Rex
3hr ago
I tried to very carefully avoid consensus building by keeping it general. And it’s not a policy debate.
In my opinion, I find the behavior I described to be very rude (at the very least). I want to know what others think. And if they think it’s not rude, I’d certainly like to hear why not.
I don’t know how many economic migrants we have here on TheMotte, but perhaps if there is one here, they can share their experience.
Rex
11hr ago
I read a lot of science fiction for fun and there are a few concepts that I’ve read about for years that seem to become more clear in light of modern AI
Peter F Hamilton’s E-butler and U-shadow. The E butler concept was invented by Hamilton, I don’t know, 10-20 years ago? It’s essential a near future agentic AI helper that can interfere with the internet and accomplish any administrative task you throw at it. In Hamiltons world, planets have a “cyber sphere” or planetary network (internet). Cyber spheres aggregate to the Unisphere which is the civilization wide internet. The U shadow is essentially a far future digital “you” that lives in the Unisphere and does what you ask. The U Shadow is essentially a perfected Guardian Angel.
Hamiltons Commonwealth series is terrific and really presents a palatable if not optimistic view of how society could evolve and essential keep this free market liberal capitalism machine going for a few hundred years. Maybe it’s all the hours I’ve spent with these books, but the GA concept really intrigues me and I think it may be necessary to avoid a total distopia.
Separately, Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space series has major trans human themes regarding digitizing people. There is a concept of “simulations” of people. Alpha level sims are perfect digital copies of a person developed though destructive scanning of a persons brain. Beta simulations are developed by observing every minute of a persons life and aggregating that data with an AI that learns and can perfectly predict a persons next thought or action. As it relates to GA or LLMs, if you had enough compute to have a GA shadow you for years, could it be possible that the LLM gets perfectly aligned to you?
Even writing all this out is bittersweet. It does seem somewhat obvious that these things are not impossible. Would a GA beta simulation perfectly replicate you? Maybe not, but it should would be a lot better than Claude. It strikes me that both government and corporations would fight all of this tooth and nail. Perhaps an open source path exists, but it seems really unlikely that it would ever get wide adoption. We will be funneled down the Claude path and it’s likely going to be total shit.
Rex
11hr ago
Thanks. I thought all of these responses brought interesting idea to the table.
And yes, I’m hesitant to bring to the main thread as well.
Rex
1d ago
Let me paint a picture.
Imagine a a person from a developing country. This person knows their home country is terrible and will talk at length on the how and why it is a complete disaster. It’s a combination of the system and the people that are the problem. The society is deeply screwed up for many reasons, but one of them is absolutely massive numbers of low quality people with questionable public hygiene and health.
This person is fed up and leaves. They travel halfway around the world a more wealthy and organized country, but one that’s either on the decline or on the brink of decline. This person shows up in the new country, takes a well paying job that could easily be filled by a local.
Now this person is likely one of the better people from their home country, but they inevitably bring a lot of their socio-cultural baggage with them. They fit right in with the local political party that is more than happy partner with immigrants in exchange for more political power. The person is hostile to the local customs and religion in their new country. In fact, the person goes out of their way to make sure everyone knows what a dim view they take of the historic religion of country that has persisted for thousands of years and dozens of generations. This person associates with other subcultures that are also hostile to the historic culture of the country.
I know I’m not saying anything here that hasn’t been said or thought a mission times but it’s still worth articulating. This person shows up in a new place and every action they take, intentional or otherwise, is destroying the this country’s culture. Remember, this hypothetical country the person went to is already on the brink. Heavily divided and new people like this matter on the margins. And this is not a one-off. In fact there are many other people doing the exact same thing every day.
Anyway, how should this person feel?Should they feel shame? Should others shame them? Do they have any responsibility to assimilate in their new home? Or least leave as little impact as possible.
This is a modern problem. In the US, immigrant communities historically were quite good at assimilating as Americans. Even today, the pressure to do so is lessened, but still exists. In Europe and Uk it seems there’s no such pressure. Immigration there at the scale we currently see is a purely modern phenomenon. And the immigrant communities are insular and shameless in their actions to change the their new countries. My original bias was that this is mainly a function of wealth and class and education. The people who act like this are poor and don’t know any better. I don’t think that’s right though. It seems to me that even this hypothetical immigrant, who would self identify as of the “better ones” has no shame about showing up in a new place and telling the incumbent people everything they’re doing wrong and agitating an already risky political situation.
