SophisticatedHillbilly
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User ID: 1964
SophisticatedHillbilly
26d ago
if a model was right, you wouldn't give up and call it merely useful.
This is only true if a correct model is useful, which is certainly not always true. Even further: the most correct model isn’t necessarily the most useful model even when it is useful.
If I remember correctly evolutionary simulations consistently show a fully accurate perception of the world is generally actively harmful even when there’s no associated resource cost. Autistic analyzers often have more accurate models of social dynamics but do worse at socializing. Blind optimism, undeserved confidence unfounded worries etc are all extremely useful, and moving to a more accurate view is less useful.
It’s possible to have wrong and useless models of course, but that’s the point of the adage.
SophisticatedHillbilly
5mo ago
Is the Allies winning WW2 really evidence of liberal societies with unplanned economies being better when they only won by taking national control of ~their entire economies, in some cases suspended elections, and turned the entire state towards control, propaganda, and bureaucracy?
I’d go so far as to say that “liberal” countries in the pre-WW2 sense just plain don’t exist today. Pre-Wickard v. Filburn the idea that the government even had the authority to decide whether you could grow grain on your own property to feed to your own horses was unthinkable. Such ideas didn’t really survive contact with war.
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
It has largely worked for the woke. A large portion of the population has gone from fervently supporting color blindness to fervently supporting affirmative action, and so on for every other social issue. It doesn’t convert everyone. It doesn’t have to.
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
Making federal employees a higher tier of citizen is a horrible idea that would contribute to the Sovietization of society and is directly contrary to the American ideal. The government being generally low quality is fine (though the floor should be higher than it currently is) it just needs its scope massively reduced. If it had the scope reduced to match capabilities, then you don’t have to increase capability
SophisticatedHillbilly
10mo ago
NGOs. Take a look at any other issue that is handled by an NGO network, and you’ll quickly realize that no state really has the political will to achieve what a disperse network of wealthy unaccountable independent actors can do.
Imagine for a moment, the immigration NGO-blob, but for parenthood:
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organizations dedicated to improving the public image of parents and parenthood, pushing it through ads, media content, etc.
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organizations dedicated to making parenthood as free and painless as possible, through free money, training, and even individual caseworkers assigned to families to assist them with any difficulties that may arise.
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organizations that help “eliminate gender disparities” by establishing prestigious awards for accomplished mothers, special job positions for current and “retired” (empty-nester) mothers.
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sex-positive education orgs that importantly note that having children as a result of sex isn’t a disaster, it’s a boon for society.
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weird humanities degrees focused around the study of children, family-formation etc that gradually force the university as a whole to be extremely pro-parent.
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development groups dedicated to redesigning urban areas in favor of large families
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festivals, maybe even a whole month, dedicated to parenthood.
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extensive lobbying groups to make sure that all of the above are not only legally favored, but funded with federal dollars.
There’s really no simple policy that could do the same.
SophisticatedHillbilly
2yr ago
"The same boiling that hardens the egg softens the potato"
I've found people's opinions on things like bullying or violence tend to just be them projecting their own egg-ness or potato-ness onto others. Yeah, some people will grow character because they got picked on, pull themselves together, become more socially adept etc, but others will just break, curl up into a ball in their own isolated corner, and suffer for it for a long time.
Now you can just say "they should be better," but I'm not sure that's possible. Most things are genetic, and I'd be surprised if fragility isn't heavily genetic as well. There's always trauma adaptation, but that usually makes the person less fragile and also less socialized, so there is a tradeoff there.
The way I see it, the problem is trying to act like everyone is equal. By insisting that this is true, we've left no room for people to exist safely at the bottom of social hierarchies. There's always a sense of "why aren't they better?" that just wouldn't exist in a world where it's understood that yes, some people are at the top, and others are at the bottom, and you each have responsibilities and expectations. Meritocracy has become an excuse for those at the top to ignore the responsibilities they must carry, and an excuse to blame the bottom rung of the ladder for not carrying out responsibilities they shouldn't even have.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Their plan for prosperity is: 1. Get rid of Israel. 2. Things magically get better
I think this may be demonstrating a major disconnect in mindset. Simply put: material prosperity is not a terminal value for most groups of people, and for some may barely be a value at all.
