ccc
1yr ago
We already have the horny gene. But we could have higher time preference or a stronger paternal love for children or greater disgust for gamers and wine aunts. Or maybe just a stronger proclivity to religious thinking.
The selection process can be cultural too, e.g. subpopulations with memes resisting modern anti-fertility technology, such as the Amish or fundamentalist Christians/Jews/Muslims out breeding all the atheists and feminists.
A lot the drugs athletes take under PED bans right now are just testosterone but re-synthesized to avoid detection. There's a lot of ways to get T levels up, and the safest ways to do it are also the most studied and easiest to detect. In this way, PED bans actually incentivize athletes to take riskier drugs.
People like the narrative idea of a Faustian bargain so much they assume it's always true that there's one on offer. But it's possible if under a scheme where PED's are allowed that the rational choice for athletes is sticking to basic steroid cycles and blood doping that gets them 95% of the way there and avoid the riskier experimental stuff that might not even help.
ccc
1yr ago
I dislike utilitarians in large part because of this very line of thinking. Those questions are far too hard to answer. You presume to know the answer, that the world would necessarily be worse, and then use that assumption to justify elite control.
ccc
8mo ago
ccc
1yr ago
EA is the subset of rationalism that takes utilitarianism Very Seriously.
There's much less overlap with TheMotte specifically, which seems pretty critical of utilitarianism. One of the main criticisms is this exact failure mode: because the numbers are all made up, a smart enough person can justify doing whatever it is they wanted to do anyway. "Why yes, of course I'm defrauding thousands of people, because I can better direct their money towards things which satisfy my utility function such as..."
ccc
1yr ago
ccc
1yr ago
Whether or not the woman is willing to stick it out is clearly going to be influenced by how good the alternative seems.
Almost everyone at some point in a relationship has niggling doubts and frustrations, and handing out a golden parachute is a clear incentive to turn small issues that could've been resolved into divorces. Sure you can dream up a fantasy world where cultural forces overpower economic ones, but why not grab at every weapon you can?
Building consumer desktops is more tedious and time consuming than it is a tremendous headache. If you can't figure out how to put together silicon LEGO then you're the perfect market for the local computer shop's services. They're not seedy but they are more or less charging an idiot tax. If your ego or wallet can't handle paying that then spend a few hours on /r/buildapc to figure it out.
Also it doesn't even sound like you have any reason to upgrade. Is any game you're playing not running at smooth 60fps?
ccc
1yr ago
Left unexplored is the question why? Why do they do it? Why do parents send their kids to idol auditions and camps? Why do producers do all this complicated logistical managerial work for slim profit margins with high risk? Why do so many young Koreans sell their body and soul to this machine?
Everyone involved knows the game. They know it's so insanely cutthroat that you'll never get rich out of it. So the motivator must be something other than money.
ccc
1yr ago
Your solution to being an autistic shut in is to send yourself even further away from civilization and become a hermit.
This has "desperately avoiding facing your actual problems" written all over.
Maybe try working up the courage to join a casual sports team before killing yourself.
ccc
1yr ago
There's a meme in software eng of the 10x programmer who does the work of 10 normal ones. In my experience, these people exist. But the 10x is more that the average programmer is lazy to a fault, i.e. the 1x is such a low standard that 10x isn't really all that.
So the answer is that the 10x are grossly underpaid while all the 1x are overpaid. And there's a lot more of the latter.
ccc
2mo ago
A rather banal way to get patients to remember medical advice is to... actually write it down. Memory is fickle and people overestimate how well they remember details.
Always shocks me that I can go for a 15 minute check up where the doctor will say 10+ things I'm supposed to remember in detail and none of it is written down.
Doctors writing down their medical advice also solves the problem of patients lying (perhaps not even consciously) about what the doctor said, which is unfortunately common.
Got 15/20. Don't really know what criteria I was using. Softer faces are more leftist?
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