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Iconochasm

2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.

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joined 2022 September 05 00:44:49 UTC 

				
User ID: 314


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
Iconochasm


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.

				
				
				

				

					2 followers  

					follows 10 users  

					joined 2022 September 05 00:44:49 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 314


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


trans men are pretty new to a lot of people's radars.




There's a darkly humorous irony there.  Transmen hitting the point where they're completely ignored and no one acknowledges their existence is a big sign that they've made it and are passing.  Welcome to manhood, brother, no one gives a fuck, have a beer and deal with it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One of my consistent frustrations with progressive style politics, going back decades now, is the total, violent allergy to any kind of consideration for second order effects.  I am not familiar with EA enough to say how they handle that stuff, but I would not be overly surprised if they found themselves in a situation where Scott and 10 other high-decouplers uselessly decry this new trend of EAers embezzling for malaria nets.


Alternatively, this has already happened, and yet EAers still seem to mostly support bigger government.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				USA Election Day 2022 Megathread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've known a handful of people who have been arrested for marijuana possession, and not a single one has spent more than a few hours in a cell.  The one guy in college who had "distribution" amounts got some community service and a few years of probation, for everyone else it was a fine.




how many had a clean record (why is this relevant?




I have heard many times that drugs are an easy way to get someone to plea, instead of having to go with some harder to prove charge.  Similarly, I've known a dealer who was released with some fines/probation repeatedly, paired with escalating threats that he was running out of chances and needed to turn his life around.  Basically, I think many of us assume the courts treat "normal taxpayer who smokes weed sometimes" differently than a known public nuisance.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I agree, but much red state legislation does not appear to agree.




If it's something like "you must out any minor suspicion", then yes, that is fucked up.  The only bill I've read in detail was the Florida one, and that just prohibited deliberate deception, which is not obviously bad.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You'll reject any arguments I make to the contrary that Blue tribe is Out To Get You while ignoring or defending any Red tribe transgression.




I want to preface this by noting that I hit you with all these questions because I respect you, and I'm genuinely interested in your take.


Do you have any suggestions for comparable Red Tribe transgressions?  From my perspective, Reds just look less invested in this part of the game, possibly from having a smaller "standing army", as it were, of professional partisans who spend all day thinking up culture war offensives to enact.  But this could easily be a blind spot.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How can it be good enough? Obviously it is in my interest to receive money from the government. Should that be policy?




Because it's good enough for the YIMBYs?  Why is it good for them to demand policies that serve their naked self-interest, but bad for other people to do so?  The fact that those "other people" have already invested significant effort and capital into their backyards, as it were, seems like a powerful argument for defaulting to their preferences.  In any case, this argument seems like a sleight of hand in which we carefully obscure that both factions have a self-interest at play.




The public thing is about the common good. If you are harmed by a policy, you have to prove that you are harmed more than others benefit. Nimbys don't seem to 'act only according to that maxim whereby they can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law'(because nothing would be built), and that's not a good sign.




I'm sorry, but you don't get to invoke utilitarianism and Kant in the same breath.  Kant is anti-utility; his deployment is inherently suspect.




Whether yimbis also have selfish reasons on top of good justifications is irrelevant.




What is the difference between a good justification and a selfish reason except framing and intellectual charity?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But that definition does not really match our definition of progressive, given that both would consider themselves totally and irredeemably opposed to each other.




Yeah?  There seemed to be plenty of people who thought otherwise at the time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


As one example, how about marriage? Marriage is literally a vow, generally to love and protect your spouse, but I haven't heard of a single practitioner getting forsworn due to a divorce. So maybe practitioners don't make the same vows? It raises all sorts of questions because you really would expect marriage to be just as if not more significant than a familiar. People should get forsworn for cheating on each other all the time.




