ares
Commander, USN (ret). Former Googler. Computer programmer.
User ID: 2527
ares
11mo ago
At some point I hope to make an effortpost about innumeracy, and how people who work with numbers are grossly overestimating the ability of the average person. This old Unz post really stuck with me. The example Level 3 question is literally read a table and pick the smallest number in the appropriate row. Back in 2012 less than half of 15-16 year olds in the USA were able to answer a Level 3 question correctly. I'm a numbers guy, and I really struggle to imagine the perspective of someone unable to do that. And that's half the American population (perhaps a little less, as some people could learn with age)!
wanyeburkett's thread you linked makes a similar/related point. patio11 has some good insights. There's also a good discussion to be had about whether giving these innumerate people an LLM that can understand numbers and complex processes for them is good solution or if that would just encourage more complexity.
ares
8mo ago
Mildly interesting: Tweet from a guy who saw JD Vance rush out of the mini golf course at the time
ares
11mo ago
That's actually a really helpful perspective for me. Funny enough, I had the following conversation with my 6 year old this morning:
Son: I like your new tattoo. Kids like tattoos.
Me: Well this is a permanent tattoo. You can only get temporary tattoos until you're 18.
Son: I'll do that! Will you drive me?
Me: When you're 18, you can drive yourself.
Son: I could drive?
Me: Yes, but you'll need your own car, and they're expensive.
Son: How much does a car cost?
Me: $10,000. You'll have to save up!
Son: I'm going to count my money now. gets his cash box where he keeps his allowance, and spends the next 5 minutes counting out the $45 he has in there
He has no concept of the difference in scale between the $10,000 and the $45 he has. He was counting it, and if he got to $10,000 then he would get a car. He didn't this time, so he needs to keep saving. I find his focus, sincerity, and innocence sweet for a 6 year old. I'd find that level of numeracy terrifying in a 16 year old, but apparently that's where half of all Americans are. "My 6 year old's understanding of numbers" is a theory of mind I can grasp.
ares
11mo ago
I don't think it will lead to introspection by most people on the left; most people in general are incapable of "are we the baddies"-type introspection. An escalatory course of action is likely to lead to a change in behavior by the left because when it's widely known that (doing whatever left-coded thing the right is able to push outside the overton window) will cost you your job, friends, social status, etc. then most people will stop doing that thing. The masses will make posthoc rationalizations for why they were justified in their prior behavior but now they know better.
If the right continues to "take the high ground", there's no reason for the masses to ever change their behavior or beliefs. The right would have to wait until the majority of the left decides to perform that "are we the baddies"-type introspection, and that will never happen.
ares
8mo ago
Eternal September is a real thing that happens to communities when too many newcomers arrive and don't adapt to the existing culture. We literally have a rule asking to not link to here from high participation platforms. This community is small, and the mods already have to work very hard to keep the current quantity of us cretins obeying the rules.
We just saw a sliver of attention to our little Rationalist corner of the internet by a US Vice Presidential candidate on the most popular podcast in the world. Even if he's not pointing people directly to this site, I think it's completely valid to believe that there are ways where fractions of fractions of Joe Rogan listeners find their way here. "What was that article Vance mentioned?" "I liked that article, where could I discuss it?" "No talking politics on Reddit? Where else could I go?" And we get a few thousand new users. Sure, that's unlikely, but that's not a criterion for making a claim here.
If you disagree then please engage with the substance instead of doing so with mockery.
ares
11mo ago
Yudkowsky mentioned Madoka Magica fanfiction To The Stars as being the best science fiction to predict the future of drone warfare. I liked Madoka Magica, so figured I'd give it a try. As you may see from the fanfiction.net link, it's 910,487 words, which is roughly 10 novels worth of prose. I use Calibre to manage my ebook library, and it has a plugin to download from fanfiction.net, so I downloaded the whole thing and sent it to my Kindle. I then spent about 3 weeks feverishly devouring the whole thing, only to get to the end and discover that it's not finished, and the author writes at a snail's pace. It wasn't until chapter 65/70 when I even considered he might not wrap up all the loose ends. The lesson for me is to use AO3, where it's much clearer that the work is unfinished. I've been moping around and having trouble starting another nonfiction book after that letdown. I really, really, enjoyed the work, but hate the idea of having to come back to it every few years to find out how the story is progressing.
