JulianRota
8mo ago
I suspect that the whole Introvert/Extrovert thing basically doesn't exist. It seems to me that pretty much everyone wants to be social and around other people sometimes and quiet and alone at other times. There's some variation on exactly how much of each and at what intensity any person wants, but virtually nobody is at the extremes suggested by the Introvert/Extrovert framing.
There does seem to be more variation in desire to plan and organize events. Relatively few people seem to have the desire or inclination to create a plan, even a really simple and vague one like, let's all meet at a bar at roughly some particular time, and invite a bunch of people to it. But at least those relative few seem to be really into it, so it's good to have them around. Many others seem to be happy to show up to an event that somebody else organized, but have little interest in organizing things themselves.
JulianRota
6mo ago
There's a lot about the COVID response that could fairly be described as insane, but I don't think the vaccine testing protocols were one of them. They are required to conduct multi-phase randomized double-blinded clinical trials to prove safety and efficacy, just like every other treatment marketed to the general public. For the COVID vaccines, the process was considerably accelerated by things like permitting the planning and organization of later trial stages before the results of earlier stages were fully analyzed and approved, which consists of things like setting up all of the trial sites, recruiting the necessary trial subjects, manufacturing and distributing the doses, etc.
It's possible to argue that the trial requirements should have actually been weakened. But considering the plans to effectively force virtually the entire population to take the vaccines right away, the new technology several of the vaccines used, and the widespread skepticism and resistance that was in fact present for the vaccines despite the standard testing protocols being followed, I think that's the last thing in the world we'd want to do. Pharmaceutical history is littered with the corpses of promising medications that turned out to have horrific side-effects and/or little to no efficacy against the thing they were supposed to be treating when they were actually properly tested. The backlash against the whole industry was bad enough as-is, just imagine how much worse it would be if one or more of the vaccines did in fact prove to be seriously dangerous.
JulianRota
8mo ago
Maybe, but have you ever met any actual people who would meet those definitions?
I don't think I've ever met or known anyone who I know to be extroverted by that definition. Though to be fair, maybe it would be hard to know because by definition such a person would be very difficult to get to know well enough to know that they're actually doing that. But then who are the people who actually know for sure that someone they know is behaving like that?
I like theory-crafting as much as the next possibly vaguely autistic Mottizan, but I've also gotten somewhat self-conscious about the tendency to build imaginary castles that aren't demonstrated to correspond to actual people or real-world situations.
JulianRota
6mo ago
First off, I agree that, in my overall estimation of the disease and results, the vaccine mandates were a terrible idea.
In the larger picture, I want to agree with the overall Libertarian idea that it would be nice if we could both have individuals not be legally barred from taking any drug a company felt like selling at their own risk, clinical trials conducted and evaluated by one or more independent entities, and individuals can choose to pay attention to or ignore the recommendations of any of those trial entities on their own when deciding which drugs to take. But for better or worse, we're so far away from that world in the way our society currently runs that it's just not viable to cherry-pick one or two things from that world and try to just apply to them to ours.
The mandates certainly exacerbated the problem, but I think even without them, allowing such a vaccine to be let out into the world with no trials at all would still potentially be a monumental disaster. Who would take such a vaccine in a world with no mandates at all by anyone ever, including private entities free to choose their own policies? The Covid-maxxers, of course, the ones so radically terrified of it to be hiding indoors, wearing multiple masks, etc. They would jump to take it as soon as possible, as many millions of people did in fact do once they were released. And what then if it turned out to be far more dangerous than Covid itself, or even helped it spread faster, as quite a few drugs have in fact been discovered in trials to actually do? Now that would be one hell of a mess.
In any case, I don't know much offhand about animal drug approval process. A little googling turned up that the FDA claims to regulate regular drugs and medical devices for animals, but not vaccines for them, which apparently falls to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They seem to have a FAQ page about it. I found a PDF of "New Firm Informational Packet for Live and Inactivated Vaccines", and the process listed there sounds broadly similar to the process for human drug and vaccine approval. I'm guessing it's probably somewhat faster than the approval process for human drugs, but not dramatically so.
JulianRota
8mo ago
My model is more like, most people have a modest number of close friends (who may or may not be family). Everyone has widely varying levels of skill and inclination when it comes to starting and maintaining conversations with people and moving brief connections towards actual friendships.
