Shrike
1d ago
I don't actually believe this but it definitely seems possible that the markets clear at prices that would be noticeably bad for the consumer.
Shrike
7d ago
We don't have to speculate, though, we know that's very literally an 80/20 issue in favor continuing to fund social welfare programs.
Shrike
7d ago
You can see how running for office as "that insurer who denied you the care that you wanted" might not be popular even if it is fiscally smart.
Shrike
7d ago
A lot of Americans who aren't part of those groups will be taking care of those groups if Social Security and Medicare are cut.
Shrike
8d ago
I think it's easy to see infighting and assume it's a sign of weakness. It's only a sign of weakness if it isn't handled properly. If Trump publicly "wins" the fight, it consolidates power around Trump as The Sole King. (And I think this is what will happen - Musk is definitely a live player but I don't think he has the proper levers in this situation).
Over the longer term, Trump consolidating power into the party could prove to be a weakness, simply because he's not going to be around forever, and after that the party could devolve into infighting. So perhaps the Western Right is in trouble over the long term. But this was always a possibility, and getting some of that infighting "worked through" now while Trump is still around to dictate winners and losers might actually help the right get some of that infighting sorted out before, making them stronger in the post-Trump stage.
Elon calling for a party that supports the 80% of Americans is sort of funny - balancing the budget [inevitably: by nuking Social Security/Medicaid/Medicare] might be good and necessary, but it's not an 80% position. Socially conservative and yet fiscally liberal is actually the closest thing there is to an American consensus, and right now Trump occupies that high ground.
Shrike
15d ago
You don't think Trump v. Hawaii is instructive here?
Shrike
16d ago
A 3.5 generation aircraft would be something like a late-model Phantom
FWIW, Wikipedia suggests that the Chinese definition of 3rd generation is different from that of the West, with the Su-30 (which Nambiar mentioned) being a 3.5 generation fighter. While it's quite possible that Nambiar is making ridiculous claims, it seems a bit more likely to me that he is using the PLA fighter generation definition...although that doesn't preclude making ridiculous claims – amusingly Wikipedia thinks that the Rafale would also be a 3.5 generation aircraft under that scheme, and I personally don't think the Rafale is exactly all that compared to an Su-35, particularly not with the original PESA array, although it looks like the Indians got the AESA variant.
Shrike
18d ago
Virtues are dead so there is no point in up holding them.
I disagree with this. It's good to be personally virtuous.
If (for the sake of argument) "the system" truly is broken and it needs someone who can operate outside of the rules, bending or breaking them at times, even getting his hands dirty, then the necessity of that is worth considering. But the aspiration behind that should be returning to an era where virtue is rewarded, not creating an extraordinary state where the system being broken is acceptable.
Shrike
18d ago
Exploding or minimizing the definition of "corruption" largely seem like post-hoc justifications for bad behavior rather than genuine attempts to understand the issue.
Yes. As I said, it's a motte-and-bailey issue, and it is to the advantage of both sides to accuse the other side of corruption while suggesting that their side is blameless under the more narrow definition. But after decades of this, it is not surprising that "populists" think that there is a massive corruption problem. Populists read the mainstream media too.
If the valences were reversed, e.g. if Hunter Biden received a $200M jet and gave it to Joe, do you think Republicans would make a stink about it? I certainly do.
Yes. We don't have to ask this question hypothetically.
Shrike
18d ago
Populists have hallucinated that there's massive amounts of corruption already going on
"Corruption" is itself a motte/bailey issue, because on the one hand there is the general (and nonspecific idea) of "dishonest gain/graft/abuse of power" and on the other is the very specific criteria of "that's illegal." And when you're defending, the question is "is this legal" and when it's the other side doing it the question is "does this seem at least a little bit sketchy to the reporter with a deadline."
So everything alleged in the NYT article [AFAIK, sans insider trading] is perfectly legal and therefore not corrupt, just as a major defense contractor making a practice of hiring former Pentagon procurement officials who selected for them in contract awards is perfectly legal and therefore not corrupt.
Now - I actually think "there are massive amounts of corruption going on" is a defensible position. Just look at the acknowledged and prosecuted cases in the defense industry, which publicly produces major malfeasance with gigantic price tags roughly once a decade.
But whether the Fat Leonard scandal or similar incidents pegs as "massive" to you depends a lot on if you are outraged at a few tens of millions of dollars here or there or consider that the cost of doing business. And when discussing "corruption" people alleging it often go beyond cases that result in a successful prosecution. Look at the problems with falsification of data, plagiarism, and non-replication in the academic community. Is this "corruption"? I would say yes, at least with the fraudulent data cases - abusing your position to accept money and then producing a fraudulent product should count as corruption, no? Yet the issue becomes fuzzier in the less blatant cases (is accepting money to make a shoddy study corruption? Is intentional plagiarism? Inadvertent plagiarism?) What about setting up a nonprofit as your own personal piggy bank (examples can be trotted forth on both sides) - the man on the street likely answers "yes" even though the behavior is (or can be) quite legal.
