campfireSmores
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User ID: 539
campfireSmores
1yr ago
Bezos's 2016 letter to shareholders:
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2016-letter-to-shareholders (read the whole thing, it's interesting)
On the subject of "Escalate and Disagree"
"This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment.
Note what this example is not: it’s not me thinking to myself “well, these guys are wrong and missing the point, but this isn’t worth me chasing.” It’s a genuine disagreement of opinion, a candid expression of my view, a chance for the team to weigh my view, and a quick, sincere commitment to go their way. And given that this team has already brought home 11 Emmys, 6 Golden Globes, and 3 Oscars, I’m just glad they let me in the room at all!"
I like to imagine that Bezos understood the difficulties inherent in this project. Or at least some of them. Maybe I'll write a Bezos fanfic one day.
Also: whether or not to make a LotR TV show sounds like a decision for a prediction market to make. "Conditional on us making a LotR TV show, will it be a success?"
Additional discussion topic: what IP-driven tv show should Amazon have made instead?
campfireSmores
1yr ago
Let's talk about infant male circumcision. Common in the United States, considered beastly in most European countries. But they don't spend much time criticizing the United States about it, perhaps due to fear of being called anti-semitic.
Reasons not to do it:
The foreskin has functions
Bad for the infant's brain due to inadequate aenesthesia
Complications ranging from meatal stenosis to more grisly and life-changing outcomes
Etc etc
Anyway, besides just introducing a topic I believe is underdiscussed both on the Motte and in general, my questions are this:
How do you rate the importance of this issue relative to commonly discussed culture war stuff? If it is true that circumcision is a serious violation akin to rape, then it seems very very important.
and
Does anyone on this board support routine infant circumcision, or is this thread just going to be full of a lot of devil's advocate stuff?
campfireSmores
1yr ago
I should point out that these sort of restrictions often end up killing people by causing inaction, as well as saving lives by causing inaction.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored
Hunter Biden was employed in highly paid positions despite being a very unstable guy. Joe Biden was a partner or possible partner in Hunter's business deals. Hunter Biden wrote in the emails insisting that most discussion of Joe Biden's involvement happen not in writing. We know that Hunter said that Joe Biden was going to be paid for his involvement in at least one business venture, although we don't know if that deal was ever completed. We don't know that it wasn't completed either. There may be other Joe-Hunter joint business ventures that weren't featured in the emails because of the aformentioned desire for them to be not-in-writing.
It seems like Hunter was getting money from these companies in exchange for favors from the VP of the US.
One such favor:
Concurrently, Biden was involving himself in ousting the Ukranian General Prosecutor for alleged corruption, an action that benefited Burisma.
"how Biden could justify expending so much energy as Vice President demanding that the Ukrainian General Prosecutor be fired, and why the replacement — Yuriy Lutsenko, someone who had no experience in law; was a crony of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko; and himself had a history of corruption allegations — was acceptable if Biden’s goal really was to fight corruption in Ukraine rather than benefit Burisma or control Ukrainian internal affairs for some other objective."
"Third, the media rush to exonerate Biden on the question of whether he engaged in corruption vis-a-vis Ukraine and Burisma rested on what are, at best, factually dubious defenses of the former Vice President. Much of this controversy centers on Biden's aggressive efforts while Vice President in late 2015 to force the Ukrainian government to fire its Chief Prosecutor, Viktor Shokhin, and replace him with someone acceptable to the U.S., which turned out to be Yuriy Lutsenko. These events are undisputed by virtue of a video of Biden boasting in front of an audience of how he flew to Kiev and forced the Ukrainians to fire Shokhin, upon pain of losing $1 billion in aid."
"But two towering questions have long been prompted by these events, and the recently published emails make them more urgent than ever: 1) was the firing of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor such a high priority for Biden as Vice President of the U.S. because of his son's highly lucrative role on the board of Burisma, and 2) if that was not the motive, why was it so important for Biden to dictate who the chief prosecutor of Ukraine was?
The standard answer to the question about Biden's motive -- offered both by Biden and his media defenders -- is that he, along with the IMF and EU, wanted Shokhin fired because the U.S. and its allies were eager to clean up Ukraine, and they viewed Shokhin as insufficiently vigilant in fighting corruption."
I'm having difficulty summarizing. Just read the article.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
Elon didn't walk back his twitter purchase out of bipolarity, he did it because his net worth crashed when the tech stocks did. No mental illness required as an explanation.
In my opinion.
It's election season at Wikipedia. If you want to ask ArbCom candidates about whether or not they think Wikipedia is biased and vote accordingly, you can. It might simply cause the most die-hard progressive ideologues to be elected in the short run, but in the long run it could shed light on something not often discussed. What was that thing where the Wikimedia foundation was giving grants to some CRT-type charity that people thought was highly dubious? I think Yudkowsky retweeted about it. You could ask about that.
Edit: of course, whether or not these candidates care about AGI X-risk is more important than their politics.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
There's currently a Request for Comment on the talk page for the Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People regarding this issue.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
Well ultimately one's reaction to OP's story rests partially on how much you take his description at face value.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
Well there are other ways to hurt a brain besides lowering IQ. Neuroticism, Autism, etcetera.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
Possible solution: Say "I'm pretty sure X will happen. Let's say 80% sure." Sounds very unassuming that way.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
I also think the people who valorize prison rape are doing a bad thing.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
Most podcasts are not 100% gold. It's a weekly unscripted thing, bad jokes slip in. Shane Gillis has said the joke wasn't one of his good ones, offensiveness aside.