What is to be done? Short of remigration, can it be fixed? I think it will be challenging since there’s often a political wedge in western democracies where half the country is using immigrants to expand their power base. Half measures will be stopped and fail.
Im not posting this to have a debate on immigration. We’ve done that many times. I’m more curious about what people think of the people who participating in this whole business. What motivations do they have? How should we react to them? Personally I have a pretty dim view of someone who would do something like this. And I’d want to understand how they feel about it. Is it intentional? Can they not help themselves with this behavior? What is it? What do we do?
I guess step one might be to at least point it out.
Rex
2d ago
I’m trying to think back to my earliest gaming memories.
I sort of remember firing up sim city 2000 and populous and ThemePark and Civ2 from DOS. And Baldies. I don’t know what tolerance kids have for old graphics. But I would highly recommend Baldies.
Rex
2d ago
The facts, as you understand and present them, are useful, however, they are also incomplete. I have two things for you to consider on the off chance you want to be helped and are just trying to save face here.
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Management doesn’t like people that are annoying, demanding, and go around to the other staff badmouthing the bosses. Management also likes and expects to have the final word on things. It’s very annoying when people are explicitly or implicitly telling their boss all the great things they’re doing and ignoring all of the not so great things. It’s transparent and often invites backlash. A stack of good performance reviews are great, but if you’re annoying, it’s not going to get you very far.
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You’ve represented yourself and 100% aggrieved and flawless. I haven’t seen any acknowledgment of behavior problems or challenges. You seem to think you’re well above your peer group because “everyone likes me and thinks I’m great. I know this is true because they told me so”. The fact is that unless you have a major problem with someone, you’re pretty much always going to validate a person and say they’re amazing when you are confronted for informal feedback. Particularly when a person is a loose cannon and potentially going to go off the rails at the slightest criticism. For formal feedback, well, I wouldn’t just take someone at their word about what they wrote without verifying it myself. It’s possible they’re being selective in what they tell you.
I find this all so interesting. It’s a great little encapsulation of the modern work environment, institutional decay, and personality issues. Your situation aside, it’s going to be interesting to see how things develop now that hospitals are run by a bunch of women in a sewing circle (in spirit, even if half those women are men). We’re very far removed from the stoic old man doctor with a cigarette or pipe. Maybe things will be fine?
Rex
2d ago
Well, you tried. It's hard to rescue a young man from his own arrogance, when he's first feeling the flowering of his agency and ability.
This is a great point worth highlighting. I too went through this sophomore syndrome early on in my career. It’s natural for talented people. But if one doesn’t break out of it, they will crash out and find an early ceiling in their trajectory.
Rex
2d ago
I work for a consulting company you would have heard of. Im no stranger to demanding hours. And I’ve had people management responsibilities for over 10 years.
Based on that experience, I suspect we’re only hearing one side of the story. I’ve had easy people on my team and I’ve also had difficult ones. The difficult ones are always genuinely shocked when they get a bad review. It’s amazing, almost universally they think they are doing a supremely good job and they think they work extremely hard. And sometimes they are right - in a very narrow slice of their responsibilities. But they are often well below expectations in most other areas.
All of this is to say that this pattern matches with a problematic employee. Maybe you’re great with patients. But if your institution is anything like mine, being good at the technical piece of work is only one part of the job. Agitating with the staff, using excuses, and making demands like that will often get a person tagged with being more trouble than they are worth. And all the positive performance review documents in the system will only delay the inevitable.
I’m just trying to give you some perspective and help you course correct. Sometimes you need to hear the truth and I’m guessing the other women in your group are not giving it to you.
Rex
2d ago
I skimmed this but have the following observations.
Am I understanding it right that two men, working in a hospital, were crying together in the bathroom because their boss had some tough words for them?
And after that, you aggressively went around to all your seniors for feedback and, requested formal performance feedback, looked over their shoulder with it, and demanded your boss review it all?
