PokerPirate
26d ago
It strikes me that I've also seen a lot of marriages turn to divorces in the 2015-2020 time frame. I've always just assumed I was in that "season of life" where my friends get divorced because we're all in our 30s and that's just what people in their 30s do these days.
You seem to suggest a radicalization -> divorce pipeline, but I wonder if the reverse is more true? People ruin their relationships and this leads them to a political radicalization as a way to find their true family / identity. I can think of at least a couple of cases in my own life where I've always assumed the later direction was more true.
In any event, this is an excellent example of a certain type of post on the motte that I really enjoy: I can't say I learned any useful facts reading your requiem, but I do certainly view the world in a slightly different way now, and that's quite useful.
PokerPirate
27d ago
Has no one here been in the military?!
Weapons of war are very commonly referred to as toys in the military. And there is a simple reason: They are fun. There really is nothing more fun than wielding the power to end life. 4 star Marine Corps General James Mattis famously said:
It’s quite fun to shoot them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people.
And basically everyone in the military agrees. Some non-military folk use the word "toys" to mock the military's enjoyment of violence, but for the most part people use the word positively.
(I say all this as a former Naval officer who was become a committed pacifist. One reason among many for the transformation is just how fun it is to kill.)
PokerPirate
20d ago
That is a truely awesome VEO3 shitpost.
PokerPirate
24d ago
Parenting win?
My 3yo has a tough life. He's got two older brothers (4, 7) and all the neighbor kids are older. The 3yo is big enough to want to play with them all, but small enough that he's not quite capable of understanding their games or communicating his thoughts. So the neighbor kids end up picking on him a lot, calling him "poop boy", taking his toys, and other misc mischief. Because they're not my kids, I can't do too much to stop the neighbor kids from being jerks. I've managed to convince the older brothers that they have some sort of brotherly-responsibility to stick up for their sibling, but there's also only so much they can do.
The 3yo is tough and violent. He's been stung by bees ~5 times over the past year, and each time he shouts "die bee", grabs the nearest rock, and smashes the bee to death several times before running over to me/mom crying that he needs a band-aid. So he's pretty good at standing up for himself when the big kids are mean by trying to punch them / throw toys / etc. I'm proud of him for sticking up for himself, but we've been trying to work with him on helping him control his violence.
We found a new tool to keep his violence in check this week.
At the beginning of the week, one of the big kids came over and dumped a bucket of water on 3yo's head when he was playing nicely by himself. I had the idea that we could get revenge by using the hose. We setup an ambush for big-neighbor-kid around the corner of the garage, and 3yo got big-kid right in the face at point blank range. The shadenfreude was great. Big-neighbor-kid learned a valuable lesson about why other people don't like getting water dumped on them and not to mess with my 3yo. 3yo now is the only one with permission to use the hose, and everyone talks about how they shouldn't mess with him anymore. 3yo also has a lot more confidence interacting with both the neighbors and his brothers, and there's been much less hitting and throwing of rocks.
Overall I feel good about how this played out, but I have some questions about what this is teaching my kids about violence. I'm a committed pacifist (in the style of the Amish), and I'm trying to raise the kids to also be pacifists. The hose-to-the-face is obviously less violent than throwing rocks: there's no potential for lasting injury, and it's not nearly as "escalatory" since the big-neighbor-kid already used water as a "weapon". But there was still lots of "evil" in 3yo's heart. He clearly wanted revenge and specifically aimed for the big-neighbor-kid's face so as to cause maximum damage.
So the lesson here wasn't perfect, but I do think it was at least "directionally correct". One common failure mode of pacifism is to become a doormat for other people to run over you---basically all objections to pacifism boil down to rejecting this failure mode---and I don't want to instill this failure mode into my children.
PokerPirate
19d ago
From physics, I would have assumed that the friction of a ship has roughly two components...
The physics of shipbuilding is incredibly counterintuitive. This is because we have bad intuition about the physics of fluids in general, and the physics at the intersection of the fluids air/water compounds this.
One super counter-intuitive concept is the Froude number, which is a dimensionless quantity that determines (roughly speaking) how fast a ship can go at max efficiency, but doesn't depend on any of the quantities you mention. The formula is:
Fr = V/√(g×L)
Where:
- V is ship speed
- g is gravitational acceleration
- L is waterline length of the ship
There are dozens of other constants like this that ship designers measure/use, and none of them are intuitive.
PokerPirate
26d ago
This researcher has done a fair bit of work on how people's perception of their own race can change in response to their politics
And this is a great example of the other type of motte post I enjoy: Fancy new facts that make me reevaluate my worldview! It never occurred to me before that people might change how they perceive their race based on politics.
PokerPirate
17d ago
I respect their willingness to defy arbitrary rules.
This one sentence has done more to help me clarify my thoughts on illegal immigration than everything else written in this thread. To the extent that there is an "American spirit" that has been consistent over the past 500 years, it has been the desire to defy arbitrary rules.
