ThenElection
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User ID: 622
ThenElection
5hr ago
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It's worth noting that, whatever their other faults, Kerry and Hillary did survive the primary process and get nominated. If his model is "I have the most control over the outcome of the primary process; the general election will be decided on economic macrotrends," then it makes sense.
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The other Clinton was the ur-triangulator, and he was very successful, though the political climate now is sufficiently different that it's hard to draw useful generalizations from it.
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Newsom isn't optimizing for Democrat-as-President; he's optimizing for Newsom-as-President. It's impossible for him to sell himself as a principled left wing ideologue or a committed moderate reformer. Given his biography and character traits, maybe he's making the calculation that, win or lose, baldly embracing reptilian cunning and ambition is a better strategy for him than trying to win people over based on trying to sell another narrative.
ThenElection
7hr ago
Leftists (meaning, here, Democrats and affiliated groups) are very eager to call out the Epstein class and variations of it that do center specifically on sexual immorality; this can be seen in everything from Reddit comments to statements by national Democratic politicians. Though it's less a belief in a conspiracy of sexual blackmail driving history and more a belief in the inherent corrupt perversions of the rich.
"Actual leftists" using your more materialist framing exist but have essentially no power.
Newsom is triangulating, not flipping. He opposes a state wealth tax that is actually on the ballot and has a real chance of passing; he supports a national wealth tax that is entirely theoretical and will not be passed anytime soon (hopefully...). This allows him to deflect future primary criticisms of him being in the pockets of billionaires by saying it's just the badly implemented and foolish state level tax he opposes.
He doesn't actually care about wealth taxes as a policy one way or another, except insofar as they help or hinder his way to the White House. But his current strategy balances the competing stories he's selling to donors and primary voters in a reasonable way.
ThenElection
1d ago
One of the strongest signs of intelligence is the ability to present views you reject in a way that resonates with actual adherents of the view.
I think the women who fangirl over murderers are literally insane.
People draw wild, overgeneralized inferences from this. Supposing 1% of women are sufficiently deranged to get turned on by and reach out to serial killers. In the modern media ecosystem, that serial killer would receive millions of contacts indicating interest. Usually, it's more like hundreds (and, notably, only for the particularly handsome; I'd be curious about the more typical serial killer numbers). A cute female serial killer would probably receive thousands.
A vanishing minority of both sexes think like that.
This had zero effectiveness in moving the needle on any cause he was pushing; he could have just as effectively taken a dump and made an MRA sculpture out of it.
On the systemic level, I'm sympathetic to your concerns. But they are pointed at something universal and timeless; fair or unfair as they are, they aren't changing now, tomorrow, or a thousand years in the future. The male sex will never be considered a victim sex or a sex worthy of public consideration. That's simply descriptive, not prescriptive.
That doesn't mean policy can't improve things for men, but it can't be on that basis. Get rid of credentialism; don't flood domestic markets with relative low wage competition; end the fad of preferential hiring of women for entry level positions. You can make arguments for those without asking people treat men as a victim sex; do that instead.
On the personal, non-systemic level, he will ironically probably receive orders of magnitude more romantic attention from a certain (unstable, disturbed) minority of women now, though he won't be able to take advantage of it.
ThenElection
6d ago
Periodically, we see an incel leader who seems to develop a sense of agency from his assumed role, and shortly after finds a girlfriend.
ThenElection
6d ago
Capitalism is unique in that it solves this in a way that enables a man not endowed with reproductive value at birth to channel his energies away from zero-sum conflict toward things (productive economic value) that benefit both himself and society.
Robin Hanson noticed it ages ago:
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/two-types-of-envyhtml
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/comparing-income-sex-redistributionhtml
This got him labelled the "incel professor" who wanted to enslave women in the mass media, even though he very obviously opposes any kind of coercive redistribution.
ThenElection
8d ago
So, if Afghanistan decided to fly a plane into the Pentagon or White House out of the blue, there'd be no moral valence to it, just some random shit that happened, sucks for the victims?
ThenElection
12d ago
It's an interesting question: what should Ayatollah Motteizan do?
Some things are obvious: lean more into the most successful military strategies, reevaluate the ineffective ones.
I'd personally just go full globohomo: money under the American aegis is nice. Get a luxurious villa on the Caspian, drink nice Shiraz every evening watching the sunset. But clearly they have deeper/different values from that, so that's a nonstarter.