I suppose that’s one way to approach work/career goals. Not a very good one in my estimation. Yes, corporate/institutional work settings have this whole formal HR performance review framework. I suppose it can be helpful for progression, but the real reason we do this is to document low performers and ease separations. It’s rarely for the employees benefit. You will get much more mileage making your bosses’ life easier rather than harder.
But that’s all besides the point I’m trying to make. Is it normal for Scottish/British men to weep at work or get emotionally flustered when they’re having a bad day? Is it normal for them to passive aggressively confront their bosses about it? Is it normal for them to stir the pot with the other staff?
Maybe it is, but that wouldn’t be my guess. This all sounds extremely feminine. I’d love to know the demographics of this place you work. Are you trying to fit in? Or is this just how you operate?
I suppose I’m looking for a window into UK office culture. If it’s as pozzed as the UK police, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at any of this. But this sure doesn’t sound like UK that was once a great country - rather, it sounds like place headed straight for the third world.
Rex
3d ago
AdvancedCiv.
Nearly zero gameplay modifications other than things like changing unit movement from the end of a turn to the beginning of a turn to help with reloading a save and not have to move everyone again.
It’s much more carefully developed than other mods which just turn all the AI into warmongers. There’s an elaborate set of mechanics governing how the ai interacts with you. It’s terrific.
Rex
3d ago
I lost my Civ4 game in 1898 when my neighbor and his two vassals attacked with 3 separate stacks that I could not repel. It was an amazing campaign that I put about 50 hours into over the last month. I’m playing with modded AI on prince difficulty. It’s a real puzzle to win. I’d highly recommend it. Peak Civ “one more turn” and a reminder of how far Firaxis has fallen with Civ7.
I started a new campaign last night and really like the start location I rolled. 2 food resources and 2 silver. Great natural boundaries. 4 neighbors. Let’s see if the Reich can win this time.
I’ve said it before, but we are truly blessed with at least 3 to 4 evergreen versions of the Civilization game. If you include mods, there is a lifetime of variety here and there’s really no need for a modern Civ. Maybe one day AI will be able to crack the civ5 and 6 DLLs and there will be a mod resurgence. Firaxis is dead as far as I’m concerned.
I opened TheHill.com this morning and see that the Michigan Democratic Senate primary is too close to call and high drama as far as summer politics go.
On one side we have Abdul, a progressive Democrat middle Eastern man. On the other hand, we have Stevens a white liberal affluent woman - described as a “centrist Democrat”, mentored by Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. A real “battle for the Democratic Party”.
My politics have be quite odd for a while now. Historically I voted republiclan and came of age in the George W years. About 10 years ago I switched registration to non affliliated and would describe my politics as MAGA (until MAGA was redefined to being pro-Israel movement). My tongue in check response on politics would be to sometimes describe myself as a Francoist or Facist fellow traveler.
Back to Michigan, I was thinking to myself “gun to my head” who would I prefer? The middle eastern Muslim progressive or white woman establishment Dem. I reviewed their Wiki policy positions and quite easily decided I’d prefer Abdul. Stevens is so odious to me that it wasn’t even close. What’s a bigger threat? A dem that publicly calls their regular trips to Israel transformative? Or a Muslim that wants to abolish ICE? Both are big problems. Stevens is a big “public health” nut so that’s pretty much puts two enormous Xs next to her name for me. Abdul is anti monopoly and these days it’s hard for me to disagree that there are some major problems with the corporate class (despite me being a part of it).
It was a fun little thought experiment. What do you all make of it? For those that are generally against the progressive project, what’s the lesser evil? For those that are for it, who do you trust?
Edit:Abdul won.
Rex
9d ago
I have hundreds of hours in VP. I was a lifelong Civ player (started w/ Civ2 when I was 10) up through VI, which I mainly experienced with an iPad. My days with VI was during a 10 year period where I had pretty much stopped playing any games other than a few things like iPad VI and Xcom. VI BNW on iPad I believe was a complete experience. And I was able to win a few games on Deity, at which point I felt like I had solved the game.
