RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
I'll give it a look, it's just that I heard it's one of those ones that only get good a few hundred chapters in.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Do modern Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have strict gender norms? All of these countries have a thriving feminist movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_South_Korea
To make this happen, numerous attempts to eradicate these laws were held by feminists and these attempts made slow but firm change over time. By 1962, the first revision on family law was made. The traditional huge sized family could now be separated and re-arranged as a new family with fewer members with their own rights to decide where to live and work. Although it did not directly make a positive effect on women's law, the revision contains its meaning on change of people's perspective over social structure. On the following revisions in 1977 and 1989, substantial changes were made and approved by law. Since the 1989 revision, property division upon divorce and succession prone to male were prohibited; parental right was fairly shared by mother and father that introduces the right to meet the children after divorce.[6] Although many improvements have been made, the family-head issue and exogamy of same surname or ancestry still remained to be changed. Without rectifying them, women couldn't achieve the position as one of the family's representative and freedom to create or re-create social relationship under law(e.g. remarriage, adoption, etc.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_Japan#World_War_II
Prior to World War II, women in Japan were denied the right to vote and other legal rights. After the surrender of Imperial Japan in 1945, the Allied occupation, on the order of general Douglas MacArthur, began drafting a new constitution for Japan in February 1946.[26] A subcommittee including two women, Beate Sirota Gordon and economist Eleanor Hadley, were enlisted and assigned to writing the section of the constitution devoted to civil rights and women's rights in Japan.[27] They played an integral role, drafting the language regarding legal equality between men and women in Japan, including Articles 14 and 24 on Equal Rights and Women's Civil Rights. Article 14 states, in part: "All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of creed, sex, social status or family origin"
I don't think so. Saudi Arabia and to a lesser extent Turkey have strict gender norms. I recently read an interesting article about how Turkish government officials and the media ruthlessly promote family values. Apparently over 50% of Turkish daytime television is devoted to marriage shows, where they explicitly promote women getting married. Ankara’s Mayor, Melih Gökçek, has stated that a mother who considers abortion should ‘kill herself instead and not let the child bear the brunt of her mistake.’ There might have been something more in the context or translation but this was in 2012 and he only got criticized for it- he was mayor up until 2017.
I think saying modern Japan has strict gender roles is a bit like someone from Greenland arriving in Inverness and saying "this is a big city!" But then there's Manchester, London, Shanghai and Tokyo. Pre-WW2 Japan had strict gender norms. Afghanistan has strict gender roles. The West hasn't experienced strict gender roles in living memory, we don't know what they look like. This isn't to say that strict gender roles are a good or a bad thing - that really depends on what you think about the Repugnant Conclusion. But I think truly strict gender roles do work at raising fertility, even in fairly rich countries like Turkey.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Not self_made but I'm in favour of non-human body modification, although only with seriously advanced technology. My idea of a good future is mass uploading people into star-faring battleships with an agreed upon distribution of the Solar system's resources and sunlight. Someone might get 1/200000 of Titan, others would get asteroids to mine and do what they want with them. There would be a relatively equal distribution of wealth and power between the richest and the poorest so people would have a chance to gang up against anyone seeking to conquer the worlds. Posthumanist libertarian confederation of citizens, basically what the US Founding Fathers desired but with more technology.
If you can turn someone into a car, then you can turn someone into a spaceship. The prerequisite, taking the brain out of the body, means you're about 90% of the way to the latter IMO.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Logically, shouldn't we expect powerful absolutist/totalitarian states to dominate, ceteris paribus?
I think it was only favourable geography that shielded Britain from autocracy and let democracy get so strong. They were left alone to focus totally on naval power. Everyone else who tried this got pummelled (Netherlands, Carthage and Athens for example). They weren't islands. They had to divide their attention between sea and land. Maxxing out naval power, bringing in the trade money and having accessible coal turned out to be the dominant strategy, if you can avoid being invaded by a stronger land power while you build up.
If it weren't for British naval power, French royal or Napoleonic absolutism would've taken over Europe and the world. The British were the ones who paid for the Austrians and Prussians to impale themselves on French bayonets.
Because of that naval power and a great deal of luck the United States got the best parts of an entire continent to rule and a zero-threat hemisphere. There's no more fortunate nation on the planet - of course their inherited suboptimal quirks will survive. If it weren't for vast Anglo-American resources, Germany would've won both world wars and cemented authoritarianism as the reigning world ideology. The Germans got outspent 2:1 in both world wars. It's very hard to see how the Allies win if you take away half their resources for a 'fair' fight. We saw what happened when it was just France and Britain vs Germany, just two global empires vs a single oil-poor state no larger than Texas. Germany trounced them and the Benelux, Denmark, Norway and Poland.