Five years from now, the strait shutdown strategy will be weakened; regional competitors and global consumers will be developing alternative routes, and you can't rely on them as much to pressure Israel and the US to chill out. It would be nice to have something beyond that threat.
Maybe I'd want to pull in China: give them whatever ports they want, to create some kind of security guarantee. But if I'm China, it seems like an undesired entanglement; I want to be less, not more, invested in Middle Eastern oil politics. Probably not a viable option.
What about nukes? Definitely would be very nice to have a couple dozen. But it's not like Iran was holding back before in its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and it's not even clear that they could effectively deliver them to Tel Aviv if they had them. I just don't see a real path to go from where Iran is and has been to the point where they have a nuclear deterrent.
What probably would be best, given Ayatollah values, would be to take the opportunity to shore up the economy and regime support. Avoid shaking up regional politics, while domestically ruling as you want.
ThenElection
12d ago
With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead,
And there of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read
ThenElection
12d ago
I am also very curious what $300B of voluntary private contributions look like. Is this a case where the USA will pressure local governments to demand that private industry contribute to the fund, under threat of negative government treatment if certain benchmarks aren't met? I.e. a convoluted tax that will ultimately be passed on to some split of global consumers and investors?
ThenElection
12d ago
Iran would have been willing to pinky swear not to pursue nuclear weapons if we pre-emptively offered them half a trillion dollars, lifted sanctions, and Hezbollah legitimacy in January, though.
ThenElection
12d ago
In a more recent thread above, someone wonders if contemporary Brits are the most cucked generation in history. They're certainly in the running, but the kind of perverse cognitive dissonance in the minds of the people who think this is a great deal for the US (relative to the pre-war status quo) might steal the chair from them.
But, sure, we should all agree this is the greatest win in the history of winning. Let's declare victory and move on.
ThenElection
12d ago
Iran was willing to pinky promise never to build nuclear weapons and play nicely with Obama, too. And Obama got that without paying Iran $300B.
"No toll on the strait (maybe!)" also is a weird flex.
ThenElection
13d ago
Yeah, I would love to be able to make a speculative bet on space services. Unfortunately it's heavily polluted with an implausible AI speculation (which I'm generally fine with, but if I'm going to be gambling on AI, SpaceX is not the bet I'm going to make). When it drops, I'll reconsider.
ThenElection
14d ago
Take it up with SpaceX's S-1.
We believe we have identified the largest actionable total addressable market (“TAM”) in human history. We estimate that our quantifiable TAM is $28.5 trillion, consisting of $370 billion in Space from space-enabled solutions; $1.6 trillion in Connectivity across $870 billion in Starlink Broadband and $740 billion in Starlink Mobile as well as additional opportunities in enterprise and government; $26.5 trillion in AI across $2.4 trillion in AI infrastructure, $760 billion in consumer subscriptions, $600 billion in digital advertising, and $22.7 trillion in enterprise applications.
ThenElection
14d ago
Either no amount of intelligence is capable of coming up with such a plan (perhaps training humans to have sufficient disgust reaction is the solution to AI alignment?)
I think it's this. But I don't think disgust reactions will save us: although they will limit the rate of diffusion, capitalism will select for companies that don't have the same kind of institutional disgust reaction and are willing to do what it takes for profit/success.
ThenElection
14d ago
I'd be curious to know more about if the air defenses were representative of current Chinese air defenses, or more like old tech surplus being sold off Temu.
ThenElection
14d ago
Anthropic already has a London office. Beyond that, Dario has a deep rootedness in San Francisco: he grew up here, went to Lowell, and returned as soon as he could after his studies. The choice to locate in San Francisco is rooted in a genuine love of place, not purely business reasons.
ThenElection
14d ago
There is an argument for OpenAI being a safer steward for AI than Anthropic, based purely on Sam having exponentially stronger survival instincts than Dario.
ThenElection
14d ago
Something something Mistral, something something one BILLION dollar ten year investment.
ThenElection
14d ago
For AI, I think the threat depends on one's model of future progress. Iterative refining and engineering: China is all you need. Significant paradigm shift: the US has the edge, at least until knowledge of the paradigm shift diffuses.
Though even for the latter, people underestimate China's research chops. And a significant component of our edge is that the most skilled Chinese researchers would prefer to work and live here and not in China.
Among the California electorate, he's consistently run 7 or so points ahead of Kamala. That's still a touch below the average Democratic politician--Kamala always did extremely poorly, even among California Democrats--but he's a stronger politician.
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