Titus_1_16
8mo ago
The average person with that title on LinkedIn (and by extension Hinge) is literally one step (or no step) above a ‘hustle’ crypto influencer and hangs around their city’s startup coworking scene selling ‘networking services’ and asking for 5% in exchange for ‘marketing and connections’
Roman criminals weren't nailed this hard my god
Titus_1_16
8mo ago
Twitter is a lot more crass than this place, it's like putting your mouth right on the tap.
I know the answer is always to curate one's feed, but it's hard to stop the low content creeping in on twitter
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
the above are just a few years ahead of the rest of us. If we survive the singularity then we, too, will spend our lives on our little reservations, everything provided from above
It's worth considering that the rickety, shitey-arse state of many reservations etc. is as much the result of incompetence, indifference and bad faith from conquerors, as it is the inherent fecklessness of indigenes. Perhaps a hyper-competent, hyper-intelligent robot overlord would simply provide a better standard of reservation.
Competently-administed mandatory eudaimonia would actually be a wise policy on the part of any hypothetical roboking that was disinclined towards genocidal eradication. To keep humans in a sub-par state of flourishing would mean less predictability - there's always the chance of some freak behaving who-knows-how. Having all the decorative/ethically-sourced humans in a state that is the absolute pinnacle of human excellence means you can plan accordingly, and the odd freak won't "hop the fence" so to speak.
Even that practical concern aside, I think an AI inclined to keep us would probably keep us well. And for the humans, this is a life at least as fulfilling as that experienced by all the chaps in the old testament, in Greek myth, etc - a life of challenge, overseen by known gods. Not too bad really.
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
Why do you think humans have infinite moral worth compared to animals?
That's a pretty unusual viewpoint for a modern westerner to espouse (though in a "revealed preferences" sense I guess it's very common). Christian background, Cartesian background, contrarianism, Chinese background.... how come?
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Super interesting, and you're quite correct: relatively mild criticism as it goes
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Nordstream was a Ukrainian op
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
That's really interesting, what would be some anti-Jewish stuff in the New Testament?
And actually, do any of the books of the New Testament ever go after other groups (ie Roman pagans, Persian Zoroastrian monotheists?)
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
This is a wittier version of the same point I was going to make - bravo
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
modern democracy is much more actually democratic than Athenian democracy
The Athenians took the word "democracy" to mean one thing, and modern Western politicians take it to mean [almost anything they want]. It's small-minded to claim one particular state of affairs is more "democratic" than another - very many political system can fairly lay claim to the term.
It's a defensible position to describe as "democratic" any that involves a reasonable number of people voting on what's to be done/whom to rule them.
Beyond those bare bones, it's like arguing which of Louisiana and Utah is the more American, or Pentecostalism and Anglicanism is the more Christian. Ie, a futile endeavour to rile up true believers
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Very interesting way to pose the question.
I can't speak for the entire nation, but I would think it's a saccharine and narcissistic sentiment and stop consideration there - I wouldn't consider how deeply believed it might be by the speaker.
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Interesting euro/American contrast here - fewer Euros would tolerate living in a place where you can only "exist" (ie do normal stuff like go to work, go to school, see friends, buy groceries, etc) with the help on a car, so this dilemma doesn't arise as much over here.
That is, I fully accept that freedom of travel should be a fundamental right, but also agree that driving a car is not - it's something you do on the state's sufferance.
These two principles don't often conflict in Europe, but it's a damn hard dilemma. Probably it's easier to solve with AI driving than by rebuilding most of your cities
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Hmm, personally I think that sets too high a bar for constituting a "movement" at least in the intellectual or cultural sense. Sure, a handful of books doesn't constitute a political movement - for that you need crowds, voting, candidates (though note that this definition also means the "alt right", such as it ever was, was not a "movement") but I think the bar is different/lower for an intellectual or cultural movement.
It's a consistent cliché in intellectual history that some group strongly disavows belonging to a single movement, while then spending the next 200 years being taught and studied as one. French New Wave Cinema, the Vienna Circle, etc.
My suspicion is that, (if there are such things as essays and undergaduates a hundred years hence) a student writing in the future about how American religiosity collapsed to European levels in the first decades of the 21st century will mention "the new athiests". Before of course talking about the triumphant rise of Zensunni Catholocism in the 2030s, which fuelled the Butlerian Jihad.
