JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
3hr ago
Yes, I have, but if the alternative is between 10 minute discomfort and an hour+ in traffic, I think I'd rather take discomfort. OTOH, maybe if I am a billionaire I can use my time way more freely than I am now, so maybe my opinion would change then. That said, if fully automated taxis take over - which I think will happen pretty soon - I might change my opinion.
like those who debased themselves by pretending they believed the 2020 elections was stolen is tainted
If by "stolen" you mean there were multiple documented violations of both law and procedure, including non-citizens voting, ballots counted without chain of custody, paid voting, illegal vote harvesting, electoral law and procedure manipulations, and so on, and so forth - then for many, including myself, it is not "obvious lies" but a fact, confirmed by piles of evidence, and I couldn't care less if you consider it "tainted". Now, I can not prove it changed the result of the election, obviously - even in the best case, with the cooperation of all authorities, proving such a thing post-factum would be very hard, but under the condition of universal obstruction it is absolutely impossible to make any informed statement about it. In my opinion, elections in a healthy democracy should be conducted in a way that it is demonstrably clear and obvious that they are fair. Not in a way that "you can not prove in court that something was wrong, because we don't even let you inside the court, because you got no standing anyway". So if you are upset by the word "stolen", you are welcome to use any word that you'd think describes this situation better, the conclusion is the same - the elections in 2020 were not conducted like the elections in a healthy democracy should be conducted.
Getting back to the topic of comparison, though, I have heard about multiple Republicans prosecuted by Democrats (and by that I mean not criticized in press, but criminally) for questioning the elections, and never heard about any Democrat prosecuted by Republicans for the same (yes, of course they did and do it regularly, what kind of question is that?) So if we have Republicans whining harmlessly, and Democrats putting their opponents in jail, or ruining their lives. Not much of a symmetry there.
they sold their credibility for a man who would toss them away the moment it becomes convenient.
I am not sure what you even mean here. Trump is well into executing his populist program. I wouldn't say I am happy about everything he is doing - some of his actions I would call mistakes, or blunders, or useless distractions, but I am not seeing what "tossing away" you're talking about. And how it's related to 2020 elections or the point that I discussed.
To reiterate, my point is that the Left - you can call it "DSA" or "radical Left" or some other term, though to be honest I do not see any serious opposition to them within the party's establishment outside of lone mavericks that are increasingly being isolated and pushed out - is all-in on the worst anti-US and anti-liberal ideas around. They are pro-censorship, pro-cancel culture, pro-DEI, for mass uncontrollable migration, for infinite expansion of welfare state, against assimilation, for destruction and suppression of traditional Western culture, for suppression of local economic development, against fighting crime, against limited government, against meritocracy, etc. - and these are not fringe positions. By now, not embracing any of that makes the person an odd one, an outcast, and a target for the attack. Even if - and I think I addressed this enough to show how big an "if" it is - the whole 2020 election complains on the right were fully baseless and purely partisan bickering, it can't even begin to compare to what the Left is doing. Of course the Left always declared every election where a Republican ever won illegitimate and stolen - some people still whine about Bush being elected - but nobody dwells on that because it's such a minor point. If that's what you put on the scales on one side, and you put DEI, BLM, cancel culture, trans cult, trillion-sized welfare plunder, 20 million illegal migrants, on the other, and put several attempted or accomplished murders (which were and continually are widely lauded by the masses) as a cherry on top - I don't see how any comparison even can be seriously made.
JarJarJedi
10hr ago
If you don't believe in the political project of the united states then you should leave.
