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VelveteenAmbush

Prime Intellect did nothing wrong

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VelveteenAmbush


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 02:49:35 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
All of the airlines would merge within a week under that regime, and then we'd all be paying monopoly rents to Amalgamated Airlines for the rest of our lives whenever we wanted to travel more than a hundred miles. And all of the other industries too. A 10% tax on deal consideration wouldn't even rate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Others have done an exhaustive job of responding to your vibrant hypothetical. I'll just add that yes, you're right in general (regarding other fact patterns that aren't quite so dramatic) that there is some increased risk of presidents misbehaving if they are above the law, and there is a cost associated with that.


But there is also a cost associated with presidents facing criminal charges after they step down. Peaceful transfer of power is a remarkable thing that we shouldn't take for granted. You really don't ever want a president nearing the end of his term to have to decide between sacrificing himself to the criminal justice system or attempting an auto-coup. That is a much bigger risk, and cost, and the law should focus on mitigating that second risk over the first.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, they used another (consenting) actress's voice who happens to sound a lot like Scarlett Johansson.


Scarlett Johansson doesn't have an IP right to "female voices that sound vaguely like Scarlett Johansson." As long as they can produce the receipts to show that this is actually what happened, she'd have no case.


That Altman referenced "Her" does not really bear on this. You can like or dislike the world portrayed in Her. Personally I found it a pretty uplifting vision of what a near-singularity future could look like, at least up to a few minutes before the ending. And you can like or dislike the voice that they demoed. Personally I can't stand it, and the sultry, flirty, overtly sexy affect really doesn't appeal to me. (But I'm a homo, so presumably I'm not the target audience, and maybe I'd be a big fan of some Josh Hartnett soundalike with an analogously please-fuck-me inflection, I dunno.) But neither has anything to do with whether Scarlett Johansson has somehow been wronged. She hasn't.


In any event, my distaste for the voice apparently was widely enough shared that they nixed it. But that just reflects a decent product sensibility and indicates nothing about this incredibly stupid attempt at a gotcha by you or all of the anti-progress Redditors who are joining you in hate-jerking over this as we speak.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The left seems to hate him more than any of the other potentials.




Why is this an advantage? My second biggest complaint about Trump's first term is that the left's nonstop ear-splitting hysteria impeded a lot of the stuff that a normal President would be able to do, and created a lot of collateral damage too (e.g. burning a bunch of cities, engaging in ritual defamation of the police, getting totally deranged on race relations). Generally politicians aim to energize their base, not the other side.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Correct, their actual moat is airport slots and routes which are now meticulously tabulated when DOJ considers airline merger agreements after US Airways / American Arlines merger empirically resulted in higher fares.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It kind of seems like you're just making your rhetoric more aggressive without really responding to my comment.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


voluntarily sterilize themselves




I don't want to engage with most of this analogy, but I think your view is impoverished if it doesn't account for children's questionable ability to provide informed consent, and the seeming purpose of the law in attenuating their parents' ability to act as stewards for their children's interests. The question of what is truly voluntary is the heart of the matter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is staggeringly ignorant on many dimensions. To pick one at random, Mark Zuckerberg would happily manage his market cap down to $20MM and compensate his employees with cash if it meant he could rely on his sole shareholder vote to retain control and consolidate the entire tech industry into a behemoth that bestrides the world. Your proposal is a road to Soviet style serfdom, and not even a long road.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The biggest mystery to me about Marco Rubio is why anyone likes him. He's weird looking, short, not charismatic, seems perpetually nervous, not particularly articulate, seems not to have ever had an original thought in his life. He seems most famous for 1. dramatically failing to out-Trump Trump in the 2015 Republican primaries, 2. short-circuiting in Chris Christie's gravitational well and repeating the line "let's dispel with the myth that Obama doesn't know what he's doing" at least three times, 3. drinking too much water in some SOTU response, and 4. trying to pass amnesty for illegal immigrants. What is the case for Rubio? I am perplexed at Florida Man's improbable success.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A sterile kid with diabetes is going to get lifelong injections and have to adopt if they want kids but I wouldn't characterize that as a "vista of terrifying possibilities".




I actually think "terrifying" would be a pretty reasonable word if one were contemplating a scenario in which children were being persuaded at scale by niche online communities to become infertile diabetics for life and the government were employing the power of the state to prevent parents from protecting them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Maybe run for president in the future, but not now.