In short,
- There are and have been massive amounts of corruption measured in absolute values, but it's easy to flip back and forth from absolute numbers to percentages based on whether or not you're trying to score points or defend your own goal.
- Unless people agree on what specifically "corruption" means, there's just going to be an endless roundabout of "my politicians earned the money from their businesses and nonprofits while yours were doing it in the service of corrupt Eastern European oligarchs."
- Neither side really wants to agree on any one definition of corruption because that would either constitute agreeing to look bad, or agreeing to stop accusing the other side of being corrupt (since most cases of alleged corruption are not prosecuted and may not even be illegal.)
Shrike
24d ago
Antibiotics - As far as I know, there is nothing about penicillin as an antibiotic agent that could not have hypothetically been developed and systematized 2000 years ago
If this had happened, would we know? What if overuse caused antibiotic resistance and caused it to be abandoned?
I'm not saying I believe this, I just find it interesting to ponder.
Natural selection
I seem to recall that the idea of common descent (which might imply or include natural selection?) was known to the ancient Greeks. I don't recall the details, though!
Shrike
30d ago
This is uncharted territory.
I don't think this is entirely true – my understanding is that a lack of population growth is considered a contributor to the decline of the Roman Empire, and I suspect (although I haven't put intense study into the issue) that similar factors may have contributed to poor French performance in the Second World War as well. I think there are distinguishing factors in all of these cases, but to the extent that we have historical analogies, they give us cold comfort.
they are consistently graduating more and more highly educated workers
And yet it is unable to employ all of those workers – the United States has a better youth employment rate than China (even after China "recalculated" their data to make it look better). Perhaps you and Faceh are focusing on the wrong Chinese employment problem.
Shrike
1mo ago
I actually tend to agree that social justice warriors are downstream of Christianity, but I don't think this is a sufficiently nuanced portrait of what Christianity teaches. Yes, it criticizes the rich and strong, but also the lazy and the lawbreaker. The Biblical solution to lazy people who refuse to work? Let them not eat. The Biblical solution to bad people who bring destruction? A wrathful sword.
Obviously there's some debate among Christians on these topics – some would disagree with me. (And it is true that many early church fathers were very pacifistic, although they were being persecuted by their enemies and largely did not have to deal with the problems of power; it's not surprising that the emphasis of the church changed when their circumstances did.)
But I don't think, historically, Christians were okay with executing and imprisoning criminals just because they aren't good at being Christians (although, yes, Christians are often bad at following Scripture's teachings.) I think it's pretty natural to read the parts of Scripture dealing with justice and go "...yeah it's totally fine to use lawful force to suppress evil" and do it.
TLDR; while non-pacifistic Christianity might be wrong, I don't think that it is hypocritical.
Shrike
1mo ago
The good-ish news is that (as I've pointed out before) the actual AI on weapons will fall into the simplish camp, because you really do not need or want your munition seekerhead or what have you to know the entire corpus of the Internet or have the reasoning powers of a PhD.
Not that this necessarily means there are no concerns about an AI that's 2000x smarter than people, mind you!
Shrike
1mo ago
Seems more parsimonious to believe that humans as a general rule actually have few-to-no moral qualms about mass murder as long as it fits into what you might call a mammalian herd strategy.
This is not saying that humans have no moral instincts simply because moral taboos are sometimes violated but rather than the moral taboos about mass murder apply only weakly if at all to group enemies.
However, I probably should back up a bit here - I've been using "mass murder" very much in the context of group warfare which is very different from mass murder in a serial killer sense, but the latter is much closer to the actual meaning of the word "murder." If your position is that Genghis Khan doesn't count as a mass murderer but Hitler does, my position is at least closer to yours than I conceived.
Shrike
1mo ago
humans' moral instincts (telling them that mass murder is wrong)
This is not a human moral instinct. Humans are quite comfortable with mass murder. That's why we've done it repeatedly (that, and it's a very good strategy).
(I suppose we can argue about whether or not something is a "human moral instinct" if it's not shared by all humans. And it is true that some humans are uncomfortable with mass murder. But the fact remains that mass murder is a very typical human behavior.)
Shrike
1mo ago
I'd just add that the New Testament is actually very skeptical of wealth (there's a strong connection made at points between the wealthy and the oppressors) and the church is condemned for showing partiality to those who are wealthy. So it's interesting because it's not really proto-communist-egalitarian-paradise but neither does it succumb to a sort of "will-to-power" fantasy where strength or power are to be privileged. Really what's elevated is moral goodness and wisdom.
Shrike
1mo ago
Is not the doctrinal communist ideal -- the universal fraternity of man, sacrifice for those who are in need, "the last shall be first" -- ultimately just an expression of universal Christian love?
Interestingly from what I can tell the "proto-Christian-communism" was within the Christian community - and it came with rules.
Besides Acts 2 (where the holding of "all things in common" was within the church) see for instance Galatians 6:10 ("...let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.") and 1st Timothy 5, which gives these instructions for granting charity to windows: "Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work."