Due to incredible geographical and historical luck, democracy and liberalism managed to snowball their way to global dominance despite being less competitive than authoritarian/totalitarian systems. If there was a land bridge between France and Britain, Britain would've just been another Eurasian land power like Spain or Sweden rather than an unstoppable liberal juggernaut. We would all be living in one party states today.
Liberalism and democracy has obvious issues with incentives: loot the country while you're in charge to deny it to the other side. Or loot the country to bribe your voters. It divides the country between parties and opens up avenues for foreign interference. Poland-Lithuania dabbled with liberalism on the Continent and got partitioned. Switzerland only survived due to favourable defensive geography. Illiberal states can more easily mobilize the population for offensive wars, grow stronger and repeat the process. For competitiveness between equals, you need militarism and a centralized state. You need to devote a larger fraction of the pie to military power than the enemy, you can't just be the US and have an economy so big you win conflicts just by entering them. This isn't to say that authoritarian systems are perfect or even desirable, just that they're more competitive when they're not faced with innately stronger opponents.
This bodes ill for the looming conflict with China, the first time the democracies face a power their own size. Naturally, it started with a disastrous defeat in that delusional liberals decided to transfer our manufacturing base to China on the basis that this would somehow make them liberalise. There's an echo of Munich in that. No matter that China guns down liberal protestors in Tiananmen or starts the Third Taiwan Straits crisis in 1996-7, they just ignore evidence and invest China into becoming the world's greatest manufacturing power (which had been the US's crowning achievement for over a century). I personally blame multinationals bribing foolish policymakers for this mega-disaster but it's still a failure of liberalism to allow this to happen.
Maybe we get ridiculously lucky again. Maybe we can coast on previous victories. But I'm doubtful.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
They are not good at sustained growth over controlled territories (in fact even sustained resource extraction).
The Russian and Chinese empires were doing pretty well, growing for centuries. The latter collapsed because of the British, the former collapsed because of the Prussians/Germans (who themselves did very well up until they started facing the British). And when the British and other Europeans arrived to pull the rug out from underneath everyone else, they ruled their colonies autocratically.
I don't understand what you're talking about commitment devices. There are internal factions in all parties and states, from the US democratic party to the CCP. The methods the CCP uses to coordinate are more centralized and straight forward than what the US Democrats do because they enjoy the advantages of deciding on a central strategy. A strong paramount leader can say "Hide our strength and bide our time" and they'll actually execute the strategy. If you don't obey the party, you get imprisoned or sent off to Inner Mongolia. There's no Chinese Manchin holding up Xi's legislative agenda. There are bottom-up elements too, they let local areas try out various economic ideas to see if they work before imposing them nationwide. It's a little like Auftragstaktik, 'get semiconductors produced, we'll give you some money, make it happen and we'll promote you'.
The Democrats or Republicans have all these people pushing on them because they're less centralized. You have cliques like the Project for a New American Century plotting to start random wars in the Middle East. You have the Tea Party plotting to wreck the government. You have various wings of both parties blatantly bribing voters by printing out money and giving it away. Of course there are factional interests in China too - some people allege that One Belt One Road is about pandering to China's construction-industrial complex. But it clearly serves their national strategy as well as factional interests. Factions in America are much stronger and the country is much more divided.
Expecting China to reach US GDP per capita in under 30 years is ridiculous. In 1989, Chinese GDP per capita was $407, the US was at $22814. That they've narrowed a 50x difference to <4x is extremely impressive, especially considering that America has a host of geographic and historical advantages. It is not easy to create hundreds of millions of jobs.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Well it was a precarious military situation that put a spear through Julian's chest. Give Julian the Apostate 30 years and Constantine 2 and things might turn out differently.
Autocracies have more freedom to undertake long-term strategies. They can resist getting dragged into popular but unwise decisions in the long term. They have a free hand to wage aggressive wars of conquest and mobilize more from their population. They can create extremely powerful militaries. As above, when Napoleonic France, Imperial or Nazi Germany faced opponents of similar economic size, they crushed them.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
2016 era The_Donald had a lot of power and energy. People were making Trump inspired music videos, there was a lot of positive feeling that lasted up until he got inaugurated. Things seemed to be going their way with Brexit and Trump.
Then Brexit got bogged down for three years and hasn't significantly reduced immigration. Trump lowered taxes and built half a wall. He was 'monitoring the situation' rather than protecting his supporters, reducing immigration and crushing the left.
"Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is an electoral victory... if you're unable to win?"
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Barbarossa made a tonne of sense. Why would the Germans rely forever on a bitter ideological enemy for their vital fuel supplies? This is a question the Germans should have pondered in recent years. Stalin was building up his army and airforce, industrializing rapidly. Why wait till they get stronger? They also wanted Soviet land, that was the whole point of the war.
German intelligence thought the Russian army was under half its actual size, so it would be easy to win. They had won the last war with a bigger version of Russia while they were still bogged down in France. There was no way they could've known that every Abwehr agent in Russia had been turned. Later on Hitler said that if he knew how many tanks the Soviets were producing, he wouldn't have invaded. Barbarossa was a rational decision predicated on faulty intelligence.
The real question we should be asking is how two global empires managed to lose so catastrophically to Nazi Germany when they started off in such a commanding position, while Germany had an army of 100,000 men. Letting Hitler build a powerful army, letting him have the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia - that is the real disaster that made everything else possible. It wasn't just a failure of intelligence, it was a total failure of comprehending the situation, a surrender to cowardice. The US making China an industrial superpower is a similar kind of completely stupid decision.
Territorially and demographically the Russian empire was growing for centuries, that was what I was primarily thinking of. However, it still displayed impressive (but sub British) industrial growth and labour productivity.
https://ideas.repec.org/p/hig/wpaper/199-hum-2020.html
The authors argue that Soviet historiography sought to create the impression that Russia was backward, exaggerating legitimate industrial weakness (which it had, not being as close to the traditional centres of wealth and Atlantic ports in Western Europe). However, Russian state-sponsored investments in metallurgy, alchohol and petrochemicals put those sectors on par with the British.
However, the Russian industries that were established or modernised with the help of the state in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were about as productive as their British counterparts. The Southern metallurgy, which produced about half of metal output, was 105.7 per cent as productive as British iron and steel factories. The productivity of railway carriage and wagon production was also close to Great Britain’s. Finally, the Russian alcohol, tobacco, rubber, and petrochemical industries showed higher labour productivity than the analogous industries in Great Britain.
Furthermore, I'd argue that the 1905 war was ultimately caused by logistical difficulties innate in having to supply an army all the way across Siberia over 1 railway. Russia has a natural disadvantage in naval power too (rarely having good ports and focusing mostly on land), so that would complicate fighting a naval war on the other side of the world! The Japanese were closer and fairly well-organized themselves, it's not unforeseeable that they could win a war in Manchuria, right next door.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
True, there's also that. But isn't that an internal failure of the right? Imagine being a sitting president and getting personally banned from twitter, a company in your country! Imagine having your supporters booted off major platforms based in your own country. Trump should have been able to protect his supporters, as I said. He should've been able to use state institutions to impose costs on these sorts of behaviours. DeSantis is doing it in Florida and he is less powerful!
Well there are natural problems in measuring inherently obscured phenomena in corruption.
If we compare public infrastructure, China crushes the US. They actually finished their HSR program and it is creating an 8% return according to the World Bank. Meanwhile, California's HSR has yet to begin operation, while costs balloon.
If we compare military research, US officials worry that Chinese procurement is much more efficient: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/china-acquiring-new-weapons-five-times-faster-than-u-s-warns-top-official
“In purchasing power parity, they spend about one dollar to our 20 dollars to get to the same capability,” he told his audience. “We are going to lose if we can’t figure out how to drop the cost and increase the speed in our defense supply chains,” Holt added.
If we compare quantitative military procurement, China builds a mid-sized European navy every 18 months. The US Navy is actually shrinking as they decommission recently purchased warships like the Littoral Combat Ships along with relics from the 90s or earlier.
As far as I can see, all the US's strengths seem to be concentrated in the private sector. SpaceX rocketry and Starlink open up novel capabilities for the US. Microsoft, Facebook and so on are leading the world in AI. Intel and AMD are very good at designing chips. But these advantages are what you'd expect from a very large, advanced economy. They don't indicate that the government is excellent, only that it isn't Soviet-tier in worsening development. If the government was capable, they'd be building huge numbers of nuclear plants (like China is), developing infrastructure, creating an effective healthcare system (China's life expectancy just surpassed the US), fighting drugs and reducing violent crime. The US is well behind China in these fields despite being richer. Thus I conclude that China has a more capable government.
