JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
2hr ago
where we draw the dividing line between democracy and dictatorship
Well, at least in the US the answer is clear - where the DNC decides to draw it. And if that line looks like a gerrymandered district boundary in Illinois, that's by design. You can do every single thing that Orban did, and still remain a hero and a defender of Our Democracy, provided you did it in the service of and with approval of the Party. In fact, it won't be to hard to find an example for pretty much every item - maybe with minor tweaks - Scott charged Orban with, from recent proposals by Democrats, arguing this is absolutely necessary to prevent the death of Our Democracy.
Well, maybe not the child porn accusation - they used the accusation of holding secret documents instead. The pedophilia accusations came later, and did not result in search warrants.
I mean I am not to say Orban is a good guy. He's probably very corrupt, quite autocratic (not to the level where the moniker of "dictator" is appropriate, but he's no Voltaire) and likely a lot of bad stuff said about him is true, and he did not play nice. But the problem Scott has - and refuses to address it - is that in his own country, in his own state, in his own city, the politics is full of people who also don't play nice, in pretty much the same way, if not literally then directionally - and as long as they don't play nice to achieve the goals he wants to achieve, he'd been fine with it. That's normal, if politicians are not doing something outrageously stupid (which unfortunately is the filter not many in California politics pass), moreover, if they do what I want them to do, I wouldn't dig too much into how exactly they got there and wouldn't spend too much of my time on getting familiar with all dirt there is on every single one of them. I want clean politics, I prefer clean politics, but I know some amount of dirt is inevitable.
But to pretend there is some way to define "dictatorship" or any other term, so that Orban would fit, and Obama/Biden/DNC would not, and that if that definition exists, this is why the mainstream press is calling him a "dictator" (or any other term), is pure bullshit. It's always tactical, always motivated, always "who whom".
JarJarJedi
2hr ago
From what I heard in general about writer salaries, not a lot. But maybe she's lucky. I know a lot of comedians process their own life drama into their entertainment content, I usually avoid those unless they are hilariously funny. Maybe if she becomes a writer on the level where her craft is worth it regardless of the baseness of the content, there would be a reason to reconsider. I'm sure then I'll hear about her somehow.
JarJarJedi
4hr ago
I was intrigued by what kind of article may have inspired this longwrite. So I went ahead and clicked (good judgement on that archive link, thank you for that). I read the title and the subtitle. I closed the browser tab. I know this kind of people exists. That's pretty much as much as I want to ever know about them. If somebody would want to torture me, but for some reason only psychologically, giving me a detailed account of their lives and inner thoughts would probably work quite well. That's likely unhealthy, and the healthy response would be to meet the horrors of this world face to face and overcome them, but I am only a weak man. So that's as much as I am prepared to think about Sophia Ortega.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
This is trivially reversible by simple Unicode normalization.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Yes, but why? Who wants to live like this?
JarJarJedi
1d ago
and without access to web search.
It has all the web search inside, up to the time of the last crawl. If you had any internet presence before they did the last crawl, it's there somewhere, so it doesn't need to search again.
stylometry is all you need.
You still have deniability, thin veil as it is. At least until the humans give up and start accepting LLM judgements as infallible. Given the progress of the idiocracy, we'll probably witness it in our lifetimes.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Yes, and of course the aristocracy everywhere considered itself "different breed", but with black slavery it's always more prominent. It's one thing when somebody is of the low birth and you can find it out by digging into the archives, and quite another when you literally see it in their skin color. If you take a Russian serf, feed him well, clean him up, dress him up and put him next to a typical Russian pomeshik, you'd see little difference. Not so with a black slave.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
They did. Selling serfs "without land" had been allowed in 1675, and while Peter I tried to limit family-splitting sales, it had been largely ignored. A Russian proverb says "the severity of Russian laws is mitigated by the optionality of following them" - this is one of the constants of Russian history, whatever is happening there otherwise. Other tsars tried to ban the practice too (yet another evidence that previous bans were ineffectual) but it was still widespread. Especially when dvornya (house serfs) were concerned, since there wasn't a concern about working the land there.