This is actually a low-key important part of the story, though I think there's only 1-2 explicit conversations about it.  Practitioner couples write up elaborate contracts, complete with punishment provisions and escape clauses, and then swear to follow the contract.  They're taught from a young age to never make a promise to anyone else, especially in the heat of love/affection, and then their marriage traditions bend over backwards to ward off the possibility of foreswearing.  And this has a bunch of downstream effects on practitioner culture, when every marriage is calculating and transactional and all human relationships are missing a core element of good faith and comradery.




not penalizing parents for mistreating their children




By what standards?  I'd say historically, "child abuse" was common and often understood as being necessary.




or children for rebelling against their parents.




This seems really uncommon and difficult.  It's quite possible that precedent and karma does factor in here.




There's no way that a magic system that wants people to fit into clearly defined roles would like people being genderfluid or polyamorous.




I actually liked how this was handled with Zed.  It took considerable care and effort to essentially submit a "change of identity form" to the spirits.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for February 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How can I support my trans friends while also being okay with people enjoying the new Harry Potter game?




Your friends are being ridiculous; the proper response is ridicule.  This will help your friends better understand that such tremulous, pathetic behavior is unbecoming of anyone past the "learning to walk" stage of development.  It will also encourage them to grow as individuals until they perhaps can endure even greater trials than the existence of a video game that is licensed from an IP by a woman who only 98% agrees with their politics.


Based on all prior experience, you will likely have to choose between enthusiastically validating this ridiculous behavior or facing the fact that your beloved friends have become unhinged lunatics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The problem every time these threads get spawned is that the aggrieved men complain only about the disadvantage they perceive (namely, that they can't get laid as easily as they'd like while the women they desire get to pick and choose and aren't punished for it), and won't acknowledge the real risks (not just "feeling bad" or "offended that an ugly guy approached me") that women have to contend with. A lot of them will react to "heterosexual men have the obligation to learn to read the room" the way feminists react to "women should learn to have situational awareness and exercise good judgment in choosing partners" - both get really pissed off at being "victim blamed" for being told that some negative consequences are actually avoidable.




One potential issue here:  what is the rate of violence women are intuitively expecting vs the rate at which nerdy tech dudes actually lash out?  I would expect a very large discrepancy between "ancestral environment" or "feminist paranoid take" versus "low T nerd convention".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				I'm a "gun guy", AMA
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Any recommendations for a handgun training program or resources?  Now that ammo prices are less insane, I'd like to more properly develop the skill.


On a related note, I've had employees at the range tell me I'm "good for a beginner, could be very good with practice".  The cynic in me says this is a naked effort to get me to come spend more money, while the compliment-starved male in me wants to bask in the praise.  How common is that sort of fluffing, do you think?


On a different note, I have ended up in possession of a neat inheritance of classic firearms, including some 19th century antiques.  I'd like to get them cleaned up into display pieces, but formal ownership of the items is basically a gentlemen's agreement, and some of the other men in the family have expressed some vague concerns about getting ripped off or screwed over.  Any suggestions for finding a reputable antique restoration gunsmith?  I'd ask at the range, I feel like I'm on good terms with the owners... but they're all cops and a libertarian part of me flinches at rolling up and announcing I have a bunch of unlicensed guns of dubious legal provision in the trunk.  Any insight on the legal side of that?  If it matters, they belonged to my grandfather, who died unexpectedly young, so no will.


And on a geekier note, this is an Ares Predator from Shadowrun.  If someone (me) wanted to have something customized to look like that, full form-over-function, what starting base would you recommend?  Supposedly, the design was inspired by the gun from Robocop, which is a modified Beretta 92fs, but that's closer to what Shadowrun would consider a "light" pistol, as opposed to the Predator as the mechanical king of the heavies.


More personally, what do you use as your competition guns, and why did you pick them?  Is that different from your EDC?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It is just as obvious that, starting in the 40s and accelerating after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, conservatives began migrating to the Republican Party.




That is not obvious when you look at the actual voting patterns.  Quickly sanity check by looking at the presidential election outcomes, and see how much support you find for this version of events.  20 of the 22 southern Senate seats that voted for the CRA stayed Democrat for the next 20 years.  They didn't start flipping Red until Reagan appealed to them as evangelicals.  And even then, Clinton carried the south in 1992.  A lot of those old racists stayed Democrat voters until they died, or at least well into retirement age, because unions, or FDR won the war.