It's like mentioning how the Amish could be more prosperous if only they used modern technology. Of course they could! The explicitly think that's a bad thing, in a way that many valueless post-modernists seem to fail to understand. Have you considered that maybe Palestinians just genuinely feel that being free, impoverished, and Islamic is actually better than less free, wealthy, and progressive? Having actual values beyond "have money" doesn't make them Satanic.
I'm not even pro-Palestine (far, far from it actually,) but this read of them is just so far from any traditional Islamist I've ever met that I had to say something. If you're one of those people with no values beyond "win," don't forget that other people actually have other values, and say hi to Moloch for me.
SophisticatedHillbilly
4mo ago
For this reason, conscription is ironically good because it allows meatgrinder-wars that eliminate the populations of “nations that don’t deserve to survive.” If we do this enough we might end up with some deserving nations coming up.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Honestly this pushes me the other way. I’ve found straightforward by-the-book medicine to be largely useless in resolving any of the health issues I’ve had (other than one infection, at which point the doctor was just a hoop to jump through to get the antibiotics I knew I needed.)
As such, whenever I’ve had a doctor actually solve my problem, it was less because they were a doctor and more because they were an extremely high-iq person with enough exposure to health problems to discern the zebra-problem from the hoofbeats.
I can go through the checklists and find the normal issues myself. Hell, I can set a bone, pick medications out of the available options, or look at my bloodwork myself too. It’s like changing your car oil, just a series of steps.
What I can’t do is realize that I have a 1/1000000 congenital heart issue because of a weird head feeling I get, or know what the proper course of action is after that. Luckily for me I found a doctor who could, and it only took going through a dozen doctors who were useless.
My experience with that last doctor was completely incomparable to any of the others, and I desperately wish there was a way to differentiate the two. Frankly, they don’t even seem like they should have the same job title any more than the attendant at a Jiffy Lube and a Lamborghini mechanic should both just be called “mechanics.”
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
just working-class-coded banter
Which from what I’ve seen, means the same thing as gaffe to anyone who doesn’t interact on a peer basis with working class men.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
This is one of those "you don't hate journalists enough, you think you do but you don't" moments for me honestly. I sometimes forget that I have to retroactively apply my hate for journalism into the past, and this is a good reminder. Journalism as a whole really never was much better, it was just harder to see how bad they were. This is regarding the 1992 article of course.
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
You have to look at their predictions in aggregate. If they predict 20 elections with a 95% chance for party A, and A wins 19 of those 20 elections, then yes they were accurate.
Even if that 1 election was a landslide for party B, the prediction method is accurate. People who say otherwise just aren’t accepting that it’s a percentage chance and not a poll.
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
If it set the stage for Trump, then it sure does make sense for Trumpians to support a continuous long-term version of it.
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
the US challenge on the budgeting sense is the automatic entitlement spending, not the bureaucracy administering it.
I’m not sure how true this is. Most times people complain about government spending it seems to relate to corruption, cost disease, and regulatory costs: Broadband programs that provide access to ~0 people for billions of dollars, bridges that cost 100X what they should, hospitals needing 10 administrators for every doctor etc. All of these are executive issues. The complaints about the actual literal entitlements ordered by Congress usually come up as complaints of vote buying, and regardless aren’t the core of the problem.
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
That leads to the obvious question: What is Trump?
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
Objectively, pretty much just white men in the like 25-45 range (definitely blurry at the edges there) who are some combination of wealthyish, charismatic, and healthy (or maybe just agentic? I’ve always felt that was a bigger factor.)