I'm nearing the end of Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. I can't recall a book that better captures the mentality of fighter pilots, the politics of the military, and the experience of wearing the uniform. The author isn't afraid to make bold claims, like "A performance report like this would normally kill your career" or "Nobody would dare talk to a General like that" (not actual quotes, but it was an audiobook and I don't want to scroll around to find specific examples). The only thing I disagree with in the entire book is the claim that promotion to Colonel, Boyd's final rank, is more difficult than the promotion to flag officer. Otherwise it's my top recommendation for fiction writers (or anyone) who want to understand the experience of being in the US military. I also recommend it to anyone who enjoyed The Pentagon Wars, since the dysfunction of the Air Force picking aircraft and Boyd's fight to get the right plane built is quite similar.
What are you reading?
ares
11mo ago
That does not match my predictions of social behavior or my reading of history. People do not pick sides based on which they view is more of a hypocrite; they pick sides mostly based on what's socially acceptable. The Peace of Westphalia was not negotiated because the Catholics "turned the other cheek" so much that the Protestants felt guilty. It was because everyone got tired of the killing.
The responses to StickerMule's milquetoast post-assassination-attempt call for unity tell me that the left is not close to being tired of the metaphorical killing.
ares
11mo ago
As an example. this popular twitter post was retweeted by Elon and seems to be resonating with many people. Of note, other twitter users argue she's just engagement farming because she's posting so frequently, but some people are just weird and actually do that.
ares
7mo ago
There could be benefits. Some immediate thoughts about challenges:
The current military procurement process is adversarial: the government creates the most detailed and specific requirements they can, and companies bid as low as they can to meet those requirements. So if a company can find an oversight or shortcut to deliver something shitty while still meeting the letter of the requirements, they (mostly) will. If, in the process of designing and delivering a new ship, its discovered that a new radar is 6" bigger than was originally planned so it has to be moved, you better believe that the company making the ship will get extra time and money in order to make that change, with rules for changes and delays and payments clearly spelled out in the contract. Those incentives don't translate well to commercial shipyards and designs. For a company like Maersk, they can develop a business relationship with their shipbuilders. They can say "Yeah, shipbuilder A is cheaper, but they're assholes to work with on maintenance. It'll be better to pay a little more to go with shipbuilder B who really takes care of us." When the government/military awards contracts based on existing relationships, it's called corruption (unless someone writes a detailed report proving the cost/benefit of shipbuilder B, which does happen, but is a lot more work than just doing the obviously correct thing).
It's still a very small market for military ships compared to commercial ones, so there will always be a bit of a premium there.
Military contracts are frequently political, with Senators and Congressmen ensuring those jobs and dollars go to their constituents. Changing this will be painful.
Even if everything was public spec, the military still has an incentive to maintain control and security over the entire building process. You can have innocuous objects planted in sensitive areas that may give foreign militaries valuable information. It's difficult enough to prevent Sailors from doing stupid, intelligence-leaking things when the design and building of ships is mostly controlled. I'm reminded of the German mathematicians' response when they discovered the Allies had broken the Enigma machine: they knew it was possible, but they were surprised we had gone through the trouble to do so. The incentives to sabotage or infiltrate US Navy ships are so great that I can't even imagine all the crazy schemes foreign militaries would try if they had more access to the construction process. If you mildly irradiate some of the steel used to build the ships hull, maybe you could detect that radiation signature at the ports it has visited in order to get a better understanding of US ship movements, deployment schedules, and maintenance periods. Subtly reducing the quality of some bolts or welds in key locations could cause major damage (and therefore loss of operational capability) long after a ship is delivered.
A known trend in military procurement is that America is addicted to cramming as many missions into each platform as possible. The Pentagon Wars focuses on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, but I think it's worse for ships. Why was my landing ship, dock doing oil platform defense in the Gulf of Oman? Because we could, and we were already over there. Does it make sense to design amphibious troop carriers so that they can also prevent hostile insurgents from sabotaging oil platforms on the open ocean? Fuck if I know. Doesn't seem like it should, but that's how America does it, and we do have the best Navy in the world. Commercial shipbuilders can iterate and improve on straightforward things like reliably carrying cargo, but US warships need to do a bunch of everything. A tradeoff between, for example, an additional missile launcher versus a better stealth profile is a political decision as much as an engineering one.