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Not negligent per se; let's just say they didn't sincerely prioritise the flourishing of those they hadn't the heart to murder.
Suppose for example I'm the governor of some territory with a load of indigenes and colonists. Even if I set aside a physical space for the indigenes and make some financial allowance for basic medical treatment and what-have-you, there just aren't enough men or dollars or hours in the day to really ensure the indigenes' flourishing.
An AI will only be able to conquer and master humanity if it is significantly more capable than us. Consider how we might expect, say, a mediaeval army versus a modern polity to care for spare people in their charge. Now consider than any humanity-beating AI would be far more competent than a modern state, and by a much greater degree than the modern state outclasses some mediaeval horde.
I think an AI good enough to beat us could also husband us well without breaking a sweat.
I don't think it's true that a purposeless life need be as squalid as those of many modern indigenes - many perfectly nice and even quite good lives don't have any purpose that's apparent to their possessors. And honestly, life in divine obedience to a real machine God seems at least as purposeful as any of the religions of the book. I reckon it would beat "modern hedonistic self-actualisation" too.
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Both are in restitution for evils that are older than the state of Israel, ie well past your 50 year rule. If the Paelstinian cause has exceeded some statute of limitation, it follows that WW2 and all its attendant evils has passed also.
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Personally I think a 50 year limitation seems fair.
Do you agree that Israel should stop accepting their annual "sorry" payments from the German government, pursuing old men who were Nazis, etc?
It strikes me that it's basically impossible to make proper restitution for millions murdered, but relatively easy to make whole someone that's had their land connived and stolen away from them. If anything, all the Israeli schmaltz and guilt about WW2 should stop well before the Palestinians give up on regaining their rightful homes.
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
I think until such time as Israelis stop kvetching to Germans about the Holocaust, Palestinians can be permitted to protest their subsequent territorial expropriation.
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
Yes, this is exactly the sort of "context" I was gesturing at (but failed to actually write) in my comment.
Strictly speaking, in the 1840s, the median Irishman was undoubtedly at a lower "civilisational level" than the median Anglo - but there are truer explanations for this than "the Irish are eternal untermenschen".
For example, you mentioned the Border people of the Scottish lowlands, and the Scotch-Irish of Ulster, who played an important role in US history - go back a thousand years for the second half of the first millenium though and you'll see that these peoples are descendants of Irish colonists in western Britain, which is at odds with the eternal untermenschen hypothesis.
For that matter, the median Irishman today is a little bit higher in a material/human capital sense than the median Englishman (though this is only a development of the past 20 years or so)
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
The Rest Is History podcast is really excellent, wide-ranging and not super ideological
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
As an experienced pedatn, I enjoyed the fact that the line morphed from the grammatically correct "How would you feel now if you hadn't eaten breakfast?" to the strictly incorrect "How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast?"
Obviously look it's variation in dialect, blah blah prescriptivism, but I still found it funny
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Which Jesse Singal article, the trans kids one?
Titus_1_16
8mo ago
It's amusing in a post talking about translation and language prowess that you've actually made a (very common with Americans) grammatical error.
if I would evaluate people by the content I find on the social media, I'd be forced to conclude that the vast majority of humanity are complete utter morons.
This should be either "if I evaluated" or "if I were to evaluate", since it forms a subordinate clause to the second conditional, if you're interested. Mistakes of this form are nearly guaranteed with Dutchmen, which I always find interesting because their English is otherwise near-perfect, and typically more orthodox than the average, say, Brit.
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Would the USA be "more democratic" if toddlers could vote?
Titus_1_16
9mo ago
Far-right insulting term for blacks. Comes from some case in the US South a while ago where a black jogger was shot. I think it's popular because the last four letters are G-G-E-R
Titus_1_16
10mo ago
The same way that gay liberation did a number on close male friendships (ie made them more difficult to cultivate and maintain), trans emancipation has been strictly negative for masculine women (who of course greatly outnumber MtF transsexuals)
Many English criticisms of Ireland are/were factually accurate, but incomplete and lacking context.
There's no question that 19th century Irishmen and women generally lowered the tone of the US, though.
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