aaa
1yr ago
I don't think you understand the nature of the problem. In general european elections will ask each citizen a handful of questions (for example two votes: one for the senate and one for the parliament). The US has far more elected positions than the average european country and also likes to aggregate local and general elections all in one (probably because general elections happen so frequently). So a normal US ballot will ask the citizen to vote for national elections but also positions in the state and county administration and include things like: seats on the supreme and appeals courts, sheriffs, various public attorneys, one or more referenda questions, seats on the school board, things nobody knows what they are, like comptrollers, etc.
Of course they could just use two ballots, put the one or two national questions on one and everything else in the other and then use two ballot boxes, and then just count the national votes first. I guess it never occured to them.
aaa
1yr ago
I think the EA’s failure to have any effective impact on Bankman’s moral calculus is its complete absence of emotional salience. Traditional moral systems usually try to maximize moral salience.
All ethical systems are isomorph, they come to the same conclusions on basic questions but can also be used to come to any conclusion on any real situation. The whole thing is completely irrelevant in practice. Deontological systems will have to have a bunch of vague rules to handle all circumstances, reducing to either virtue ethics or to a form of consequentialism. Utilitarianism has enough free variables and unknown parameters that will let you reach any conclusion. Virtue ethics usually comes with a big book of excuses you can pick from.
Also nothing stops you from subscribing to an ethical system and then going "well actually I'd rather grab the money and run anyway".
Consider Christianity
Yes, lets consider christianity, a religion that tells you to turn the other cheek but also that it's ok to beat your slaves as long as they don't die immediately, that says don't murder but proscribes capital punishment, that preaches poverty and used to practice opulescence.
I'm sure if you try you can think of a few big atrocities committed by devout christians, too. For example, let's say that we agree that heretics needed to die, was it really necessary to burn them alive, could we really not find a more humane way to do it?
If we are going by historical record I think there's no contest that utilitarianism comes out looking like a saint, but I think it's only had 200 years to do damage compared to millennias.
aaa
1yr ago
The NRSV says "But if the slave survives for a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property." I don't know which one is more correct, but from my point of view it doesn't matter either.
someone who clearly has a lot of problems with Christianity for reasons I don't know and don't want to speculate about. Pain is pain, however inflicted.
I think you are misunderstanding me. I don't really have any problems with christianity, the point I'm making is that it's silly to think the key to true morality is in a book (or in a tradition) that is so vague and varied that it has been used historically to justify both the most virtuous and the most vile of acts. I even said the same thing of utilitarianism but I guess you were to blinded by my words offending you religion to read that part.
aaa
1yr ago
I started noticing that wokeism (or rather, SJW as it was called back then) was a religion back around 2015-2016, and since then I came to realize that its great innovation over other religions was in convincing its followers and proponents that it wasn't a religion.
This is new but it isn't an innovation. Scientology did the same, early on. They still tell their newcomers that it doesn't make transcendental claims and it is completely fine to be christian and a scientologist. I think one of their big mistakes was to claim to be a religion for tax exemption, they would have made more money if they had kept paying taxes.
If you include strong ideologies, then communism did the same more than a century ago.
I think the great innovation of SJWs is to deny its own existence, it doesn't give itself a name and any name that is ascribed to it gets rejected as inaccurate or as a slur.
aaa
1yr ago
This is the Moldbug fallacy A descends from B, therefore A is B, you don't like A therefore you must also not like B. Ideas are all interconnected if you applied this principle rigorously you could refute western thought all the way back to aristotle, the trick is picking an arbitrary place to stop.
Wokism does descend from marxism but in a sense it also represents disillusionment with it, with the failure of class consciousness to materialize in the west and with the fall of the URSS simultaneously. Marxism says little about race and gender and is very preoccupied with economic class; wokeism is basically the opposite, to the point where you can make a corporate friendly version of it that disregards class entirely. Marxism is, in principle, materialist, wokeism is not.
aaa
1yr ago
But this argument is based on a particular interpretation of which portions of Marxism are salient (...) Specifics of the classes and their features and grievances do not seem terribly relevant to the question of how and why the ideologies operate.