Does this apply to everybody or just to your political opponents? Because there are a lot of people on the Left that don't believe in United States as a political project, as it was created by Founders, and consider both Founders and the whole 250 years of history of the United States to be evil beyond repair. Is it OK to ask such people to leave? OK, let's ask even milder question: is it OK to not let such people come in and become residents and citizens of the United States?
but the far right is also bad and has a terrible grip on the Republican party
That's not true. While woke right and idiots like Qatarlson and Owens and Fuentes exist, they reside on the fringe of the party, have - at least for now - virtually no representation in governing circles and certainly do not control the narrative of the party and the culture to the extent that the woke do. There's no analogue to dominating concepts like DEI or "anti-racism" or even affirmative action on the right. The worst excesses Republican extremes produced is some censorship (mostly in porn and adjacent areas) - where the Left now has them also beaten with much more aggressive and insidious censorship. There's no mirror picture and nothing even close to comparison between how woke left caused the party literally to kneel before them, and the fringe right which is at most the source of embarrassment but nothing more.
JarJarJedi
10hr ago
I don't know, if I were a billionaire I totally would take a helicopter everywhere. Or at least like when going from the airport to the hotel and such. The problem is that it costs about 100x of what I'd pay for such a ride, based on my current net worth. If money weren't an issue, I'd totally do it.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
I think you misunderstood my meaning. I don't say the tech already existed, I am saying once this tech is released, even if it becomes widely known how to do it, it still won't gain common use due to various other factors - just as there are a lot of ways to make a jetpack now, but not a lot of common use of them. I am not questioning Musk's priority, just the future of it as a consumer technology.
That said, he was able to make electric car and satellite internet a consumer technology, so what do I know. Hopefully somebody will read this in ten years, point at it and laugh, calling me an idiot.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Super cool, but I am afraid it'd be the same as with jetpacks - the tech exists for a while now but it's not practically usable outside of flashy demos.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
No, no one is in favor of broad spectrum debanking.
For a thing that no one is in favor of, it's weird how it already happened with all nine largest US banks: https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ-2026-90.html
In reality, debanking had been a popular tool for a while before the Left got so bold it decided to deploy it at present scale. It had been used against legal but "disfavored" industries for years. Look up Operation Choke Point for example. It had been going on for a long time, except that, as always, the boundaries eroded further and further until it arrived to a point where to get debanked, you just need to be publicly known to be a thought criminal.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
I wonder what the Catholic theology has to say about it - can you put term limits on this office and how does it sit with the doctrine of papal supremacy? I mean, if the Pope is God's earthly representative, wouldn't it be kind of presumptuous for mere mortals to say "today you are the God's vicar but after 2pm tomorrow you just an old dude"?
JarJarJedi
2d ago
John Paul II was 58 when elected. One of the longest ruling popes on record. Not everybody would like that - it's one thing if you don't like him and he's gone in 5 years, and another thing if it's over 25 years.
JarJarJedi
2d ago
That is very similar to what charter cities are trying to do I think. Except that not having the backing from someone with massive military and balls to use it, it is very vulnerable to plunder at the first sign of producing any value that can be plundered. Or even without it, just by virtue of being an example that things can be done differently it's an irritant to local powers that would have it destroyed just out of spite.
JarJarJedi
3d ago
The Right watches in horror the irreversible ratchet of their nation being diluted; the Left watches the irreversible ratchet of lives being wasted.
There's an obvious solution for this of course. If the resource on Western Goodness in certain territory is limited, we need to produce more Western Goodness in another territories, so that the lives could be saved there without being constrained by the limited supplies of a single country or small set of countries. But, of course, this obvious solution is considered the worst of all possible evils. That's where the symmetry breaks - the Left doesn't just want to save the lives, they want to save the lives in a way that would precisely replicate the conditions which made it necessary for the lives to be saved in the first place! If we take your abortion analogy, it's be as if the pro-lifers would insist on the act of birth never ever happening - while the life of the fetus is sacred, it can never be born and become a full-responsible human. Imagine there was a technical way to prolong the pregnancy indefinitely - and imagine pro-life movement that would insist on banning both abortions and births.
