JulianRota
2yr ago
Being very very stupid seems to be common, but it's the combination of that and the maniacal insistence on continuing to post the same points over and over again even after they've been thoroughly debunked that's the issue. Taking that into consideration, it's not hard to see why many platforms eventually ban it. At a certain point, you're just annoying the crap out of everybody.
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
8mo ago
I think it's accurate in that the words are generally used in a sense of declaring people to be at the extreme ends of the spectrum, when probably under 1% of the population is really that far in either direction. Words like "shy" and "gregarious" are in my opinion more useful as the way they are used seems to describe a moderate tendency more than an absolute or extreme case.
Maybe OP doesn't agree, but they described themselves as an Introvert and then described enjoying an activity that a person meeting the strict definition of an Introvert would not enjoy.
JulianRota
1yr ago
That may be another good factor. I've never been to Sioux Falls specifically, so I don't know what people there think about the winter weather. Presumably the people currently living in Sioux Falls are happy enough with what that currently entails, though I've heard anecdotes suggesting that the residents of nearby Minneapolis seem oddly comfortable in sub-freezing weather. Most people don't like sudden radical lifestyle changes, so I doubt they would be happy if we were to magic Manhattan into the same geographical location and they had to live there. But it doesn't seem that implausible that we could find a population of Americans who can live with needing to physically carry every crumb of their food all the way home even in the 6 degrees F lows that Google says it has there. Could we find 200k of them and convince them to live there? That, I don't know.
JulianRota
2yr ago
The "political activism" part was referring specifically to:
The trolls also tested out ideas like photoshopping MAGA hats on celebrities like Ariana Grande, and posting fake Clinton ads with the logo “Draft our Daughters” to trick people into believing that Clinton wanted to send young women to war.
Which apparently, according to the article, went to prove that they "weren't really joking".
Yes, this was a conspiracy charge. IMO, the large distance between what was actually done and any vaguely plausible claim of actually influencing an election makes this a blatantly partisan hit job. And IMO, the fact that they must have known it would look like this and made no attempt to make themselves and their campaign look more neutral says that they did it on purpose, that the goal was a chilling effect on Conservative activism.
If I start a chat with my 3 best friends where we talk about how funny it would be to trick Democrats into voting wrong, but never actually do anything, is that a crime in your opinion? What if we were all Democrats and we thought it would be funny to trick Republicans into voting wrong?
What happens when the next Republican President is as enthusiastic and skilled at lawfare as the Biden administration seems to be and start making these kinds of charges against Democrats?
JulianRota
2yr ago
FWIW, I tend to be a bit skeptical of certain types of things coming from the security community. They do have a tendency to overstate the severity and applicability of issues due to the benefits of publicity in that community.
Ex - the browser environment is riddled with RCEs because the attack surface is massively huge - they are expected to let any site on the net run arbitrary JS code with a ton of flexibility on their user's systems, and to use as much of the overall power of those systems as possible, but not let that code behave beyond certain limits. I sympathize with the people trying to keep that secure. But it doesn't have a lot in common with most other environments.
The web server environment has a much more limited attack surface. For the most part, apart from supply chain attacks, you can only really attack it by sending HTTP requests to it. That doesn't make them invulnerable, but it does mean that the great majority of vulnerabilities follow a few specific patterns that are straightforward to avoid. None of us who have worked with the code here have found any of those in the codebase yet.
I don't think I'd quite bet that there's no vulnerabilities at all. But it seems unlikely enough that there's anything serious that I'm not actively worrying about it. Especially combined with our relatively small size, general lack of going out of our way to piss people off, and lack of really juicy things to be gained from compromising the site.
JulianRota
1yr ago
I actually draw a distinction there. I have a greater level of sympathy and understanding towards actual black communities that are wary of trusting the police, since they've actually experienced historic oppression by them. For the whole Ferguson situation, my impression was that the shooting of Michael Brown was technically justified, but it might have been the only correct thing the cops had done there in a long time. Michael Brown's actions were technically wrong, but more understandable, and did succeed in shining a light onto lots of actual misconduct. I admit I don't have any great ideas on how to create law and order in black communities when the relationship with the police is already so poisoned in so many of them.
However, my impression is that I don't see a lot of those people or communities in the BLM movement. That, as far as I can tell, is mostly a wealthy white people movement. Whatever actual black people took part in it are mostly upper-class and already pretty disconnected from actual oppression, even if there may have been some history of it.
