FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
Blues generally. They clearly aren't stupid, by my rating or anyone else's, and their values and tendencies are quite despicable by my rating at least.
This doesn't seem like a hard question to answer.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
Surely "permanent" is an exaggeration.
I think there's a fundamental difference between the sides here in terms of intuitions about social processes.
Assuming no genetic racial variance in relevant traits, and assuming no other policy or social interventions of any kind, how long would you expect it to take from the day that there is zero race-based discrimination anywhere in the country, to the day when all racial wealth and achievement gaps have been completely eradicated?
My answer is 'probably around 300 to 500 years.'
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
I think the ATF agents made an intentional tradeoff to maximize the drama and PR effect of their raid at the cost of a greatly increased chance of a gunfight.
I think he fired at officers as a case of mistaken identity. That doesn't change the fact that they appear to have deliberately created a situation that maximized the danger to their target, in exactly the way their agency has a long history of doing. Nor does it change the fact that they appear to have intentionally violated their own policies in a way that minimizes their legal exposure for doing so.
Yes, dynamic entry is overused, but the people responsible for getting folks killed are the ones that are firing on officers.
No, the people responsible are the officers who were more interested in headlines than in doing their jobs properly. They created the situation. Their creation of the situation is impossible to justify because it was so obviously excessive and unnecessary. Their actions in the situation are impossible to justify because they deliberately disabled the required tools of accountability. They work for an agency with a long history of these exact behaviors, leading to these exact outcomes.
Suppose a jurisdiction begins using full swat teams to serve speeding tickets. They use unmarked police cars to suddenly box-in the vehicle in question, then multiple plainclothes officers burst out screaming orders while waving badges and pointing machine guns at the vehicle's occupants. Shootings of "suspects" are significantly higher using this method than with the standard method. If this is pointed out, would you argue that it's the suspects' fault for failing to comply? If it turns out that all the officers in a traffic stop that resulted in a shooting left their body cameras behind, would you find that fact suspicious?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
I disagree. there was no legitimate law-enforcement purpose served by a raid on his home during the hours of nautical twilight. He was a respectable businessman holding a position of significant responsibility. They could have approached him discretely at work on any of a wide variety of pretexts. They could have grabbed him while he left work, discretely or not. They could have stopped him as he was driving home from work. They could have waited for him at his home.
ATF has a significant history of conducting cinematic raids for, by all available evidence, purely PR purposes, and it has a significant history of those raids turning into clusterfucks that get innocent people killed. This appears to be yet another example of their long-established pattern of unconscionable behavior. If they did indeed violate their own guidelines by conducting the raid without bodycams, as opposed to destroying evidence of legally-questionable behavior, as they again have a long, well-documented history of doing, then there is no reason at all to grant them the benefit of the doubt.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
Generalized distrust of media is insufficient if it does not result in skepticism of a given story. It observably did not do so for most people for COVID and BLM, which are the last two serious stress-tests of the thesis. It's really not so different from people having a super-low opinion of congress, yet reliably voting for their incumbent congressperson.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
What's left to say?
We had a really good post on the legacy of BLM two weeks ago. I've been meaning to write a similar post for a year or so now, but what would the point be? Most of the people I'd want to argue with about it aren't here any more, and of the few who remain, I suspect that they would not engage with it much. Further, I suspect that the better I wrote it, the lower the chance of their engagement in the future, as I doubt they would find the conversation a net-positive experience.
It's been ten years since 2014, which is the consensus date I've seen for when the current culture war kicked into high gear. Ten years ago, all of us on either side had lots of questions and few answers. It seems to me that we now have lots of answers and few questions, at least across the divide. There's just not that much left to say, and for me at least conversations tend to result in a marked sense of diminishment, as though one can feel what common ground remains fading away. We discourage low-effort agreement because that just makes the process happen faster, but it still happens slowly, and that's just as fatal.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
why is it misogynistic? Being cheated on is remarkably traumatic for men or women, as evidenced by the evident link to homicide/suicide. The "gentle" and "silent" modifiers are there to disambiguate theories of where the harm is coming from, not to claim that harm doesn't exist.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
The rest of us get a really good post out of it, though. And when enough of these good posts accumulate, you have receipts for a broader discussion.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
...I think most abolitionists did pretty much seek to end slavery throughout the country?
And the way they did it was by winning locally before they went for a global solution. Pro-life has only just recently secured the possibility for local wins. They need to consolidate those wins before going for a global solution, or they will lose their hard-fought gains.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
What was the point of banning slavery in only some states? If people really considered slavery evil, why settle for only banning it in one's own state, while it is perpetuated just over the state line?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
I don't understand why so many people seem to believe that Nazis have some kind of mystical totemic powers that make them an ever-present threat far beyond their actual material capacity. Like if 100 people do the Nazi salute at midnight, they'll be empowered with the strength of a hundred thousand Panzers, instantly overthrow their government, and invade Poland.
