alexandertheokay
No bio...
User ID: 1163
alexandertheokay
10mo ago
The problem with communal property is it is usially poorly maintained and policed by hall monitor personalities.
I like my yard. I keep it the way I want it. My neighbors do their own thing with their yard. It is different and highly personalized.
alexandertheokay
10mo ago
I give up my seat for elderly, weak, and pregnant people, but not women.
There are lots of reasons why, but the biggest reason is I want to be the kind of person that I like.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
To pile on: the sin here is deceiving the people being moved. If DeSantis' agents had said "we want to send you to an upscale New York neighborhood as a political stunt, there is probably good work up there" I wouldn't object.
Personally I love the idea of shipping illegal immigrants to blue tribe strongholds, but it has to be done ethically.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
The "heat" in the sidebar does not refer to "honest and clear arguments," it refers to arguments designed to provoke strong emotions that overwhelm the cold, rational part of our thinking that should have significant sway over our decision-making.
alexandertheokay
10mo ago
I'm neither pro nor anti-HOA. I just want people to have their pick.
alexandertheokay
10mo ago
Its very easy to find neighborhoods thay are 100% HOA controlled. If you look at a mixed development, its easy to buy a house with no line of sight to non-HOA property.
The people I sympathize with are the ones trying to find a home that isn't HOA controlled. That is very difficult if you live in a part of the country near major job centers.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
One of my in-laws is an amateur elite athlete who ran long distances before Covid. She complains of multi-day periods of physical exhaustion that she attributes to long covid. I won't comment on her mental health other than it seems fine and we aren't close.
alexandertheokay
10mo ago
That's not a problem. The neighbor can just ignore his whining.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
You have generalized one conservative's point of view to "enough conservatives that it would drive their policy if they had political dominance."
I don't think this was true in 2016. I think it is probably true today.
The gentleman's agreements that allow us to have freedom of thought have expired. We're in the hardball stage, and the degree of censorship is likely to only get worse as time wears on.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
I agree with the conservatives, but here are some attempts to steelman:
-
Martha's Vineyard is obviously not equipped to handle any number of migrants. If Florida can't take them, they should have sent them to an urban center that could.
-
Florida has a duty to handle it's own migrants, and Martha's Vineyard has a duty to handle it's own migrants, the cause of the disparity doesn't matter, and dumping your problems on other people is wrong.
-
Migrants can be accepted anywhere, and shipping them around as a political stunt is dehumanizing.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
Its an old fashioned prisoner's dilemma.
If all states enforce a ban on illegal migrant labor, labor costs and employment rates go up, which benefits the working class electorate.
If any states continue to allow illegal migrant labor, they get to produce agricultural products so cheaply that the farmers in the other states might as well close up shop.
The solution, as usual, is to have a mob boss in the form of the federal government intervene. But why do that when you can get all the benefits of appearing to be against illegal labor while secretly allowing the farm lobby to keep their illegal labor?
That's my theory anyway.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
The format of media influences its form.
Books encourage 200+ pages of material with a common theme. That is the ideal format for deep exploration of an idea.
Blogs, articles, etc are optimized for their ability to draw in drive-by readers. At best they don't reward depth, at worst they punish it.
alexandertheokay
10mo ago
I also give up my seat for elderly men, so ending that phrase with women would have been incorrect.
alexandertheokay
10mo ago
What's the problem here?
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
The internet has given you much greater access to the kind of socialization you prefer, but at what cost?
Prior to global connectivity, you would have learned the specific communication patterns that were mutually pleasurable between yourself and your family. This should have resulted in deeper emotional ties and a stronger family and community.
Now you spend that same time building social capital on rationalist forums.
I don't think this is a net gain for you or your family.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
Internet companies spend billions building systems to hijack your attention. If you want to succeed, you need to re-shape your environment to combat their tactics, because you aren't going to be making purely rational, well thought out decisions on a moment to moment basis.
I occasionally go through phases where I limit my technology use in various ways in order to "reset" what I'm acclimatized to. Here are some things I've found effective.
-
Password lock screen on phone AND full information in notifications on lock screen: I can see my messages don't need an immediate reply, and opening my phone to use it is slightly annoying. This means a random email that dings me won't lead to me instinctively opening reddit.
-
Uninstalling apps for specific platforms: If I'm trying to take a break from reddit, I'll uninstall the app and only visit the site on my computer. That leads to significantly less use, and when I do use reddit I am more likely to engage with text-based content.
-
Read-Logging: I've done this for a few months at a time a few years ago. I logged every article I read with a short summary, from 1 to five sentences. Maybe more if I really liked it. This dramatically improved the value I got back while reducing the skimming I did, but I found it mentally draining.
-
Background music: I often take short breaks. If I navigate to a website, that short break has a tendency to become a long one. Instead, I keep background music playing and I try to enjoy the background music during my short break. My work stays on screen and I am much more likely to return to it sooner.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
I'm going to answer this question: what are those important things that the news is not mentioning that is relevant to our lives?
I added #header tags to organize my thoughts, and the site CSS went a bit wild with them.
Tribal Migration
Anecdata
I've seen a sudden migration of conservative technology experts away from the DC area to, overwhelmingly, Florida. Companies that are hurting for talent seem totally okay with losing employees with 20 years of experience if they think the root cause is a red tribe thing. My main observation is people are leaving over mandatory vaccinations are being told not to let the door hit them on the way out.