JarJarJedi
3d ago
I'd advise to just try and go. Worst thing you'd feel nothing and would then try some other place. But maybe in some place you'd feel a little connection. If it's not your habit, you won't just get all the benefits from the start - that's like going to the gym once and expecting to be instantly fit. But if it's working a little, you could keep working at it and maybe it will get better.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
Read 10 Books That Screwed Up the World by Benjamin Wiker. An interesting critical review of several "foundational" books on modern liberal culture. Of course, not without bias, as one might have guessed from the title, and one can debate the selection until blue in the face, but leaving that aside, the author raises some interesting points. Of course, blaming a handful of books in all the troubles of humanity is a bit too harsh, in my opinion, but if you take them not only as books but as expressions of the dominating thought patterns and cultural phenomena, then I think the author has a good ground to stand on.
Finishing that, I've switched to a different area and started Monster Hunters International. Pretty fun so far, though I think I like Dresden's writing a bit better. Will report more when I finish it.
JarJarJedi
8d ago
I think the US really missed the mark by not having "Chains of Office".
Nah don't think so. US moved to the early Roman model, where the office holder, while they can have massive powers, only hold these powers while required by some substantial need, and surrender them at once when the need passes. Of course, it doesn't exactly work this way (neither did it for Romans) but at least that's the general idea. The alternative is that some random asshole, having beaten another random asshole by 17 votes, suddenly is some special semi-divine entity floating in the sky above well beyond mere mortal's reach. That's such bullshit. At least in Middle Ages there were real differences - the nobles were better clothed, better armed, better fed, better educated, usually healthier, often smarter, etc. so there was at least some basis to treating them differently. Obviously, that didn't always held but at least there was some logic in it. Now everybody is basically the same, not getting into the weeds of HBD, nobody has any claim on being better than anybody else. So what's the point?
I can understand blinging up the Head of State - we need to show those foreigners how rich and powerful we are, so they would respect us. But the mayor? Who cares about the mayor? Their task is to make sure the garbage is getting taken out and the buses run on schedule. Don't get me wrong, it's an important task, deserving of respect - but as a job, not as some kind of divine mandate.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
An exercise company named "Sore Necks"? Hmmm....
JarJarJedi
11d ago
I think you are right. I am going to Reddit exclusively for a handful of niche communities - and those could have existed on any platform. But they exist on Reddit because it's the default place, so I have to go to Reddit to read them. I'd happily not go there because the rest of Reddit is a toxic dump, but I have no choice.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
the ones that have disgust-forward personalities and conventional morality (we're talking Kohlberg 3/4s)- to throw out the survey.
That's the big difference, right here. Cults can be very selective. They only need 0.01% to join to survive (in fact, much less - in a nation of hundreds of millions, typical cult size is probably dozens). Totalitarian regimes can't thrive on 0.01% success. That's why crimestop is the technique that works on 99% of people - because it's designed for mass control. Cult filters, on the other hand, are completely fine with rejecting 99% of people - as long as the remaining 1% is a good match.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
As I understand, if you get it from inhaling vapors from a broken vial, it'd be 100% pneumonic. One gets the bubonic one via an infected insect bite, and the way of ingress defines how it goes - if it's the bite, it goes to the closest lymph node, settles there and you have a bubo. If it's inhaled, it settles in the lungs, thus pneumonic. You don't need to modify anything between one and the other, it's just how it got in that matters.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
The best guess is a common, regular, run of the mill Russian fuckup. A low-paid under-trained lab worker, in a lab neglecting basic safety protocols because nobody's got time for that elaborate shit, breaks a vial with live pathogen. Not wanting to get chewed up by the superiors, cause trouble, and maybe get docked some pay for causing trouble, she never reports it. When she feels bad, she goes to the regular local hospital. In the hospital, nobody has any idea about who she is and why she's there, so she is treated as anybody who'd show up with respiratory symptoms in the beginning of the flu season. Except it doesn't go like flu at all, instead she dies quickly and horribly. People start checking and find out where she'd been working. Major "oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck" flags start going up, and people start bouncing it up the chain of command, which automatically engages "lie, deny and hide" strategy, but it's obviously too big to be handled like that now. So the real containment protocols - which existed in Russia since the Tsar's times, it's not their first rodeo by far - start activating, and that's where everybody learns about it.
