NunoSempere
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User ID: 1101
NunoSempere
7d ago
Heh, with Kant what I mean by readable is more like: I mapped the argument to the Introduction of the Metaphysics of Morals when I was 17 and found I could follow the argument, but ultimately didn't agree with it/thought there were a few steps missing.
NunoSempere
10d ago
Well I do speak German and I did get to some Kant and some Heidegger, found them very readable, but as you say it addresses a different question.
Have you looked into Jhourney at all or the Jhanas more generally?
I looked into Mastering the Core Teachings of the Budha and buddhist introductions in that style but never really took it off. Jhourney looks interesting but also expensive.
NunoSempere
11d ago
Ok, then as a reader I'm torn beteween finding this really interesting, and a nice mechanism for forcing readers like myself to think more about stuff, but I will also gravitate towards mining insights from books that are more accessible and not so esoteric. So my initial dig does go through: the Bagadav Gita and the tradition of knowledge within which it is contained seems more transparent and fruitful to me.
NunoSempere
13d ago
Ok, this is a great point that was totally ommitted in my philosophy education. Do you have a best guess as to the esoteric content of Aristotle's philosophy?
NunoSempere
13d ago
I would highly recommend this paper regarding th Gita https://ia802907.us.archive.org/8/items/gitaandoppenheimer/Gita%20and%20Oppenheimer_text.pdf
Thanks! I didn't know that Oppenheimer had based a bunch of his personal philosophy on it, but it makes sense.
NunoSempere
13d ago
No! He was boiling it down for his own son, who was presumably pretty smart. And I read it when I was a 17 y.o. lad and honestly did not get that much out of it.
NunoSempere
13d ago
do what society says you should and must do, or do what is right by the higher truth?
This is an interesting perspective. For me the following also hits deeper: oh, he is just faced with a decision such that he is going to be miserable either way (kill his family and mentors or lose his kingdom and abandon his duty). So then, why choose to be yourself miserable? And in fact you are experiencing similar choices all the time, though at much lower stakes. This had some koan like effect on me.
NunoSempere
15d ago
I had the same reaction honestly, but the story does pull it off.
NunoSempere
15d ago
Alternatively our man Arjuna had a psychiatric break, thinks Krishna is ordering him to kill his family, and after he wins the story gets retconned :). Assuming the story is at all based on reality.
NunoSempere
15d ago
Thanks!
NunoSempere
25d ago
- This would not be a problem in practice unless you are a visible leper, and perhaps not even then.
- 70K was the requirement to get it fast, but you can just get the permanent one 2y after the temporary one if you decide to stay.
NunoSempere
1mo ago
Paraguay would welcome you, and if you have $1k in rents or jobs from somewhere you could live quite well.
NunoSempere
2mo ago
China invades Taiwan 15%
A Major political figure is assassinated(Congress/SCOTUS Judge/Executive cabinet member) 20%
These seem a bit high, but otherwise reasonable. Some leeway in how to interpret "approves new nuclear reactor construction".
NunoSempere
2mo ago
My very quick estimates, little more that gut feelings + looking a bit for sources:
AI:
- Yudkowski declares AGI/ASI Achieved: Pass.
- We have federal regulation passed through congress to regulate AI: 10%
- Anthropic announces IPO: 40%
- A Chinese model is released that is widely considered to be the best coding model(not just on price per token): 20%
- AI System wins an award for a significant contribution in mathematics: Pass
- A lab releases a fully autonomous drop-in worker agent that at least five fortune 200 companies implement: NA. Very dependent on what marketing term people use.
- OpenAI revenue exceeds $30 billion: 50%
- A frontier lab experiences a security incident that requires public disclosure: 40%
US Domestic politics:
- Democrats have a majority in the House: 75%
- Democrats have a majority in the Senate: 40%
- Trump Approval rating exceeds 50% at any point: 30%
- A government shutdown exceeds 14 days: 25%, but not sure.
- total deportation in 2026 exceed 500k: 60%
- Mamadani implements fare free busses city wide: Pass
- Mamdani implements at least three state run grocery stores: 10%
- Trump is impeached: 5%
- A Major political figure is assassinated(Congress/SCOTUS Judge/Executive cabinet member): 7% if only those specific categories, if including someone like Charlie Kirk them much higher.
