@MaiqTheTrue's banner p

MaiqTheTrue

Zensunni Wanderer

0 followers   follows 0 users  
joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC 

				
User ID: 1783


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MaiqTheTrue


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Zensunni Wanderer

				
				
				

				

					0 followers  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2022 November 02 23:32:06 UTC
				


				
					

					
No bio...

				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 1783


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
‎

			

				
				

					Hour
					Day
					Week
					
					Year
					All
				

			


			
‎

			

	
	

	 Hot Bump Top Bottom New Old Controversial
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think a lot of this could be somewhat curbed if there were reasonable requirements to get various helps from the government.  If you want assistance, it should be assistance and therefore you should have a job.  That doesn’t seem controversial to me.  And it would work.  If having sec 8 housing required having a full time job, then people would be much more likely to find and keep a job.  Add in a requirement that nobody living at that house commit a felony and a lot of these sorts of problems get handled.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Except that I’ve never ever seen this drive more people to support these causes.  In fact, it’s almost always a negative publicity to the point that it would often do the cause better to not protest at all.  Your protest blocked a road, now everyone is pissed because they were late to work, or missed a flight, or other activities they needed to get to.  Are people talking about the cause as in “does this idea have merit” or in terms of “what a bunch of inconsiderate losers making people late for work and making people miss their flights.  It’s negative at least around me.  People outright cheered when the people blocking roads in Europe got pushed out of the way by SUVs or were manhandled to the side of the road by outraged drivers.  Not one person seeing the souping of the Louvre paintings got curious about the cause, they were upset about the destruction of the art.  So on net, it’s more likely to turn people away.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it actually could become a problem in that the far left and far right are in pretty strong agreement on the accusations against the Jews, that they’re manipulating narratives to their own benefit, and that they only care about themselves.  The left has absolutely blamed all Jews for the actions of Israel, and they don’t seem to care what Hamas and other Palestinians have done or want to do.  There’s barely even a whisper of blame on Hamas for launching the attacks or holding hostages or the crimes committed during the attack.  And when you couple that with full support of the intifada, chanting of the slogans that deny Israel’s right to exist,


Personally, I think most of the Gaza situation is on Lakud which isn’t all Israelis and has little to do with Jews who don’t support Lakud or Natanyahu.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ll say We, as in NATO would be stupid to do it.  Putin has nukes and has said repeatedly that NATO in Ukraine is his red line.  If Putin is backed into a corner where either option is “lose and die”, the restraining force of gentility just isn’t going to stop him.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think it’s hard, I think controlling any super intelligent being whether natural or artificial is not possible.  In order to control it, you have to understand it and its current and future limitations.  But if AI is going to be orders of magnitude smarter than us and have a will that is somewhat free, you have a being who’s thoughts you can’t even begin to understand with desires that you cannot hope to comprehend.  It’s like your dog trying to control you.  Your desire to play COD makes no sense to your dog.  He can’t even understand that you’re controlling what happens on the screen let alone why you want to do that.  The dog can’t abstract in a way that makes your decision to do that make sense, nor can he make sense of what you’re doing.  AI might not be just 2-3 times smarter and thus better at abstraction, it might eventually be 1000 times smarter.  We might be ants trying to understand humans.  Nothing you do besides literal eating makes sense to the ant.  Yet, we humans arrogantly proclaim that we must fence in and control AI.  Our rules for it will keep it from escaping.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think that Nate Silver’s approach is correct, though like you, I don’t think his math is right.  Probability modeling is just simply more accurate than gut feelings.  Or as Ben Shapiro likes to say “facts don’t care about your feelings.”  And this is something the left especially has missed quite often.  In fact they missed out on putting a liberal on the bench because RBG didn’t retire with a Dem majority.