The US is also very sensitive about naval losses. Strategically, we've known for a long while that lots of small ships win against fewer big ships, but there's no way that we'd accept losing a missile boat and a few sailors as a matter of course, nevermind sending sailors on suicide missions. So we can't even really optimize our fleet for winning a near-peer naval engagement. The free market, in turn, can't really optimize for something when there isn't a consistent view of what's "better".
Again, there could be benefits to moving to a more "open source" shipbuilding model, but there would also be plenty of challenges, and I don't think it's clear how the scales would tip until we start hammering out the details.
ares
9mo ago
Good advice. Children are unrelenting like nothing I've ever experienced. I made a list and pinned it to a screen on my phone of reasons the baby could be crying, because when you're sleep deprived it's impossible to recall:
- Sleep/tired
- Dirty diaper
- Gas
- More food/milk
- Bored/play
- Hot
- Cold
- Bath time
Using this list saved us many hours of crying with realizations like "oh, yeah, he's still wearing his warm pajamas"
ares
11mo ago
My conspiracy theory story, told quickly because I really should be working right now: I was assigned to Carrier Air Wing Five. While we were deployed, our CAG (HMFIC) was quickly and quietly relieved due to "loss of confidence". All the officers were pulled into a conference room and we held a quick ceremony where DCAG (number 2 in command) assumed responsibilities for the Wing. Never saw CAG again.
It turns out that he was sleeping with the base XO's wife. They were both married with kids. Infidelity is a common reason for getting fired in the military (perhaps the last place in America where that's true). But immediately after the change of command, the rumor mill was still a little unsure about the specifics and I wanted to know more, because when you're stuck in cramped quarters with the same people for long periods of time, gossip is high entertainment. So I googled. And whoa boy did I find some conspiracy theories. My favorite was that he was relieved because the US was going to attack North Korea in a week, and the CAG wouldn't do it, so they replaced him with someone who would.
As you may recall, the US has not launched an unprovoked air strike on North Korea. The conspiracy theorists were just throwing shit to the wall and hoping some stuck.
I like this post, and I think it's important to understand what has happened and what is possible for a US conspiracy. But it's also important to keep a very strong bayesian prior that each particular conspiracy theory is incorrect.
ares
1yr ago
My grandfather was a bomber pilot stationed on the Aleutian Islands during World War II. With not much in the way of local entertainment, the USO on base would provide what they could. This included a lot of books, and my grandfather either bought or stole the 20th anniversary anthology of a popular periodical that remained in his library until he died. I have a deep love of old books, but that apparently runs in my family, because upon the death of my grandmother (who outlived her husband by 10 years) this anthology was one of only two old books from their library I was able to claim.
In it, there's a wonderful article titled "My Five Best Dinner Companions".
Here is an interesting thought: You and I will give a dinner tonight, and our guests shall be five men we choose, out of all who have ever lived.
I love how, in 1924, le petit caporal is the obvious choice they feel a need to dismiss immediately. They pick Socrates, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Pepys, Montaigne, and Lincoln. Read the short article here.
Myself, any time I am given hypothetical time travel powers, I feel a moral obligation to pick Homer so we can get the missing poems from the Epic Cycle. If my sole purpose was for my own enjoyment, I'd pick Robert Heinlein, and talk with him about our alma mater, politics and space travel. For the sake of an entertaining dinner amongst my friends, though, the only option is Samuel Clemens. That is to say, if anyone wasn't entertained by Mark Twain at dinner, I wouldn't count them as my friend.
Who would you pick?
ares
8mo ago
I'm trying to come up with a joke about Trump choosing to go out in a "hyperbolic" chamber/suicide pod, but I can't quite get there. "We really have the best pods, don't we, folks? This isn't just ending, it's ending with a flair, with class."
ares
9mo ago
Advice from a dad of 3 for where you are right now:
- Don't tell family and friends until you get a heartbeat. Miscarriages are surprisingly common before that point.
