HalloweenSnarry
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User ID: 795
HalloweenSnarry
3mo ago
Variable geometry consequentialism
This is a new term to me.
Precisely because it is easy to hide behind the fact that the intent of communism wasn't to starve millions of people. But it indeed was its purpose.
I think this is something that Scott could disagree on--or, rather, I personally think the counter here is that the intended purpose of Communism was to uplift, liberate, and equalize people. However, achieving this intent required destructive actions that led to mountains of skulls as a consequence, and the Communists were not at all shy about this being a necessary inevitability (by their lights, anyhow).
Quantumfreakonomics made a good point below that POSIWID is a useful antidote to "if only the Tsar/Comrade Stalin knew," because systems like Communism, oppressive police forces, environmentally-deleterious corporations, and so on naturally produce these externalities as a necessary result of their intention.
Similarly, there's Sunshine's comment, saying that a system naturally alters and optimizes itself to maximize its sustainment. In fact, if I try to apply these ideas to two of Scott's examples:
-The cancer hospital will maximize for getting as many patients as they can, both to genuinely try and cure them and to keep itself going as an established entity that attempts its stated purpose. Patients who lose their battles with cancer while under the hospital's care could simply be cases where the hospital couldn't save them, even with their best efforts.
-The NY bus system wants to maximize ridership, and thus, revenues, so it will naturally do as much as it can to maximize those, which will probably mean running as many buses as possible for as long as possible, which will inherently increase CO2 emissions.
HalloweenSnarry
4mo ago
Having read that article, I'm beginning to think that the political thrust coming from Trump, Vance, Musk, and others is more about morals, values, and aesthetics rather than advancing some more coherent goal. The Vance quote seems to illustrate it, especially taken in light of his comments overseas during that security conference: this is about establishing and enforcing the superiority of a specific set of values, not just within America, but also among the West as well.
Which, sure, duh, "MAGA" has been Trump's slogan, but I think now the strategies, such as they are, make a lot more sense when not viewed at from a game theory perspective.
HalloweenSnarry
3mo ago
To add onto the other disagreeing replies here:
Consider the technology we use to make a cup of coffee. Once, you had to just boil ground coffee beans (presuming you already knew that you had to roast and grind them) in water. This made okay coffee, but you had to deal with the grounds. Then, we invented the percolator, which sprayed hot water over coffee and made for a crappy end result, but was probably more convenient overall.
Then came the Chemex, which took a bit more manual effort, but made good coffee. Then the almighty drip coffee machine was invented, which carefully dripped just-hot-enough water over the coffee grounds, and the end product was pretty good--maybe not as good as the Chemex, but still good enough, and very convenient. But then, then came along the Keurig K-Cup and all its derivatives, serving us coffee from plastic/aluminum pods. Is the end product as good as the older drip coffee, let alone as good as the Chemex coffee? Again, probably not, at least as far as aficionados would tell you, and yet, the K-cup has proven to be just so damn convenient that I would not be surprised to learn that the drip coffee machine was a declining product type.
This story of convenience beating out quality has happened in many fields of technology, and I feel that AI could play out the same way.
HalloweenSnarry
7mo ago
To add onto the other replies, pronouns on the modern Internet contain much more information than the literal direct conveyance of gender identification. It's a potent nugget of information if you're willing to read between the lines...or letters, in this case.
HalloweenSnarry
6mo ago
But so many companies expect employees to magically appear, fully formed and massively overqualified, and would rather hire for months than actually try to help somebody improve.
I'm under the impression that this isn't even confined to tech.
HalloweenSnarry
5mo ago
I think the two or so concerned German posters here would actually contend that other parties working with the AfD instead of trying to shut them out would not, in fact, be the end of Germany or possibly even the end of the German state as it is currently understood. A collapse of one set of preferences does not have to mean a total collapse of a liberal system, in my estimation, and I think this is where you're getting tripped up: a correction/realignment of the political landscape can be very painful, as we've seen, but it may be necessary and even actually prevent the downfall of a liberal system.
HalloweenSnarry
5mo ago
"Average Gold-Plated AK Fanboy vs. Average Gold-Plated Pager Enjoyer: a History of the Modern Middle-East"
HalloweenSnarry
5mo ago
...Damn. I have honestly pondered whether or not putting all of Israel-Palestine under American control so as to keep the Israelis and Palestinians from hating each other for long enough would actually be an improvement. Never thought anyone would actually even consider something in the ballpark of that idea, though.
HalloweenSnarry
3mo ago
Some people here claim that the old, pre-edited version of Meditations is better. I haven't actually sat down to compare any changes, and to be frank, the archived version was one of the first results that came up on DDG...and not Scott's actual old blog, for some reason.
HalloweenSnarry
3mo ago
the obvious one being fatherlessness:
Goddamn, blacks have that problem in Britain, too?
HalloweenSnarry
4mo ago
If you have a big bankroll, you can keep going with that for a while, but eventually, that money runs out. I think 2024 was a big year for when many of these decision makers finally recognized that they were able to see the bottom of the barrel of money they've been feeding their projects. In video games, we might see an actual closure of Ubisoft this year, depending on how their next Assassin's Creed game - one that had direct inspiration from the BLM riots of 2020 according to a developer, IIRC - does, after the mediocre reception of their Star Wars game last year.
This has pretty much been because of the zero-interest-rate regime, which was recently-ish brought to a close with help from the pandemic (which itself served as one last turbocharge of money and growth for entertainment and tech). Now the growth has slowed down, and wokeness is not safe from the chopping block, even if the blade has not yet fallen.
