Titus_1_16
10d ago
Listening and very much enjoying, nice job
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
This is a wittier version of the same point I was going to make - bravo
Titus_1_16
16d ago
one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens
Really nice turn of phrase
Titus_1_16
3mo 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
3mo 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
1mo ago
Is the Motte supposed to be funny?
This is the funniest shit I've read all morning
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
Ethnic wilting was contemporaneous with the decline and fall of the western Roman empire, if not its proximate cause. Hardly a point in favour of "civic nationalism"; the Germanic barbarians that Rome allowed to settle in its lands from the 3rd century onwards were never assimilated, and to use anachronistic language, formed a fifth column.
As for America - large-scale Irish Catholic (and later German) migration was the proximate cause of the collapse of the sort of agrarian yeoman republic that most of that American rebel leaders had envisioned. The sort of Irish people that showed up en masse in the 1840s - starving, illiterate, destitute, non-anglophone and uncivilised - ruptured the white/other distinction that had bounded the USA's participatory democracy for white landowning men, and necessitated the shift to managed democracy: yellow press, chickenfeed for the hoi polloi, the impossibility of complex public arguments and time horizons beyond the next election.
Were I making an argument for democratic universalism - I wouldn't - but if I were, I'd pick an example where a state identity has authentically and comprehensively erased localist ethnic distinctions into a single homogeneous "the people". 19th century France is actually not a bad example. Any country you can think of where ethnic division is still noticeable has not, ipso facto, succeeded in democratic levelling.
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
Super interesting, and you're quite correct: relatively mild criticism as it goes
Titus_1_16
5mo 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
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
16d ago
Well look, you used it naturally enough that I couldn't have told the difference
Titus_1_16
21d ago
A couple of points: first, in terms of English proficiency being a cultural solvent - English already is the lingua franca of Europe, as it is in many other parts of the world. When an Italian meets a German, 9 times out of 10 they will speak English. When a Finn meets a Spaniard - English (although the Spanish are generally pretty bad at English). And so on.
If Europe is to achieve some manner of proper confederation and thereby preserve itself as anything other than a relic over the next century or two, it needs a language with which to do this. English in Europe (and remember it is after all a European language) doesn't just mean Americanisation, it also means the coalescing of pan-European consciousness.
So English proficiency is not purely a malus, or purely a tool of globohomogenisation.
Secondly - I know you're talking about Latvia as a long shot in terms of migration and integration, but actually its neighbour just to the north, Estonia, explicitly is pursuing a strategy of welcoming ambitious foreigners from the likes of America. They've set up an E-residency scheme that's kind of notoriously open to abuse, but it's meant a lot of foreign tech setting up shop there. Estonia is a more reasonable shot for someone of your profile to move to and integrate into, if you're interested
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
3mo ago
And are you referring to Irish colonisation by the Viking kingdom based in Dublin in the late first millennium, or are you referring to an Irish colonization that happened much earlier?
The latter. There were Gaelic polities that preceded the big Viking one - this is how Scotland came to speak Gaelic, and how the Picts were pushed east prior to Viking invasion
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
Does anyone really have anything against actual Romanians? I don't think so. It's almost always the latter, and the difficulty is compounded by the High Wokish word for "Gypsy" (that is, "Romani") sounding so like "Romanian"
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Sorry, that was a failure to convey tone correctly on my part - I agree with the busywork proposal, I wasn't being facetious. Perhaps some holy commandments like an obligation to pray x number of times per day etc
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Right, so the AI creates busywork for humanity.
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
I'm sorry to report that I could not resist downvoting this post, but will make amends with a comment.
Also - I think the downvote is useful, it's interesting sometimes to see the tally of up and down votes. Highlights contentiousness in an interesting way
Titus_1_16
16d ago
It's really interesting to me that someone could post regularly on this board and yet still enjoy cannabis. I'm envious of your mental robustness tbh.
A strong plurality of people posting here could fairly be called "anxious overthinkers" - the board is a bilge pump for excess thought, and eg expressing any worry whatsoever about AI risk (whether the worry is grounded in real things or not) ought to be a criterion for anxiety diagnoses.
I smoked a fair amount of weed in my teens/early 20s, took plenty of other recreational drugs, and a near-universal thing I've heard from peers with a similar profile is that around age 25, they started to find weed disagreed with them. Specifically, it makes them/me really unpleasantly anxious. Weed to me now is solely a tool I would use if for some reason I wanted to give myself a panic attack. Maybe I'm a little more dramatic in my dislike than normal, but it's very normal to find weed unenjoyable from mid-20s onward.
So what's your secret? Youthful brain? No prior history of smoking? Iron resolve?
I actually would quite like to like weed again, and agree with the demerits of drink that you outlined - so if there's One Weird Trick you can share, please do so.
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
21d ago
Russia looks pretty white to me, just saying.
Russia is only about 70% ethnically Russian, from memory. Eyeballing it, at least half of the countries in Europe would have a higher % of their primary ethnicity.
Titus_1_16
4mo 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
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
I think until such time as Israelis stop kvetching to Germans about the Holocaust, Palestinians can be permitted to protest their subsequent territorial expropriation.
Nordstream was a Ukrainian op
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