PokerPirate
25d ago
I've got 4 kids (2f, 3m, 4m, 7m) and 2 kids bedrooms. Every week, there's a different combination of kids in the 2 bedrooms based on who's on the ins and outs with each other (and who wants to sleep/read vs play). This all mostly takes care of itself though at least with the kids being young.
The real difficulty is meal time. Each additional kid limits what can reasonably cooked for dinner so that everyone will eat. We've started doing 2 main courses of kids food (e.g. nuggets + pasta or pizza + fish sticks) where we know that each kid will like at least one of the 2 choices. Otherwise, 4 hasn't been any more work than 3.
PokerPirate
1mo ago
The whole diskworld series by Terry Pratchett. The plot is roughly "use fantasy tropes to make fun of the real world" and has excellent longterm story arcs along those lines. But it's also full of excellent one-liners like the following:
Give a man fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Les caught Akhan's eye. They exchanged a very brief glance which was nevertheless modulated with a considerable amount of information, beginning with the sheer galactic-sized embarrassment of having parents and working up from there.
Thunder rolled. It rolled a six.
Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.
Against all rationality, his hair ached.
Thou shalt not submit thy god to market forces!
HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM.
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
To call Rincewind's understanding of magic atrocious left no word to describe his practical application of it
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
PokerPirate
1mo ago
I like to go on walks with my kids. The other day we were walking back from church when we crossed paths with a couple of middle aged men walking their dog. As soon as my 3yo saw them, he shouted as loud as he could, "Gay! Gay! Daddy, look, a gaaaaayyyyyyy!!!"
Gay means "dog" in Korean. We're a pasty white American family, but I'm learning Korean with my kids because of some work I do with North Korea. Oops. At least he's not saying the words "you", "I", or "because"... they all sound just like nigga.
PokerPirate
27d ago
It's pretty obvious that using a pile of linear algebra gives the best outcome for loans, and literally every bank in the word has been doing this for >30 years. The more old fashioned banks have just been using a person to enter the data into the linear algebra.
PokerPirate
1mo ago
Four years ago I bought a bounce house. A proper commercial grade bounce house. It's shaped like a pirate ship, 35 ft long, 15 ft wide, has a poop deck, a slide, a mast that can be climbed up, and a bunch of fake cannons.
I paid $1000 to get it used off craigslist, and it's the best investment I've ever made.
I've got 4 young kids: 7, 4, 3, and 2 years old. Right now, they're all jumping around and getting their energy out and happy to play together without daddy. It gives me a chance to cook dinner and write this real quick note. And they'll actually sleep tonight :)
PokerPirate
23d ago
I don't have firsthand experience. But I've been around lots of marines who have. And I'd say infantry type jobs very strongly select for people who find the infantry "fun".
Notably General Mattis (quoted above) was an enlisted infantryman before becoming an officer and served as an infantry rifle platoon commander in his first leadership roles.
Also don't forget that gladiator fights in the Roman Colosseum were widely considered entertainment. There is a famous account from Augustine's confessions where he related an account of a friend Alypius. Alypius was outraged about the morality of gladiator fights and refused to participate. But some friends dragged him to the show anyways. Here is Augustine's account of how Alypius learned to enjoy the violence:
Alypius kept his eyes closed and forbade his mind to roam abroad after such wickedness. Would that he had shut his ears also! For when one of the combatants fell in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirred him so strongly that, overcome by curiosity and still prepared (as he thought) to despise and rise superior to it no matter what it was, he opened his eyes and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the victim whom he desired to see had been in his body. Thus he fell more miserably than the one whose fall had raised that mighty clamor which had entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes to make way for the wounding and beating down of his soul, which was more audacious than truly valiant--also it was weaker because it presumed on its own strength when it ought to have depended on Thee. For, as soon as he saw the blood, he drank in with it a savage temper, and he did not turn away, but fixed his eyes on the bloody pastime, unwittingly drinking in the madness--delighted with the wicked contest and drunk with blood lust. He was now no longer the same man who came in, but was one of the mob he came into, a true companion of those who had brought him thither. Why need I say more? He looked, he shouted, he was excited, and he took away with him the madness that would stimulate him to come again: not only with those who first enticed him, but even without them; indeed, dragging in others besides. And yet from all this, with a most powerful and most merciful hand, thou didst pluck him and taught him not to rest his confidence in himself but in thee--but not till long after.
PokerPirate
26d ago
I certainly do think it's both! And part of my changed-world view is that I'd never considered the other direction before. It's a bit like OP's link to "Leftism is both a cause and effect of acute mental illness".
I suspect basically all statistically correlated human behavior also has a 2-way causative relationship.
PokerPirate
1mo ago
I've worked with this type of business before, and I think you've diagnosed the problem correctly. I don't see them being able to get AI to automate any of these steps though for the same reasons that they couldn't get spreadsheets to help them.
Man, that really sucks for Dennis.
This case seems like a great metaphor for America these days: Everyone (but Dennis) did everything by the book, and the court seems to have made the right decision based on the facts, but no one had the decency to knock on Dennis's door a couple of times and let him know of his impending legal doom because he didn't check all the right boxes in the right forms.