HalloweenSnarry
4mo ago
(even homeowners aren't onboard with price rises at this point)
Since I haven't seen Grendel-Khan around in a while, would you care to go into detail? I'm curious.
HalloweenSnarry
5mo ago
Consider also the other side of the coin:
As I've posted before, it may be possible that the Nazi regime could lose those qualities of evil we've assigned to it from history, if political realignments continue as extrapolated. After all, for those pro-Israeli Jews being criticized, one would have to look at what happened in the Gaza War, and perhaps conclude that "this is what 'securing a future for your people' looks like."
HalloweenSnarry
6mo ago
Eh, I thought the real backlash always started with those kids trapped in the cave and him calling that ex-pat diver a pedophile over being told that his submersible idea was bad. It wasn't exactly partisan, but I think that was the beginning of the polarization.
Plus, also, I think people were looking for anything to make Elon and Tesla's fanboys shut up, and it just escalated from there.
HalloweenSnarry
4mo ago
But the republican party has effectively made use of the complement strategy-- finding the most powerful minorities available and adhering them together.
The Democrats could also be described as making use of this tactic; prior to Trump, one could describe the two parties as rival coalitions: one made up of different ethnic minorities and college-educated whites, the other a weird mashup of business libertarians, religious fundamentalists, and ethnically-concerned right-wingers.
Democrats have had to fold, over and over again, to moderates like Manchin and Sinema. That infuriated and demoralized the democratic base.
One could argue, watching from another screen, that Manchin and Sinema were the last stalwarts keeping the Dem party from completely sabotaging itself and going full-lefty.
This is from your other reply, but I'll comment on it here:
And the more power gets taken away from old people, the less their cultural conservatism would hold sway over the american public.
Is the idea of "old = conservative" a given? I think a lot of your ideal vision rests a lot on this, among other things.
I think Phosphorus was getting at something when they claimed that you aren't describing reality, because it sounds like how you interpret politics and what you want out of politics are very weird and at odds with how things have tended to play out.
HalloweenSnarry
4mo ago
an incredibly deep, burning apathy toward Trump.
Feels like an oxymoron when it's said like this, but that being said, I think I feel this way, too.
HalloweenSnarry
2mo ago
Fixing the regulations would be a good deed. Going around them is (somewhat) bad on its own merits.
An ideal, yes, but conditional on the possibility of the regulators letting you fix it.
I understand the content of the moral imperative here, but I think we need to look at the Soviet Union to understand where this falls flat. The system was built and sustained on lies, there were lies and deceptions and samizdat all the way down and it made for an awful society, but they had no choice. Things literally could not get done without people being deceived at various points in the Great Chain of their society.
There are no practical rules to live by here, other than "have an honest and fair system from Day 1" and "anything that lets you sleep with food in your stomach can't be that bad."
HalloweenSnarry
4mo ago
"Option D: Apologise profusely to Russia and provide them with any support necessary to completely subjugate and annex Ukraine, in return for a promise that they will cooperate in containing China"
Why on earth does anyone think that a Russia hopped-up on revanchism is going to do a 180 and go "okay, bro, no problem, let's do this together" instead of being like "ha, fat chance, as if, Western imbeciles" if this were to come to pass? I don't care how synchronized the people are to the will of Putin or for whatever theory of Kremlinology you subscribe to, this sounds plain retarded spoken aloud, even putting aside how outside the Overton Window it is.
HalloweenSnarry
4mo ago
Private sector orgs who did do that would find that everyone competent applied for a job at a competitor instead.
Isn't this the key, though? The public sector is the public sector, it doesn't experience competition in the same way. If you were going to lose your US Government job, where the fuck would you go? Who competes with the US Government from a talent-recruiting perspective? State governments? Other countries' governments? Neither of these are run like privately-owned corporations, and some of them have way more friction for joining.
HalloweenSnarry
2mo ago
But allowing tariffs destroying economy? That is borderline to treason against the USA.
Is the economy that central to the American nation? I understand that market freedom has been an important component of our political strength, but at the same time, this feels like preparing for the last Cold War right as we are in the midst of a new one.
HalloweenSnarry
3mo ago
I would like to agree, though I think poetry is one field of art where slop is characteristically more palatable to the masses than the real thing. It's one thing to have too-perfect generated images vs. illustrations made with actual care, but your average Joe is probably going to prefer a low-brow limerick over Eliot, Ginsburg, or Cummings.
HalloweenSnarry
2mo ago
Yeah, but among who? I am skeptical the left will suddenly cancel the Maoists because of some shifting valences.
And nobody needs to prevent all conflict in the world, they just need to prevent piracy or a giant world war for trade to continue on.
The issue is if conflict leads to piracy or a global world war, particularly if some actors decide to egg it on to stick it to the West (e.g. Iran, Russia).
Whatever happened with those Somali pirates, incidentally?
EDIT: I think another way to think about the challenge with globalization is that the term "globalization" implies a sense of motivated cooperation, the world literally coming together as one. Maybe I'm just speaking from the 90's liberalism worldview I knew as a child, but I imagine that that is what was always intended with globalization. The reality seems to be that the various world powers will only cooperate as far as they absolutely have to, and past that point, we are back to conflict.
HalloweenSnarry
4mo ago
I must begrudgingly second FC here, your assessment does not square with how I remember the political climate of the 2000's, unless you really want to lump Michael Moore and Adbusters in with MAGA.
(Admittedly, Moore himself did make comments around 2016 to the effect of "Trump and MAGA is what the neoliberal establishment deserves.")
"We trained him wrong on purpose...as a joke."
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