FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
No bio...
User ID: 157
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
1d ago
No.
I've put up with you doing the Nanny bit because you're a mod and you have the authority, but I'm not going to accept sneering without responding in kind.
If OP can be polite about their response, I'll be polite in return. OP goes on about "reality is only allowed to have appropriately gritty" so on, I'll respond in the same tone.
You can tell me I'm wrong, you can tell me I'm banned, but you can't tell me how to feel my feelings.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
No one thinks we should beat old men because they can't cross the street fast enough. That's just silly.
That's slave morality right there, friend. The old and weak should know when to yield to the young and strong; if they're social inferiors, they should always be aware that they must defer to the squire and get out of his way, or better yet not get in the way in the first place. If they're equals or superiors, they should graciously yield (or, depending how far back we want to get, be slain in combat by the new, virile, younger challenger who ascends to the top of the dungheap over the corpse of the previous alpha).
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
And it won, because there are always going to be more of the ignorant, servile, and downtrodden. See the French Revolution. Guys who are "we want to go back to the days when the likes of us were rightfully the nobles and rulers" should remember the rattle of the tumbrils taking the lords and nobles to execution before the jeering crowds as entertainment.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
1d ago
Sure, the government is insisting that military applications are the danger zone, but it's the big tech corps that stand to make the money out of selling AI to you, me and the gate post who are the ones being invited to sit on this. Board, I mean. Northrop Grumman okay, as someone on a different thread here grumped about the military-industrial complex and how it gets its sticky fingers into all the pies going, but, uh, Delta Airlines?
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
1d ago
Do you understand why people are not convinced that superintelligence won't happen just because AI is being used for military purposes?
No, I do not, and this is why I'm looking for love in all the wrong places seeking enlightenment on the gap between theory and practice. We are now seeing AI being put into practice, and it seems to be more towards my opinion of how it would be all along (dumb AI that is most risky because of the humans applying it, not because the AI has desires, goals, or fancies a grilled cheese sandwich but has no mouth and is really mad about that so the world is gonna pay), not the "the AI will be so smart in such a short time it will talk its way out of the box and take over" as per the early discussions in Rationalist circles.
This is not to diss the Rationalists, they took the problem seriously and addressed it and worked on it way back when it was only a maniac glint in a mad scientist's eye, it's just to say that the behemoth of public attention that is now lumbering towards consideration of the entire enchilada does not seem to be searching on the desk for that sticky note with MIRI's phone number on it.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
3d ago
It's unbelievably beautiful.
I've never found that in previous attempts to read Nietzsche, just ever-more "I really would like to slap this guy hard" reactions.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
2d ago
I think you can legitimately be concerned about fishing, particularly commercial fishing which is often destructive, but when you are basing it on "fish are people" then yeah. Fish are very much on the brainless end of the spectrum, and while they do feel pain as a living organism, it's hard to argue that they are aware in the same way you might argue a cow is aware.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
2d ago
I wasn't sure whether or not it qualified as Culture War, it's more my own amused/jaundiced view on how the intervention on AI safety, which people have been calling for, is going in reality - which is the big corporations which stand to make mega-bucks out of AI are the ones getting seats on the board, not the EA/Less Wrong/similarly aligned AI researchers.
Which is pretty much how I expected it to go, to be honest. I'll stick it into CW thread if you think that's the best place for it.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
2d ago
Freud was wrong on a lot of things, but he really was a trailblazer in setting the course of psychotherapy. Late 19th century Vienna was a hothouse society, over-heated and over-stuffed and neurotic and about due to burst at the seams, and the kinds of patients he was getting would be those wealthy enough to be able to afford a private specialist for a long course of treatment. They would also be the most disturbed, so he was also getting the worst cases (that were not already in asylums), the result being that he would get the nasty, dirty scandal cases. And naturally he couldn't accept that this was really all true, plus the fear that if he went at all public with this in the medical world he would be finished and on top of that open to anti-Semitic accusations that he was a dirty Jew trying to throw muck at the good Catholic Austro-Hungarian empire. On top of that he was working out his own theories of sexuality which involved the acceptance of early childhood sexuality being present, that children are not a blank slate who only experience erotic impulses when puberty switches it all on. So he had several reasons to change from "this is real" to "this is the seduction theory".