I believe that our society has a more general problem of militarization of the police and over-policing of many things that applies to all people. I think that the recent racial focus is misguided and serves to obscure the real problem by insisting on a false narrative and thereby causing people to take the opposite position of excessively defending the police when they see the lies.
JulianRota
1yr ago
Maybe we're getting a little far off topic here, but this is touching on one of my bigger general concerns. Many of our problems do seem pretty big. To be specific, I'm talking about things like how much control near-monopoly tech companies and national mega-corps are coming to have over our lives, specifically retail and news and entertainment media, how much influence a united and stable Russia, China, etc are able to wield over world affairs, etc. I'm not so sure that a United States with the Federal gov effectively throttled and the many State governments ascendant would be better able to deal with these issues.
JulianRota
2yr ago
I guess I would mostly code as one of those Reds that's modestly adverse to HBD. I don't quite agree with any of my siblings here. If I had to characterize my actual beliefs briefly, I'd say:
I think that color-blindness is the right way to run a society of fixed population size (immigration being a separate discussion). Even if HBD is strongly true, what of it? Capitalism and individualism has already proven to be mostly adequate at slotting people of varying skill levels into appropriate jobs, and giving appropriate punishments to individuals who commit crimes. I don't think we should discriminate by race at the society level at all - either to give an artificial boost to people who some may feel have been unfairly discriminated against in the past, or to artificially suppress people who, based on their race and HBD research, may be more likely to be less intelligent than average or more inclined to short-term thinking, i.e. more likely to steal, assault, murder, etc. If one race appears to be less likely to be CEOs and more likely to be murderers, and HBD suggests that this is likely to be a perfectly legitimate outcome given genetic tendencies, then I'd say society is working correctly and no intervention is needed.
I don't necessarily think HBD is wrong, but shouting it from the rooftops too loudly IMO tends to encourage policies I don't agree with, and increase racial tensions. In case you haven't noticed, racial tensions are already kind of high. Some have already called for a race war, which doesn't seem like a great idea to me. Perhaps I am a fool and it's already too late. But I'd like to say we at least tried to find a way to live together before anything like that kicks off.
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
1yr ago
I think it's pretty well-accepted that an Iranian nuclear capability would likely result in a number of regional counter-moves, such as:
The regional Sunni Arab states may then perceive a much more serious threat from Iran. They would likely seek to either build their own nuclear weapons or come explicitly under the protection of one of the existing nuclear powers. We're talking Saudi Arabia, Emirates, Oman, Quatar, Yemen, Egypt, and Jordan. Iraq and Syria aren't usually seen as Sunni-aligned, but they may not necessarily take such a thing lying down either.
Israel has long maintained a policy of "nuclear ambiguity", refusing to explicitly confirm that they do have a nuclear arsenal. If Iran does openly have a nuclear arsenal, I would think Israel would change this policy.
It's also the status quo of nuclear geopolitics that nuclear powers are not allowed to attack or threaten non-nuclear powers with nuclear weapons. You can attack, invade, and conquer with conventional weapons, but nothing nuclear. Once you have your own nuclear weapons though, you're now fair game for other nuclear powers to more directly threaten.
So, maybe Israel and Iran openly pointing nuclear ballistic missiles at each other? Not sure if that's a good thing. At least they might both cool their jets a little with the constant proxy wars.
Maybe American nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia? It's possible. There's precedent in America defending them from Saddam's invasion, and the Saudis don't seem terribly interested in manufacturing their own high-tech weapons. Or maybe they would ally with an openly-nuclear Israel? Both don't sound very likely now, but it's hard to see the Saudis just sitting idly by with an nuclear-armed Iran right across the Persian Gulf.
JulianRota
1yr ago
I've never worked there, so I don't know for sure. I'm inclined to think it's basically true though. For one, I don't think Musk's companies hire true juniors - indications are that they expect every employee to be highly competent and motivated. I wouldn't be surprised if getting a good idea through can happen even at the lowest level. Musk is reported to be a notorious micro-manager - that's the good side of it, that good ideas at the lowest level can be found. Of course there's a flip side to all of this too - if your idea isn't actually good or you can't execute on it, you might just be summarily fired.
JulianRota
1yr ago
Well they banned you for a bit so I suppose I won't get an answer right away, but if you're game, I'd dearly like to hear an actual rigorous definition of exactly which wars America has fought in the last few decades were "for Israel" and why. Near as I can tell, none of them were suggested or approved by the Israeli state, and none were particularly beneficial to it.
