cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
2yr ago
I was always surprised and a little confused that the "bat soup" theory was labelled the non-racist theory.
cjet79
2yr ago
Partial Mod-Hat: If I had seen this first it would have been at least a one day ban. Intentionally violating a rule and not being punished for it makes the rule meaningless. I would have preferred to make an example of a post like this, rather than just allowing it with a light warning. For anyone thinking of pulling this in the future, please take note that OP's lack of a ban is from Luck rather than official policy. End of partial mod-hat
Thoughts on some things:
The Crime of living under an Administrative State
The underlying "crime" seems dumb. It is a result of an overactive administrative state. Its exactly the type of reason why overactive administrative states are evil. There are hundreds of thousands of rules, and a single mistake is enough justification to wage a legal war. Two mistakes in close enough proximity can get mashed together to more than double the consequences. The question we should ask is, can someone pay off their mistress to keep quiet? If yes, end of story. If no, then Hollywood watch out. All the complaints about how the money might have been mislabeled are administrative state bullshit. Why should I need to label how my money (or my businesses' money) is spent for the administrative state? If Trump had labelled the expense "payoff to stormy Daniels" do we have any expectation that the administrative state would be happy, and wouldn't do something like conveniently "leaking" that detail to the press?
John Edwards, Campaign Finance
One of the "rebuttals" to this administrative state unfairness, is that the unfairness was pointed the other direction a decade ago. John Edwards got in trouble for using donations to cover up an affair. Here is the problem, Campaign Finance laws are blatantly unconstitutional. They clearly violate the First Amendment. Campaign finance survives the court system because judges are smart enough to realize that those laws are in place to give legitimacy to the US government. And the actual job of every judge is to hold up the legitimacy of the government, ruling on court cases is merely their means of accomplishing that goal. Campaign finance laws are also always doomed to failure. You can't take money out of politics when politics is so wrapped up in the economy. Anyways, a decade ago when the Obama administration was still getting its legs under itself, parts of the administrative state were still controlled by Neo-Con types. Its not a surprise they used some lawfare to go after a Democratic politician. People here either seem to have short memories, or they've lived shorter lives than me. The post-9/11 period of government, up until about 2010 was absolutely filled with shady things being done by the government that seemed to benefit the Neo-Con agenda. In the exact same way that the opposite is happening today.
State vs State Lawfare
The DeSantis refusal to assist in arrest is interesting. It speaks to a coming problem facing the American legal system. If it hasn't happened already, it soon will happen that there things that are crimes in one state, and in other states NOT doing that thing will be a crime. Trans issues for kids are already splitting that way. The NY attorney is currently going after Trump. Meanwhile Missouri and some other states are going after Fauci. I happen to hate Fauci, and I'm cheering on Missouri, but I'm part of the 'problem' of expanding lawfare. States with entrenched political interests can afford to wage lawfare on the national stage against their political opponents. No one else really has the resources to wage lawfare on the national stage, which Elites probably saw as a feature rather than a bug.
There are also cases of states weaponizing the constitution against the federal government. It might have been Missouri as well, but they passed a law a while back saying that it was Illegal for any state law enforcement agents to enforce unconstitutional federal gun bans. There were a lot of details to the law that made it look like it was basically a setup for a perfect legal challenge against a federal gun law. Coincidentally gun laws have not been getting passed as often lately, so I guess this law hasn't been tripped up yet.
There are "sanctuary" cities. Of various types of sanctuary. Initially for immigration. Now other things that cities don't want to enforce just aren't enforced.
The next Civil (court) War
It is worth thinking about what the end state of all this lawfare will look like. I don't think it actually leads to a hot war with bullets flying. Most of the court cases and topics end up being so dumb and boring that people can barely grab onto what is happening. Instead I think it ends in gridlock. Federal and State courts clogged with cases of lawfare that drag on for many many years. The Supreme Court unable to break the gridlock, because they are a part of the lawfare as well, and their reputation as non-partisan has been damaged too badly. Bureaucratic agencies unable to enforce any of their edicts on suddenly unwilling and uncooperative states. A president would have to call in the troops to start enforcing federal bureaucratic mandates, otherwise state LE just plays a game of arrest and release of any bureaucrats that step on their territory. But even the troops aren't too effective ... after all the issue is going to go to a local court with a local judge presiding, and a favorable local jury of peers.