The whole reason that Trump is winning right now is that 1/ Obama thought this way when picking his VP in 2008, and 2/ Biden thought this way when picking a VP in 2020. Choosing a VP is monumentally consequential for your party. You need to make sure you are choosing the right guy if you care at all about the future of your party. And how can you think you have taken the measure of a man to know where he will be in the next decade or two when he's already a completely different man from what he was a decade ago?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I dunno, setting aside the litigation specifics (the stuff about this being the product of a default judgment due to his refusal to comply with discovery requests etc.) I don't really have any objections. He dragged individual families who were not public figures through the mud in front of a massive audience, accusing them of lying about the deaths of their own children, in pursuit of some flagrantly delusional claims. Seriously messed up behavior and he deserves what he's getting. Yes the specific figure the jury came up with is disproportionate, but juries often do that when there's a sympathetic plaintiff, which is why even Antonin Scalia agreed with a substantive due process right of defendants to have judges knock excessive jury awards back down to the realm of reason, as will likely happen here too if Jones doesn't shit the bed again with his appeal. If the figure was awarded directly by a judge, I guess he's SOL subject to bankruptcy protections, but that's what you get for horribly and specifically defaming a huge group of innocent private families for years on end in front of a bizarrely large audience. Don't do that!


I was glad when the kid in Smirkgate was able (presumably) to drag cash out of the media organizations who defamed him during the summer fever dream of 2020, and I likewise don't feel bad for Jones here. Defamation has always been an exception to the first amendment, and unlike other putative exceptions for hate speech and the like I don't think it poses any kind of systemic risk to the right to voice opinions and ideas in public.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't mean to defend the zanier ideas of the rump right. Q-anon, 2020 election truthers, anti-vaxxers who ascribe every death of a previously vaccinated person to the vaccine, people who jump at globalist pedophiles under every rock and behind every tree -- it's nuts. There's a great deal of ruin in a party. So it goes.


THAT SAID, normies are quite right to worry about the loyalties of their local elite. Culturally, an American titan of industry likely has more in common with a French titan of industry than with his fellow Americans. Is it so hard to imagine the industrial, governmental and cultural elites of the world collectively furthering their interests as a class to the exclusion of their individual countries' interests?


In a season of Survivor, members of an alliance start to worry when a few of their members go off into the woods to meet with a few members of the opposing alliance. Maybe they're reconsidering their allegiance. Often they're right to worry.


Viewed through that lens, the WEF is a venue for defection against one's own country. They acknowledge it! They're globalists. The first letter of their acronym stands for it. Klaus Schwab seems to be the guy in charge. He may not have much power in his own right, by elite standards he's doubtless a midwit mediocrity as you describe, but however it came to be, he is the facilitator and proximate cause of an event that probably should be looked at askance by those concerned about whose side their own country's companies and government is really on. Obsessing over the social media ephemera of the conference is barking up the wrong tree, and ascribing personal agency to Klaus as though he can direct the tides of the illuminati via his keynote address is going too far, but it's forgivable, because the whole enterprise is a venue for collusion by the world's elite against everyone and everything else -- not in explicit drawing up of plans and executing plans of oppression, but in formation of shared norms and culture to the exclusion of those not there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the core of this very real problem, which we see in architecture and subway art as well as public statues, boils down to two things: Scott's barberpole theory of fashion and the tragedy of the commons.


The barberpole theory of fashion holds that being fashionable requires distinguishing your aesthetic from the aesthetics of the masses. It naturally drives elite circles who define themselves on the basis of their aesthetic sensibilities (artists and architects) to equilibrate on an aesthetic that most people will find unsettling or discomforting.


And the tragedy of the commons manifests from individual artists, architects and public works decisionmakers prioritizing their personal status among their aesthetically elite circle over the interests of the people who will see the art. Each time they decide whether to erect some modernist abomination in place of something that will actually brighten the day of the people who see it, they are deciding whether to give themselves a large direct payoff at the expense of everyone else receiving a small diffuse harm.


I guess this is inevitable in a post-scarcity society. Showy wealth and extravagance is no longer fashionable basically for the same barberpole reason that it associates one with the wealth-craving aesthetic of the masses, so elites compete for adulation of their peers in a contest to most dramatically degrade public spaces with unpleasant art.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


any possibility of peace




Can you explain more about how this possibility would proceed? All explanations I've seen involve an implicit step consisting of "and then the Palestinians decide to stop hating Israel with such passionate intensity that they'll sacrifice their own wellbeing to harm Israel and Israelis" and I genuinely don't understand, mechanically, how that step is supposed to be achieved.


My more-or-less-unconditional support for Israel in this conflict is rooted in the seeming impossibility of durably appeasing the Palestinians at any reasonable cost.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The Court, for its entire existence, has steadfastly refused to provide advisory opinions such as this comment.




The Court routinely offers advice to potential litigants in this manner directly in majority opinions. Elements of the opinion not necessary to reach its conclusions are usually referred to as "dicta" and are not considered legally binding (although of course the question of which elements of the opinion constitute dicta is itself often controversial).


Advisory opinions are forbidden insofar as the Court won't rule absent a case or controversy, which requires a plaintiff with standing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the respective parties in charge (Hamas and the pro-settlement Israeli hardliners) are both locked in a sort of hostile symbiotic relationship where their actions keep entrenching their ostensible opponent, who in turn further cement the other's legitimacy.