There was a story from the 2008 campaign, about a canvasser for Obama in rural Pennsylvania who knocked on a door in a rural home.  An elderly woman answers.  The canvasser asks who they're voting for.  The woman calls out, "Honey, who are we voting for?", and the presumed husband is heard to holler back "The n*gger!"  And the woman smiled sweetly at the canvasser and reiterated, "We're voting for the n*gger."  This story was told in a tone of awe at the Nyarlotep-tier charisma of Barack Obama, that he could inspire even these racist, sexist old assholes to vote for Hope and Change.  But I think it's pretty likely that they had just been voting for whoever was a [D] since double-ya double-ya two, and if a yellow dog, why not a black guy?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
FWIW, I vaguely remember seeing or reading articles claiming severe treatment of the J6 prisoners (held in solitary, etc), and vague claims of wildly disproportionate punishments for extremely minor offenses.  After seeing your posts on the topic the last few days, I am moved to concluding those were probably disingenuous partisan bullshit.


And I still almost made a fool of myself with an instinctive "Well, what if...", but luckily I double checked the date and realized my mistake.  The corollary to this is that it's hard to believe that J6 was less than two years ago.  It's been talked about so much that it feels much longer.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sending partisans in to loom over ballot boxes has to be one of the least trustworthy ways to actually secure elections.




We already do this, everywhere.  Every time I have worked the polls, both parties had partisans on hand to observe everything, on top of the county election staff and the volunteer staff.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


what's the justification for shipping them more migrants?




Rubbing their noses in NIMBY hypocrisy is quite sufficient.


Imagine an alternate world where Democrats found some clever way to publish the names of the daughters of rich politicians who had abortions.  Imagine the Republicans freaking out and sputtering bullshit protests when they are obviously just upset that their constituents are finding out how many of their mistresses are getting abortions.  Do you think you would be sympathetic to their plight?  Can you muster up a comparable defense of Hershel Walker's abortion scandal?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


arbitrarily seized and transported by agents of the state? Offered a free plane ticket to a rich sanctuary city.




Your phrasing here is histrionic to the point of derangement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What exactly would the crime be?  And why wouldn't it apply to every NGO, congressional staffer and lawyer doing similar things to get people to and over the border in the first place?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Now, the power dynamic today may be that the academics do get to foist their “social construct” definition on the word gender. For a time, there will exist a purgatory of definitions where the previous majority definers are tricked into believing that this is the real definition. But what will happen is that most people will discount the importance of “gender” as a word. It would be as if someone created a new word, “spashiboo”, which refers to a social construction — the majority will simply not care about “spashiboo” and go back to caring about the male/female sex distinction.




I wonder if this is a partial explanation for the use of "females" among some types of young men.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll be attending a Jewish funeral in NYC in the near future related to my children's other side of the family.  Not really practicing, generally middle-class blue tribe types, but there will be more high-achieving and high-believing great-aunts/uncles in attendance.  Any customs or issue to potentially be aware of?


I'm assuming I need to force the boy into slacks and a dress shirt, but I am sure there are elements and expectations there that I am totally clueless about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Come on, there's no substance here.




That's exactly the point.  The power fantasy leaves "vapid" in the dust to dwell firmly in the realm of "hilariously fucking stupid", and there's no counter-balancing, reality-checking criticism because Women Are Wonderful, and any such efforts code as mean.  This seems to result in a situation where middle school power fantasies are normalized and "respectable" for women in a way that they aren't for men.  In the real world, we mock mall ninjas and weaboos, and some of them manage to get the message and grow up a little.  Imagine if every pop song, social media outlet, movie and TV show was hammering young men with the message that they were Sons of Heaven and they should just Dragonball Z scream to unleash their warrior spirits at the school marms who oppress their divinely-blessed existence.  Somehow, I don't think that would help them become sane, pro-social, reality-based members of society, I think it would foster mental illness, delusion and severely arrested development.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It is absolutely incorrect to say, as you do, that the College Board is using "Being an AP student" as a measure of college success.




