Jiro
2mo ago
Israel is creating thousands of boys every week who want nothing more than to fight back against Israel — because they just saw soldiers shoot their grandmother, or shoot their little sister, or kidnap their brother, or maybe Israel bombed their entire family, or maybe they were mistreated, or maybe their cousin is starving.
You'll notice that this argument applies to shooting enemy soldiers just as much as it applies to civilians. By your reasoning, Israel shouldn't shoot any enemy soldiers because it creates thousands of boys who saw their brother or father or uncle or whoever get killed by the Israelis, and who want revenge.
Also, notice that bombing Nazis didn't create more Nazis. Why? Because Germany was saturated with Nazis already. Boys who saw their relatives killed were already steeped in Nazi propaganda and probably would become Nazis no matter what you did. If for some reason they didn't, they'd just get drafted anyway.
Jiro
2mo ago
Revealed preference here is related to switching costs, not to which someone would prefer in a vacuum.
Jiro
2mo ago
Flooding Gaza with food would lead to Hamas taking it all, selling it to Gazans, and destroying that part that they can't sell.
It's not as if having excess food means that the food goes to people who need it. Hamas is just as capable of taking excess food as they are of taking necessary food.
Jiro
2mo ago
If you are going to make a rule requiring impossible things from users, just ban them directly. Don't force them to follow an impossible rule just so you can say it's their own fault for being banned for not following it.
(And if it isn't impossible, it will become so as soon as users game it by replying with Gish gallops.)
Jiro
2mo ago
Also, a lot of the ones who don't like Hamas dislike Hamas for not killing enough Jews. This is a twenty Stalins sort of dislike. "Doesn't like Hamas" doesn't mean "is more peaceful than Hamas".
The aid organizations were helping Hamas and had to be stopped regardless of whether they were also providing food.
I'd also ask just how much "pretty much no one" is and how many are starving now. Hamas is known to have used food to control the people even before October 7, so I do not believe "nobody used to be starving".
Jiro
2mo ago
Outside of the Oct.7 attack, which was a defensive blunder, is all the manpower and material spent on this battle justifiable in any sense if we are comparing before and after?
If they didn't fight, it would be October 7 constantly. You are saying that there's no danger, so the military operation isn't needed. But there's no danger only because of the military operation.
Instead, Hamas is not affected by starvation at all, because where they are in control they will obviously take what food they want.
That's exactly why Israel needs to do it: it is impossible to prevent civilians from starving because Hamas takes all the food. Israel taking the food affects only Hamas (although there are plenty of civilians to point to, who will be starved regardless of what Israel does but who can be blamed on Israel.)
Starvation is a bit like firing a machine gun towards a Hamas militant hiding behind dozens of rows of Gazan kids
Which you may have to do (at least to the extent of getting blamed for killing them). Hamas hiding behind civilians and forcing Israel to kill them, or to look like they're trying to kill them, has been a ubiquitous tactic already.
Jiro
2mo ago
I think humans whose genetic expression maximizes any one trait are going to have trade-offs in other areas.
Statistics says that it will look that way even if they don't.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dC7mP5nSwvpL65Qu5/why-the-tails-come-apart
The bigger problem is that people actually said they'd lead discussion groups at the leftist commune, but nobody actually said that under a right wing government, they'd be a warlord. The whole thing is someone guessing what the right wing equivalent would be--no right wing person really said it.
As leftism is about changing society and being right wing isn't, I suspect that this is not the answer you'd get, and you'd get something more like "Job under a right wing government? Nothing any government can do about that. Maybe I'd make some more money and live in a better place if the economy is better."
Jiro
2mo ago
A) Recognized Islam as a greater threat; or B) Were religious fellas hoping for a restoration of the holy land, eventually. Or maybe the rapture.
Ot C) see Christianity as having developed from Judaism and consider themselves culturally tied to Jews. Also, they are more likely to be politically conservative which means they support American allies.
Supporting Israel because it brings about the Rapture is basically a weakman.
Jiro
2mo ago
it looks like he regrets it too
Really? Where did he say this?
(And "It was bad tactics" or "I really don't like how it made people hate me" don't count.)
Jiro
2mo ago
I will give him that it must be pretty annoying to already be left of center in a space like this and then get multiple people who link 5 year old posts at him aggressively to tell him how wrong and hypocritical he is.
