JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
1d ago
JarJarJedi
1d ago
told me that having kids was the worst decision of her life, and she actively encouraged me to be kidnapped - her advice for if a stranger tried to abduct me was to go with them
Wow that sucks. I mean I can get regretting having kids - it's not always easy, and stress levels can be enormous. But telling it openly to your own kid, and trying to get the kid kidnapped (and likely murdered)... that's just fucked up.
That kind of readjusts my priors a bit. Maybe I never needed to be told it's ok to be white me, but clearly there are people who are, and books that do it for them are doing a good work then. Of course, some people who are already assholes enough might read it and become excessive assholes, but I think that'd happen to them anyway, so overall the effect is still positive.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Agree, I don't see much similarity. But I suffer from the same predicament - I am a big fan of Watts' writing, and no fan at all of the man. Which unfortunately happens with more than one contemporary writer. It's easier when couple of centuries has passed and you can enjoy the writings without bothering too much with how the author's personality was totally disgusting. Yeah, maybe, but the guy is dead for 150 years, so who cares.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
I am not sure why, but for me the idea had always seemed natural. "It's ok to be selfish?" Well, duh, of course it is. I mean, I am not a psychopath, I empathize, I donate money to charity, I help others, some people even say they like me (weird, I know), but being selfish always came easy to me. Maybe that's why when I read Atlas Shrugged it wasn't a big revelation to me - maybe I was even somewhat underwhelmed. Like, if I'll be even more selfish that I already am, I will kinda be an asshole, and I don't really want to be an asshole. At least not much more of one than I already am.
JarJarJedi
2d ago
And also what the locals would say about it too. I mean, maybe Trump gets them the deal so good they don't want to go back to Denmark?
JarJarJedi
2d ago
I'm not sure one can pull it off as a true solitary actor, but politics would be a good venue. I mean, the cumulative damage from COVID lockdowns is estimated to be over 14 trillions. Of course, you'd have to be in the right place in the right time, but doing at least billions of damage may be even easier - e.g. become a mayor of a large city and defund the police, or something like that. Or maybe just promote the idea that half of the country population is irredeemably evil and stole everything from the other half. Bonus points if you can sell that idea to both halves. Imagine how much damage that could do.
JarJarJedi
2d ago
I'd give 50/50 about some law-enforcement-adjacent eyes here (maybe LLMs by now) but there are wackos everywhere. And a lot of recent attacks were committed by so called "lone wolves" - i.e., wackos without organizational links to any established terrorist groups. In fact, those likely have higher chances to commit an actual attack - there are more of them and feds can't watch them all.
JarJarJedi
2d ago
I'm not getting what the hype is about. Yes, he's (very) smart and (very) talented. There are a few smart people and a few talented people, he is one of them. But various superlatives directed at him is something that I am confused by. Then again, I am confused by great many things, so nothing really special here.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
I am still hugely confused by those numbers and what they mean, and have no idea how to quantify these things, so I will just put my predictions in words.
- Yudkowski declares AGI/ASI Achieved - Too early for 2026, but I don't really care tbh.
- We have federal regulation passed through congress to regulate AI - Some regulation, maybe, even likely, really comprehensive one - probably not yet, too much of a moving target.
- Anthropic announces IPO - Could be, but looks a bit too early and I understand they have enough money anyway?
- A Chinese model is released that is widely considered to be the best coding model(not just on price per token) - Nah, don't believe it. I can give them "cheap and barely adequate if you squint enough" but "best in class, no questions asked" sounds very unlikely.
- AI System wins an award for a significant contribution in mathematics - Plausible. I mean, it only requires one award committee to decide it. There are many award committees. Some of them are not averse to publicity, likely. And by now nobody among the normies (including me and pretty much everybody I know, for example) can distinguish "significant contribution" from a bag of nonsense anyway.
- A lab releases a fully autonomous drop-in worker agent that at least five fortune 200 companies implement - nope, not for any reasonable meaning of "implement".
- OpenAI revenue exceeds $30 billion - 3x current revenue seems to be a bit too much, I could go for 2x though.
- A frontier lab experiences a security incident that requires public disclosure - very likely. Though "requires disclosure" and "is actually disclosed" is not the same thing...