Wars:
- Israel-palestine conflict reignites: 70%, has already done so
- Ukraine war ceasefire lasts greater than 30 days at any point: 70%
- China invades Taiwan: 5%
- US officially at war with Venezuela at any point: 20%, hard for Congress to give the go ahead.
China:
- Official GDP growth below 4%: 30%
- Youth unemployment (16-24) reported above 15% at any point in 2026. 15%, going with https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1dpDA
- Major Chinese property developer (top 20) enters formal bankruptcy. Pass
- SMIC achieves volume production at 5nm or below. Pass
Economics:
- US enters recession (2 consecutive quarters negative GDP growth).
- S&P 500 higher on 12/31/26 than 12/31/25. 70%
- US unemployment rate exceeds 5% at any point. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE, 35%
- Bitcoin above $150k at any point, pass
- YoY inflation exceeds 4%, https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-category-line-chart.htm, unclear since it's so easy to torture and they changed the BLS chief.
Technology:
- Starship upper stage (Ship) successfully lands (caught or propulsive landing). Pass
- Blue Origin New Glenn completes 5+ successful launches. Pass
- Tesla releases vehicle with SAE Level 4 autonomy to consumers. 40%
- US approves new nuclear reactor construction (not SMR). 55%
NunoSempere
2mo ago
I've been reading King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, on Jungian psychology. It makes the point that there are positive mature masculine patterns/archetypes/stereotypes, and the book goes over how they look like. I'm probably aiming at the Magician pattern and coming from the precocious child pattern.
NunoSempere
2mo ago
Some items I'm looking at:
Geopolitics
United States
Trump announces new class of U.S. battleships named after himself
Rest of the Americas
Iran and Venezuela Strengthen Alliance Against US Actions: Cooperation to Combat Caribbean Piracy
U.S. strikes another alleged drug-smuggling boat in eastern Pacific
US pursuing third oil tanker near Venezuela, officials say | Reuters
Great Satan US Steals Tanker Off Venezuela in Another Act of Piracy
Russia evacuates diplomats' families from Venezuela as US seizes oil tankers
Europe
EU anti-Russian influence operations, also decried as censorship
Pair convicted of plotting gun attack on mass gathering of Jews in Machester
Middle East
Israel plans to invest $110 billion to develop its indigenous defense industry.
Iran
Iran: 357 Executed Since November 22
Iran refuses inspection of nuclear sites until IAEA provides new guidelines after bombing
Gaza
Government announces 19 new West Bank settlements and legalized outposts | The Times of Israel
Land Grab: Inside Israel's Escalating Campaign for Control of the West Bank
Yemen
Asia
Japan's attempt to 'go nuclear' must be prevented, says North Korea
India announces USD 450 million reconstruction package for Sri Lanka after Cyclone Ditwah
India/Pakistan
Pollution in New Delhi is so bad that people's DNA is getting damaged
Air Pollution in New Delhi,India: Effecting: DNA, Reproduction, Grand Children
Africa
Summary of Sudan toll in numbers
Hundreds of thousands newly displaced as Islamic State insurgency expands in Mozambique
President Trump announces strike on ISIS targets in Nigeria
Biorisks
Resistance to antifungal therapies
Artificial Intelligence
Google 2025 recap: Research breakthroughs of the year
ARC-AGI 2: Poetiq reaches 75% at less $8 / task
More tech
Russia's new anti-satellite weapon project would target Starlink with space shrapnel | AP News
Drones causing alarm in Thailand airport
Economy
Climate and Nature
Others
NunoSempere
3mo ago
I also gained the ability to parse reddit, from which:
Serbia’s Krušik arms plant sees second explosion in 3 months https://old.reddit.com/r/serbia/comments/1pe6sc3/druga_eksplozija_u_kru%C5%A1iku_u_3_meseca/
US travel ban from selected countries https://old.reddit.com/r/USCIS/comments/1pd6ix5/uscis_pause_and_review_megathread/
GPS spoofing in Eastern Europe. I don't understand what the significance of this is. https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1pdqpdm/comment/ns7kc2h/
4.3M Chrome users infected in malware campaign https://www.koi.ai/blog/4-million-browsers-infected-inside-shadypanda-7-year-malware-campaign
Marine algal stuff https://old.reddit.com/r/Adelaide/comments/1pc2nl3/marine_harmful_algal_symposium_5th_december_2025/
NunoSempere
3mo ago
Some headlines:
Latin America
The Angry Tide of the Latin American Far Right
Trump Warns of Expanded Military Operations Against Venezuela
Europe
UK slams Putin 'sabre rattling' after he says Russia ready for Europe war and digs in on Ukraine peace talks
Ukraine talks 'productive' but more work needed, Rubio says - BBC News
Middle East
Iran
Iran’s Escalating Air Pollution Crisis
(they use mazut)
Gaza
Israel launches airstrike in southern Gaza after earlier attack by militants wounded 5 soldiers
Over 350 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since ceasefire, authorities say. Is this high?