Here's an episode from the biography of famous Russian writer Turgenev: http://i-s-turgenev.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000007/st003.shtml who, being a young man, interfered with such a deal, planned by his mother. Since he was a noble and proclaimed he will shoot the police officer if he'd try to enforce the deal (Russia was much more wild back then) the deal was cancelled. The police officer opened an official investigation, but since he was a lowly village policeman, predictably investigation against a local noble went nowhere and had no consequences whatsoever.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
How does moral not come into tax questions?
I don't think this is a proper answer.
It's one of the main ways that the government slams it's weight around in the economy. How it does so can impact everyone's livelihoods.
Yes, but this does not explain a claim like "taxing X is a moral imperative" or "taxing X is morally abhorrent". I mean, you could make - and maybe even prove, who knows - such claims, but none of that directly from the fact that taxation is important. Yes, taxation is important, but it doesn't make a phrase like "tax advantage for AI labor is still morally wrong" more meaningful. You, essentially, claim that taxing AI is a moral necessity, but you provided no argument for it so far but saying "government taxes a lot of things and it has large impact". True, but does not prove that the questions of taxing AI has a moral dimension at all, let alone prove that the positive answer is morally necessary.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
we will never be capable of thinking in the sort of "my tribe versus other tribes" thinking we see in, say, Somali scammers.
Who is "we" here? I mean, some Davos dwellers like to think about a completely cosmopolitan society where tribal markers - at least for white people - are nothing but entertaining bits of trivia, but I suspect this is only until shit starts really hitting the fan. Then The Gods of Copybook Headings will be back. Living through that period probably gonna suck, because the excesses of tribalism are not very pleasant, but I don't think it's gone.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
For Russian serfs, I don't see any difference (except the racist aspect of course).
JarJarJedi
1d ago
on the grounds that white people should be enslaved too.
They were. It was called "indentured servitude". Yes, I know it wasn't hereditary, but for the person in it there wasn't too much difference in that.
BTW, returning to your Neolithic example, the question now if this prisoner finds a nice girl who wants to marry him and produces children, why shouldn't those be free? The whole argument does not work there if you want to make it hereditary.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Anything can be taxed out of existence (well, legal existence anyway) but I don't see any reason to adopt tortured metaphors - like equating human income to AI output - if anybody wanted to do that. Income taxes exist because it's easy to the government to raise money this way (most people have income, and need to have income to live, thus providing unending stream of taxes) and it appears "just" - after all, if you are getting some money, why not share it? Sharing is caring. But a lot of things had been taxed, so AI output could be taxed too, of course - I just not see how "moral" comes into it. On what theory there's even a moral question here?
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Yes, slightly over 50, once or twice a month. I don't get hangovers, at least not since very young and stupid student years, but I learned if I drunk too much, I felt very bad (nausea, stomach aches, etc.) so I stopped doing that and now limit myself to 1-2 drinks, or whenever I start feeling it's not good for me anymore. In my 40s, I was drinking about weekly, usually 1-2 drinks socially, but now even less for various reasons. Sometimes it could be several months without a single drink, sometimes could be a couple of times a week but on average it's about 1-2 times a months, and usually 1-2 drinks. I do enjoy drinking socially, usually with family or friends, so I am unlikely to give it up completely, but probably would keep this pace at least until some turn in my health would change it.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Still on Howling Dark, getting into the last 20%... Looks like Hadrian
JarJarJedi
4d ago
JarJarJedi
4d ago
It's pretty mild substantive critique, not aggressive at all. If that's "jumping at this so aggressively" for you, we must be visiting very different internets, and I almost envy you. But only almost because if (when) I am wrong, I'd rather be informed about it than stay wrong without knowing it. I don't see it as a personal attack (even though being wrong is unpleasant, but that's just my ego talking).
JarJarJedi
5d ago
You have to understand the context here. Republicans tried the nice guys for years. Romney was nice. McCain was nice. Even Bush was way nicer than Trump. What they learned from that? First: your nice guy will be declared literally Hitler anyway. There's no avoiding it, that's just how it works. Second: nice guys finish last. Cruz or Rubio wouldn't likely beat Clinton. To say nothing of Jeb!. Trump did.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
but I suspect they are wrong that he is more electable than a more competent, less divisive populist Republican like DeSantis
I'm not sure DeSantis is better. I personally like him more, and would be glad to see him in the White House, but Trump is a much better showman and that counts for a lot in politics. I wish it didn't but it does.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
Are you asking a question or pretending to ask the question to boo the outgroup?