I think I could make a better argument that the US in it's war-making has been rather hostile to Israel. Israel was not permitted to join in on Operation Desert Storm. Saddam launched some SCUDs at them anyways in hopes of provoking a direct response. The US forbade Israel from responding directly and attempted to stop Saddam themselves.
JulianRota
2yr ago
I'm about a third of the way through reading it myself. It's interesting enough that I think he would have made a better than average Motte contributor. I haven't found anything yet that would seem to justify a terrorist bombing campaign though.
It's just a dream, and the timeline doesn't match of course, but I want to think we could have told him:
It's okay friend, your views are welcome here! We will read them and discuss them with you. You don't have to blow anyone up!
Of course, that might not work. But the greater the extent to which he had the opportunity to be heard and taken seriously and did that anyways, the more he's just a midwit terrorist asshole whose ideas aren't all that interesting.
The more interesting discussions is, to what extent are people with heterodox viewpoints nowadays able to avoid any urge to take radical action because they can find a community that agrees with them, or at least is willing to listen, on the internet?
JulianRota
2yr ago
That's the question indeed. Should we take anything from the fact that we aren't getting the names and career histories of any of the people responsible for these events? If there were WASPs behind any of them, do you think they would be immediately named and publicly fired to demonstrate the organization's commitment to "reversing structural racism" instead of obscuring the details, brushing the events under the rug, while insisting that we have no idea what's going on but it's definitely not a competency crisis due to diversity-based hiring practices?
JulianRota
2yr ago
It's popularly used IME to refer to the overall campaign of extermination against the Jews in Nazi Germany. Some were killed in concentration camps and death camps by gassing, others by mass executions, and others by starvation or over-work. I haven't heard of it used to refer to the Roma who were killed as well, or to Slavic POWs who also died in large numbers, though were never sent to death camps.
JulianRota
2yr ago
I got -5.38, which apparently makes me
Toe-in Rat, 50-70th percentile. You probably play board games, know what prediction markets are, and maybe occasionally read a blog or two. Not really a full-fledged rationalist, but their world is next door.
I suppose I do occasionally read a blog or two. I don't have any interest in board games. I know what prediction markets are, but don't have any particular desire to participate.
JulianRota
2yr ago
Yes. There are professional Soccer leagues in America. I'd bet money that the number of blue-collar workers attending any of their games is effectively zero.
JulianRota
1yr ago
I'm pretty sure it's 100% outgroup-hatred along standard culture war lines. Executing convicted murderers is a red tribe value, therefore to all blue tribe civilized society, it's savage, uncivilized, and wrong no matter how it's done, and every weapon in the culture war will be brought to bear to oppose it. That explains why a genuine attempt to do it in a more "humane" way has absolutely no effect on the media position. It was never about that, it was about crushing red tribe.
Meanwhile, if somebody wanted to execute Jan 6 convicts, even in the most pointlessly brutal way you could possibly imagine, the same sources would likely cheer on how they were getting exactly what they deserved and lament that the punishment wasn't harsh enough.
JulianRota
1yr ago
There's a rule here for Make your point reasonably clear and plain. It's not clear to me what your point is, so why don't you just say it, whatever it is? Why are you making it all about me and my experiences? Exactly what is the "lie" that you are referring to at the end?
JulianRota
2yr ago
Note that Reddit itself doesn't handle 2k+ comment posts all that well. Sure, it never stops loading the comments page at all or crashes the site. But it's often basically impossible to see more top-level comments once you load the first 200 it lets you. It usually lets you load more at the top level once, but I've never seen it work more than once. Other options like using depth=1 seemed to be broken 3/4 of the time, with no clue when it would work and when it wouldn't.
Another reason to be eager to get off Reddit was so that the behavior of large comment count threads is at least consistent and fixable instead of constantly broken in unpredictable ways.
JulianRota
5mo 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
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
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.
I broadly agree with Kulak's take here. Putin isn't great yeah, but the leadership of Ukraine isn't exactly Jeffersonian classical liberals either. It's a standard regional power struggle that America has no real interests in.
If the Ukrainian people desire independence enough to really fight for it, they're welcome to it. If not, whatever, not my problem. I'm fine with selling them a bunch of weapons, but giving them huge amounts of money or direct intervention ought to be off the table IMO.
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