I also don't see why publicity and journalists mean you can't make things up. Certain elements of the US political-media-intelligence establishment made up a Trump-Russia collusion story that spread around the world: https://nypost.com/2022/05/23/fbi-told-agents-trump-russia-data-source-was-from-doj-not-clinton-tied-lawyer/
A different bunch of the same sort made up Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and used it to start a pointless war. While China does disappear people from public attention or conceal various incidents like Tiananmen, that seems to be a much more natural thing to do than accusing the President of working for a foreign power or invading random countries. That doesn't enhance national strength.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Pre-pandemic, the crypto market cap was 300 billion. Today it is over 900 billion. Housing did not go up 3x in the last few years, nor did the NASDAQ or stock indices generally. Index funds did not achieve this level of performance.
Over these last few years, crypto is not just a positive value proposition but considerably superior to traditional investments. The expected value is greater if you don't buy stuff like CuteFeet.finance or Goblintown NFTs as a long term investment. If you simply bought boring, well-established coins like BTC and ETH, you'd have gains considerably greater than index funds. Only if you buy at the top are you looking at losses.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
What is legitimately wrong with NFTs?
In traditional art, you get a painter to make a painting, there's an element of scarcity and expense involved. With NFTs, somebody spends some Ethereum to mint a bunch of them, then they're done. There's an element of scarcity and expense involved.
Then people buy, sell and revalue them as they see fit. Now I don't want to buy a Bored Ape. But I also wouldn't pay a vaguely similar amount for this: https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Nature-36/555517/8571133/view
I could surely find an example of some extraordinarily ugly piece of modern art purchased for some vast sum - how is that any more desirable than an NFT? Why is it more desirable to own a physical picture than a digital picture? If it's just the tax loophole for donating to art museums, how is that a valid justification for the fine art market over NFTs as opposed to some sneaky loophole manipulation?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
I can go into google images and 'save as' the Mona Lisa - yet this isn't a devastating blow to fine art. The Louvre isn't going to shut down because of me. Nobody can stop you right clicking anything, NFT or not. The whole point is that it's clear who owns the product, not that it's somehow kept obscured from mortal eyes so only the owner can see it.
For some reason people like first editions of important books and will pay more for them. Nobody considers this a grave injustice, nobody clowns on these people by saying "I bought the same book for cheaper". People just popularized this bizarre notion of 'right click save as = you're an idiot' when there's no logical connection to how this is good or bad. For several months the right-click NFT meme was plaguing twitter and the internet and nobody seemed to justify how this is a coherent concept.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
I'm not going to watch a 2 hour movie. What about NFTs means that everything should be 'commodified'? The other half of the anti-NFT argument seems to be that they're rubbish at commodifying things, that you can just right-click save and this is a stunning blow to the whole concept. It can't be both ways.
NFTs are just a way for rich people to show that they're rich and have clout, like buying art or ridiculously expensive fashion. It's a bit obnoxious but not an actual, realized way of manipulating the tax system as with existing art.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Oh I'm not dissing your book, that was just their general argument which I was summarizing.
Various researchers calculated that, between 1887 and 1913, Russian manufacturing and mining sectors grew, on average, from a low estimate of 5.1 per cent (Goldsmith, 1961; Suhara, 2018) to a high estimate of 6.65 per cent per year (Gregory, 1999, pp. 487-488; Kafengauz, 1994, pp. 290-297). Accepting Gregory’s (1999) higher estimate would mean that Russian industry grew considerably faster than the industry in major industrialised countries, including the U.S., the U.K., and Germany (Gregory, 1999, p. 488). Accepting the more conservative estimate by Goldsmith (1961) would mean that over this 26-year period, Russian industry grew on a par with major industrialised countries (Gregory, 1999, p. 488).
I think Russia was a successful autocracy. They faced a much more challenging geography than the Western Europeans, the area they got to take over was not the fertile Americas with endless rivers but cold and infertile Siberia. They didn't get any of the good Atlantic ports. They mostly faced the strongest non-European powers like the Ottomans, Persians, Chinese and Japanese rather than rich and easy-to-conquer foes. That they then managed to industrialize at similar rates to the West is impressive given that they started off with a poorer, less literate country. I think this shows that autocracies can develop at similar speeds to democratic countries over relatively fixed territories even in worse circumstances.
Even if Witte did get kicked out by Nicholas, surely that's a personal failure of a specific leader rather than a systemic failure. Tsar Alexander appointed him in the first place! Stolypin was appointed Prime Minister and Interior Minister by Nicholas. It seems to me that much of the damage to Russia was caused by bad luck in that they faced a stronger autocracy in Germany and a coterie of anarchists and Bolsheviks who were dead set on killing anyone who wanted to improve the country. RIP Stolypin.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
So the fair metric is comparing the previous all time high to the present day? Or comparing from October 2020, midway through the bull run? Or late 2017? We both know what happens when you track BTC's performance from pre-2016, it leaves absolutely everything else in the dust.