When I bought a new desktop pc a few years age I was going on a tear through big mods and came across VP. The attraction there was that it radically tuned up the difficulty, set me back to noble/prince, and became a new puzzle to solve. To me, it still retained the core Civ feeling, but designed for someone with 30 years of prior Civ experience. The complexity was a bonus, not a problem.
I had dabbled with Civ4 Realism Invictus during this period, but I bounced off hard. I was looking for something for Civ4 like VP. Something designed for an experienced Civ player.
About a month ago I got that Civ4 itch again and found Advanced Civ. This is a rebalance mod that keeps 80-90% of the vanilla machines, but add in a much improved AI, UI improvements, and a very slight textures update. I’m now completely hooked on Civ4.
In my current campaign, Nazi Germany (me) just declared war on Rome and successfully razed on city and we’re a few moves into enjoy territory marching on Rome. The Holy Roman Empire saw that I had nearly emptied my garrisons in Munich (border city) and attacked with a 12 unit stack. I reloaded to try again with a smaller warband marching on Rome and delt with Charlemagne just fine. Several turns later I took Rome, but as I did, Gilgamesh attacked my northern city of Frankfurt. I think I need to reload again and pump out more units to defend the rear before taking Rome. It’s unclear to me if the AI is declaring war due to my weakness, or because I’m getting too powerful if I Vasselize/destroy Rome. I’m hoping there is a solution here to salvage the game. This is on Prince difficulty btw.
All of this is to say is that the core mechanics of Civ are absolute pinnacle game design. Expand cities, capture luxury/strategic resources, make GDP/science, war with neighbors. This makes it even more baffling to me how badly Firaxis fucked up VII. I find every entry in series, except VII has value. My biggest issue is that the vanilla AI are intentionally designed to be pushovers when it comes to strategy. Vanilla Deity is the same, just with bigger bonuses.
It’s hard for me to understand how people with a lot of experience with 4x games in general or civ specifically can have fun with the stock difficulty. I need the mods to make the underlying systems become meaningful and engaging.
I can see why it’s not for everyone though. I recall that I found the base game V to be the worst offender from a mechanics and difficulty standpoint. That’s why VP is so meaningful to me.
Rex
16d ago
On a separate topic. Does anyone know anything about Larry Niven’s Known Space book series? I’m at the end of my Culture reread and need something new.
One reason I reread so many books is that any fiction written after 2016 is completely pozzed. I’ve been through all the often recommended sci fi authors like Peter Hamilton and Alaister Reynold and Simmons. No one ever mentions Known Space. I only just now read about it while searching for the longest sci fi book/series ever written. There was a stay comment of someone saying they like Niven, with the caveat they they know it hasn’t aged well. That piqued my interest.
Turns out he’s some dude from the 1960 who’s written some beloved sci fi books - however he’s a massive misogynist.
Check out this gem of a comment from Reddit:
I don't say this to be rude, I say this with honesty so you have a starting point to gain awareness if you'd genuinely like to do that: if you can't tell Niven is a rank misogynist, you're likely pretty blind to the treatment and presentation of women in fiction. Sometimes when there's observable misogyny in writing, it's part of the universe or a characterization choice. Sometimes, however, it's pretty clearly a general miasma coming from the writer which underlies the way they build worlds and characters. Niven is very much the latter. Ringworld has two sentient female characters. One is too stupid to live, and is basically a sexy baby that the main character is using as a dick warmer in between scolding her, and the other is a manipulative hooker who, like all women according to the text, "enslaves men" with the "tasp between her legs." The other females mentioned in the book are literally non-sentient and used for breeding by sentient males. This is not one but THREE species. It's REALLY blatant.
These Reddit people are so embarrassing. A bunch of dorky guys all patting each other on the back for spotting the misogyny. Fuck these people for ruining the whole genre.
Rex
16d ago
Matter. An odd choice I know as it usually ranks low. I think I just like different things about Banks work. I remember the MC in that was such a boob. I was always amused with his antics. And very cool setting.
Rex
17d ago
Most people find it to be the worst the series. I’d try player of games and if you get a good bit in and still hate it. Call it quits. Player of games is a better book
What’s everyone reading? (Sorry guy who usually makes this one)
I’m 1/3rd through a reread of The Player of Games by Iain M Banks.