Myself, I maintain maybe like a dozen or so pretty close friendships and another few dozen somewhat more distant friends who I know and see semi-regularly but don't actually get together with that often for various reasons. I am usually pretty good at going to a bar or party where I know nobody or only a couple of people and talking to a bunch of people. Most of the time, I forget about whoever I was talking to not too long after. Moving those brief conversations towards actual friendships is considerably harder, at least to me. Maybe some people are better at that part, I don't know. People I consider actual friends tend to come from situations where you tend to be around the same few people regularly without either side explicitly planning to get together with those specific people, like by being regulars at a bar or working together or being members of some kind of club or other regular group activity.
Perhaps that behavior looks to other people at that sort of event like what you've described as an extrovert. But they don't know that I actually only maintain those few dozen closer friendships with people I've known for years. I'm inclined to believe that most people we see acting like that are doing the same thing. So am I Introverted or Extroverted? I don't know, so I don't find the distinction very meaningful. Maybe those other people you see who appear to be doing that are just having a little fun their way and actually do have their own dozen or so really close friends.
So in my book, you're not actually Introverted, just normal.
JulianRota
6mo ago
It's not a matter of cherry-picking. It's simply stating that things are clearly good or bad.
I think it is. A possible reasonable alternative system is, no Government agency exists to approve medical treatments, instead, several independent organizations (possibly including a Government one) make recommendations based on their own criteria, but individuals are free to take what they want. In such a system, those one or more organizations are already set up, and people are used to making their own decisions and taking responsibility for them. I believe that basically nobody thinks that way now. I don't think you can just overnight in a crisis switch to the regulatory framework of that system and expect people to change their thinking overnight. It is perhaps telling that no country in the world currently works like this.
A lack of willingness to take responsibility for my own medical decisions is not my opinion at all. I am fine with doing this myself, but it is my belief that 95% of American citizens are not prepared to do this. This is based on observations of how they actually behaved during the actual Covid period. Which gets me to what I really want to object to:
This is one of the most common failure modes, perhaps even a typical mind fallacy. Because you think, in your situation, that you wouldn't want to take it, you think that no one would want to take it (or you think they'd have obviously wrong preferences, since they don't match up with your own).
Please refrain from putting words into my mouth or assuming what I think. I already said I would personally be fine with taking responsibility for my own decisions. I think it's the American people, and the people in pretty much every other country too, who are unwilling to do this. You may disagree that they think like this, or dislike it, but don't tell me what I think personally.
If we did allow people to take any treatment without testing, warned them hundreds of times that it was untested and anything could happen, and it turned out to be a disaster with hundreds of thousands of casualties, I would be any amount of money you care to name that they would all scream their heads off at the Government for allowing it to happen, vote them out of office, probably storm the gates of all the Pharmaceutical companies and lynch people, etc. Roughly 10 people would say, oh well, they did warn me it was untested, guess it's on me. If watching how people behaved during Covid didn't convince you of that, then I don't know what to tell you.
We're also talking pretty vaguely here, why don't you spell out exactly how you envision your ideal system working?
JulianRota
6mo ago
I'm not sure if we've talked about this lately, but do we have any thoughts on what should be done with the Russia-Ukraine war at this point? Seems like as good a time as any to consider grand strategy, with Trump soon to take office in the US.
It's a little surprising that it's still going. It seems pretty clear to me at this point that Russia / Putin has no intention of stopping anytime soon. The sanctions regime that has been put in place seems to have caused them to return to self-sufficiency as much as it has hurt them. I'm doubtful that further attempts to sanction them harder will have any greater effect. The Ukrainians seem to have had impressive determination, especially during the first few months, but they don't seem to have the practical ability to eject the Russian troops, even with extremely generous donations of Western arms. I'm doubtful that's possible at all without large-scale Western intervention. There's also the possibility of allowing them to make more deep strikes into Russia with longer-ranged weapons, but I'm doubtful that anything along those lines can hit hard enough to either seriously disrupt their logistics or their will to fight, at least not without, or maybe even with, so many high-end western arms that it's basically obvious it's the US striking them directly, with all of the potential consequences that could entail.