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
3d ago
Based on status, though; the old widow gets shoved to the edge of the village to beg or starve, the old male former chief is a respected elder with a voice still in the councils of the village. The old peasant male who gets in the way of the young noble gets shoved out of the way or is supposed to be aware of his surroundings enough to get out of the way.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
Julian wanted to bring back the gracious days of yore before the Christians turned it all to shit, and was frustrated that those shitty Christians managed to appeal to the people who should be following the lead of their betters:
- To Arsacius, High-priest of Galatia [362, on his way to Antioch in June?]
The Hellenic religion does not yet prosper as I desire, and it is the fault of those who profess it; for the worship of the gods is on a splendid and magnificent scale, surpassing every prayer and every hope. May Adrasteia pardon my words, for indeed no one, a little while ago, would have ventured even to pray for a change of such a sort or so complete within so short a time. Why, then, do we think that this is enough, why do we not observe that it is their benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism? I believe that we ought really and truly to practise every one of these virtues. And it is not enough for you alone to practise them, but so must all the priests in Galatia, without exception. Either shame or persuade them into righteousness or else remove them from their priestly office, if they do not, together with their wives, children and servants, attend the worship of the gods but allow their servants or sons or wives to show impiety towards the gods and honour atheism more than piety. In the second place, admonish them that no priest may enter a theatre or drink in a tavern or control any craft or trade that is base and not respectable. Honour those who obey you, but those who disobey, expel from office. In every city establish frequent hostels in order that strangers may profit by our benevolence; I do not mean for our own people only, but for others also who are in need of money. I have but now made a plan by which you may be well provided for this; for I have given directions that 30,000 modii of corn shall be assigned every year for the whole of Galatia, and 60,000 pints of wine. I order that one-fifth of this be used for the poor who serve the priests, and the remainder be distributed by us to strangers and beggars. For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us. Teach those of the Hellenic faith to contribute to public service of this sort, and the Hellenic villages to offer their first fruits to the gods; and accustom those who love the Hellenic religion to these good works by teaching them that this was our practice of old. At any rate Homer makes Eumaeus say: "Stranger, it is not lawful for me, not even though a baser man than you should come, to dishonour a stranger. For from Zeus come all strangers and beggars. And a gift, though small, is precious." Then let us not, by allowing others to outdo us in good works, disgrace by such remissness, or rather, utterly abandon, the reverence due to the gods. If I hear that you are carrying out these orders I shall be filled with joy.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
I think we're in agreement more on social issues than we're disagreeing, I'm just saying that it wasn't women alone who decided they wanted this new state of affairs, men were happy for it too until they lost the former privileges and were living under the new dispensation. Now they're blaming women for it being all their fault as if no man ever went along with "wow, you mean the Pill means I can fuck women as much as I want and no babies and having to settle down and marry only one? sign me up!"
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
it’s simply that only highly educated men decided things in Islamic nations.
And who educates those men at an early age and influences them afterwards?
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology gives four distinct forms of concubinage, three of which are applicable to the Muslim World: 'elite concubinage', where concubine ownership was primarily related to social status, such as under the Umayyads; royal concubinage, where concubines became consorts to the ruler and perpetuated the royal bloodline and politics and reproduction were deeply intertwined, including under the Abbasids and in the Ottoman empire; and concubinage as a patriarchal function where concubines were of low status and the children of concubines became permanently inferior to the children of wives, such as in Mughal India.]
...The concubines of Islamic rulers could achieve considerable power, and often enjoyed higher status than other slaves.
...Almost all Abbasid caliphs were born to concubines and several Twelver Shia imams were also born to concubines.[citation needed] The Ottoman sultans also appeared to have preferred concubinage to marriage, and for a time all royal children were born of concubines. Over time, the concubines of the Imperial Harem came to exercise a considerable degree of influence over Ottoman politics.