If I wanted to produce really spectacular returns, I'd do the same thing as you but in early 2017 when Ethereum was trading at $10-40 and BTC was just breaching $1000 again. Or I could put my start point at the end of 2018!
90% from October 2020 is nothing to sneeze at. Apple didn't do that. What hedge fund is up 90% since October 2020?
Nobody is saying that it is easy or risk-free to make massive profits but it is possible and has been done.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Have you checked all the art before saying its uniformly awful?
I rather liked this one: https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0x2953399124f0cbb46d2cbacd8a89cf0599974963/48388610335180253795576366386312396261162674450341463428664179782889647374436
It captures the mocking grin of our effeminate, malign overlords. There's political commentary. There's a pun in the title. The creator gets 10% of each transaction. We consumers can view the image whenever we want. What's not to like?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Absolutely, the British government made some terrible mistakes that permanently set the country backwards. They wrecked the Midlands with planning systems. Relying on foreign energy is always a risk - should have built more nuclear power plants as well.
https://unherd.com/2020/09/the-plot-against-mercia/
However, I'd argue that retaining a huge population and territory could have insulated them from almost any problem. Nobody in Russia needs to worry about fuel shortages or food shortages (provided their government isn't abysmally run) - they inherently have an advantage that food importing countries like Taiwan or Egypt lack. If you have a large population, your scientific and military efforts will naturally be enhanced. If you have a large territory compared to your population, you'll have more natural resources per person.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
You'd probably need to go to Asia for a real male power fantasy. The harem must grow larger!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
productivity growth
https://www.bls.gov/productivity/images/pfei.png
Looks like productivity growth certainly decreased. There's also sectors and the meaning of productivity to consider. Computing power has gotten exponentially greater. I'd imagine this accounts for much of what growth there was. Computers hold everything up, other sectors might have gone backwards. NASA's coming trip to the moon certainly isn't very impressive, compared to the 1970s there's been basically no trans-orbital productivity growth. SpaceX has only done orbital stuff thus far.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Who cares what the EU thinks? The EU is so far behind China and the US in AI, it will never catch up. The reason they're so far behind is because of this fetish for regulation.
https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1509832349986562048
Consider that the entire EU technology sector is worth about 30% of just one of the biggest American tech companies. That was 9 months ago, so maybe they're up to 50% of Apple by now.
Can Europe dominate in innovation? No.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
You're quite right about restrictions closing in.
I just spent 20 minutes trying and failing to install stable diffusion (due to poor technical skills). It's amazing how much sanctimonious nonsense they can put in their license. They go on about being biased towards White/Western prompt language and announce that it probably cost about 11 tonnes of CO2 to produce the model, as though anyone cares. I don't understand why you would release software for free, on a very open license and then put in this stuff. Wouldn't releasing your model like that mean you're libertarian-leaning?
The model should not be used to intentionally create or disseminate images that create hostile or alienating environments for people. This includes generating images that people would foreseeably find disturbing, distressing, or offensive; or content that propagates historical or current stereotypes.
Of course, there's already a general in 4chan's /h/ about it. h stands for precisely what you would expect a novel art-creation AI tool to be used for.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Yeah I found an exe shortly after. The technical skill I lacked was the wisdom to look for an easier path. It's good fun to play around with.
But to put the C02 into comparison, some friends of mine put 17 tonnes of C02 into the atmosphere just today with international flights. Your average climate summit probably has a carbon footprint similar to the larger models. Slowing down the big players is nice but the silliness of it irritates me.
And do these people think a primary use-case isn't nuding celebrities or making 'stereotypical' content? Credit where credit's due, the version I got didn't have blockers on it. But it's like making a set of monkey bars and forbidding children to climb on top of them since they might fall. One, it goes against the point and two, it won't be obeyed. A rule made to be despised.
The Three Body Problem trilogy. The Infinite and the Divine: cool 40K book.
The Wildbow classics: Worm, Pact and Twig. All with somewhat slow starts but well-written and gripping.
Reverend Insanity, very long, somewhat edgy xianxia. Really logical, thoughtful plot and worldbuilding. Definitely meets the definition of rational fiction. It does some literary stuff with internal fables that was pretty cool, adds some philosophical weight to it.
Rather like Mearsheimer's publications, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, The Israel Lobby & The Great Delusion. Fairly approachable and highly persuasive international relations, though I already agreed with his ideas before I started reading him.
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