Goodguy
1hr ago
Now let's see if Democrats learn the lesson of "we do well if we focus on the economy, we avoid turbo-woke stuff, and we take advantage of the other side's unforced errors".
Or if they instead decide "ahhhh, 2016-2026 was just a bad dream... the voters are telling us that what we really need to focus on is electing history's first black transwoman President".
What's actually going on with Abbott? I don't follow Texas politics at all so I have no idea, I thought Abbott had it on lock even though I expected Dems to probably take both the House and the Senate. Unlike the House/Senate map, in which prediction markets have had Dems doing well for a while now, the Hinojosa rise seems to just date back to... today.
Goodguy
6hr ago
Oh, weird. Link currently works for me when I'm logged in but I see [Deleted by user] if I'm in incognito mode. Don't know why.
Now it works for me in incognito, too. Maybe temporary issue.
Goodguy
6hr ago
Apologies for the short top-level post, but I just made a Midterms thread so that there can be a place for more off-the-cuff sort of midterms discussion without getting it scattered all over the culture war thread. Might be useful.
Goodguy
7hr ago
The political problem with Iran for Trump is not just that the war affects the economy. It is also that Trump is perceived as devoting energy to waging the war rather than focusing on domestic issues such as the economy. This will tend to cause a reduction in Trump's popularity without being directly captured in polls that ask how important people think foreign policy is relative to other issues.
I'm not a Christian of any sort, but I will say this... the idea that a good god is trying to free us from an evil god makes more sense to me than the idea that there is only one god, this god is good, and this god also gives infants horrible diseases on a regular basis cause of muh free will or something.
At the end of the day though, the good god / evil god dichotomy doesn't make much sense to me either. It feels emotionally resonant in a way that is deep but still somehow superficial compared to true depth. It too is a bit brittle like the rantings of a crazy homeless man. Like Revelations.
The truth, I think, is something deeper than any of those Christian ideas... Christianity has nice symbolism and it points to some important true things, however.
Goodguy
1d ago
I think the optics are good for Trump when it comes to immigration and when it comes to helping beat back leftist excesses like trans in women's bathrooms and defund the police. But the optics are bad for him on bringing back manufacturing, improving the economy for the average person, avoiding pointless wars, and AI.
Note: I am not making a judgment here about whether Trump lived up to his actual promises or not. I'm just talking about how his promises are widely seen. For example, Trump never promised to not attack Iran, indeed he has a long history of anti-Iran statements. However, many people assumed that he wouldn't attack Iran, and attacking Iran has hurt his popularity I think.
The Democrats, on the optics level, do have an agenda that can attract many people. Their economic agenda is more wealth redistribution from the wealthy to the not wealthy. Their foreign policy agenda is to do what Biden was doing. Their negative view of the AI revolution is likely to be popular. Their social agenda is one of their weak points, but they have learned a bit from what happened a few years ago and now seem more aware that peak woke is unpopular with the general electorate and that it might be a good idea to run a white man even if you really really think that a black woman deserves to be President, or whatever.
Again, I'm not making claims about what the Democrat agenda actually is or how well it would work in practice. Just what the optics are like.
Goodguy
1d ago
I think most innovators will stay in the US even if there is more wealth redistribution, as long as there is not so much wealth redistribution that being based in the US becomes less attractive than being based in some place like Dubai or Singapore.
There is a lot of political terrain in between what the US is now and what Europe is now.
Housing is young people's biggest expense, so if I acquired FDR-like power I'd probably try to use Federal force to push through construction of more housing in cultural hubs. That already would go a long way. There would be second order effects, but I think the sense of optimism and dynamism that would result might make them worth it.
the arc of history bends towards communism
I don't think that's set in stone. In any case, the current bending towards socialism becoming a viable force in American politics again could be stopped by another New Deal-like compromise in which the wealthy make things better for the poor and the middles. I do not know if today's wealthy have the insight to do it, the will, or even the necessary political levers to make sweeping changes instead of getting bogged down in bureaucracy and regulations.
Now if by communism you mean social leftism, as the trooning example seems to indicate... I also wouldn't be so sure. I think that wokism is too authoritarian to ever be popular for long in a modern psychological climate... which is why it reached its high water mark a few years ago and has since receded a bit.