Valide sultan was, in most cases, the most important position in the Ottoman Empire after the sultan himself. As the mother to the sultan, by Islamic tradition ("A mother's right is God's right"), the valide sultan would often have a significant influence on the affairs of the empire. She had great power in the court and her own rooms (always adjacent to her son's) and state staff. The valide sultan had quarters within the New Palace, where the Sultan himself resided, beginning in the 16th century.
As the Valide sultan (Sultana mother), who had direct and intimate access to the Sultan's person, often influenced government decisions bypassing the Imperial Council and the Grand Vizier altogether or the grille-covered window from which the Sultan or Valide sultan could observe Council meetings. This left her at the heart of the political ongoings and machinations of the Ottoman Empire. valide sultan also traditionally had access to considerable economic resources and often funded major architectural projects, such as the Atik Valide Mosque Complex in Istanbul. Many valide sultans undertook massive philanthropic endeavors and buildings, as this was seen as one of the main ways to demonstrate influence and wealth. Valide sultans were also conveniently one of the few people within the empire with the station and means to embark on these expensive projects. Nurbanu Sultan's daily stipend as valide sultan to her son, Murad III, was 2000 aspers, an extraordinary sum for the time, which revealed the highly influential position she held at court.
The valide sultan also maintained special privileges that other harem members could not participate in. A valide sultan was not subject to sole seclusion within the confines of the palace. She had mobility outside of the harem, sometimes through ceremonial visibility to the public or veiled meetings with government officials and diplomats. Additionally, the valide sultan spearheaded one of the most crucial elements of diplomacy within the Ottoman Empire’s court: marriages of royal princesses. The most powerful and influential valide sultans had multiple daughters, with whom they forged crucial alliances through by marriage. During the 17th century, in a period known as the Sultanate of Women, a series of incompetent or child sultans raised the role of the valide sultan to new heights. Two Valide sultans acted as regents for their sons, assuming the vast power and influence the position entailed.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
6d ago
I don't think you should treat your kids as biological experiments, but as you say, it's nothing to do with me. I'm not talking about "don't put your kids through college", I'm talking about "don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington". If you want to be the equivalent of a stage mother pushing your kids to live your dreams vicariously through them - okay, that's your family business and if they're happy or not with how things turn out, they'll let you know in later years.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
6d ago
Look, I'm old enough that I remember the tail end of the Sexual Revolution becoming aware of it as going into my teen years. The attitudes then about men versus women were nuts by modern standards, and I don't mean "crazy ultra-feminists hate all men" standards, I mean "treating the other person as a human" standards. The attitudes parodied here where guys were tough and macho and women loved it, and the notion was to be sexually available because this was the new era of doing away with hang-ups. Men did benefit from it, so it does make me smile wryly to read all the crying now that the shoe is on the other foot.
Is it great that women can now be emotionally abusive to men? No. But in general guys are now getting a taste of the medicine that women had to put up with, and they don't like it. Newsflash: neither did women, hence feminism. "Women have the power in the dating market! Women are too picky! Women spurn nice guys and go for the alphas!" Yeah, the sexual market place used to be a male buyer's market, now it's a female one. And men can't shove off all the blame onto women, because men wanted to eat their cake and have it: women willing and available for casual sex, no demands for committed relationships or marriage, and access to novelty. Women were then conditioned into 'if guys can do it, so can you'. And now we have the results, where nobody is happy save for a few who can command premium attention, be they men or women.
If you're going to complain that women are not having babies, you need to look at the other side of "where do you get babies" because it's not out of thin air. Why don't women want marriage and kids? What are the social forces driving this? A lot of it is economic - unless you have one partner with a lot of money, it's not really feasible to be a stay at home wife and mother. If both of you have to work, then there's little chance to have kids because it all needs to be planned around education and careers, and then when you do, you're paying for childcare which is pretty much eating up one of your wages. You won't get a mortgage without two incomes, and renting is another problem (can you even find a place to rent, and if you do how high is the rent, and will the lease allow children?)