From the perspective of an American, it's felt for a while like maybe it's time to wind down this conflict, or at least our involvement in it, as far as providing arms and assistance. Are we really accomplishing anything but getting more Ukrainians killed to little effect? And okay yeah, Russia is not our friend, but it's probably only to the United States' benefit to push them so far.
Does anyone have any different opinions? Does anyone see any realistic potential of forcing Russia back without a large-scale escalation that I'm doubtful Americans will accept? The European powers may be more determined to push Russia back, but do they have much practical ability without the US?
JulianRota
7mo ago
Reading Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland as part of an overall obsession with the Troubles.
FWIW, I'm still very interested in the subject, but haven't read that much about it in a while. I feel like I've had my fill of books about the leadership structure and decision-making of the various militias and Government departments, and what happened in all the big-name incidents. What I'd really like to read more about is the less prominent stuff, the experiences of the "little guys" on all sides and lowest-level fighters, the backstory of the lesser-known but more routine happenings that deeply affected the lives of the people involved (or ended them, of course). So far, this book seems to deliver!
JulianRota
2mo ago
What ads are you talking about? I just got a new Kindle, and I don't see any ads at all. Just go to Library on the front page, it stays there, and you only see your actual books and their contents. If you go to the Home page, you see some recommendations, which I suppose you could consider ads, but it doesn't ever seem to switch over to that from Library by itself.
Of course, there is the option to save a few bucks on the purchase price in exchange for seeing ads. I hate ads as much as anyone, but I don't have a lot of sympathy if somebody takes the $20 cheaper option for ads and then complains about the ads.
JulianRota
8mo ago
Yes, there are whole subreddits full of them. /r/Rapekink for example. Yeah I have a thing for digging up weird corners of the internet where utterly bizarre stuff happens.
Evidently, there is such a thing as "rape baiting", where women who actually want to be raped, for whom role-playing isn't enough, go out seeking to be raped. They have a whole FAQ on it, trade tips on how to do it most effectively, and share stories of their most successful attempts!
There's also a lot of women posting there about what happened to them and how they feel about it. Many seem to be struggling, not quite sure how to feel about it. Things like, not liking it, but also not wanting to think of themselves as victims, not seeing it as the worst thing that could possibly happen to someone. I can see going to a place like that when you don't really want the fawning sympathy treatment but aren't quite sure what you actually think about it.
I have no clue what percentage of women overall think or feel along these lines. Even coming up with a way to measure it accurately seems difficult. But there's enough written about it that I don't think it's all fake or like 0.1% or anything like that.
JulianRota
10mo ago
How would having nuclear weapons allow them to fight Israel?
They could potentially nuke Israel, and then be nuked back in return by Israel, and very likely other nations, including anyone who considers themselves allied with Israel, or simply against the unprovoked offensive use of nuclear weapons by anyone.
That aside, they can already fire conventional missiles at Israel. They don't have the ability to carry out an offensive land invasion of Israel, and having a few nukes isn't going to change that.
JulianRota
6mo ago
I did not say that you had a lack of willingness to take responsibility for your own medical decisions. I said that you were taking upon yourself the ability to make medical decisions for everyone else.
I personally don't have or want the ability to make medical decisions for everyone else. The "everyone else", being the American People, have more or less voluntarily given the Federal Government that power through the existing democratic process.
I haven't really expressed much in the way of opinions about how things ought to be in this thread. I'm mostly just talking about how the system currently works and why it works that way, and what issues any potential changes to the system would need to address. That shouldn't be confused with actually advocating for the system to work in a specific way.
What are you talking about? This seems irrelevant.
Your other comment about the Glock lawsuit issue is kind of funny by itself, but also IMO serves to illustrate how the current state of the system is the product of how a bunch of things tie together.
For example, in the current system, all potential new drugs, even if created by some tiny team of independent scientists or university lab, are taken up by pharmaceutical giants to take to the market. They have the financial backing to take these drugs through the lengthy and risky clinical trial process, absorb the losses from ones that fail, and also weather any lawsuits filed by people unhappy with the drugs. They're mostly happy with the Government-run trial process partly because, if they get sued, they can say at trial that their drug went through those Government-monitored trials and was approved for sale by the Government.