Goodguy
1d ago
That would be a significant escalation of degrading norms.
I'm not so sure. Republicans tried to do it to Bill Clinton when he was President in 1998. They had plausible legal grounds to do it, but it's not like it would be hard for Democrats to find plausible legal grounds to do it to Trump.
Goodguy
1d ago
The Internet isn't closed. The censorship of Reddit just made people go elsewhere or make their own sites. Even at the peak of woke censorship, the Internet never came close to actually being closed.
There were and are instances of payment providers refusing to work with people, but they are so rare that calling the Internet closed because of them would be like saying that schoolkids in the US are constantly being terrorized by mass shooters.
The far-left has Reddit and other places, but the far right is not left out. In some ways the Internet is more friendly to the far-right now than it was even 15-20 years ago. The far-right didn't have anything with the size and algorithmic subtlety of Twitter back then, now it does. When I say that, I'm not saying that Twitter is a far-right site, cause it's not. I'm just saying that you can go there and be pretty much as far-right as you want if you don't explicitly call for violence (but that's easy to work around).
The Internet is not closed, but it is heavily surveilled. One can assume that anything one does online goes into a government computer somewhere, whether or not a human ever ends up looking at it (and with AI, that doesn't matter). Thanks, Bush. Thanks, Clinton. Thanks, Bush 2. Thanks, Obama. Thanks, Biden. Thanks, Trump.
Goodguy
2d ago
I have actually considered trying to figure out how to make money from both sides at the same time. I would find that amusing. However, I'm not sure if my conscience is sufficiently loose to let me engage in the necessary deception. Maybe I should let go of such qualms if I really want to really become a political player at some point.
My more fundamental motivation is that: I am neither a left-winger nor a right-winger -- however, I don't currently see a way to create a viable movement that would represent my actual political desires. The next best thing, then, is to play the left and right against each other in a way that prevents either from taking complete control, maximizes the chances of things that I want happening, and perhaps lays the groundwork for creating a movement that does reflect my desires.
Goodguy
2d ago
My political strategy is not to create a leftist hegemony. It is to keep the left and right balanced against each other in such a way that each of the two groups, both of which I largely despise, is restrained by the other.
In my strategy, one of the "useful idiot" roles that I have for the right is to prevent leftist censorship.
Goodguy
2d ago
Very different situations given the types of immigration the two countries get.
Goodguy
2d ago
I dislike both the Democrats and the Republicans, so for me one useful thing would be if I could use the Muslims to hurt the Democrats when the Democrats become too powerful and hurt the Republicans when the Republicans become too powerful.
I also dislike the size of US military spending and the US Presidency's pretty unrestrained ability to make war, so Muslims could also potentially be used to affect US foreign policy in ways that align with my goals.
Goodguy
2d ago
Given demographics, Islam is almost certainly never going to be powerful enough in the US to accomplish any of the goals some of its subsets have that I find most annoying, such as imposing authoritarianism or ending social liberalism. So if I look at things from a self-centered chess-playing perspective, then in the US I am relatively comfortable with tactically using Islam against my more significant political opponents if and when there are opportunities to do so. I'd just want to make it clear to Muslims that no, this does not mean they should feel free to go beat people up for being Jews or whatever, or try to impose some sort of anti-free-speech pro-Palestinian regime on college campuses. Stick to electoral politics where you can be useful to me without doing bad shit.
Goodguy
3d ago
The USSR in 1950 had about a 4-5 male-female ratio because of the war. So if this theory of male-female ratios being the dominant factor in explaining the sexual revolution is true, one might expect the USSR to have experienced a stronger sexual revolution than the US did. And from what I can tell based on ChatGPT-ing, that did not happen. The USSR did have a sexual revolution after the war, but it was not stronger than the one the US had.
That said, there is another factor to be considered: the USSR had a more socially conservative government than the US did, and one more willing to meddle in sexual matters. So it is possible that the government's attitude suppressed what would otherwise have happened in the USSR. However, if the government managed to suppress it than maybe the male-female ratios are not as strong as what the theory holds.
The state of AI ability is an empirical question, but to me is a fascinating topic nonetheless. To quote Jurassic Park, "You did it. You crazy son of a bitch, you did it."
Humans actually did it. They created AI.
This struck me suddenly just now, after several hours of working with AI.