Earlier, you cite the College Board saying:




"Research consistently shows that AP students are better prepared for college than students who don’t take AP, regardless of their exam score. They’re more likely to enroll and stay in college, do well in their classes, and graduate in four years."




This is the measure.  The correlation between being an AP student and doing well in college.  So they made a target of "number of AP students", under the assumptions that "being an AP student" causes "doing well in college".  But by making it a target, they change the incentive structure around "becoming an AP student" which means that the old correlation doesn't necessarily hold anymore, and given general trends in the incentives of large organizational structures, that change will probably be in an undesirable direction (probably "more AP students don't do well in college").


An alternative phrasing of Goodhart's Law might be "There are no cost-free optimizations in matured systems.  The very act of attempting an optimization imposes costs elsewhere in the system."  If you want to increase the number of AP students, there will be side-effects somewhere else in the system (because the system consists of people who react to the rules change) that will hamper or ruin the purpose of the increase.  Check the wiki page for the alternative formulations and corollaries, I think the concept quite widely applicable.


On the more general topic of "large organization logic", this is probably driven by someone(s) in management who needs a measurable goal to point to the next time they apply for a promotion, and this is a number whose increase can be justified with facially plausible logic.  Those people probably don't much care if "being an AP student" becomes less predictive of "doing well in college", because that almost certainly won't come up during the VP interview.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It is a difference because the person has no control over the rest of the trans community. It's not a threat because they can't make it happen.




They're still enabling it, and treating it like a reasonable response.




"If you stop depressed patients getting treated, more of them might commit suicide"




I'm explicitly not talking about treatment.  Transitioning is not hard anymore; if anything, it's easier than any remotely comparable type of treatment.  How many men would love to be able to talk to a doctor for 10 minutes and walk out with an insurance-covered prescription for T and steroids based on nothing but "I feel like I want it"?


The "abusive" behavior is when that implied threat of suicide is lodged at everything.  Find the idea of transgender kind of incoherent?  GENOCIDE.  Criticize this trans character?  GENOCIDE.  Don't want to use pronouns?  GENOCIDE.  Don't want to Brazilian wax this penis?  GENOCIDE.  Don't want to suck the girlcock?  GENOCIDE.


If my failure to actively endorse your totally legal, easily permitted life choices increases the odds of you killing yourself, that's entirely your problem.  Threatening me with the harm trans people might do to themselves because I decline to actively support them, or even argue that their whole deal is silly and incoherent and quite possibly harmful, is what crosses the line into "clearly abusive behavior".


And I'm sorry, but you are the only person I have ever seen do this decoupled "it's just about predicted consequences" routine.  Whenever I see this stuff in the wild, it 100% redflags as textbook "shit abusers do to their victims, if you swapped the nouns and translated this into a relationship, virtually everyone would agree this was abusive behavior".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Motte Postmortem : slatestarcodex
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why? We don't even see numbers until moat conversations are already over?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I envision a world where AI killbots have to halt their extermination of the meat-entities because the Slaughter Metrics have tripped some forgotten, buried DEI flag that won't let them proceed without 30% BIPOC representation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


(2) there is a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited by the lawyer's responsibilities to another client, a former client or a third person or by a personal interest of the lawyer.




Do you think Baker had a waiver in writing from Elon Musk?


You used to work for the ACLU, right?  Imagine you had inserted yourself into a controversial ACLU case that blew up, during which a coworker was caught forging documents submitted to court.  Years later, you go to work for a different client with some tangential relations with the ACLU, and the aggrieved party in the controversial case.  A new case comes up in the new company that has implications for the ACLU, and directly involves people who were directly involved in that previous controversial case.


Would you, as a lawyer, be comfortable sliding yourself into a "vetting" position for the new case?  If you were, would you really be surprised if many other people were unwilling to give you a blank benefit of the doubt?


I worry I lost the analogy here, but the core question is, isn't CoI about the appearance of possible impropriety?  I seems crazy that we would need direct, actionable evidence of malfeasance to allege a conflict of interest.  Was Baker the only general counsel for Twitter?