IMO the contention that the salient portion of Marxism is not economic class is a pretty contorted view of how marxism has been generally interpreted in the past 150 years.
they appeal to the same people, they're pushed by the same people,
They don't, communism appealed very much to the working class. You may not see this because communism was basically illegal in the US, but where it did exist the parties were staffed by working class people and that's where they received votes. Wokism main centers of power are journalism and HR.
they attack the same important social structures in the same ways,
What would that be? I don't know where you are going with this, but often people say "the family" so I'll pre-empt that. All strong ideologies "attack the family" to some degree:
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in the 10 commandments, allegiance to the family comes after allegiance to God and to the Church
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fascism followed suit, proclaiming allegiance to "God, country and the family" (Dio, patria, famiglia) in that order
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Jesus says "For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother" as well as many others to the same effect
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Scientology practices disconnection from anyone who is declared SP, including family members if necessary
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Isolation from family members is a common cult technique
and the arguments against them are more or less isomorphic
Maybe for you.
aaa
1yr ago
As far as I am concerned this is all positve and Elon Musk is a hero. Twitter, as it existed before the acquisition, was a blight on humanity, Musk owning it means it either changes, which given the starting point will likely mean improve. Or it dies, which given the starting point is also an improvement. The gnashing of the teeth from journalists and ex-employees just makes my dick harder.
I used to be neutral on ol' Elon before this, now I like him.
aaa
1yr ago
If America Ferrera can be Ugly Betty I don't think this is a problem.
PS. maybe she can just reprise the role.
aaa
1yr ago
The character limit is actually a big problem because it excludes the possibility of expressing any nuanced thought: twitter consists solely of hot takes because that's pretty much the only thing that can be communicated through twitter. Tweetlongs/twitter threads don't really ameliorate this, the content still needs to be structured into short sentences peppersprayed with hot takes that can be retweeted individually.
And then there's the fact that it trains your attention span to hold only for microscopic amounts of time, it is also uniquely bad in this, no other medium in history trained as short an attention span as twitter.
I think being exposed to that for a sufficiently long enough time will make you retarded, so yes more than 280 characters wouldn't make the masses enlightened but it would at least not cause brain damage to them.
And then there's the likes. You can only like a tweet, you can't downvote. If you don't like something you can either ignore it or respond/retweet, which, because of the response limit is going to be a hot take. So when you are on twitter all you perceive is either the hugbox of likes, anyone that disagrees with you is either invisible to you or a troglodite that responds with a short (and from your point of view stupid) "sick burn".
And then there's the fact that celebrities are on it. People who would normally have curated their public persona to a select few manicured communications (think authors, screenwriters, etc) are now absentmindedly putting all of their imbecillity on display, in fact they are using a medium that amplifies it by forcing all nuance in their thought to be expunged. I think the world is substantially worse because of this.
And then there's the moderation, by applying politically biased moderation twitter has created a false consensus on its platform, which skews the perception of what is common knowledge on anyone that interacts with it.
And finally there's the fact that journalists are on it, which means that journalists are now subjected to the mentally retarding effects of twitter, to the false perception of what is common knowledge. They also come to believe that reporting about tweets from politicians and artists is a valid form of journalism therefore amplifying the damaging effects of twitter to the entire population. And because of this they think that sitting at the computer reading twitter is a valid form of work which means they are exposed to more of twitter and more of its deletereous effects.
No other media that existed before or after twitter is as bad as twitter, 4chan is better, reddit is better, instagram is better, tiktok is better, microfilm is better, vellum is better. Literally the worst possible way to communicate ever made.
aaa
1yr ago
Reddit had 30 employees in 2012 and it was a far more complicated application then than twitter is today.
aaa
1yr ago
Sure. So what's the relevant differences between Marxists and Wokeists that I'm missing here, and how should people like me play them to our advantage?
For example: immigration depresses the cost of labor to the detriment of workers, a diverse workforce makes unionization efforts harder to achieve, the push of careerism on women is the capitalist sistem seeking to exploit them further. On the other direction: the lower classes are often the most bigoted (more homophobic, transphobic, sexist, etc).
What would that be?
Heirarchy, tradition, law, economics, justice, ethics, morals, etc. Ideas along the lines of "Social justice" or the cultivation of a "revolutionary conscience" recur with monotonous regularity, because the fundamental logic of Progressive Materialist revolution demand such innovations.
Any strong ideology will seek to change hierarchies, the law and ethics to match its own. Also I don't think SJW can be considered materialist.
Your examples seem fairly bimodal to me, in a way that is quite telling. I observe a significant difference between honoring God above one's father and mother, and honoring the state or one's auditor above one's father and mother.
For there to be a difference god would have to actually exist and participate in human affairs, but it doesn't so in practice it's just a stand in for a human institution.
Neither Christianity nor Judaism seem to encourage this.