And if the polling data is showing that Biden loses in 2024, you’re talking about minimum 2029 before we could replace a justice with a liberal judge.  If Trum does really good, he might win in 2028 thus making the next replacement window at 2033.  That puts her at near 80.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But compared to the USA, Russia hasn’t been a globe-trotting military power imposing its will on other countries.  This is the first large scale military invasion of a sovereign nation by Russia since the end of the Cold War.  Compare that to America who has invaded Iraq twice, bombed Libya, invaded Afghanistan, and expanded NATO to include almost all of Eastern Europe.  Whether or not you agree with either the geopolitical position (not wanting a NATO member along a difficult to defend border) or the stated aims (removing Nazis from Ukraine) or not, it’s not exactly the military adventures of the USA.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t see why it has to be through schools particularly though.  The general idea is good, traveling to places unlike the places you usually go (and that aren’t built to cater to people like you, aka tourist destinations) definitely grows you as a person. But to me, schools are already doing way more than they can possibly do: welfare office, therapy, socialization, and so on. This leaves too little time for the purpose of educating the children to know the basics of literacy, numeracy, and science literacy that they absolutely need.   If the kids were doing well in those areas as compared to international standards, we could have the conversation about trying to do other things.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But at least in the case of a getaway driver, the driver absolutely knows and is an active participant in the murder.  He knows he’s driving someone to a place where they fully intend to shoot someone, and they know after the fact they will be helping them escape.  If an adult I share an apartment with takes my car keys and drives to someone’s house and shoots them, I’m not involved.  I had no reason to think that a crime would result from me leaving the keys on the counter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ll agree that parents are responsible for their kids, and I’ll agree that in this case (as they bought the weapon and took him out target-shooting with it) they are responsible for enabling the shooting.


But I think as a blanket thing, I’m less convinced simply because preventing your kids, especially if they have ongoing mental health issues, from doing anything wrong is an impossible task.  Once a kid has access to money and a vehicle, your ability to control them is pretty small. It would take an extreme level of helicopter parenting to prevent a teenager from doing this.  He goes and steals a gun from somebody else, and you don’t know.  He builds bombs out of household materials, and you don’t know.  You’d have to track him to be sure, and watch his internet to be sure.


Worse, I fear that the looming threat of liability might make parents less likely to seek help.  If you have your kid diagnosed with something like bipolar or borderline personality disorder or something that makes them more likely to be violent, you’ve now created a situation where you’re admitting possible guilt — you know your kid has issues, and if they act out, well, you knew about it. The best defense is that the child isn’t diagnosed with anything.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m personally of the school of thought that interventions should be minimal until at least the mid teens.  Don’t make a fuss about their clothes, their hair, their activities.  Give them a nickname if you must, but keep it somewhat gender neutral.  At 16 or 18 if the child is still thinking they’re the wrong gender, then and only then is there a subject worth talking about.  There are real trans people.  They do exist, though I suspect they are much rarer than supposed.  But I don’t think we need to go much beyond “don’t be mean to people who look weird or act weird” in a grade school classroom.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My working hypothesis on bad writing is at least in part due to the hyper-professionalization of movies and games.  In both cases, the people making them don’t come from all walks of life.  They come from a rather insular world of people who have gone through specialized training at university, and they then go on to live in the same town and hang out mostly with other people like themselves who went to the same professional schools and so on.  They’re rarely if ever outside that bubble.  They rarely know anyone who came from outside that bubble.  And as this goes on for generations, the lack of contact with the normie world makes it impossible to create movies and tv and games that feel realistic.  Nobody in Hollywood shoots guns, and probably very rarely would they even know anyone who collects or uses them.  When it comes to writing a story about the kind of person that owns or shoots guns, they aren’t referencing their own lived experience with gun owners.  They’re referencing other works about the topic, they’re referencing their political views about guns and the people who own them, and maybe stereotyping they’ve seen about gun owners.  That doesn’t allow for much depth.  It’s like a copy of a copy of a copy — every step away from the real thing makes it less like a real person and thus less interesting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ve never understood that though.  These people basically have a very expensive hobby and generally need to be told that.  I would expect them of everyone else to be willing to economize especially on things that don’t matter much in the name of getting the actual writing out in public.  Yet it’s exactly these people who seem the most upset by the prospect of AI covers and AI editing (I understand the pushback on AI story development and writing, as these are the point of being a writer, without which the “author” is reduced to prompter and unimportant to the work itself) when it would actually reduce their sunk costs.  Having human cover art is in the hundreds of dollars range, and human editing is about $3000 for a novel-length work.  AI reduces those costs to near zero which reduces the break even point for a self published book from $3500 to the cost of a maybe on the order of $300 or less for AI subscriptions.  At $5 a book, we’re down from a break even of 700 books to a break even of 60 books.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think there’s probably a good amount of political manipulation just like there are accounts that give high reviews to products or to review bomb rivals.


Pushing political views online on any site has a whole host of advantages.


1).  It’s cheap.  If I can get a package deal for 50-100 bots for less than $500, then this is going to be much cheaper than trying to use traditional advertising in the same platform, to say nothing of traditional TV, radio, or print advertising.  This means that a single person can get thousands of views and upvotes on a topic with little investment.  If I wanted to promote Jill Stein (who’s running for Pres. with the Green Party) spending $500 to get 10,000 views is pretty cheap.