On the flip side, Florida has provided every indication that individuals will not have to get vaccinated and Florida companies are all but openly flouting federal requirements in my field (aerospace/defense.) Keep in mind that the federal government is requiring that all federal contractors get vaccinated, so unless your employer is willing to let you lie about your vaccination status, you are effectively shut out of the aerospace/defense sector.
I know of 5 such migrations and I have visibility into about 150 people. I have some company data, which I cannot share, that indicates many more employees "voluntarily" left during the Covid Pandemic. I'd peg a loose estimate at 3-5%. Keep in mind that aerosapce/defense is a generally conservative field, and most employees will have strong financial positions.
Laws seen on National News that might drive migration
States like California and Texas are passing (or trying to pass) highly partisan laws that I believe are designed to pressure people to move. For California, this would be a series of gun control laws that include the ability to sue people if they sell guns to the wrong person. For Texas, the main example would be their new abortion laws. We could charitably think this is how the legislature and their electorate feel about these issues, but I pessimistically believe that legislators are actively trying to drive migration to solidify their state electoral party alignment.
I believe the extremity of these laws is tactical, not moral
Republican voters I have spoken to have admitted they support criminalization of marijuana only because it discourages migration of Democrats "Like what happened in Colorado." (Colorado is the example I was provided, no further comments on this.)
If Obergefell vs. Hodges is overturned, I feel certain Texas will effectively ban gay marriage even though it has majority support among Republicans. They'll do this because they know it will push primarily Democrat voters to migrate away.
There is a push to add a credit card classification for firearms related purchases. This feels like a first move to implement gun control through the private sector. I fully expect Florida or Texas to mandate that these ISO codes be banned in some way to protect citizens from whatever comes next.
Split States
Meanwhile, in my current state of Virginia, there is a death struggle over gun laws. When the state legislature was unable to reach a compromise, the state delegated certain regulatory authority to local governments across the state. Now there are a patchwork of guidelines defining where you may or may not carry a firearm, and a felony conviction waiting for anyone who gets it wrong. I could charitably suppose that Democrats just want to protect public employees in government buildings, but I find it hard to be charitable when people are prohibited from carrying firearms on the trail systems that connect to DC. These remote trails are the site of many rapes and robberies every year, and they are one of the few places in the greater metropolitan area where I'd actually like to carry a gun. I suspect the extreme stance is partially motivated by a desire to get Republicans to just leave the state already.
Predicted Consequences of Tribal Migration
If the national population starts picking a place to live based on party affiliation, I think that will have the following costs:
-
There will be a loss of economic efficiency, as workers will have to be selected by their skills and their strength of political alignment.
-
There will be a loss of intellectual diversity, as migrants will enthusiastically join their new community and drive an echo-chamber. This will drive further legislation and further migration. Someone who can tolerate the Florida of today may feel more alienated in ten years.
-
There will be an increase in cultural tensions at the federal level. It will be harder to find laws that both California and Texas can agree to.
-
Federal politicians will find that their more homogeneous voter base demands ever more partisan laws, which will be even harder to pass at the federal level. If they do pass, it will inspire whiplash when the balance of power shifts and the other tribe undoes all the new laws and imposes their own.
Thinking about this honestly makes me feel a little sick with worry.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
There is no way to report direct messages.
Also is it allowed to have a particularly inflammatory username like "BURN_NIGGERS_RAPE_NIGGERS"? Got a weird DM from him.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
I have a nit to pick:
Blue tribe needs outgroups. If they wiped out red tribe they would turn inward to continue the conflict.
One of liberalism's great strengths is its relative comfort with endless conflict. The meme of tolerance and metaphorical warfare through the voting system allows that conflict to continue endlessly while allowing the conflicting factions to form a united front against outside threats.
Other systems built around ideological purity require an honest attempt to actually destroy the enemy, and when this is successful a new enemy needs to be found or created.
I think unending conflict may simply be human nature, and stability is learning to manage that conflict in a productive manner.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
Hacker News (specifically news.ycombinator.com, there are multiple "hacker news" sites.)
The overlap with the SSC/Motte community is higher than you'd expect. The community has a higher-than-elementary level understanding of AI, the tech sector, and business, and leans politically center or slightly left for US politics.
alexandertheokay
10mo ago
That worked, thanks!
alexandertheokay
10mo ago
How do I figure out the email address attached to my account? I forgot which email address I used when I signed up.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
I don't think it actually matters if it's a good movie or not. What matters is how effective the marketing team is and whether the material is acceptable in multiple major consumer markets.
It's clear that this movie has the favor of every major media outlet and social media site, so it will get "the shine" for a few months at least.
alexandertheokay
1yr ago
I don't have any strong feelings about native american tribes until they ask for more than they've been given.
Yeah, they got the short end of the stick, but there is no limit to the number of things they could make credible claims for.
At some point its time to write off the losses and move on, which they have no incentive to do, but damn I have no sympathy left. It's as absurd as Poland's recent request for renumeration from WWII. This stuff is history.
Big exception: If a person was discriminated against, or of their parents were discriminated against while they were children, I'm okay with one time cash compensation for that event.
While I generally agree with the viewpoint that "Fox is an unreliable and untrustworthy source of information," I think any organization that does not reach the same conclusion about CNN or MSNBC is showing an strong selection bias.
More options
Context Copy link