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
Machine operator is a pretty basic role. If you’ve ever used a 3d printer and had to deal with leveling the bad, clearing stuck plastic, verifying that prints are proceeding correctly etc. it’s basically that but with bigger machines.
Not trans, but my own take on it from talking to trans and not-trans-but-considered-it people:
One of the most common precursors to people going trans is an inability to mesh with one's own gender in social settings, especially in group settings. The guy who can't handle male social dynamics and ends up bullied or simply alone. The girl who can't wrap her head around female social games and thus is effectively exiled from female social contact.
I think of one moderately autistic woman I know who struggles very hard with this. Her natural responses in social situations lead her to being pretty inevitably hated by groups of women after enough exposure. This bleeds over into work, and has major negative professional impacts.
When interacting with men, on the other hand, she gets along great. It's not a sexual thing either, just that when she gives direct, blunt responses it's appreciated instead of hated.
I suspect this is why it correlates so strongly with autism. They struggle to fulfill the convoluted and difficult rules of intra-gender social interaction and find the (much looser) rules of cross-gender interaction more welcoming. They then falsely think this means they'd be better at intra-gender interaction as the opposite gender, rather than that they're simply benefiting from easier rules
SophisticatedHillbilly
9mo ago
Human cloning: not enough people want it badly enough. Same probably goes for surrogacy, with the added fact that anyone who could afford the criminal price could just afford legal workarounds.
In the case of CP I think it results in similar behavior to drug prohibition. Extensive criminal networks, child trafficking and all the associated crimes, etc. the people who want it want it bad, will pay for it, and have no easy substitutes.
Deepfakes are currently too easy and still readily available even when technically illegal. No market when the supply is nearly infinite and demand is relatively low.
None of those things are comparable. A better comparison is bans on drugs, which do result in broken kneecaps and gang shootings, and bans on prostitution, which result in the same.
SophisticatedHillbilly
7mo ago
From my anecdotal experiences (which weirdly enough include specifically receiving an MRI as part of a health sharing system) you pay out-of-pocket and that price ends up being equal or lower to the negotiated insurance prices. You may have to do some negotiating yourself, but it’s usually as simple as calling the office and saying “this is unreasonable, give me the real price” and then they do. The $5000 price is there because they know insurance will haggle, and so they can charge the government systems exorbitant amounts, insurance pays the $1000 price, and if you pay out of pocket it’s more like $500, then health sharing reimburses you. The amounts aren’t accurate but the ratios are.
The $5000 price is part fraud, but realistically mostly just because they have to recoup the cost of all the non-payers who receive care and don’t pay for it. It’s basically just backdoor government-funded healthcare for the poor, scummy (has money just doesn’t pay or pays like $10/month), or undocumented. The only ways to bring the costs down are to not allow those people to receive maximum care, which the public doesn’t have the stomach for, or to address the elderly medical cost issue, which is politically untouchable, or address the supply cartel issues mentioned above.
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
Any proper system has to explain the machinist vs sheet-metal-worker divide (around a 30-point difference) and I have yet to see one that does.
SophisticatedHillbilly
8mo ago
The issue is that pay increases for government employees just means poaching talent from the private sector. You’ll increase government efficiency at the cost of lower private sector efficiency. There’s only so many competent people. Raising pay doesn’t make more of them.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Could you please expand on what you mean by this? I’ve read a lot of Woodgrains’ stuff and never noticed any ideas in this vein. Interested in what you’re referring to.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
there must always be sewage janitors working on minimum wage
Or there could be sewage janitors making extremely good wages, sufficiently socially respected for their sacrifice to assuage the struggle of the work.
Is it safe in the two senses of:
Doesn’t cause any appreciable loss of strength, at least not beyond what losing that amount of weight would normally do via not eating (exercise held constant)
One can stop taking it without any negative consequences beyond just the loss of the benefits?
I’m interested in taking it but haven’t done a deep-dive into the subject yet. Any resources you’d recommend?
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