Isn't the story of Abraham and Isaac similar enough?
aaa
1yr ago
I'm also not sure why you are picking on transubstantiation in particular as a flaw of Christianity in general. That is not a doctrine shared by all Christians, it's just Catholics as far as I'm aware. So at worst it's a flaw in Catholic teachings, not Christian teachings as a whole.
Narrowly defined as the aristotelian explanation for the eucharist, yes, it is only catholic (although most catholics don't even know this). But the belief that the eucharist is some real magical thing and not merely symbolic is patristic and exists in almost all christian denominations, although there are theological differences between catholic transubstantiation, orthodox transubstantiation, consubstantiation, sacramental union and whatever else protestants have come up with. I would agree with characterising all of them as nonsense, however.
aaa
1yr ago
Tony Podesta (not John) is probably a satanist. But, he's a satanist in the real world sense of the word, i.e. he an annoying edgelord that either pretends or actually does believe in christian fanfiction (where the bad guy is actually the good guy).
There is no evidence that satanism is actually widespread in political circles enough to warrant the conclusion that we are "ruled by satanists".
The Epstein thing is more concerning but it's unclear what it means (was he actually procuring for a cabal of rich pedophiles? was he trying to create a compromat for powerful people by tricking them into pedophile sex? was he a different CIA op that went rogue, Barry Seal style?).
Also, I have to say that wherever someone uses the word "satanic" I cringe really hard, as a atheist that was raised roman catholic it makes me think less of actual christians I have known and more of a parody of a christian fundamentalist. The kind of fire and brimstone christianity that exists more in the Binding of Isaac than in reality.
aaa
1yr ago
You can write pedo and satan without self censoring, bloody mary isn't going to appear in the mirror.
aaa
1yr ago
It's meant to be shocking to stand out. Fashion brands do weird stuff all the time to stand out. It worked well, I bet this was the first time you've ever talked about Balenciaga in your life.
aaa
1yr ago
As far as I am concerned, given what I have seen, he shouldn't have been banned, even if it's probably the best thing for him. Not twitter's decision to make.
aaa
1yr ago
He's going to appear in court, say "I took it by mistake I was tired after a long voyage", nobody is going to check if he has a similar type of bag and it's going to end there. It's probably even true. Either way nothing is going to come out of this.
PS. I'm surprised it even went this far. This retroactively justifies every time I double-checked the tag on my bag at the airport.
aaa
1yr ago
I've read it now. His story is weird but not impossible. If there is no sexual motive (which, if the bag doesn't have a garish floral motive, there probably isn't) then it's going to be even harder to prove anything.
aaa
1yr ago
Best defence is to claim they were drunk as a skunk after coming off their flight, grabbed the case in a drunken daze
Also possible
That still doesn't explain "so why were you using the suitcase as your own property?" for further trips
The bag used in further trips could also be his, which happens to be the same model. That he stole it for personal use is the least likely explanation, surely he's paid enough that he can afford to buy a $300 bag.
aaa
1yr ago
If the price they report is right it could be this one: https://verabradley.com/collections/rolling-luggage/products/hardside-large-spinner-2813515185?variant=40622072627244 which does come with garish floral patterns but also in generic black and silver. All other models have one or two "boring" (sane?) variants. Regardless, none of this is a unique piece.
aaa
1yr ago
Apparently both of his grandparents on the mother's side were of partial black ancestry. This is also news to me.
aaa
1yr ago
This significantly downgrades the probability that it was a honest mistake the first time. I'm still going to wait for more information before believing that it's a fetish, instead of some other retarded motivation. We don't even know if this one belonged to a woman, let alone looked like it belonged to a woman.
(if you want to steal bags you do it at bars and restaurants in tourist areas, like all other thiefs, not in an airport)
aaa
1yr ago
I don't understand your argument.
The breakdown of families comes to mind, which is of course for a myriad reasons, to a point where families are becoming far too expensive to sustain
What does this have to do with men seeking virgin wives and prostitutes?
So here's where I'm less certain; will decadence necessarily mean decline?
What decadence? Decadence of men seeking virgin wives and prostitutes or decadence of men failing to seek virgin wives and prostitutes? Decadence of prostitues not suffering enough consequences from being prostitutes? Decadence in the number of virgin wives? Also what decline? Of fertility? Of families? How does it relate to the topic of men seeking virgin wives and prostitutes?
Should we turn to traditional norms to reverse this trend?
What traditional norms? The traditional norm of men seeking virign wives and prostitutes? And also which trend? And how do they help? And why did these traditional norms go away?
The sad state of punting in the US. Do you at least get a happy ending with this much money?
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