- Democrats have a majority in the House - about 50-50
- Democrats have a majority in the Senate - same, about 50-50
- Trump Approval rating exceeds 50% at any point - according to who? Some pollsters give him over 50% right now, some do not. Seems a bit too vague.
- A government shutdown exceeds 14 days - 50-50, depending on how the parties see their electoral chances
- total deportation in 2026 exceed 500k - I'd like to see it but unlikely, a lot of "deportations" counted seem to be at the border, and border traffic have gone down significantly. Low hanging fruit are already processed mostly. So likely what is left would not be enough to get 500k.
- Mamadani implements fare free busses city wide - there probably would be some free buses. City-wide is a very vague term. In general, MTA fare revenue is ~4B per year. That's about 3.5% of city budget. If he wants it enough, he could find funds to cover it. But more likely, he would just put up some amount of free buses along the routes which had historically low fare collection rates, and declare victory.
- Mamdani implements at least three state run grocery stores - three is a low number. Even a communist, given hundreds of billions of dollars, can open three stores that survive for a year.
- Trump is impeached - not in 2026. Though if Dems take the House, 2027 impeachment is very likely - why not, it's fun for the whole family and costs them nothing.
- A Major political figure is assassinated(Congress/SCOTUS Judge/Executive cabinet member) - impossible to know, but unlikely - successful assassinations are hard.
- Israel-palestine conflict reignites - it never de-ignited, and 2026 is the year when Israel has to decide whether to go all in on destroying Hamas, or prepare for Oct 7 repeat in 10 years. I suspect Bibi will go all in.
- Ukraine war ceasefire lasts greater than 30 days at any point - not very likely, Putin is getting the territory anyway, albeit slowly, but he has nowhere to rush.
- China invades Taiwan - don't think so, not yet
- US officially at war with Venezuela at any point - probably not "officially", US Presidents are very reluctant to ask Congress for an official war, and Venezuela is certainly not an imminent danger to the US. There might be some "kinetic action" though.
- China - I abstain, don't know enough about China
- US enters recession (2 consecutive quarters negative GDP growth) - unlikely
- S&P 500 higher on 12/31/26 than 12/31/25 - very likely
- US unemployment rate exceeds 5% at any point - no, likely would stay under 5%, though some fluctuation like 5.0-5.1% might happen
- Bitcoin above $150k at any point - more no than yes, given it's at $90K now. It'll go over $100K almost certainly but $150k I think not (fair warning: I am extremely bad at predicting things like this)
- YoY inflation exceeds 4% - very unlikely, fed is determined to keep it low, and it was under 4% since 2023. Now, if you go beyond the official numbers, there be dragons...
- Starship upper stage (Ship) successfully lands (caught or propulsive landing) - no prediction, only hopes
- Blue Origin New Glenn completes 5+ successful launches - as I see they only have 4 launches planned in 2026, so probably no?
- Tesla releases vehicle with SAE Level 4 autonomy to consumers - As I understand Waymo is at level 4 for a while now, and other models in China are too. Time for Tesla to catch up! I think they can.
- US approves new nuclear reactor construction (not SMR) - very much hope so, though unfortunately Trump doing this would mean every leftist would reflectively hate the nuclear for the next 40 years, which after they have been hating it for the last 40 years is very sad.
JarJarJedi
8d ago
It's right over the bay from Yemen. Guess how Houthis would feel when Israel has a foothold right at their door. That's only one of the angles of course, Israel has been working on making friends with minor Muslim powers for a while now. Eventually converting "all Muslims oppose Israel" to "some Muslims oppose Israel" then maybe "opposing Israel has nothing to do with being Muslim" then maybe "a lot of Muslim countries have ties with Israel, why shouldn't we do it too?". Israel has a very long history of dealing with various small African and Asian countries on the down low, whether Muslim or not.
JarJarJedi
8d ago
Putin has many of those palaces and hideouts. And Ukrainians likely don't have minute-for-minute data of his movements. So did they try to hit one of the large building complexes in which at some other point of time Putin may have stayed? I can believe that, the locations are known and getting a drone in there is not much harder than getting a drone into a strategic airfield, which Ukrainians already did several times. Is it enough to call it "attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin"? Not even closely so. Maybe "attempted to assassinate Vladimir Putin's pride" would be more appropriate.