I'd be more bothered about people bringing up five year posts if the posters (or institutions) involved with them were willing to say "I don't believe that any more" or even "that's out of context" (along with an explanation if needed). I would agree that if that's the case, bringing up the five year old posts is crass and usually inappropriate.
But that's not usually what's happening when people bring up old posts here or on LW. (It often is in the outside world, of course.)
Jiro
2mo ago
One major issue with the law right now is that even the most bullshit allegations cost money and time to fight against, and even doing something like trying to get the costs covered by the one suing you is itself expensive and time consuming, especially when that is rarely given even in cases where the lawsuit is bull.
This works in both directions. "Trump did bad things with Epstein and I have this letter proving it" is probably a bullshit allegation. And it costs time and money to fight against. Unlike the usual situation, Trump can afford to cover the costs. Oops.
I also think people should be free to associate or not associate with whoever they want to, so I can't really point to them doing anything exactly wrong when they do that.
I think that people should be free to do a lot of things which are bad, even specifically bad for social cohesion. You're free to say "I don't like Jews, so I won't associate with this Jew". I would still call it wrong.
We need to distinguish "break up friendships for a bad reason" and "break up friendships for something we can prove is a bad reason". If someone refuses to associate with you because you're a Jew, that's wrong. If someone refuses to associate with you because he doesn't like your attitude, that's fine. If someone refuses to associate with you because you're a Jew, and he lies and says "I just don't like his attitude", this is still wrong, even if you have no way to prove he's lying without looking into his head.
I'd probably limit wokeism to identitarian politics as well. Nobody gets cancelled for saying they don't think the workers need to own the means of production.
Jiro
2mo ago
Normies have the idea that a price is based on cost, plus a certain amount of profit. Charging more for a product because the customers are less price sensitive rather than because the product costs more to make is considered cheating the customer.
Rationalists may not think that way, but everyone else does. If pink razors cost the same to make, but women are willing to pay extra for them, charging extra is dishonest.
Jiro
2mo ago
I wonder if some of the problems people have with this kind of in-group bias is the reverse: immigrants who are culturally different and need to exert a lot of effort to catch up will get along with mainstream Americans, but immigrants who are multiple generation assimilated are more likely to use their immigrant heritage for identity politics.
Unfortunately that is past the point where Reddit lets you search. (You may see posts suggesting that Reddit only returns 1000 posts but narrowing it down will work. Narrowing it down will not work.) But I can come up with some related posts:
Moderator tells me that I can be abrasive but not antagonistic
Jiro
2mo ago
There's also the opposite situation where the author launders his beliefs through his characters. If the characters never have any flaws in their beliefs shown by the story progress (or if the only flaw is "he's too extreme, but it isn't otherwise a bad idea"), there's a good chance the author does believe them. If the author mentions fine details that would refer to some real life incident that is not actually supposed to be in the story, there's a good chance the author is trying to lecture about the real life incident. If the character makes a 3 hour speech and the story quotes 2 hours of it, the character's probably an author mouthpiece.
Don't overcorrect on this.
Jiro
2mo ago
Unlike back on reddit where being abrasive was explicitly allowed.
(The moderators had said that you can't be antagonistic, but darwin admitted to being abrasive. So they had to warp the rules to say "being abrasive and antagonistic are totally different things, so see, darwin didn't admit to anything banworthy".)
Jiro
2mo ago
For years, the story of AI progress has been one of moving goalposts.
This is like saying that a Turing test is moving goalposts because the interrogator can suddenly decide in the middle of the test to ask the AI a new question that he hasn't talked about before and that the AI and its programmer has had no chance to prepare for. Except on a much bigger, slower, scale.
AI progress is moving goalposts because people are better able to figure out what they need to demand from the AI after seeing how it performs on previous demands rather than before.
Jiro
2mo ago
The worst case scenario here would be that Epstein makes public statements accusing everyone from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump to The Man in the Moon of bangin underage girls on his private island. But as I mentioned earlier, there would be no motive for him to do so at that point other than spite.
Being harmed by revelations isn't an all or nothing thing. Fingering well-connected people probably would have some effect, even though since they are well-connected they won't be harmed as much as people who aren't well connected.
This is not true. And Gazans (and people in honor based and tribal societies in general) tend not to be reasonable people anyway.
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