This telling seems to assume that absent the settlements, the Palestinians' intergenerational rage would subside and they'd embrace peaceful coexistence with Israel. Do you genuinely believe that to be the case? My weary conclusion is that they're stuck in an intergenerational rage spiral sustained mostly by hope (fueled by the actions of their supporters abroad) that they'll be able to prevail and eliminate Israel. Apace with Richard Hanania, I think peace can be achieved only by crushing their hopes -- and that doing so is worth substantial trauma in the present to break the region out of their seemingly durable and miserable stalemate. In this telling, the settlements are superfluous.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The opportunist will follow Trump for as long as it's in his interests to do so,




It hardly seemed obvious on January 6, 2021 that it would have been in Trump's VP's own interest to engage in a Scooby-Doo-esque scheme to steal the Presidency just because the incumbent had a mental break after losing the election.


If Vance had a Damascene conversion to Trump as a consequence of Trump gaining power, one should consider the possibility that he'd have had the inverse conversion as a consequence of Trump losing power.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's no reason to think he can. He was a below-value-over-replacement candidate in Ohio, winning by less than all other concurrent Republicans winning state elections in the same cycle. It's like expecting that Ted Cruz would have an advantage in winning over New Mexico.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well clearly the government is engaged in viewpoint discrimination in choosing which content to flag, and clearly it's a state actor, so I guess the only question is whether the government sending a note to Twitter asking for it to remove the speech constitutes interference with your speech. I think it does... there is a power dynamic, and even if there weren't, the government is still attempting to silence your speech. (And in practice, it seems, succeeding.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


he had reprimanded Ms. Toner for the paper




Replacing the toner usually fixes any issues you're having with the paper in my experience


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hillary faced calls for criminal consequences for her emails as secretary of state. Biden also inappropriately retained classified information and faced a criminal investigation.


But yeah, I'll bite the bullet, Trump is unusually shady.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The troll on my left shoulder wants to remark that perhaps she'd feel less exhausted all the time if she reconsidered her veganism.


But substantively... what do you expect from EA? It is not a movement of technical achievement, even though its ranks are full of tech people, because EA isn't about building, it's about extracting others' wealth and spending it.


Scott Alexander's travails in persuading people that the media is generally dishonest without lying speaks to the interpersonal innocence of his tech-centric community. These are people who work in collaborative environments, whose defenses are weak to the finer modes of interpersonal manipulation because their passions and competencies lie elsewhere and they are unaccustomed to having resources that other people want to take from them. So a community that exists centrally to extract wealth from that community is going to feature activists who are best at manipulating that community. And one of the strategies suited to that project is performative female vulnerability. Megans.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I enjoyed Steve Sailer's commentary on the gas stove controversy. His theory is that this is really a climate change move, but needs to be dressed up as a health move to get the public to accept it. He sees this as a fumbled attempt to orchestrate academic "research," the media and regulators in that sequence to build momentum for a ban -- fumbled because the regulator spilled the beans too early, before the Cathedral finished its sermon.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Everything you and @sliders1234 said makes some sense to me. I know a few guys who are happily married to women and who either have an understanding with their wife that they'll sleep with guys from time to time (and she'll go do her own thing from time to time) or who specifically seek out MMF threesomes. Are they gay? My guess is they're probably innately more attracted to men than to women (otherwise why bother with all of the social coordination and self identity issues that such behavior must engender), but they certainly identify as straight. One of their wives kind of propositioned us for a threesome once, after we shared a bottle of wine, or at least left the idea floating in the air in a plausibly deniable way, which we didn't act on because, although he is really hot and a great guy, we're married and monogamous and pretty committed to the whole white picket fence lifestyle. Notably, none of these guys is obviously gay in terms of mannerisms.


I tend to agree that guys who aren't flagrantly homosexual in the stereotypical sense could (usually, probably) live happy lives married to women, and that being married to a woman would make it a lot easier to start and raise a family, for all of the reasons @sliders1234 mentioned.


On the other hand, being gay isn't just sex, it's whom you're attracted to, whom you develop crushes on, who causes butterflies in your stomach, whom you fantasize about holding hands with and going on adventures with and talking with until 5am on a school night. Getting to experience that full romantic journey is a core part of the human experience. That part of your life is usually over by the time you are married and settled, or a couple of years into being married and settled, but it's still a big part of your life in terms of time and particularly in terms of emotional impact.


Also, among straight couples, the woman is usually the partner who initiates divorce (something like 70% of the time?) and being married to a gay guy is only going to increase the sympathy she'll get from society if she does so, regardless of the understanding that she had. That would really scare me. I also would not be comfortable hiding a secret like that from the rest of society, and think it's morally questionable to marry a woman if you're a gay man -- that isn't the life that most little girls dream about having.


But yeah, I totally understand why a deniably gay guy might choose to marry a woman, and even why he'd be happy with having made that decision. It isn't for everyone though, and it wouldn't be for me, and IMO we shouldn't view it as justification not to offer legal same-sex marriage.