The way out
Courts have a letter of the law vs spirit of the law problem. We have tried a system of enforcing the letter of the law for the past century. I think it ends in the gridlock scenario outlined above. Laws aren't mathematical enough to all coexist nice and peacefully with one another. There are conflicts, discrepancies, and gaping holes all over. The court system has been papering over those problems for as long as they can. But everyone is starting to see the problems. Trump, as always, is just a catalyst. No one has even bothered asking what spirit of the law Trump has broken. They went straight to finding the tiny letters that he might have broken.
I think the way out will require a great reset of court systems. Possibly with everyone getting their own AI lawyers. Or possibly a system that doesn't require any lawyers. Courts will need to re-establish themselves as bastions of fairness and justice. Rather than just as battlefield locations for lawfare. The longer the period of gridlock or legal failure, the more likely it will be that "Courts" come out looking/feeling/being named something completely different. Courts will have to focus on spirit of the law. Where people that don't violate a single law might still get prosecuted, because they so obviously violated the spirit. Or where people that broke a million tiny elements of the law get off completely free, because they weren't doing anything that actually violated the purpose of the laws.
cjet79
11mo ago
Politics is the Mind Killer Changer
Yudowsky wrote an Politics is the Mind-Killer on less wrong back in 2007 on this topic. For an article with the supposed purpose of convincing people ... it kinda sucks at that goal.
To read it uncharitably:
- It starts with an implied comparison to cavemen and that people engaged in political discussions are succumbing to baser instincts.
- Then it suggests how you can trick people on a political point by using history.
- The next paragraph implies the politically infected are akin to mindless raging warmongers, or literal zombies.
- There is another example comparing the consumption of politics to fatties that can't control their sugar intake.
- Finally, it ends with an appeal to be less political if possible. But no, you don't have to be as apolitical as those ascetic whackos over at wikipedia (boy that part didn't age well).
Perhaps the biggest problem with the article is that there is a baked in assumption: that the purpose of the mind is for rationality. Once the mind has been touched by politics it is changed into an irrational thing, and thus it has been "killed" or deprived of its main purpose. This is exactly backwards. The mind was built for politics, language, and social games. Humans have taken this purpose built machine dedicated to politics and managed to make it do other things like math and rationality. And noticeably, these other things are very hard for most people to do. While politics is a mixture of fun, addicting, and often easy for even "idiots" to grasp.
The Drug of Politics
Switching gears, back to charitable. I've always loved the idea of "politics as the mind-killer". Because it so neatly fits my own experience. I was part of the Ron Paul rEVOLution in 2007. I remember sitting outside in 20 degree weather guarding a Ron Paul Blimp from anyone that might want to come by and cut the line, or hopefully just answering friendly people that had questions. I saw the phone survey polls that he wasn't anywhere close to winning the nomination, and I didn't ever really believe them, even when they were born out by the actual primary elections. I was filled with so much hope and copium. Him losing felt like a physical blow.
I came out of that experience like a drug user coming down from a haze. Why had I been so dumb and stupid? Why had I ignored good data? Why had I spent so much time arguing with people to try and convince them? Why did I think I was winning arguments instead of just exhausting the people around me?
The answer was available online in the same sorts of places I'd found Ron Paul. I'd been "mind-killed". I'd gotten very very high on the drug of politics, and I'd never had a strong hit before so I had no tolerance built up. All rationality had left me. So I swung hard in the opposite direction. I became the kind of abolitionist that was a recovering alcoholic. I berated and argued with people about politics being the mind-killer and did so far harder than I ever stubbed for Ron Paul. The irony was lost on me.