I'm not trying to blame men, I'm saying that there are no easy answers and putting all the blame on women alone is as unfair as putting all the blame on men alone.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
3d ago
Technically, so long as it isn't ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals, isn't it always a possibility that the pope is wrong about [insert topic here]? I mean, at least from the Catholic perspective?
Oh, yeah. The Pope can't say "The Brazil nut is the one and only official nut of the Catholic Church and anyone consuming any other nut is going straight to Hell". There's wiggle room. If he's going to change teaching, he better have a dang good reason and an entire team of theologians backing him up (this applies to any pope, I'm not picking on Francis in particular here).
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
3d ago
Based on... ? nothing but "trust me, I'm a doctor".
He seems to have believed it at first, was horrified by what seemed a huge amount of incest and sexual assault by the middle-class on their children, and eventually was talked around/persuaded himself to the view that it couldn't be true, but was instead a sublimation of the Oedipus/Electra Complex; children's first sexual attachment was to their parents as the nearest intimate relationship, girls wanted to marry their fathers and boys wanted to marry their mothers because of this, and once puberty and sexual awakening set in, these impulses were translated into dreams or fantasies of sexual encounters with the father or mother.
As medical/scientific treatment, it's terrible. But as a respectable middle-class Viennese doctor, especially as a Jewish man who was already suspect simply due to prejudice in society? It's understandable; he couldn't imagine such things to be true (any more than in the early days of the Catholic sex abuse scandal people could imagine it to be really true) so an alternate explanation that tidied away the facts was preferable. And then he swung all his authority behind it to show this must be the real explanation, which did all the damage.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
I'm not sure if the version we sang as secondary school kids at Mass in the late 70s/early 80s is the one you mean, but the very name makes me shudder.
I will gladly donate to this worthy ecumenical project!
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
Again, not blaming men as the primary movers and shakers. But in all the "birth rate dropping, women should be having more babies" discussion I see, nobody is talking about the other side of the equation - the fathers of these babies. Women are not having babies for reasons of convenience, but so are men. If you want more marriage, stable marriage, and more babies, you need to sort out the culture and social values and that includes guys as well as dolls. Men also have expectations, standards, and conditioning from wider society around marriage and family (which culturally has shifted from "early marriage, be main breadwinner, have two to four kids" to "develop your career, enjoy yourself while still young, mature adulthood is put off until thirties, kids are an expensive drag which prevent you from spending your money on having fun and buying stuff").
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
5d ago
My own view is that there is not going to be magic all-powerful AI providing for the world, so most people are goiung to have to work for a living just like always. The type of work available may be different, but the profits of AI are going to the big institutional shareholders.
I'm not saying you don't intend the best for your kids, but your view of "this is best for you" and their view of the results, which after all they are the ones living with it, may differ. "Dad, I hated that from the age of three you were measuring me every week and if I didn't match up to what you expected, your disappointment and disapproval were evident. Sure, I'm six foot tall, but I'd prefer to be five foot nine and we spent time together doing stuff when I was a kid".
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
5d ago
At the end of the day people who care about improving things and have specific goals like a society with more healthy monogamous relationships and at least replacement fertility rate, should change things.
Yeah, and if men want that, they are going to have to face up to it that they can't eat their cake and have it: be 'sowing their wild oats' in their 20s with a bunch of hot, willing chicks, then settle down in their 30s with a modest wifey to pop out kids. If you want hot chicks willing to have casual sex with you, you are going to have a culture where women will expect the same sexual market value as men. If you don't want a culture of promiscuity and infertility, you are going to have to change back to the old values of "respectable men don't fuck around and will try and wait for marriage".
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
1d ago
Looking at security cameras and seeing if something bad is going on was a job, or at least a huge part of a job. Driving a truck for hours along the highway was a job. Converting a text to bullet points and back was a job. Making thematically appropriate illustrations to text-heavy articles was a job. Writing articles based on a press release was a job.