Please give some examples of people who hold the belief you are criticizing. This would be a very uncharitable interpretation of the post you're actually responding to, so let's assume it's not them you're talking about. Who is it, specifically? There's apparently "so many" of them, in your words, so examples should not be hard to find.
9/11 was Al-Qaeda, not the Taliban.
Bin Laden got his start in the mujahideen in Afghanistan, fighting the Soviets, supported and trained by the US. Is there an objection here beyond terminology?
[EDIT] - no, wait, it isn't even terminology. Your correction is straightforwardly less accurate than the comment it aims to correct. Didn't the Taliban get significant support from the US as well?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
There is also a federal law on the books that specifically precludes this exact sort of lawsuit.
When the court is already violating black-letter law to try the case, you aren't gambling on a trial any more.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
The government can't stop people from building their own guns, but that doesn't stop them from jailing otherwise law-abiding and productive citizens. They likewise can't stop criminals from purchasing guns illegally, but that doesn't stop them from shooting law-abiding and productive citizens to death under questionable circumstances in an effort to do so.
"Enforcement will be difficult and costly" is not an argument for non-enforcement, especially if most of the difficulties and cost will be borne by the outgroup.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
8, 8, 0.
The first two, I think there's fairly solid evidence, so more confidence would require isolating and editing the specific genes involved. Less confidence would require a demonstration of successfully raising IQ through environmental factors.
The third factor is axiomatic, and is supported by what appears to me to be a very large amount of evidence. It does not seem to me that there is a shortage of intelligent evil people.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
No one appears to want to elect critical thinkers.
Is the problem that people aren't good critical thinkers, or that you don't like the product of their thinking? The two are easily confused.
We had a thread about BLM and its consequences last week; it drew some engagement, but not, I think, as much as it deserved. "Critical Thinking" seems like it ought to offer a fairly solid answer to whether the consequences of the BLM movement are more dead black people than WWII, Korea and Vietnam combined, in a shorter amount of time. Once you have an answer, though, it doesn't seem to me that critical thinking offers cooperative solutions to the problem, and it's pretty clear that this is because there are no cooperative solutions. Polarized hardline stances are, in fact, sometimes the correct response to a sufficiently fraught situation. It seems to me that we're in such a situation.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
If you have designed a system which can predictably induce certain perceptions in someone's mind, how is that not already a restricted form of mind control?
You're describing a method for indirectly manipulating someone by fooling them about the state of reality, correct? And the idea would be that if you make the illusion convincing enough, you can manipulate their choices by lying to them about what those choices are? I would not call this mind control, even if you replace someone's inputs entirely and reduce them to a brain in a jar. You can already lie to and manipulate people pretty well without making them a brain in a jar, and I'm not sure what the full immersion is supposed to achieve. I'm also weakly skeptical that full immersion is possible, both from a practical standpoint and at all. It's definitely far enough away from our current capabilities that I think it deserves a "I'll believe it when I see it."
If you can directly read and write their consciousness, though, that's something different. You don't have to resort to lies or manipulation, you simply see how they are, and make them how you want them. That seems like a completely different thing to me.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
I don't anticipate evidence for determinism.
Then my whole argument doesn't apply. I'm arguing against Materialistic determinism, where they started with "we can prove it right now" and worked their way down to "we'll totally be able to prove it at some indeterminate point in the future", all the while continuing to insist that it's not only obviously true, but thinking anything else is evidence of irrationality.
I've been arguing that there are very clear discontinuities in the evidence for materialism, with materialistic Determinism being one of the big ones. We seem to experience free will, making choices that can't be predicted or controlled by others, but can be predicted and controlled by our selves. I think it's entirely possible that this free will is an illusion. What I don't think is possible is that we have direct empirical evidence confirming or even suggesting its illusory nature. All the direct evidence we have appears to confirm the bog-standard descriptions of free will.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
We kind of are getting there, though.
You are describing the USB port. I am talking about the hard drive. Read Consciousness is isomorphic to mind reading. Write Consciousness is isomorphic to mind control.
If you think that the capabilities you're pointing to are actually the precursors to mind reading and mind control, then would you agree that my prediction, if correct, would be significant?
The human problems remain, because we're still here and we're still the same hairless apes with pretensions we've always been.
I agree, but this is the core question I'm trying to get at. My understanding is that the main branch of the Enlightenment is specifically based on the assumption that this is not, in fact, true. It holds that human problems are not separate from non-human problems, and that human problems can be solved the same way we solve polio. My argument is that this specific question is a pretty good predictor of the large-scale split in values between the tribes. One side of that split believes that human problems are intrinsic to humanity and thus cannot be solved. The other side believes that human problems are an engineering failure, and if we get the engineering right they go away.
I don't know if the "fundamental nature" has changed but the changes are large and important and I think to a certain extent arguing about whether things are "fundamental" comes down to word games.