I’ve been rereading a lot of Banks this year since I’ve finished most of the sci fi author i think I would like. Before this, I went to reread Use of Weapons and quickly realized I had not in fact read it before! I had always put off reading it for some reason but I ended up really liking it
One of my favorite qualities of banks is that everything is so low stakes, but memorable and satisfying all the same. The plot is at best, a neat device. But there are so many memorable and creative vignettes in his books that it makes him one of my favorites
Speaking of The Culture series, I’m saving the Consider Phelbas reread for last. It was my first culture book and quite contrary to public opinion, one of my favorites. Perhaps because the MC is so disgusted with the Culture. Ever since I read that, I can’t help but notice even in the later book the undercurrent of critique of the Culture. It’s puzzling to me because Banks wrote an essay where he swears up and down that he earnestly believes The Culture is the best possible outcome for humanity and his preferred societal structure. Even after reading that, I can’t help but believe he’s still just yanking everyone’s chain.
Also, I find it very odd how many smart people I know don’t reread good books or rewatch good films or tv shows. Anything that is good or enjoyable the first time around is often just as good or better when revisited. Particularly if what you think of as good includes some decently complex theme or subtext that’s impossible to fully appreciate without knowing where the characters or story is going.
Rex
22d ago
I give my highest recommendation to Valheim. It’s hitting 1.0 in a couple months, but do not miss this. I was in a very similar position as you a few years ago. New gaming pc after not gaming at all for 10 years.
If you’ve followed gaming trends at all you’ll have seen the whole survival sandbox genre explode in popularity. Valheim was one of the catalysts for that. It’s by far my favorite in the genre because it’s carefully designed. Boy just a bunch of shit thrown at the wall or giving players exactly what they say they want. I think the design of that game is a good example of “video games as art”. Certainly more so than the typical narrative I’ve slop that gets bandied about with that term.
Rex
22d ago
I don’t know if it will bomb or not. But I watched a CAM bootleg on my computer this evening. It was literally the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Now, given that it was a pirate copy and most people don’t n ow what that means, imagine someone with a camera on a tripod in the projection booth filming the screen. As such, I can’t really say if the visual impact of the movie makes up for everything else. But since the fidelity was so low, I have to judge the film by its characters, theme, acting, dialogue and plot. I give it a 2, 1, 0, 0, 1 in each category. Overall score 1 out of 10.
I just watched The Return last night. As such the final scene with Odysseus, the bow, and the suiters was particularly horribly executed. I beg everyone who’s watching the Nolan movie to go find and watch The Return. That movie is also flawed, but the final scene is absolutely epic. Watching Matt Damon swing and axe around in a circle like a retard is laughably bad. And watching him play a famous archer and basically hip firing a bow and arrow is so silly.
I saw one good review say it was “Bracingly modern”. With that, I agree.
Are all Nolan movies this bad? I know he’s got some detractors out there, but I recall telling people I liked Oppenheimer. I need to rewatch it to see I was just caught up in the hype of that too.
It’s hard to emphasize how bad I thought a lot of it is. And then to see the critical reviews give it a 10/10. And I’m sure all of the normies will rave about it too. Am I just crazy?
It’s the worst movie Ive seen in quite some time.
Rex
23d ago
I was recently listening to an interview with one of the survivors who was there.
After the ship was hit by a torpedo plane (I think), the ship sunk. Dozens of Americans abandoned ship. The Israeli planes then strifed the Americans in the water with machine gun fire from their aircraft - presumably to kill everyone and keep the story contained.
I always wondered, do people think this is a fake story? Or is it just not a big deal?
It occurs to me that there is a funny counter factual out there where people of different skin colors are really all nearly identical on all the measurable things that are supposed to matter (intelligence, crime, education, financial outcomes, hygiene, health, inhabiting clean a tidy communities, etc.) and then you have the racists making enemies of certain pigments. But then they would struggle to come up with any reason why they don’t like group besides the mere color of their skin. It would be rather ludicrous. I suppose there are a lot of people who do think that’s our current situation.
Is it really the skin color that people object to when they think about immigrants?
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