It's strange... it's as if for many of us, the actual fact hasn't quite sunk in yet. For me it's still sinking in, I still haven't really wrapped my head around it. Is it even possible to wrap one's head around it?
It almost makes me think of Lovecraft's concept of coming into contact with something that uproots one's understanding of humanity's place in the world so much that one retreats from it with psychological defense mechanisms that try to blot out the knowledge, or reduce it to something manageable. More likely, though, than that explanation is the more ego-damaging explanation that I've just been slow on the uptake, lol.
AI was always some thing in the fuzzy horizon... maybe 50 years away, maybe 100, who knows? It wasn't supposed to actually just happen.
But it did happen. We are the human beings who happen to be alive at that point in human history where humanity genuinely, for the first time ever, has created artificial intelligence. If you want to get speculative, you could go into interesting questions of 'hmm... that seems like quite the coincidence doesn't it? why us specifically? us the people who are alive right now? is it possible that that's a bit too much of a coincidence to really be a coincidence?'... but I'll refrain because that way lies fun but completely unproveable speculation about simulation hypotheses and so on. And in any case, maybe there's nothing more special about being the people alive when AI was created than being the people who were alive when the first nuclear weapons were created.
But still... shiiiiiiit. What the fuck? Humanity actually did it. The crazy bastards did it. It exists. Not only can it code and prove new mathematics, but I've also seen it make novel (as far as I know) connections between various more personal or more humanities type ideas that I talk to it about.
I feel like I'm still catching up to the fact that it exists. I know some people are way ahead of me. Some are behind.
Fire is amazing. Penicillin is amazing. Nuclear weapons are... I won't say amazing, but impressive. Artificial intelligence has a different quality though. The creation of alien intelligence, on Earth. Something you can talk to. Something that routinely does novel things. Not yet to the point of writing an actually interesting... well... novel, for example. But routinely does novel things on a somewhat smaller scale when it comes to art and psychological insight. And a grander scale when it comes to mathematics, it seems, though my math understanding is not sufficient to follow any of the recent proofs.
The implications are to some extent difficult to talk about simply because they are so huge.
All that sci-fi speculation about the psychological and social impacts of contact with alien intelligence... are starting to become a reality.
Goodguy
5d ago
My problem with it is that the UX fucking sucks. They're now the Anglosphere's premier place for long-form political commentary by writers outside of traditional media. It would be nice if they unfucked the UX.
As for paying, I don't see any problem with that. How are we going to get decent long-form political content on a large scale if people can't make a living doing it? Yeah there is the occasional Scott Alexander who has a day job and enjoys writing essays in his free time. But there are limits to that approach. If you want to do some actual in-depth sleuthing, for example, some real investigative journalism, there's only so much you can do in free time while having a day job.
I don't know what the data shows, but if Kerouac's On the Road is an accurate picture of what the 1940s/50s were like, it was a time when a young man could arrive in any big city with a thriving social scene, like New York, San Francisco, or Denver, spend a few days job hunting and find a random manual labor job like parking lot attendant or railroad worker, grab a shitty but private apartment (no roommates) somewhere, and spend his free time having fun and/or making art.
So part of me wants to say that a lot of the problem is that housing in dense, fun parts of the country is fucked. And the entry level job market is fucked.
I myself remember seeing my own city, in the last 20 years or so, go from a place where it's hard but reasonable for a person who doesn't have a solid career to pay the rent with random jobs to a place where it's very difficult to do it.
At the same time, modern media (both mainstream and non-mainstream) is constantly exposing people to pictures of stunning material success. Politicians, socialites, celebrities ranging from YouTubers to Hollywood actors. There's kind of a sense in the gestalt that either you hustle your way to being some kind of at least mini-celebrity with a personal brand, smart your way to being a tech/entrepreneur genius, or you're fucked, condemned to the permanent underclass.
On the sexual front, the blackpill has really risen in popularity compared to 20 years ago. 20 years ago a young man who typed "how to get laid" into Google would have found the pick-up artist community, which would tell him that by doing fun adventurous things like approaching women he could gain social skills and have a lot of sex. This was true, by the way. And it still is, despite dating apps. But now with the rise of the blackpill, it's more common for the young man to get sucked into some community that tells him that he is fucked if he doesn't looksmax his way to being a 6'2" male model with a square jaw. The dating advice for men has also become more political. 20 years ago it had more a libertarian, fun, adventurous attitude. Now it's gotten sucked more into the miserable culture war, with both male and female influencers spreading misogyny and misandry, the kind of energy that if one buys into it, makes one wonder why there's even any point in interacting with the opposite sex. Meanwhile women are comparing themselves more than ever to hot female influencers on social media.