I'm not saying you have to like the podcast, just keep that in mind.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
At a Q&A I asked Scott Alexander if he was going to circumcise his kid and said he was in favor of it and his wife was against it. I'll be honest, I'm kind of shaken. I'm sometimes able to argue persuasively against male genital mutilation, but I wasn't on that day. I sort of made a fool of myself, I guess. It's a painful subject for me.
It's also just kind of shocking and dismaying, because I think that noticing that male genital mutilation is bad is something almost anyone with basic rationality skills should probably be able to notice, and he didn't. Now I want to ask Yudkowsky. I'll choose my words more carefully.
He mentioned the adversarial collaboration on SSC on the subject, which to me had a lot of obvious holes and flaws in it.
Purposes of the foreskin:
-
Prevents the covered skin from contacting clothing. Clothing contact desensitizes the penis through a process called keratinization. If you're circumcised, you'll notice that the circumcision scar and the places below the scar are what's sensitive, and everything above that isn't very sensitive. That's not normal.
-
The foreskin has densely packed nerve endings.
-
The foreskin provides lubrication, both through natural lubricant and through a gliding motion.
-
Protective against health conditions including meatal stenosis.
I can also rebut the purported positive outcomes of circumcision, and talk about the risks of the procedure. I have videos of men with botched circumcisions talking about their suffering.
I don't really want to get into a debate about circumcision here. I just wanted to provide an example of what someone arguing the point looks like.
My question is this: Is anyone else shocked/saddened that Scott is pro-cutting?
campfireSmores
1yr ago
I'm skeptical that the real IQ of Arabs is 80. Arabs where? Arabs in Israel? Also... Sephardic jews have an IQ of 92? I'm skeptical of that as well.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
One factor that should be acknowledged is that "We are alone. We are not represented anywhere" is a painful thought to have.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
His/her wife is Russian, and it seems like she was leading the operation. She even had to overcome some hesitancies from the officer, apparently.
Truly a sinister people, those Russians! (jk)
campfireSmores
1yr ago
That he even lasted 4 days at that level of shitstorm in a cultural place so far behind the lines is remarkable
Not that remarkable. He got into SNL on the strength of his stand-up and his audition. There wasn't any vetting process where the producers checked out his podcast. I bet there's a vetting process now though!
campfireSmores
1yr ago
This would be a wakeup call for me if I thought all aspiring rationalists were operating at a level of rationalism too high to dig themselves into a hole like this, but I did not in fact have such a high opinion of this community (which I do like very much).
campfireSmores
1yr ago
I bought Alan Moore's new book of short stories and so far I'm not that into it. It's rare for me to not like anything Moorish. But I bought another book Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man by Steven Alpert and I like it a lot. Alpert is the highest ranking non-Japanese guy at Studio Ghibli and he's got lots of interesting stories about Japanese business culture and stuff. Did you know that most non-Japanese men speak Japanese like a woman? According to the book it's because most Japanese language teachers are women.
Also, here's the rationalist steam group, if you're interested:
campfireSmores
1yr ago
Well this seems like a good time to do the standard rationalist technique "what evidence could convince you otherwise".
What evidence could convince you that infant circumcision reduces sexual pleasure?
Because it seems to me like once you understand what the foreskin does and how sex is different without it, how could it not?
campfireSmores
1yr ago
I see a lot of people get indicted and convincted for simple words, stuff that would be obviously and uncontroversally protected speech in the US. That bothers me.
There are other things. Banning homeschooling, banning yawaras, etc.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
I'd rather protect people by preventing them from investing than preventing people by silencing them. dath ilan (yudkowsky's fictional alternate earth) has a licensing scheme where you need to pass a test before you can invest.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
Well I think it's fine to borgify characters that no one on earth cares about, like the protagonist of Comix Zone. They're also developing Toejam and Earl and Space Channel 5 games, btw.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
^LOL, I don't know what to say about that. I can only hope they get what they want.
Laughing at people protesting against tyranny is cruel and small-minded. In my opinion.
A model of 3D printed rifle called the FGC-9 (which stands for F*** Gun Control) is being used by rebels fighting against the authoritarian genocidal military junta in Myanmar which regained power after a military coup deposed the democratically elected leader in 2021. If that's not enough, the government of Myanmar is not at all shy about killing civilians, from what I've heard.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/guns-are-being-3d-printed-myanmar-199401
https://observers.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20220114-3d-printed-weapons-myanmar-rebels
Apparently they've got 3D printers set up in guerilla jungle hideouts. The creator of the FGC-9 was a young German-Kurdish man named Jstark who died recently, possibly of a heart condition.
My thoughts: It's sad that some progressive organizations might be reluctant to bring positive attention to the rebels or the tools they use because it arguably hurts their cause or something.
If I was a guy like Jstark or Cody Wilson, and I was concerned about PR, I might say something truthful but strategic like "the most important thing to me is getting these files somewhere where they can't be taken down and where they can be accessed by anyone, because that's the only way for me to help rebels like these. I care about the downsides of making these guns available, but I've calculated things and it is greatly overshadowed by the upside." Or something. I didn't phrase that well.
Edit: A cleaner way to say it: "the moral benefit of 3D-printed guns to citizens living under brutal authoritarian dictatorships in places like Myanmar is so great that the harm caused to the rest of the world would need to be truly massive in order to outweigh it, and I do not believe it is so massive, if it is indeed a net harm to the wellbeing of other countries."
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