among them, some significant neurological abnormalities. But it's hard to escape the impression that they're not losing their minds so much as intentionally throwing them away. They are actively taking concrete, premeditated action to undermine and compromise their own sanity, because they've bought into enough reasoning convolutions that they've committed to it being a good idea. I have some minor personal experience with cult shit, and this is definitely cult shit.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
If I see someone saving brass, I assume they're a handloader; beyond that there's no real connotation. Even if you aren't handloading, you can sell brass to reloaders or for scrap, and ammo is expensive enough that people trying to save a bit isn't prepper or miserly, just a reasonable thing some people do. What does have connotations is trying to collect other peoples' brass; that's what gets the "stingy/miserly" attitude, from what I've seen, and I think that's what's been driving the adoption of "brass goes to the range" policies. "Squeegee men" is the right model in my experience, especially because collecting brass off the floor lends itself to being mildly unsafe, since it's a divergence from the normal business of remaining stationary while you shoot in your own bay. The safety-conscious version is to use a provided broom to sweep cases down-range so people don't slip on them. Thinking about it, it's kind of an oddly-prickly area; my impression is that people kinda look down on the range for mandating ownership of all spilled brass, but also look down on other shooters for trying to hoover it up, but also mostly don't collect it themselves; the range keeping what you yourself don't capture is the least-worst option, and trying some varying method (showing up with a shop-vac, say?) would be generally frowned-on.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
The point of that poem is that when anyone, left or right, starts narrowing the category of 'human beings who deserve to live', they don't stop, and they are likely to end up narrowing it to exclude you.
Your collapsing of all distinctions into "deserve to live" is notable, but it doesn't seem to me that it changes much, so let's go with it.
We observe that the category of "human beings who deserve to live" can both expand and contract. Your position, then, is that it should only expand? If it expands to include a category of people previously excluded, and then things get significantly worse, we just have to live with it because no takesie-backsies?
What's the status quo for reusing the spent cases?
Generally, you can reuse them multiple times. Some guns abuse them in various ways that make reloading impractical, and some factory loads use case materials (aluminum or steel are commonly used in cheaper factory ammo) or case designs that complicate reloading, but typical brass cases are relatively valuable. A lot of modern firing ranges have rules that all brass on the ground belongs to the range, and ranges that don't often will have customers offering to collect your brass for you, or simply collecting it without your permission.
As mentioned recently, this is why I'm not a liberal any more. "human rights" doesn't trace back to a set of objective facts, it's a label intended for use in coordinating use of force, and it can and is applied entirely arbitrarily, even to the point of self-contradiction.
Liberalism of this sort is breathtakingly stupid, astonishingly dangerous, and utterly ubiquitous.
It's stupid, because it assumes order and social structure for the foundation of an argument intended to prosecute arbitrary divisions of order and social structure; it's taking a concept intrinsically designed to be applied to the margins and aiming it at the center and expecting everything to work out fine.
It's dangerous because it encourages people to initiate and escalate conflicts they can't actually win.
It's ubiquitous because it's the basic social technology our whole society runs on, and that the majority of people have no defense against.
Liberalism takes it as axiomatic that "Religion" and "Human Rights" and "Freedom" are conceptual primitives. When that turns out to be false, it has no Plan B.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
Because it's a way to make concrete a claim about abstract principles. The obvious next question is "what do you think should be done about it?"
"Infant circumcision is a human rights violation" "Judaism is founded on a ritual that is a human rights violation" and "Circumcision should be banned, and Jews who continue the practice should be jailed" are three distinct statements, and it's instructive to see how far someone is willing to ride this particular train.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
From the dive I did, I'd say that sounds reasonably accurate. I linked the glossary below if you want to dive yourself. That, combined with the report on the attempted murder of their landlord and the personal accounts related to it, were more than enough to identify Ziz as ten pounds of crazy in a two-pound sack.
I'm not sure "timeless-decision-theoretic-blackmail-absolute-morality theory" is the term they actually used, but I'm not sure it's not the term either, and it seems like a reasonably accurate description from what I recall.
Here's the Glossary from the site linked above. I wish I'd taken the time to write more on the subject while doing the trawl, but the short of it is that Ziz is very, very clearly doing Rationalism just as hard as they can, and Rationalism is in turn doing its thing: converting human flaws into impending disaster.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
Damn. I was just reading up on Ziz a couple weeks ago; a commenter here linked their blog and I spent an evening dipping into the raw crazy. Reading through their glossary, the Rationalist influence was inescapable. Pure dark-mirror Scott, and deeply chilling.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
Well for starters, at least in theory, states states within the nation can cooperate on a deep level due to a common framework of duties and obligations. This significantly raises the probability of mutual cooperation being workable.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
What the layman refers to as a "bullet" is actually a cartridge, which is made up of four main components: a case, a primer, a propellent charge, and a projectile (the actual bullet). Assembling these components is known as "loading". If the assembly is done at a factory, the cartridge is "factory-loaded", but you can also buy the components separately and assemble them yourself, which is known as "handloading". In addition to being cheaper, handloading also allows for a significantly higher ceiling on the quality of the finished cartridges, and also allows for the creation of variant cartridges that aren't commercially available in a factory loading.
Most serious competition shooters specializing in accuracy use handloads, and a lot of hobbyists do as well, generally for the cost savings and increased accuracy available.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
I have not read Hegseth's book. Have you? Where are you drawing the idea that he is in favor of new wars in the Middle East?
Here he is discussing the war in Afghanistan. His critiques match my own well, and I detect no enthusiasm for further middle-east interventionism. This matches the interviews I've watched of him, and also matches the general attitude toward foreign wars that Trump has been hewing to since his run in 2015, which convinced me to back him. I am fairly confident that Trump will not be starting any new wars in the middle east, and I am extremely confident that he will start less wars in the middle east than Kamala would have.
I do not know where your confusion over Trump's intentions come from, but I do not share them. I've heard this sort of FUD during Trump's first term, re: John Bolton. Bolton got no new wars, and his political influence seem to me to have taken a precipitous nose-dive under Trump.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
To be clear, is the maximumally-cynical interpretation "reduced attack surface during a national election"? Because that's the obviously-correct answer to me.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
I do not think we are going to be invading the middle east under Trump. Would it be correct that you think we will, in fact, be "going on a crusade in the middle east"?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
so if you are to shoot anything more than once a year on your birthday you better learn quickly how to do it yourself.
And one of the nice things about black-powder is that you can do it yourself. You can make your own projectiles. You can make your own powder. You can even make your own gun if you want! Taking a few steps back down the tech curve in one specific area opens up a whole wealth of possibilities that would otherwise be invisible to you.
I haven't bought any guns in a while, but a black-powder revolver is one of my "someday" firearms.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
Who says it doesn't?
You've misunderstood me. I'm willing to at least contemplate the idea that there isn't really anything to be done about the cartels, that the present situation is roughly as good as we can expect and that we should just suck it up. What confuses me is when I'm then told that it's very important that we prosecute a proxy war with Russia on the other side of the world, and that we need to gear up for a Great Power confrontation with China. All the arguments for restraint and toleration of the Cartels likewise appear to me to apply even more so to China and Russia, who have nukes, actual armies, and significant nation-state resources backing them.
I'm not sure you're wrong, but I would really like to see your math.
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?
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