Asia
HK housing complex fire a warning for Taiwan, since they can observe the repression of protesters afterwards.
Wang Yi and Lavrov jointly emphasized safeguarding the outcomes of World War II. Putin also signed a visa-free order for Chinese citizens.
India/Pakistan
Bangladesh sentences UK Labour MP Tulip Siddiq in absentia to two years in jail for corruption
25% increase in terror incidents in 2025 in Pakistan, think tank report says
India rejected Pakistan's claim that New Delhi denied overflight clearance to Pakistani aircraft carrying humanitarian assistance to Sri Lanka
Africa
UN warns Sudan's Kordofan faces mass atrocities as fighting spreads
200,000 children to die this year because of foreign aid cuts
Tanzanian activist blocked from Instagram after mobilising election protests
Tanzania: US Reviews Ties With Tanzania Over Repression, Post-Election Violence
EU split on Tanzania aid after violent crackdown
Trump hosts signing of peace deal between leaders of DR Congo and Rwanda
E.U Parliament Halts $174 Million Aid to Tanzania
Artificial Intelligence
Amazon agents as a service
OpenAI becomes for-profit, gives Microsoft 27% stake. Microsoft will retain rights to OpenAI’s confidential research methods until either an independent expert panel verifies that AGI has been reached or through 2030, whichever comes first, and will keep some post‑AGI commercial rights.
OpenAI's GPT-5.2 'code red' response to Google is coming next week
TPUv7: Google Takes a Swing at the King
Google has moved from internal TPU usage to aggressively commercializing TPUv7 “Ironwood” systems: it is selling complete racks to customers and renting capacity via GCP, with Anthropic as the marquee customer. Google is prioritizing external adoption by ramping TPU software support: efforts include a native PyTorch TPU backend.
Anthropic's Claude 'Soul Document' extracted from Opus 4.5 weights
More tech
China has its own autarkik and probably superior version of Android now. The US is afraid of it.
NunoSempere
3mo ago
The drafts I sometimes post on Thursday are by myself, but I have a larger team that does other things (e.g., parsing Twitter, reddit, making sense of stuff when wars start, etc.) We also wanted to have an emergency response team.
NunoSempere
3mo ago
I am interacting with Paraguayans, which have a simplified and in a sense more rational version of Spanish with consistent verb endings. Despite being landlocked, it does have a navy, which patrols its rivers.
NunoSempere
3mo ago
NunoSempere
3mo ago
The Motte is a pretty good intelligence agency though :), I wonder how we'd do in the case of another covid/world war/civil war/memetic strain/AI bamboozlement/whatever
NunoSempere
4mo ago
The crisis is in the connection to the broader context, for instance, the Houthis might start attacking tankers again if this gets back enough. But probably not.
NunoSempere
4mo ago
I fundraised $500K for the nonprofit I'm running; it arrived a few days ago in our bank account. This means I get to run my small intelligence agency for another year.
This seems like a particularly fiery answer given that it's in response to a paraphrase of a religious position, rather than a defense of it.
Btw, do you have a sense of what tradeoffs you'd make between different degrees of kin? How do you think about going to war to protect your extended kin group, but not necessarily your family specifically?
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