Quite a few of the Covid vaxx-skeptical were concerned that the PREP Act rules made everyone associated with manufacturing, distributing, and administering the vaccines immune from lawsuits. They do have a point... but how could you possibly release a new vaccine that fast, or even faster yet, without that legal immunity? How would you convince the pharma companies to go ahead and release without that, when part of the reason why they exist and are structured as they are is to manage that risk? Or would you go for much broader legal immunity? Like it or not, lawsuits are a great way to throw sand in the gears of a new drug release.
That's one reason why I'm skeptical about your vague ideas to apparently cut more restrictions and go even faster yet. Which is why I'm asking in order to try and nail things down more specifically:
Let's start with just the basics. In a pandemic...
I'm not actually asking about an ideal system for handling pandemics. I don't think that's possible. We've got 20/20 hindsight for Covid now, of course, but if you were making a system for all pandemics, you'd have to handle Covid, plus Aids, plus Ebola, plus everything else that's come down the pike, plus whatever the next pandemic may be, which none of us can predict.
What I'm actually asking is your ideal system for how to go from what some scientists think is a promising new drug to something that the average person can buy or be prescribed to treat some disease or condition. How do you think that should work exactly during normal times, and how should it be changed during a "pandemic", whatever we might define that as?
I skipped over the "HCT/RCT debate" question because I honestly have no clue what that is. A few google searches didn't provide much insight. What is this debate?
JulianRota
7mo ago
Non-fiction I'd say. Is Troubles Fiction even a thing?
That is the sort of thing I'm more interested in, thanks!
I have read about things like that going on. It seems to be a great truth that, if you as a rebel group do a sufficiently good job at booting out the Government and getting people not to trust them, then you now become the Government. People will start coming to you to resolve petty disputes and enforce order, whatever they consider that to be, and if you do a decent job at it, then you're just that much more powerful.
I'd read about the militias on both sides often spending a lot of time extorting businesses, and often even cooperating with each other on who got to shake down who, despite being technically at war with each other. Also at least the outline of reorganizing the RUC into PSNI, supposedly now with more Catholics. The efforts to integrate the schooling sounds very interesting too, though I don't know where to read much about that. It seems like the separated schooling must have been a big factor in keeping the communities split apart enough to create such a conflict in the first place.
JulianRota
7mo ago
I live in NYC, and I've never heard of anyone living like that. I've lived here for about 8 years, and I know of exactly 1 instance of somebody I personally know being affected by street crime, and that was just a phone snatching. Maybe some women carry pepper spray, but I've never noticed it. IMO, carrying pepper spray indicates that things are pretty safe because it's not very effective against much. I do know lots of people, men and women, young and old, who have no concerns at all about walking around alone late at night, even drunk. I've never heard of anybody telling people everything they're doing in case "something happens".
I'm not really sure if car break-ins are much of a problem honestly, mostly because very few people have them, and if they do, they mostly park them in expensive private parking garages. It does seem a little surprising I guess, but I would think I would have heard of it happening at least some if it was actually common.
It is fairly common for people who want to have kids to move out, but that's more because it's quite expensive to get a large enough space, not because of concerns about crime. There definitely are a lot of kids of all ages around, including in strollers and being walked around. Enough that it's reasonably common to be mildly annoyed by someone wheeling a baby stroller around in a place that seems kind of inappropriate, like inside a crowded store.
JulianRota
8mo ago
This sounds super weird to me. I did entry-level competitive cycling on a college team for a few years, and have never heard of that being a problem for anybody. Even with plain flat pedals and ordinary shoes, your foot shouldn't ever slip off. Maybe you're trying to pedal way too fast or have some kind of weird foot motion or position or something. The axis of your toes on your foot should be roughly directly above the axis the pedal rotates on.
Pedals with straps to hold your foot on are indeed a thing, as are various types of "clipless" systems where your shoes lock in and only come out with a specific twisting motion, but they're only really beneficial for allowing you to exert force on the pedals on the upward stroke. If your foot is coming off the pedals, you should fix whatever issue is causing that before you do an equipment change.
JulianRota
8mo ago
I know that that particular behavior (willingness to start conversations with very weakly connected people or total strangers) is very abnormal and most would consider it extroversion. However, most other people I know seem to be much further towards "extroversion" in other ways than I am, yet seem to me to be strangely unwilling to do that.