Of course, since the talks are going on, as likely as not the Russians are faking the whole thing to get some PR advantage. But it really doesn't matter too much - Ukrainians can hit stuff within Russia, had been done many times. They can't hit enough of stuff for it to be of any consequence to the overall war, and they don't have operative capacities to pull something as big as hit on Putin personally. But they can hurt Russians' pride and piss them off, and cause them some tactical setbacks. Which is not a bad thing by itself - but better to concentrate of degrading Russia's refining, manufacturing and transport capacities. Unfortunately, that's also not going fast enough to matter on the ground.
JarJarJedi
8d ago
The first sentence: hmm, sounds a little biased, I wonder whether it's solid science or just a piece of propaganda... further data required. The second sentence: oh, well, that settles the question.
JarJarJedi
8d ago
PTO cultures, especially in tech startups, are commonly abysmal. Or at least were when I was there. While it is understandable for early founding team, where working one's ass off can literally make one millions (if one's very lucky of course), unfortunately it gets transferred to the wider team where the benefits are much more limited. It takes explicit and conscious effort to counter this dynamics, and I only rarely have seen companies that do it, and explicitly encourage and normalize taking regular vacations and not being "always on call". While being young, childless and untethered, it may not be that big of a deal, but later in life it becomes a bigger deal.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
Could be, I have worked either in California or with companies that have significant California presence, and California requires sick days.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
"Unlimited" vacation is always a scam. I get why companies do it - e.g. tech workers, unfortunately, under-utilize vacations, and the culture, unfortunately, often encourages it - and with "unlimited" vacation you do not have any monetary liability left to cover. And it doesn't even take the supervisor to explicitly deny vacations - absence of defined benefit already creates an expectation that it's something additional to what you're normally owed, so if you're taking more of it, you're more "greedy" than then next guy who doesn't. If you have X days defined by contract, then you taking X days is normal. But if there's nothing in contract and you take X days and the other guy takes X/2 days then clearly the other guy is a better worker than you. That's not a healthy dynamics to be in.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
Which country is this? In the US, I have never seen an employer who groups sick days and PTO. Of course, I'm in hi-tec where the standard of benefits is usually high. Not luxurious - like, I have a pretty decent benefit package now and it has just 5 sick days a year (there's also short-term disability but that's whole other story) - but still a separate benefit from PTO.
Usually if I get sick, I'm out for the duration of the active phase for pretty much everything. The only exception is walking the dog, if necessary - dog's needs trump all. When I had covid, I was so fatigued I barely could make myself get up to go to the bathroom, but I still once a say dragged myself out of bed and dressed up and zombie-shuffled along the dog route because you've got to do what you've got to do. Usually it's no more than 2-3 days of this but when at it, I'm pretty much 100% useless. That also may be because my work involves using my brain, and when sick the brain is useless. But usually also the flu for me results in fatigue which makes me even more useless. That said, once the active phase has passed I am pretty much back to the normal schedule, even if I have cough and sneezing and other stuff (of course, trying to limit contact with other people while expectorations are continuing).
As for medicine, I usually do tried and true home remedies - a lot of hot tea with lemon, ginger & honey, plus vitamin C (it may be overdoing it as lemon already has a lot of it, but I never heard of anyone overdosing on vitamin C) - this year also adding zinc and quercetine, let's see if there's a difference. If I get lingering coughs - which I am prone to, unfortunately - menthol lozenges. Ah, and the chicken soup of course - while called "Jewish penicillin", unlike penicillin, it works for viral infections too.
On one hand, you are right, that Russia got in deeper than they planned to. On the other hand, I don't think Putin minds too much - the expenses of the war are quite tolerable so far, the final power consolidation, which otherwise may or may not have been smooth, went without a hitch, he got rid of pretty much all opposition and a lot on undesirables, and has a mandate to do pretty much anything he wants without any internal opposition. He can maintain it like this for many years. Maybe taking over Donbass will take another three years instead of original three days, who cares? These three years he is an unquestioned war leader, whose victorious army is conquering enemy lands. The economy has not collapsed, the people are not starving. No significant riots or disturbances. As Russian rulers go, it's not a bad showing at all. So I don't think they have a reason to see it as any problem right now.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
I'm old fashioned so for me this situation looks kinda weird. I mean it's one thing if the kid's biological father is unknown (like sperm bank) and the kid grew up with this family and their are the parents and that's fine. That happens a lot and it's culturally inoffensive, out of sight, out of mind, you know. But if the father lives right over there, and you can see him every other day you go to the store, and still he's not your real parent but these guys are, and the real father is not part of anything because he his real kids who he loves unlike you... can you see how it gets weird? I mean I know nothing, maybe it can be made to work, people live with weirder things than that. But there's a huge risk it will be a mess.