If you do ask the question, then the answer is they do not consider supporting Trump to be incompatible with patriotism, etc... and while Trump is not exactly an exemplary Christian (especially in his private life), his policies align much more with those that people who hold these values (and many other people who hold similar values while not being Christians) would endorse than the alternatives.
Not sure what you mean by "utterly surpasses normal partisan affiliation" - we know that it is normal for partisans to excuse their team for lying, cheating, fraud, racism, corruption, ignorance, being mentally deficient, being senile, and so on, while on the other hand, it is normal to compare their favorites to saints, gods, Jesus Christ and other spiritual figures. What part of Trump support surpasses that?
JarJarJedi
5d ago
That's the point - it's not "piece of evidence" of anything. OK, maybe it's a piece of evidence Magyar is not a flaming antisemite, since otherwise he'd refuse to wear the yarmulka, but beyond that it's not much of an evidence. Certainly not an evidence of him being or not being a Jew. I don't know about the particular photo but likely it was in the context of meeting some religious Jews on a religions occasion (such as celebrating a Jewish holiday maybe?) - and it's completely appropriate for a non-Jewish person to wear one, e.g. when visiting a synagogue. In fact, in most such places, when you enter, there is often a pile of yarmulkas near the entrance so anybody entering could take one and be polite. If he wore it day to day, it'd be weird for a non-Jew to do that, but I don't think he does.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
Some friends in my right-wing group chat shared a photo of him in a yamaka with a star of david on it.
You know that, contrary to popular belief, non-Jews can wear yarmulkas and neither God nor Mossad would strike them down? Also, contrary to popular belief, it takes more to become a Jew than putting a piece of cloth on your head, even if you photograph the occurrence. It is hard to believe that a person with the last name of "Magyar" is actually a Magyar, but it seems to be the case here.
I mean I get where it's coming from - Hungarian Jews are one of the most prominent branches of Ashkenazi Jews, who gave the world prominent people from Teodor Herzl to Robert Fischer to Milton Friedman to Edward Teller to Paul Erdős, and many many more, so when you see a smart, successful, prominent Hungarian some may be tempted to ask the question. In this case, however, the answer is "no".
A worrying number of his core supporters think he is a Godlike figure
That's an exaggeration too. Sure, they do the memes, that's what people do on the Internet. Pretty much none of them actually things he is a supernatural being worthy of worship. In fact, we'd find more worship of, say, Obama (who had been unironically called names like Lightworker and his supporters described feelings that can be characterized as religious ecstasy upon meeting him) than Trump. But even then it didn't raise to truly "Godlike" proportions. Sure, adoring people is as common (visit any pop music concert, or just look at the ticket prices) as it is un-Christian, but that's what happens. But it rarely goes as far and deep as true religious conviction. And of course, claiming this is a phenomenon somehow unique or special to Trump only reveals either ignorance or blind partisanship.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
To me, the most parsimonious explanation is that Trump is a narcissist with a god complex.
Nope, the most parsimonious explanation is that Trump is a giant troll with a juvenile sense of humor. He loves his own jokes and outlandish boasts. Sometimes others do not. I also have an impression he's not that devout Christian - I mean, he's probably in line with most of Christian morality, but he's not that deeply spiritual, so he may just have not appreciated how this would land with more serious Christians.
That's not to say Trump isn't a huge narcissist - he absolutely is (about 90% of top politicians are, many in much deeper and totally humorless way). But it's very unlikely he considers himself literally to be God or any other kind of supernatural being.
I mean, they have actual daycare, actual instructors, they even have training (a poor one, but still) and they are complaining? Sweet summer children. They obviously never saw the real Quality Learing.
On the other hand, if there weren't any actual kids there, they couldn't be sexually abused there. So there's that.
More options
Context Copy link