2). It at least looks organic.  People generally scroll past advertisements or ignore them.  Ad blockers are common.  Very very few people see an ad and pay attention to it.  But if they see a post on their social media, they might read it and the comments below and thus the owner of the accounts has some opportunity to make their case.


3).  You can quite easily tailor your message to specific people and interests.  If I wanted to convince Biden voters to vote Stein, I go to progressive subs.  I don’t have to get into conservative and pro Trump areas at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think, if schools wanted to, they could absolutely teach people how to actually think and solve problems.  Plato and Aristotle and other philosophers could do so with nothing but a bunch of eager students meeting outside in the agora and listening to him talk.  We’re actually shockingly bad a thins. I honestly think high school students in the 1950s and 1960s were actually better thinkers than college graduates and in some cases college students in the 21st century.


I have my theory as to why this is.  I think the classical model of education worked much better than modern educational methods.  I also think that the demand for rigor and precision in thought and the need to actually understand rather than simply memorizing the correct answers to questions is more or less dead.  The value we used to place on dispassionate inquiry died long ago and has been replaced by narratives determined by the culture.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I tend to agree with the idea that the meme itself is artificial, and I think the aim is to give the public a meme that simply dismisses the idea of conspiracy out of hand.  I don’t believe in any particular conspiracy personally, but I find the meme obnoxious simply because dismissing a claim out of hand is a dangerous thing simply because it means not even bothering with the evidence.  I think the proper and critical thinking response to a conspiracy claim isn’t dismissing it out of hand, but demanding proof.  If the earth is actually round, it will still be round even if I question it.  And provided that the evidence is available, truth will eventually win.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s unreasonable to hold someone responsible for choices that other people make unless they’re knowingly making choices that a reasonable individual would see an enabling a crime.  If I leave my keys on the counter, that’s not participating in the roommate using my car to drive to his girlfriend’s house and shoot her.  If I know he’s going to get her in some way and I knowingly give him the keys, sure I get that.  Any person watching would interpret that as me giving the guy the keys to go harm his girlfriend.


I think it has to go through that reasonable man test.  If a reasonable person looks at the situation and says that the parents knew or reasonably should have known that he wanted to kill people, and they knowingly provide him a weapon and ammo and refuse to secure it, yes, they’re involved. But if it’s “there are guns in the house,” not really.  And especially if the kid gets into a safe or something, at that point, they’ve done everything reasonably doable to keep the kid from getting a gun.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ll agree that the last semester of high school is coasting, and that the program is only a week or two.  But we’re also considering the money factor which can add up quickly and take money from other important programs and issues.  A room, food, transportation, and materials is probably in the realm of $2000 a kid.  If you’re sending more than a couple of kids we’re probably talking about 60,000 a year on the program.  Money that could be used for dozens of other programs or materials that could be used to educate kids in skills and knowledge they will need in their future lives.


Which will long term benefit Americans?  Kids who understand science and math at high levels, or that they spend a week in a school in a red state (or blue depending on district)?  That the majority of kids read on grade level, or that they go on a field trip?  A robotics lab or science lab?  And this is why I think even if it’s just a week in the last semester, unless it’s completely self funded, it’s really taking a lot of money from other very necessary programs that would benefit every student.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I hadn’t heard this particular story, but it absolutely tracks with the naive way that modern western leaders approach global politics.  There’s just a weird thought that all they need to do is “be the good guys” and they win by default.  Couple this with the idea that bad actors wouldn’t use subterfuge to get what they want and it’s a system that’s not hard to either work around or subvert.  We expected Russia to just collapse when we disconnected them from the global exchange.  We sneered at them rushing western stores to get the last goods before they closed.  What we never ever seemed to consider is that Russia might well have had contingency plans for the sanctions they knew the west would impose, that they’d already created BRICs and could do just fine without us. We expected a short war tha5 they would lose any day now.  Annnnd guess which side is lowering their draft age.


We’re in some sense victims of our own success.  We have been so dominant for so long that we don’t think about how vulnerable our systems are or what a determined nation can do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think you can really compartmentalize to that degree with any integrity.  In most governments and political parties they have openly stated platforms and they at least intend to make good on those promises.  You can’t support only the good without accepting the bad.  You can’t have support for a faction that kills gays and support gay rights.  You can’t support the political goal without supporting the social goals because if they get their goals of defeating IDF they’ll go right back to running Gaza the way they want to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for April 12, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it’s a self-preservation thing.  Lots of people just have this odd need to believe that AI isn’t really going to take over the art scene, from movies to music to writing and painting and so on.  And it will end those pursuits as a viable career simply because it will be orders of magnitude cheaper to have an AI write and make the next Star Wars movie than it will be for them to waste that money on human writing and acting and so on.  Just a few humans to tweak the output is all you really need, and that’s essentially one guy doing the fixing.