The plague control labs have existed in Russia since forever, and not only for plague, for other diseases too. Those labs deal with monitoring, defending against, etc. various pathogens occurring naturally, including the plague. There were also weaponization efforts, including in Russia, but as far as it is known, Irkutsk lab hasn't been any part of that system. Of course, there's always possibility of something that we don't know coming up, but so far the best guess is the lab fuckup, followed by multiple chained safety protocol fuckups.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
I disagree. Crimestop is designed to prevent a rational consideration of undesirable matter - because considering it may lead a person to conclusions or thought patterns that are disapproved by the Party. However, the cow question, if pondered seriously, would most likely lead people to become disgusted and more entrenched in the value of their current culture - "we normies have our faults, but at least obsessing with questions like that isn't one of them". It's not a slippery slope, rather it's the opposite of it - the more you try to go there, the more all of your instincts scream at you to turn back. Except, of course, for the rare few that are really into it. Crimestop is not designed to guard against a rare few freaks - it is designed to control the masses. This question is designed to filter for certain kind of freaks.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
If the experience with gun control or drug control teaches us something, it's how hard is to prevent people from doing something they want to do. And how much control does it require to have even a limited degree of success in it. Imagine a world where only ISIS and the Sinaloa cartel has the true AI... And the CIA/NSA of course but we don't talk about it. OTOH the regular citizens ae required to have government monitoring software on any device smarter than a thermostat.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Is anyone arguing for "give Eliezer and Scott full exclusive access to prompting the first ASI instead of Sam or Dario"?
It's not personally Scott and Eliezer. It's the Oversight Committee (there's always a committee). But who do you think will influence forming the committee and who do you think the members of the committee would look for guidance when faced with tough decisions? Wouldn't it be the folks that convinced the government that the committee is needed in the first place? Or at least folks aligned with them?
but he is not in the position to do that and will never be.
He personally may be not. But some more savvy, slick and energetic politician taking cues from him might be. Marx or Gramsci did not personally take power.
Eliezer is not a critical stakeholder with whom one needs to coordinate.
If Eliezer does not matter, then it doesn't matter who says what about him. I am fine with this outcome, where whatever he says and does is immaterial and he has no influence on the outcome of things. I am afraid however it's not entirely the case, as a lot of people who are very knowledgeable in the industry and are at least adjacent to its control levers are significantly influenced by him (either personally or by the ideology he embodies). Maybe I am worrying for nothing, I'd be happy with that outcome too.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Are they paranoid about China or is their only problem with China that they think they can control the US government easier than they can control the CCP? Imagine if CCP told them "you know what, we decided you are right and we're pausing our AI research, but we are kind of concerned the US would gain unfair advantage. So we need you to, you know, sabotage US a little - not a lot, just to maintain parity, nobody is going to get hurt and everybody wins!" Would they take the deal? I know a lot of their ideological predecessors took the similar deal with the USSR and the nukes...
JarJarJedi
13d ago
You have DoW directly saying that EA and all that it stands for is anti-American
Are they wrong? I mean, I don't know if there's a pure-rational EA-based case for patriotism and American exceptionalism, but I certainly didn't notice a lot of people in EA circles looking for one and trying to build one up. I suspect if somebody seriously and earnestly did so, they'd be expelled from a lot of EA spaces. I mean, I understand there could be a very different view about what "American" is about, but if we talk about what a middle ground conservative working for DoW understands about it, how much the EA movement is his friend and how much it is his enemy? I am not asking who is right and wrong between them, but if we stand on the position of DoW, what would be the correct evaluation of EA from their side?
There's no "rules-based world order". Europe want there to be one, in the way that EU makes up the rules (when and where it pleases), or delegates it to some other bureaucratic orgs, and US pays for it and enforces it. As soon as US steps back from propping it up, turns out the whole thing has always been fakery.
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