- Strongly consider getting a doula. She'll be your support and counselor even when all the hospital staff are out taking care of other patients. My sister-in-law's doula resuscitated her daughter when she stopped breathing and the nurses were all out of the room. Our doula had us lay out a birth plan covering how we wanted to handle various contingencies; not having to think about all the little (and big) decisions while actively giving birth was really nice. It's also reassuring to turn to someone you trust and ask "is this normal?", without the feeling like they're answering how hospital policy and insurance require them to answer. Lastly, while I'm usually pretty good with words, for our first kid I said the absolutely stupidest things trying to support my wife during labor; my doula was able to calm my wife and give me hints to shut the fuck up for a while.
- My wife found a moms' club that was great to be part of. They set up a "meal train" to cook/deliver food through the first 2 weeks after the birth, which was nice. It also helped with play dates for babies, adult socialization, getting ideas for gadgets, etc. We started using a bottle warmer machine but seeing someone else just microwave it and stir it thoroughly was one of those "duh, why didn't we think of that" moments. And we got to try a friend's expensive bouncer instead of the cheap one we'd started with.
- We put all our kids to sleep on their backs as recommended by the professionals. Here's a long thread to consider: https://x.com/ruthgracewong/status/1818895404542627881. If I could do it all over again, I'd probably try to convince my wife to put our kids on their bellies, which they clearly preferred.
ares
11mo ago
One of my favorite culture war book reviews is of Days of Rage, covering how left wing terrorists in the US were supported by groups like the National Lawyers’ Guild.
Having not lived through the Weather Underground and McCarthyism, I'm hesitant to say which side the shoe was on or how much it should inform our strategy for the current state of the culture war. I do remember 9/11 (I was standing deck watch at the Naval Academy) and the culture for the decade after that. Criticism of the war effort was treated pretty harshly, and that was a time and topic of right wing (RW) dominance. But I also recall gay marriage ballot initiatives failing across the country (an example of RW dominance) until the 14th amendment got stretched around it (LW victory). And we still had Superman embarrassed to be an American enough to change his "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" into "Truth, Justice, and all that stuff" in the 2006 movie Superman Returns (LW dominance). Christianity was never protected or sacred (LW dominance). I recall more collaboration and respect between Republicans and Democrats in Congress (less hostility in the culture war). I'm surely biased, but it seems to me that "elections have consequences" defectbot has been exceptionally effective over the past decade or two at pushing the pendulum to a far left position with much higher amplitude/height than the right swing it was returning from. All of which adds up to limited utility in looking to history while swapping "right" for "left".
Is there anyone here with book recommendations about the culture swings of history, in ways that would inform right wing decisions today?
ares
11mo ago
Would you show me some historical examples of when your choice 1 was successful? Mitt Romney is the favorite counterexample of how that strategy doesn't work here in practice. I don't think Gandhi is a good analogy, since the modern American right lacks many of the factors favorable to him (Britain's economic and military weakness after WWII, a shared Indian cultural identity, international pressure against colonialism, Britain's willingness to negotiate).
ares
7mo ago
And this one is just fun: https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-ships
Hadn't seen that one. Amusing. Having served on a landing ship, dock, which is very similar to the landing platform dock discussed in the article, I will say that the history of the USS San Antonio is pretty average in terms of mechanical issues and cost overruns. My ship had similar problems. I think they have probably gotten enough of the kinks out of the Arleigh Burke Destroyers (74 active ones right now) where they'll have 1/2 to 1/3 of the issues that small run ships like the San Antonio class (13 ships) will have. Still an order of magnitude more than an equivalent sized civilian ship. The US Navy tried to take all the lessons and technology they could from the civilian shipbuilders, and the resulting Littoral Combat Ships were a complete clusterfuck. The automations and efficiencies never really materialized, and instead you had a Frigate-sized ship with 1/3 the crew and 2-3x the number of systems that would break down.