Life in America sucks for people who can't / won't jump through legal hoops. Basically everyone I know who is on-again-off-again-homeless has a story like this about how the system fucked them over. But the Man oppressing them is just "doing the right thing by the book". I'm sure there were other problems in the 1800s, but at least the downtrodden/not-quite-dregs of society didn't have to deal with paperwork.
Two days ago, my 4 year old shouted "belly flop" and then jumped face first from our porch step onto the sidewalk below. The results were predictably gruesome. The main injury was three large gashes in his lips where he bit through the lip, but blood also gushed out of his nose and (more lightly) from his forehead, knees, and elbows.
This is one of my favorite events to happen so far as a father. (And I actually mean that literally.) It perfectly captures for me the idea of just how stupid/innocent kids are (and presumably I once was). I'm also really proud of the little guy for taking his injury in stride. There was lots of crying for 30 minutes or so, but once we got him cleaned up and bandaged, he was back outside playing with his brothers again. He's been showing off his injuries to all his little kid friends and making sure they know not to belly flop in the sidewalk too.
PokerPirate
1mo ago
The court obviously did the right thing to maintain a functioning society based on existing laws. But it's easy for me to imagine an IQ ~80 person getting sucked into this shitty situation without any intentional malice on their part. IQ 80 corresponds to about 10% of the population. If we can't get a system that is "easy" for these people to navigate, then literally millions of Americans are doomed to a shitty life full of the Man ruining their shit.
In a perfect society, I think that the cops / county clerk / local priest / bartender would have pestered Dennis multiple times in person at their house / church / pub until this got resolved amicably. This pestering would have ultimately saved tax payers tons of money in legal fees as well.
PokerPirate
30d ago
You've correctly pointed out a very real failure mode of our modern atomized lifestyle, and highlighted that many people do in fact fail because of their own ineptitude. I agree with all of that but also think it sucks for Dennis that he failed in this way and that it sucks for all of the other people who also fail in this way. Maybe I have too much sympathy for people who suck at modern life.
PokerPirate
19d ago
If you're using any sort of real database (sqlite / mysql / postgres / mongo / etc) to store the documents, you'll never run into speed-related constraints. You might start running into semantic constraints about limitations of the models' ability to differentiate different topics, but that's unlikely with domain-specific applications like you have.
PokerPirate
1mo ago
I'm a CS prof and I use debian. If you're into programming at all, then I'd recommend ubuntu (which is based off debian but designed to be "less ideological" and more "beginner friendly"). Most tutorials for programmers (and thus most advice from LLMs) assumes debian/ubuntu.
PokerPirate
1mo ago
You're claim that liberation theology and the social gospel movement "remove the supernatural elements from Christianity" is straightforwardly wrong. These are not evangelical theologies---and it's fine to dislike them for that reason---but they obviously incorporate the supernatural.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
There is not a single randomized control study of gender transition, in either children or adults.
You're overstating the importance of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in medical research.
As a famous parody of your point, this 2003 study found that no RCTs had been done of parachute use when jumping out of airplanes and concluded that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that parachutes are effective. As a follow up, this 2018 study did implement a RCT for parachute use when jumping from airplanes and concluded that parachutes do not in fact prevent injury. (Participants jumped from an airplane on the ground.)
Less facetiously, we have no RCTs demonstrating that HIV causes AIDs, but we can still be pretty confident about the link between the virus and the disease. Recognizing this relationship has led to a lot of good medical progress both for the populationis affected by AIDs and those not affected by AIDs (by for example keeping HIV out of blood transfusions to prevent the spread of AIDs).
I happen to also be skeptical of the benefits of transition. But your explanation of the science is not good here and at best leading you to the "right belief for the wrong reason".
PokerPirate
1mo ago
Coke Zero is my preferred caffeine. In the first few months after each of my kids was born, I would drink a 2L bottle per day. I decided to stop because of the risk of tooth decay. The real-sugar drinks are much worse for teeth, but I'm pretty sure the acid from the carbonation is also not good, especially since I was drinking the coke without any food. (It's not hard to find random studies showing carbonated water is bad for teeth, but I'm not sure how much stock to actually put in them.)
I'm a just-received-tenure CS/math prof at a top rated teaching college. I've put in way less work than the traditional R1 faculty (but probably a bit more than what you describe). One thing I've learned since graduating is that the phd/postdoc life really only prepares you to think about R1-style academic work. But there's a huge world beyond the R1 research world that is much less intensive.
For example, there's definitely community colleges around where you live that have teaching positions you'd be qualified for. At community colleges, these positions are mostly non-tenure track these days, and won't pay a lot, but they'd definitely support a decent DINK lifestyle and give you the flexible hours to enjoy it. Based on what you described as your qualifications, there's probably proper 4-year colleges near you that you could teach at and get tenure as well.
I've been on a handful of hiring committees too at this point. If you want to PM me a CV, I'll take a look and provide more detailed feedback.
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