For example, most other people I know tend to have what I call more words than me. They seem to have much greater capability to extend conversations indefinitely, to just keep on talking and talking and talking. I was never very good at this. Usually any conversations I start tend to peter out fairly quickly unless the other person is actively interested in maintaining it and puts in effort towards that.
I also desire to spend substantial amounts of time basically quiet and alone, doing something like reading or watching movies and videos on the internet. Some other people I know seem to be much more active, constantly up and about doing things.
So then am I introverted or extroverted? How about all those other people I know with different combinations of traits? Beats me. That's why I find the whole thing not very useful, to the point of saying it basically doesn't exist, and might even be actively harmful in some cases. I think that what people normally think of as those traits are actually a cluster of dozens of personality characteristics that aren't necessarily related to each other at all, and several of them are closer to being skills that can be learned or moods and emotions that someone may feel more of or less of at any particular time for any number of reasons than fundamental traits that cannot be changed.
I cannot really know or claim to speak for what any particular person thinks and feels. But I do think that quite a few people who are self-proclaimed Introverts are actually just psyching themselves out. Perhaps when they were young, they did not yet know how to conduct themselves in social settings or had false beliefs about what other people were thinking of them. Perhaps they were convinced of an ideology that they were Introverts, that this was not a temporary feeling or mood or lack of a skill that can be learned, but instead made it part of their identity and chose to revel in it. What if it's not actually a fundamental unalterable trait? What if such a person decided to believe instead that they could learn how to socialize and how to at least sometimes get themselves into a mood to take pleasure from it? I say this not to condescend to you or any other particular person, but because it's exactly what I did myself.
Driving a car was initially pretty scary. But I learned to do it and got comfortable with it eventually. I certainly wasn't always any good at any sort of socialization. I'm far from perfect or any kind of expert at it even now, but I have managed to get somewhat better and more comfortable with it, at least sometimes.
JulianRota
9mo ago
I'm still reading And The Band Played On. Probably want to hold more extended commentary until after I finish it, but I am pleasantly surprised so far that it's not at all a dunk against Reaganist budget thriftiness specifically. Nobody looks particularly good in this story, and it seems that the gay community itself and the Federal administrators behaved far more irresponsibly. It's definitely interesting to compare the reaction to the rabid panic associated with Covid-19.
JulianRota
9mo ago
It's not really aimed at the general public, but at the Republican Presidential candidates and the people who might make up their cabinet if they get elected. Nobody cares much about selling the general public on how it's totally super awesome. Only conservatives who are hardcore policy wonks would actually read it. There's probably not much to be gained from any Republican candidate for office talking about how it's great and they promise to do it all either.
The Liberal institutions picked up on it as something they can scare their base with. It's easy and in their interest to go wall-to-wall selling everyone on how it's totally super terrible and horrifying and every Republican definitely seriously wants to do it, regardless of how much truth there is to that. And so, the overall public perception is super bad.
JulianRota
10mo ago
Finished The Devil's Chessboard. My opinion about the main theme of the book is basically unchanged since my last post on it.
The last section of the book is all about the JFK assassination. The basic theme, according to the book, is that a ton of people around Lee Harvey Oswald and the Book Depository building had "links" or associations with the CIA, anti-Kennedy Republican activists, and anti-Castro activists and a bunch of weird stuff happened around Oswald himself, including being allowed to live in the Soviet Union for a number of years, and move back with a Russian wife, at the height of the Cold War, with basically a rubber-stamp level of scrutiny. Also supposedly the whole Warren report was a whitewash.
To all of this I say, well maybe, but this is a lot of smoke but not much fire. Okay, it seems pretty unlikely that Oswald just up and decided to shoot the President one day. But exactly who did what here, and why? There's no more information on that in here than I had before. And if it was an organized conspiracy by... some groups... exactly what did they hope to accomplish by doing this? Why did they actually pull off an assassination of Kennedy, but not any other American president? Did they just kind of decide that that was too far and not to do it again? Is it like part of the plan or something to be so vague and confusing about exactly what happened that nobody has any idea what to do?