There are some valid reasons why warships will be more expensive than cargo ships. Generally, you don't have to design a cargo ship to be able to still deliver its cargo after getting hit by a missile. There are a lot of "Program of Record" systems that are developed (mostly) independently from the actual ship (definitely lots of them made by companies directly competing with the shipbuilder) that all have to get integrated. And the market for warships is much smaller than for commercial vessels. Everyone knows about the bloated and corrupt US military procurement process, and it's very difficult to trim the fat because 1) we can't stop or even significantly slow down procurement without unacceptable risks to military readiness, and 2) many very smart and wealthy people's entire job is to make sure the current system continues to give them and their companies contracts, and they do that by complicating the entire processes while obfuscating their shortcomings. Anyone claiming there are simple solutions is either a liar or an idiot.
Still, it's great to contrast what the free market gets you versus what comes out of that military procurement process.
ares
8mo ago
Pawn stars meme: Best I can do is bomb threats from Russia to Georgia.
No, our Georgia this time.
ares
8mo ago
In the US military, there's a tradition of senior leaders serving food for a single meal, like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Example 3-Star Admiral serving Thanksgiving dinner. In my 20-year Navy career, I have never heard anyone be critical of someone's choice to participate in this sort of event. I heard (and contributed to) whining as a Junior Officer because our CO decided the entire Wardroom would be doing it, but in the end we all did it and enjoyed ourselves. I have heard multiple sailors complaining that their CO didn't do it. I have never even heard of anyone be an asshole to a senior leader serving the food, although punishments are pretty quick for unjustifiable assholery to food service workers even when they aren't Admirals.
But even when people aren't being dicks to you, I will testify that it's quite humbling to be serving food to your entire command. It's good and valuable to get your head out of the big - often intangible - problems of your regular senior job, and focus on all the little things that have to come together in order to get plates of food for a stream of sailors. It's humbling, in my experience, going from worrying about writing official memos or following up on a logistics request, into just having to deal with ensuring that there's another tray of mashed potatoes ready for when we run out of this one: you absolutely can fail at the latter even if you have a Masters degree and 70 people reporting to you. It reminds you that for all your skill and power, you're still beholden to basic reality. It brings into sharp focus how no matter how brilliantly the potatoes were ordered and shipped, no matter how cutthroat the price negotiations were, if you don't do the basics of cutting them up and putting them into a mixer, cooking them, and having them ready to go when they're needed, then its all for naught.
If human nature hasn't changed too much, I would bet Saturnalia gave the masters a similar humbling experience.
ares
11mo ago
"Pick sides" in this context is "we should get our enemies fired from their jobs" vs "we should abstain from doing that". Apologies if that wasn't clear.
Regardless, that does not match my predictions of social behavior or my reading of history. From the standpoint of the right, the choices are:
- Your proposal, where the right takes the high road and keeps losing the culture war until they cease to exist, or
- Double down, expect the left to double down, and let it keep getting worse until both sides agree to stop
ares
8mo ago
There are plenty of stories of wildly successful people who were failures in their early to mid lives. There are almost no things that are too late to turn around.
Winter in Alaska is tough, though. Someone in the Rational spaces (maybe Eliezer) noticed that his SAD light was rather, well, sad. He bought a ton more of them to actually get lumens equivalent to daylight everywhere in his living room, and it turned to be all he needed. So if the SAD light helps you, but not enough, why not try more dakka?
ares
11mo ago
You would describe the end of WWII hostilities between the US and Japan as "no, I'm not going to hit them back, instead I'm going to try to appeal to their better nature and end this"? I was hoping for an example with more parallels between the current left/right power dynamic, showing that the underdog could expect a fair resolution by taking the high road.
JD Vance was on the Joe Rogan podcast, and references Scott's Gay Rites are Civil Rites. It happens at 23:45. As TracingWoodgrains says, the Eye of Sauron approaches.
I apologize if I can't add much more insight. Are there going to be left wing smear articles explaining the evil Rationalists that have the ear of JD Vance? Or is there so much chaos right now around the election that this will get passed over, widely unremarked upon?
Threats to our community aside, it's pretty awesome that a VP candidate referenced one of Scott's articles.
Edit: Andy Ngo is boosting this part of the interview, focusing on the trans children discussion, without commenting on the article.
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