An Illusive middle truth
Over a decade later and I've mellowed a lot. I shake my head at the overly enthusiastic supporters of this or that politician. But I'm not gonna say anything to them. I'm not playing the part of a wide eyed DARE presenter yelling "never do it even once!" instead I'm now in the role of the "exhausted" participant that those young operatives get to "win" arguments with.
I don't know if either side is correct, I don't even feel certain that there is some kind of middle ground where a little bit of controlled politics is the way to go.
I'm only certain that politics changes us. Like going through puberty, seeing evil, having sex, your first child, or your first experience with death. You aren't the same afterwards. Once you've seen arguments as soldiers, or motives attached to every move its hard to go back. A conflict theory view of the world is pernicious and infectious, while mistake theory is fragile and hard to reassemble once broken. It places everyone in a prisoner's dilemma, where mistake theory is cooperating, and conflict theory is defecting.
I don't believe it with absolute certainty, but I am pretty sure that the changes wrought by politics are not for the best. Religion and philosophy have both sought to place some ground rules on politics and specifically how you treat other people. Because it is not hard to find examples throughout history of politics going far enough to get ugly and to turn into violence or war. This is a part of Yudowsky's article that is correct: politics is war by other means. But it is our attempt at a polite war, a war with rules and far less violence than actual war. Politics makes us worse, makes us uglier.
Scott has written of archipelego as utopia. It is noticeably a land that mostly tries to avoid politics altogether. The solution is not to argue over scarce resources, the solution is to infinitely subdivide an infinite pool of resources. This is where the necessity of politics becomes apparent. We don't live in that world of infinite resources. We have to figure out ways of subdividing finite resources. War and violence is the way of nature in figuring out the allocation of resources. Creatures eat each other to take another's resources. Politics is the human alternative. Our way of dividing scarce resources when we would otherwise use violence.
In that way politics is beautiful. It doesn't deserve the label of a mind killer. It was humanity's first triumph over nature, but it was such an early triumph that some of us mistake it as part of nature. However, I do not want to tear down the warning signs that so many have sought to erect. Politics will fundamentally change your mind. Most people who come down from the drug of politics don't have good things to say about it. Be ware of politics, but do not hate it.
cjet79
1yr ago
Could you summarize what she is saying? I'm just not big into watching political commentary.
cjet79
1yr ago
I don't think announcing the release of a covid vaccine days after the election was in any way illegal. It was probably enough to sway the election.
I don't think implying to major social media networks that the Hunter Biden laptop story was fake was illegal. It was probably enough to sway the election.
I don't think investigating Trump for nearly 3 years for collusion with Russia that ultimately turned out to be nothing was illegal. It was probably enough to sway the election.
I don't think freaking out over covid and insisting that the country completely shutdown and tank the economy was illegal. It was probably enough to sway the election.
None of these things were illegal, but they were all very very dirty and despicable. If they had just done one of them I might chalk it up to coincidence. But all of them happened, and other people can probably list their own examples. With so many events I strongly doubt they were all coincidences. I also say this as someone who never has and never would vote for Trump. I usually get sick of election politics about a year before the election. But I fully get why people have the unwavering sense that the election was stolen, while not having a single shred of "evidence" that applies to a court case.
cjet79
1mo ago
Great post, reminds me a bit of my parents marriage, which has thankfully and surprisingly survived the Trump years.
My mom: heavily pro-choice, bit of a hippy, microbiologist PhD, main breadwinner doing government contracting stuff, likes reading books about myers briggs personality, or deep getting in touch with your feelings type stuff. Sucks at making friends, only talks well with very close friends or family. Can be bossy and annoying unless too drunk. (cavalier culture)
My dad: redneck, carpenter (but doesn't make much money doing that these days), was barely too young to ever go to vietnam and was sad about that, weed and age have helped his anger issues, ocd, generally republican, thinks trump is funny but doesn't personally like him, loves voting for trump, hates political correctness, likes racist jokes and dropping the n-word. Makes and keeps friends easily. Easy for everyone to talk with, fun to be around. (border culture)
Idk I feel like there are multiple scenarios where both of them could have just gone a little further off the deep end on their respective sides and it would have been an end for the marriage. As much as they sort of sound like stereotypes at times (my dad being the redneck stereotype, and my mom being the PMC karen stereotype) they also have the awareness of why those sterotypes are bad and annoying. They both have friends that have fully crossed over into those stereotypes, friends who would never get along with my other parent.