And, on top of it, it really doesn't matter what you sign. What matters is what the judge would decide when push comes to shove. What one lawyer says another lawyer can contradict. If a man fathers the child, there's always a potential for this man to be called up to support the child. The judge would decide according to child's interests, not yours.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
So read this court case today. The gist is simple: two fine specimen of humanity from Arkansas sold their baby to a stranger for $1000 and a case of beer (there was a written contract and everything, they are not some kind of savages!). A neighbor noticed and informed the police. The rest is predictable. But then we come to the sentences.
The man:
Urban pleaded guilty to one count of attempted accepting compensation for adoption, but prosecutors dropped one count of endangering the welfare of a minor. A judge accepted Urban’s plea deal, and he was sentenced to three years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections with an additional three-year sentence suspended.
The woman:
Ehlers pleaded guilty to both counts — attempting to accept compensation and endangering the child’s welfare — against her. But Benton County Circuit Judge Brad Karren suspended the charges in her plea deal and placed her on state-supervised probation for six years, according to court records.
So this is where I wonder - they guy pled guilty to just one count and got 3 years inside. The girl - who did absolutely the same thing, they did it together and in concert, and who pled to the same count and one more, worse one if I understand correctly - got essentially nothing, if she manages not to sell another baby within 6 years, she's free. So she clearly got much lesser punishment for at least the same - and formally, by charges, actually more severe - crime. Because she's female, I understand? Nobody think this is wrong? I really hope they don't plan to give the baby back to the "mother" and that's not the reason why she's not in jail.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
OK, I stand corrected, nobody but Argentina (which I am sure prefers Malvinas) cares.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
I don't think the situations are comparable here. For Britain, beating up Argentina and keeping whatever they kept, nobody cares by now what it is anyway, was pointless and meaningless. Britain is not an Empire anymore and has no desire or capability of being one. Heck, they aren't sure they want to be Britain anymore - displaying a national flag is officially deemed to be an offense.
For Russia, however, at least in the concept Putin sees the future of Russia, conquering Ukraine is an absolutely key part. You can not have a Russian Empire without having it's historical core - the three Russias, Great, Small and White. While Belorussia is formally independent, Putin has enough control over it to consider it his. The control of Malorossia is absolutely vital, without it the whole project of recovering the past glory has no sense. It doesn't have to be officially part of Russia, at least not yet, but it has to be under the Moscow heel, otherwise you just can't pretend you are doing anything to recover Russian Empire. Within this concept, the war makes total sense for Russia. So comparing it to British-Argentinian war is not proper, it's very different. It may be meaningless for the US, as a tiny Russian Empire - at least for now - changes little to the US for now - but it is very meaningful for both Russia and Ukraine.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
I just doubt that most apes would intentionally, as a required part of their plan, decide to murder 20 million apes.
That had been known to happen too, but more often no, they just want the paradise. And if a single ape is preventing us from achieving the future paradise, isn't it prudent and wise to remove the impediment, given as the benefit to all outweighs the narrow interests of a single ape by so much. Then we run the same algorithm at scale, and somehow when the dust settles, 20 millions are dead. Nobody intended that, everybody intended to build the paradise, it just happened. But the real paradise has never been tried, so we must try again.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/
Keep on keeping on, though.
I am not sure I understand the details though. Like, can't ECB just decide to keep printing euros (in whatever form it takes, I am sure they can find a way), under the premise that France is too big to fail? I mean, France and Germany are like half of the EU economy, if they are OK with something I imagine EU is OK with it too. And Germany has pretty much the same deficit France has, so it's not like they have a standing to complain. Additionally, we have Russia, so if anybody would agitate for capital austerity, he'd be told "not now dummy, can't you see we're on the brink of war here?!" If you believe Eurostat, inflation is very low so nothing to worry about, right?
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