So while Christianity definitely has an idea of the "universal fraternity of man" within Scripture the brotherhood of believers is privileged. That's not to say that charitable works to nonbelievers are forbidden, but it's not the communist ideal of the Universal Brotherhood of Man (...or perhaps it is similar, in the sense that the Communist Universal Brotherhood of Man was in practice often restricted to, well, Communists.)
Shrike
1mo ago
Amazing. I almost wish I was a motivated enough person to fake tens of thousands of things!
Shrike
1mo ago
One of the things that I think is true of life in general is that your faith will be tested. And sometimes logic, no matter how prettily written down, is not what comforts the heart. Sometimes no amount of clear reasoning and pat answers can prepare you for the devastation life has to offer or teach you how to respond to life's frustrations.
I think it's interesting that we can have these sorts of conversations where, if we are willing to wrestle with the text in faith, we are rewarded - not always with clear answers, but with a reason to be encouraged and to continue engaging. (As I certainly have been here, thanks to you and other Mottizens!) I don't think a book that only has crystal-clear answers can do that - only a text with problems, or one that is often unclear or mysterious or even seemingly paradoxical can do that.
And when the times come in our lives where syllogistic arguments fail, that process of being rewarded for being willing to engage in faith even if the results are unclear might be the thing that shows you how to hold fast to what you believe in. The process of wrestling might be the thing that unbeknownst to us was teaching us how to hold on. I wouldn't say this process is limited to religious texts, either! Perhaps looking for perfect clarity in a book that aims to build character is like looking for a textbook without unsolved problems.
Food for thought (for me as much as anyone!)
Shrike
1mo ago
Has any other con artist in history ever produced something comparable?
This brings to mind Brígido Lara who (going off of Wikipedia, here, which is itself going off of the word of a self-reported fraudster, so – grain of salt, here) supposedly created tens of thousands of pieces of fraudulent Mesoamerican art, to the degree that it's possible he created more fraudulent Totonac artifacts than there are authentic pieces in circulation, although it seems like it would be hard to tell since his creations were apparently indistinguishable from the originals.
As an aside, can I say that I find this entire conversation really funny given Motte lore? Obviously Christian Mottizens would love to convert you to orthodox Christianity but I'm sure there's also got to be an underlying concern about turning you into a furry by mistake.
Shrike
1mo ago
I'm glad to hear that! Really appreciate you taking the time to reply, that is very encouraging.
Shrike
1mo ago
Aha, good find! Have you read it? This is exactly the sort of digging into the context that I am unfamiliar with that I was hoping someone would bring out, and I'm genuinely very grateful to you for flagging this for me. (Stuff like this is what makes The Motte so great!)
Apocalypticism is a dominant theme from early Christian documents.
And also in late(r) ones! My understanding is that Revelation was believed to have been written around the time of John. And it's been a recurring theme ever since.
They expected Jesus to return soon, because Jesus said he was returning soon.
Yes! But He also gives a large number of parables where He cautions that He will be gone long enough to tempt some people to believing He will never come, including in this passage, and as I believe you mentioned, 2 Peter 3 talks about this explicitly – there's apparently not much consensus as to when it was written but it seems like it could have been written earlier than Matthew. Peter certainly seems to be counseling believers to be prepared to extend ~infinite patience while still living as if Christ would return tomorrow. (And of course I'd say this is also what Christ Himself is pointing towards in the very next chapter, 25).
Finally, in the plot of Matthew itself, Christ is giving the disciples this advice at a time before they realize He is going to be crucified. Afterwards, in Matthew 28, He gives them the Great Commission, which is still ongoing (but see also of course Matthew 24:14).
The prima facie reading would be what people back then understood.
Wasn't Christ in this very passage already "problematizing" prima facie readings? He references the defilement of the temple (in Daniel) as a future event, which Jews at the time would have recognized as a past event, wasn't He? So it seems to me that a prima facie reading of this passage is that Christ is being deliberately cryptic at least at points.
Now as I already pointed out to Quantum, Christ Himself satisfies Quantum's prima facie requirement – Christ is still alive! But of course I think that's really the sticking point – either Christ rose from the dead (and there's some good reasons to believe this! – I think fair-minded people can acknowledge this even if they are not personally a Christian) in which case I don't think this passage should stand in the way of being a Christian. Or – He didn't, in which case this passage could be very explicable and it would not move the needle much.
I know that in real life things are a bit less reductive than that – people are swayed by something like the weight of evidence as a whole – but I think you can see why people who aren't completely satisfied by explanations of passages like this do believe. Most Christians can't explain every possible objection to Scripture, any more than a scientist of any given discipline can explain every scientific anomaly. But just as the inability of science to close the case on outstanding questions does not make the framework it has established useless, the fact that Christians still wrestle with the text centuries after it was written does not make the moral and historical framework it has established obsolete. (I'd actually argue this is a feature, not a bug!)
Technically noticeable, but barely! Very interesting if true.
If I had to guess there's probably better ways to make farm work attractive, too, besides that – the article says that the average wage is $28/hour right now. For instance, normalizing shorter workdays (two shifts) or work weeks and paying more might generate a lot more interest and keep costs lower than simply quadrupling wages. But I'm spitballing (and not terribly familiar with what's normal in big ag right now anyway).
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