I get along with all of them, both of my parents, and all the crazy friends of theirs that feel like walking stereotypes. I think you are in a somewhat similar spot as me. You are no one's outgroup and everyone's far-group. You might as well be living in a different country. I used to think that I'd just learned some social skills and had the right attitude of "I can't lose friends over politics, because my views are too weird and I will have no friends." But its really more on other people. Having enemies is usually exhausting. Smart, well adjusted people learn to keep their enemies in the hypothetical.
cjet79
2mo ago
I grew up in the 90's and 00's. I always had the sense that women did not enjoy sex and barely tolerated men. This somehow came up in a drunk conversation with my mother at some point and she was a bit horrified. "No I never told you that! Women like sex! Your dad and I..." I cut her off at that point, didn't need to hear more. But it feels pretty clear to me that I picked up this idea from media sources. And yet I can't point to a single particular example.
I can't imagine how things have gotten even worse since that time.
I do feel that putting the onus on parents to either raise better men or women is misplaced. I'd first turn to Hollywood or other culture makers and say "stop making such shitty culture". I have memories and can point to specific times when my parents took the right approach with me. My dad telling me that he was never willing to have sex with a woman he didn't want to have a kid with (he seemed to want kids though, so I don't know how much of a restriction that was), and him making jokes about not sticking your dick in crazy. My mother being concerned for my emotional well being after silly breakups in middle school, and her insisting on us watching a discovery channel show that was basically sex ed. Them telling their kids that they wanted grand babies, just not while we were in highschool or college. I remember them showing signs of affection towards each other, and forgiveness after they fought with one another.
TV shows and movies still managed to do a number on me, and on those around me. After all I can't count on how other kids are raised but I can usually count on them having a similar cultural soup they grew up in.
From a practical perspective applying the social responsibility to cultural producers also seems easier. It feels like they've weaseled out of that responsibility somehow. I'm happy to reward shows like Bluey that have good parental figures. But they seem like rare glowing exceptions instead of the rule.
Should we expect all parents to explain to their teen kids how Chani's love in Dune seems slightly off, or should we lean on Dennis with criticisms of the film that his interpretation of love sucks. Of course we can do both, but the latter seems fat more effective for the level of effort involved and reward expected.
cjet79
3mo ago
Or you end up with something like the Jones act and basically destroy the industry by making sure they never compete and they turn into parasites.
cjet79
3mo ago
It's partly that they flipped all the standards of evidence on their head.
Interventions were considered safe until proven otherwise. Masking young kids in school, widespread adoption of a novel medical treatment (MRNA "vaccines"), puberty blockers, etc.
Covid is basically a flu/cold virus. All intuitions about such things turned out to basically be correct. And there was good evidence that was true in 2020 but they spent nearly four more years dragging it on. Unless you were part of a BLM protest, and then things were fine.
Biology can often be weird and unintuitive I get that. But when it gets weird is when you need more evidence and research, not a political wall of silence saying "you are a bad person if you don't believe us".
I literally cannot imagine a non life threatening scenario where hormone therapies would be allowed for kids. Hormones are definitely one of those systems that we don't understand very well. We know that getting it wrong can even cause life threatening conditions. We correctly vilify anyone giving out steroids to teen athletes, this seems just as dangerous and permanent.
cjet79
10mo ago
Scott posted Lukianoff And Defining Cancel Culture. He takes one of the given definitions of cancel culture and tries to see how it applies to edge cases, and whether it makes sense as a definition. I thought the comments on the slatestarcodex reddit thread were pretty good. I tried to post a synthesis of the ideas I got while reading the comments:
Cancel culture is speaking about and coordinating your disassociation with a person.
You have the right to not associate with people. You should feel free to exercise that right when you personally notice them doing something you don't like.