JulianRota
10mo ago
This is a very interesting and ominous development. I strongly doubt Durov will actually serve serious jail time. The interesting questions then are:
Exactly what concessions will France / the EU / whoever wring out of Durov and Telegram in exchange for his release?
What should we take from the fact that this level of lawfare has not yet been used (at least not visibly) against any of the other social networks or messaging platforms? Are they all cooperating sufficiently, despite claimed E2EE protections on some things? Do they have some other sort of leverage or protection? Or maybe the powers that be are just afraid of possible backlash, so they're going after Telegram first to see what they can get away with, and if it goes well, further action on other platforms may follow.
JulianRota
19d ago
What I haven't seen much commentary on yet is, will Adams and/or Cuomo run against him as an independent? I figure, winning the Democrat nomination makes Mamdani a shoo-in by default in the general. To have a shot at defeating him would probably require a temporary alliance between a very substantial number of more centrist Democrats and pretty much all of the Republicans to all vote for one particular alternate Democrat running as independent. Having a shot at that actually working seems much less likely if both Adams and Cuomo run, especially if they start openly attacking each other.
JulianRota
7mo ago
Reading JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. It's a much shorter book, I'm halfway through already.
I'm not sure if there was much in the way of ghostwriting or assistance on this, but if it's not much, then it's remarkably good writing for a sitting politician.
It reminds me a little of Sowell's Black Rednecks, White Liberals, which put forth the idea that quite a few of the dysfunctions affecting black culture were actually copied from the white hillbilly culture.
JulianRota
8mo ago
FWIW, usually the justification has been that the margin of victory of the winning candidate in most races is much higher than the total volume of mail-in votes, so it doesn't actually matter. At least besides the pseudo-religious justification of having those mail-in voters believe that their vote "counted".
It remains to be seen just how many more mail-in votes (legitimate or questionable...) will take place in this election.
JulianRota
8mo ago
Nope! NYC is very captured by Blue Tribe. Most of the ones I meet IRL are NPC-level, spewing mindless hatred. The Motte is probably the only place where I can at least sometimes have reasonable debates with reasonable Blue Tribe-rs that isn't immediately drowned out by mindless shouting.
Better for life? That's a tricky question. It could be thought of as bad that so many people seem to hate your guts if you lean Red. But on the other hand, it means you have an automatic connection with anyone else who does too. It feels like it makes things more fun in a way. In theory it could be good for debates, but I meet very few blues who are intelligent and knowledgeable enough to debate issues and actually have the temperament for it.
Will I move somewhere eventually where most people are more ideologically similar to me? Beats me. As I've gotten older, I've gotten less willing to make big pronouncements for the future, since I have no idea what my situation will be or how I'll feel 5 years from now. I don't think there's been any point in my life where I could have made accurate predictions that far out, so there's not much point in trying.
Naturally, all bets are off if something really out there happens, like an actual national divorce with states and regions breaking away from the United States, or actual secret police hunting down ideological dissidents for long sentences in reeducation camps. I still don't think anything along those lines is really likely to happen in my lifetime, but I no longer dismiss the possibility out of hand. Maybe like 5 or 10 percent chance.
I saw Trace's post at the time, but I didn't have the time or energy to go through the whole thing at the time. I did today though. The poo-flinging here was a bit unexpected though. I don't really keep up with the interpersonal drama in that much detail. For anyone else curious:
Trace's post on the blog of the podcast he works for detailing the Libs Of TikTok Hoax he carried out
A Motte discussion of it at the time.
Whole thing seems kind of meh to me, to be honest. Yeah it's not a good look for Trace or the BaR Podcast to carry out hoaxes like that. But LOTT didn't really suffer any harm from it. Trace has done some great work otherwise, but I'm not under any illusions that he's a partisan for my side of the culture war, so I'm not like morally offended that that time, he did something mildly bad to my side. It's kind of a bad look for him to do that and, as far as I can tell, refuse to apologize or anything, but I don't feel the need to follow him around and bash him about it in every other thread. And I get that it's annoying to have that happen, but he didn't need to get so mad about it. I haven't seen him acknowledging anywhere that it was kind of a jerk move. If he wants to take his ball and go home because of that and other such things, well sorry to see a mostly good poster go, but okay I guess.
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