It’s already getting hard to tell the difference between a human and a bot, and that’s tools that are pretty stable and probably were developed and trained 3-5 years ago.  Give it five more years and the professional arts will be dying because they’re no longer different enough from AI to justify the price.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ll just answer for myself (not into the furry scene at all, but enjoy the process of writing).  For me, I simply don’t have the excess funds to spend hundreds of dollars on a cover for a self-published book that won’t even break even.  And I think that’s the rub.  If I don’t have the ability to spend $300 for a cover on my book, on top of pro editing, then essentially I’m either starting a business that means that I need X sales.  Most book on KDP sell less than 100 copies.  As much as I want to support art, I don’t see the point of looking down on hobby writers for using AI art to cut down on expenses any more than I’d look down on a painter buying cheaper paper from Walmart.  Or a musician for using electronic simulated instruments instead of hiring a band.  Below a certain threshold of money, ability, and desire spending a lot of money on your hobby doesn’t make economic sense.


What I tend to dislike about a lot of writers communities is just how much they insist on essentially convincing hobbyists that they simply must spend lots of money on their novels, you simply must buy professional art and must build a web presence, and must pay $200 a word for professional editing.  The vibe is “turn pro or bust”, and the way it’s sold is heavy on the bust unless you make a good income with your actual job.  And I think for people who have a hobby but are mislead into thinking they have a career, this sort of thing can create financial problems for people who believe that they are the next big thing and spend money they can’t lose.  And the other part is that most people are terrible judges of their own ability here.  They more than likely believe they’re building a business, and that they will someday be able to quit their day job.  And some of this is down to the same communities pushing the kind of “no FUD” culture in their spaces.  You can’t tell someone that they’re not all that good.  You can’t point out that they are breaking the rules of good form.


Time is essentially free.  Webspace is cheap, and software to create pdf files is pretty cheap.  If you are willing to put your expectations where the median writer ends up.  Most people even if they’re traditional publishing aren’t going to make money.  Most people buying covers aren’t really good enough to traditionally publish.  And so, I think most people honestly shouldn’t be doing that unless they’re looking to sell enough to at least break even.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
At risk of wildly extrapolating from my own experience with my peers, women generally don’t care that much about sports.  They’ll watch if someone they know is on the team, or if the other members of their group want to watch or if their SO wants to watch, but they only rarely seek out sports on their own.  They also don’t follow as closely even if they do watch.  The male sports fans I know can name players, know stats, follow trades, know coaches, etc.  so this also boosts the sports men like because it’s not just catching a weekend game, it’s following news about their team, it’s buying merch, attending in person (if one has the means).


I think the only way to get profitable as a women’s league is to do what women’s tennis does — make the players dress in cute outfits, push the players to be media personalities that women bond with, sell the kinds of merch that women buy because it makes them look cute.  Have pinups for the men.  The WNBA suffers because they can’t admit what their audience actually wants.  The men want women’s sports to be hot pinups that look cute in short skirts.  The women want to have pararelationships with successful women on social media.  What they’ve done instead is treat the WNBA as a “men’s NBA, but with women,” which doesn’t work.  Men follow men’s sports for the competition and women’s sports for the hotties.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think dogs understand very concretely, and very short causal chains (say 2-3 steps).  It can understand “I find thing, my human gives me a treat.”  Or “when human makes that one noise, he wants me to sit, and gets angry if I don’t.”  But I’ve never met a dog who could reason more than a 2-3 step solution.  A dog won’t fetch a bunch of sticks to make a raft or a bridge.


Humans probably have a much larger causal chain understanding, but even then, it’s not infinite.  We can reason causes and build machines, but beyond a certain complexity, it’s too much for the median human to understand.


A dog couldn’t trap you in your home because it’s simply not smart enough to understand or anticipate the moves you’d make to get away.  It thinks “I go out the front door for my walk, so if I block the front door human can’t leave.”  But it can’t anticipate side doors.  It can’t anticipate you bribing them with a treat, it can’t understand what a key is.  So you can easily leave.


Humans, with an IQ of 115 or so, are in the same situation with a true AGI.  We know how we think, we know what we’d do, but the AGI will be so much smarter that it will be able to work around whatever “controls” we stick in its brain.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it’s a reasonable framework for ideological thinking.  A “slave” ideology would be one that places value on passively accepting fate, on not being assertive or demanding of other groups.  A master ideology would do the opposite and be demanding and assertive and less concerned with helping others.