See, this is where I thought AI risk would lie, if anywhere (apart from real people being stupid and greedy enough to think they could get AI to run the government or something) and I agree, this is where the actual application of AI is going to impact society.
The forecast fears for 'why we must make sure AI is aligned' were of AI getting out into the wild and taking over the fabric of global rule because now there was a rival intelligence to that of humanity, with its own cold alien goals and aims. What we have instead is chatbots that hallucinate and the people who love them.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
2d ago
I've been asked to repost this in the Culture War thread, so here we go.
I read this story today and it did amuse me, for reasons to be explained.
Fear not, AI doomerists, Northrop Grumman is here to save you from the paperclip maximiser!
The US government has asked leading artificial intelligence companies for advice on how to use the technology they are creating to defend airlines, utilities and other critical infrastructure, particularly from AI-powered attacks.
The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that the panel it’s creating will include CEOs from some of the world’s largest companies and industries.
The list includes Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, but also the head of defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman and air carrier Delta Air Lines.
I am curious if this is the sort of response the AI safety lobby wanted from the government. But it also makes me think in hindsight, how quaint the AI fears were - all those 50s SF fever dreams of rogue AI taking over the world and being our tyrant god-emperor from Less Wrong and elsewhere, back before AI was actually being sold by the pound by the tech conglomerates. How short a time ago all that was, and yet how distant it now seems, faced with reality.
Reality being that AI is not going to become superduper post-scarcity fairy godmother or paperclipper, it is being steered along the same old lines:
War and commerce.
That's pretty much how I expected it to go, more so for the commerce side, but look! Already the shiny new website is up! I can't carp too much about that, since I did think the Space Force under Trump was marvellous (ridiculous, never going to be what it might promise to be, but marvellous) so I can't take that away from the Biden initiative. That the Department of Homeland Security is the one in charge thrills me less. Though they don't seem to be the sole government agency making announcements about AI, the Department of State seems to be doing it as well.
What I would like is the better-informed to read the names on lists being attached to all this government intervention and see if any sound familiar from the EA/Less Wrong/Rationalists working on AI forever side, there's someone there from Stanford but I don't know if they're the same as the names often quoted in Rationalist discussions (like Bostrom etc., not to mention Yudkowsky).
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
2d ago
Sure, but that's vegetarianism not veganism, and these people are hell-for-leather pure 100% vegans. If they were willing to compromise on a vegetarian option, I think there would be less friction (permitting eggs, cheese, dairy products for the meat-eaters and in food). It's the ones who don't want any such options who are going to run into trouble, the ones who are "you put butter into the mashed potatoes so I'm not eating those even though they're one of the few vegetable options for the meal, plus I'm going to sulk about the rest of you eating butter and cream".
To do the writer justice, the wider movement seems to have copped on that the original strict version was a failure:
The practical difference between the original Liberation Pledge and our update is that the original Pledge was delivered in a static state, “I don’t sit at tables where animals are being eaten” where the outcome of the updated Pledge is determined through conversation in collaboration with the other. “I’m thinking about Thanksgiving and feeling pretty worried about how I’ll feel with a turkey there. What’s coming up for you hearing that much? I think I understand, am I getting it? Are you open to hearing more about what’s coming up for me? How is that to hear? How would it be for you to… go without the turkey? Let me prepare a main dish instead? Have me visit after dinner? What ideas do you have for how we can work this out?”
Another difference in this proposal is to rethink our request as specific to a relationship, not a table or event. This can set us up for more realistic positive outcomes and help us invest our energy in productive ways. You might choose to attend a large family reunion where animals are being eaten and only make the request to those you most know and trust, letting their show of solidarity be a signal to others.
My dears, my darling, my honey, my sweetie-pie:
Thank you for yours of the 28th inst., your reply has been received and noted and will be actioned whenever (if ever) I can be arsed to do so.
This is indeed a reaction, and is helpful for me to note and keep track of various opinions. So, shall us put 'ee down for "it's all copacetic", shall us?
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