I don't think "fundamental" is a word game. Humans have been stealing for as long as they've existed. If you change things to the point that humans actually stop stealing, that's a fundamental change. Ditto for all the other goods and evils. That's my understanding of what "progress" means, from direct observation of progressives. Again, "war on poverty", "smash the patriarchy", "teach men not to rape", "give peace a chance", "New Soviet Man", and so on.
In the industrialized parts of the modern world, we experience abundance that is so hilariously far above that threshold that it's easy to forget that the threshold exists.
This is true. And yet, the hedonic treadmill appears to also be true, such that our desires and ambitions auto-adjust to whatever level of abundance we have and whatever level of hardship we face. I don't think people in the modern world are significantly happier than people in the ancient world. I think people in the ancient world laughed and cried more or less the same as we do, just over different things, and I think that based on reading their own descriptions of their lives.
It is informative that your example compares the experience of the ruling family of one of the world's mightiest states at the time against some internet rando.
The example is of a queen, because queens are notable enough to make it into the histories. I maintain that the core of the experience generalizes to all humans, and of all ages too. Kamikaze spite is a very human reaction to losing a conflict. I don't think wealth or status or anything else has any significant impact on the story. Honor does not seem to have been the exclusive preserve of the ultra-wealthy, then or now. If you disagree, we could change the example to the siege of Masada, which is essentially the same story without the involvement of royalty.
In the first world, beggars largely do not starve.
And yet, they still die disproportionately young, and the things they die of are generally described as "deaths of despair". If our absurd abundance is actual progress, why would "deaths of despair" be a meaningful category?
Nope. But smallpox did stop, and malaria will stop, and polio and starvation and iodine deficiency are mere shadows of the specters they were in centuries past. Our homes are cool in the summer and warm in the winter. We're having this conversation over the internet, a magical network which allows most people in the world to talk to most other people in the world whenever they want to, synchronously or asynchronously depending on their preferences. If we decided that the mere projections of each others' words through rocks we tricked into thinking was insufficient, we could each get into an airplane and meet up at some arbitrary city somewhere in the world at this time tomorrow, probably for less money than we each make in a month.
All of this is true. And yet:
What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?
...All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
...The above seems deeply true, based on my own experience. It also seems entirely incompatible with the concept of "progress".
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
It's certainly incompatible with my Christianity. But the comment above doesn't reference Christianity at all, only science. From a strictly materialistic viewpoint, Determinism started out making strong predictions, had those predictions falsified, then made weak predictions, had those predictions falsified, and now makes no testable predictions at all. Its supporters claim that it obviously must be true even though all observed evidence contradicts it, and that supporting evidence will be available "someday soon", in the indeterminate future. Well, Christians can claim that every knee will bow and every tongue confess when Jesus returns in his glory "someday soon", and they can say it with an equally rational basis.
Evidence in the future is not evidence at all. Belief based on inference is not the same as belief based on observation.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
Say we come across aliens in spaceships. Do the aliens have sin and desire salvation from it, isomorphic to Christianity? Any answer to that question would have profound implications, and either way you answer it doesn't fit into my model of God.
If they have their own copy of Christianity already, that would be pretty good proof that the Christian God exists. My understanding is that He is not interested in providing that proof.
If they have no copy of Christianity, but were sufficiently similar in psychological makeup that they could be converted, that would be merely extremely surprising. This version might not break my understanding, depending on how the implications play out. I suppose the argument would become that minds necessarily converge to a specific structure due to physical constraints, etc, etc, and maybe it could be papered over, but predicting in advance it would still be deeply weird, and seems like it would converge on proof of God.
If they're different enough that conversion is impossible, then you have a group of beings apparently outside the Christian God's described order, and that breaks all sorts of theological assumptions.
The above isn't thought out in detail, but... if you think of faith as bets, which I do, and if you think that betting intelligently is possible, which I also do, then your bets shouldn't be contradictory. I'm betting that God exists, and betting that aliens exist would be contradictory, so I bet that they don't.
Maybe not the best way to describe it, but hopefully that gets across something of the thought process.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
One would hope.
It would be nice if it went the other way, and people noted that Determinism started by making strong predictions, and then retreated to weak predictions, and now has retreated to complete unfalsifiability.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
If we find alien life, create AGI, and can scan a human brain and make a copy, would that be proof for you that God doesn't exist?
Pretty much, yeah.
you've stated that you consider a lack of aliens, a lack of AGI, and a lack of Read/Write Consciousness upload ability to be proof that humans are divine and that God exists.
You have misunderstood the argument. Any of those three existing means that I'm wrong. Any or even all of those three not existing isn't proof that I'm right, nor even evidence that I'm right.
Also, I have no idea what "humans are divine" is supposed to mean, or where you got it from.
I'm not sure I can add much to this beyond musical accompaniment.
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