The vibes in the country are bad. There's a sense that something big has to change, soon. The overall feel is of living in a declining empire rather than in an ascending one. Overall social optimism is scarce despite some good things happening (for example, homicides are way down compared to say the 1980s though part of this might be that medicine lets more people survive getting shot than in the past). And now with the AI revolution, things appear even scarier. It's nice if hypothetically AI increases social productivity, cures disease, and so on at some point in the future, but that's hard to enjoy if there is fear of becoming unemployed in the near future. There's a general precarious sense that seeking a stable career is a fool's errand and one has to constantly be on one's toes, ready to pivot one's life in an instant, if one wants to be able to adapt.
Third places have gotten scarcer and also people spend more time sitting at home online. Many young people complain about having zero friends. The Internet makes it easier for people to get sucked into a lifestyle where one doesn't meet people in physical reality, to spend many years in that lifestyle and then realize that one is 30 and has no social skills and no off-line social connections.
I think tech also may be starting to reach the natural biological limits of the human organism when it comes to being a cyborg, a tool-user. Beyond a certain level, constant engagement with technology might become corrosive to certain needs that the human organism comes hard-wired with. The typical human organism needs a certain dose of touching grass and socializing off-line in order to stay healthy. The modern software-enabled lifestyle also has a certain constant annoyance factor. One has the sense of living in a dystopian cyberpunk world of giant corporations that are constantly pursuing you with advertisements and pestering you with notifications.
Now, does all this explain the change in suicide rates? I really don't know. That would require some deep analysis to determine. But it's what first comes to mind.
The post-Stalin USSR worked alright. Creakily, and not as well as the West, but it wasn't a failed state or anything. It had a decent quality of life for people. That only lasted for about 35 years, but most 20th century right wing dictatorships also did not last very long. Granted, some of the right wing dictatorships ended because of outside pressure. But the USSR could maybe have also lasted longer if it had not stupidly devoted such a huge portion of its resources to its conventional military forces, which it barely ever ended up using in war, and which it did not decide to use to keep itself together.
Goodguy
8d ago
so it's a bit weird to me that you want to boil it down to favoritism
I guess I do it because you can have public order and rules with just plain authoritarianism. To me what makes fascism distinct from authoritarianism is that it attempts to make the state and the nation the same thing. So there is a notion of some privileged nation. Although, it is important to note that the nation does not have to be defined based on genetics. For example, Italian fascists were relatively comfortable with Jews, as long as the Jews participated in the "Italian" nation.
It seems to have forgotten to put a limit on what can be done in the name of a minority.
And, to the extent that it's done that, it has become less liberal.
Goodguy
8d ago
your claim that actually what any fascist must actually be arguing for is favoritism for their group is just flatly wrong
I suppose there are fascists who care more about the principle of fascism than about ensuring that their own group is on top, but to me that seems kind of pointless. I guess I don't see any appeal to fascism unless it's to get my own group on top. But some people have different preferences and genuinely like other things about fascism. I suppose many of those would be people who for whatever reasons genuinely like the idea of collectivism.
There's also a hidden assumption in what you're saying that democracy prevents favoritism, which is also just flat out wrong.
Democracy definitely does not prevent favoritism. Almost by definition. But so-called "liberal" democracy does limit the degree to which favoritism causes problems by limiting the power of the majority to change things just because they are a majority. Of course when enough voters want to do things that are prevented by "liberal" democracy, then "liberal" democracy does tend to go away.
I agree. Being rightly or wrongly perceived as the side that is more focused on bread and butter issues is huge. Republicans ceded it back to the Democrats through wrong focus and unforced errors at the same time as the Democrats partly realized that they should talk more about the economy and less about woke stuff. Luckily for the Republicans, I'm not sure that the Democrats will be able to resist the sort of smug wokeness and belief in having an "on the right side of history" mandate that got them in trouble in the past.
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