To avoid being a part of cancel culture:
- If you choose to disassociate with someone you should not try and get others to pile on as well.
- If someone else notices a reason to disassociate with someone and tells you, then you should ignore that, or possibly try to mentally dismiss it like it is bad evidence presented to a court.
- Spread these two things as politeness norms, and resist attempts to undo them.
Supplemental section.
Applying these to Scott's examples:
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A1-A6 are not cancel culture. The actor is taking personal steps to change their association with someone they don't like.
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A7-A12 are cancel culture. The actor is trying to coordinate and spread their disassociation with someone.
The other ones are a bit more complex.
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B1-B2 The university admin isn't really the prime source of "cancel culture" in this example. It is the newspaper that is trying to publish a juicy story. I think the university admin is fine to resist as much as they feel comfortable resisting, but is not obligated to resist at all. The newspaper is bad, and you should cancel your subscription from that newspaper (and only tell the newspaper why you are cancelling).
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B3-B5 It is cancel culture to write the article and focus it on the grad student or any particular person as the problem. If you are able to anonymize the grad student and others involved then it is not very cancel culture. If others then dig deeper and de-anonymize the grad student, they are cancel culture. If you wish to be part of the anti-cancel-culture alliance, probably don't write it at all. If you just wish to follow politeness norms anonymize the people involved to the best of your ability. If you want to be a part of cancel culture make the article entirely about the grad student.
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C1 The New York Times was doing cancel culture against Scott. His friends did cancel culture against the New York Times. Scott in his articles about the situation did not encourage cancel culture. Tit-for-tat strategy can be good for getting people to not do things. But it needs to be handled carefully. Retaliate for specific instances against exact people. Do not retaliate for general attacks by generally attacking the other direction.
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C2 Scott can personally cancel his subscription and never associate with the Atlantic again. That is not cancel culture. Telling us about it is cancel culture.
cjet79
1yr ago
It is good if young people figure out how to spot lies, especially spotting the cases where people are lying to themselves.
Older women in the dating game have a clear reason for being bitter. Nature really screws them over. Their physical looks / attractiveness to men peaks in their late teens or early 20's. They age out of safely having kids in their early 40's. There goes two of the main reasons for dating/marriage: (sexual) fun and raising kids. I feel bad for them.
The comments section reflects lots of copium being thrown out. I see sexual frustration (which to me seems like a problem with partner selection). I see abrasive personalities (men don't need to feel smarter, but talking down to them like a kid becomes tiring for them to listen to). I see people buried in the culture war losing grounding with reality (most violence is committed by young testosterone fueled men. It nearly ceases to be a real concern later in life.)
I don't think this will heavily impact younger generations. I doubt younger generations are even willing to listen to older generations. They'll figure out sex and love on their own. Or they won't figure it out because of other more important trends.
Sex and committed relationships are something that I think people realize has value because of peer effects. I remember highschool: some girl in the class was the first normalish girl to have sex in a relationship, and then many other girls in school took it as their cue that it was ok to start having sex, and many boys took it as their cue that it was ok to start asking for sex. There was also a wave of breakups because of college separation.
cjet79
1yr ago
As of this time @HlynkaCG has been permabanned. I'm posting this message at the top of the thread, because its not really for Hlynka, its for the community to know. There were a few different posts I could have chosen in the modqueue, and many of them were too buried to be visible. The mod team has given him repeated warnings and bans. And I personally reached out to him last ban to warn him that a permaban was likely coming if this behavior continued.
I mostly do not feel this is a good thing, but it is a necessary thing. Hlynka had quite a few quality contributions, and I don't think I was alone in appreciating his often unique (for themotte) perspective. But he repeatedly did it in a way that just wasn't acceptable for the rules around here.
I would like people to have a few takeaways:
- No one on this forum is infinitely excused of bad behavior. Having quality contributions and providing a unique viewpoint might get you some additional leeway, but our patience isn't unlimited.
- The mods do read and participate here. We know when someone is starting to abuse that leeway. We know when there is frustration about it.
- We do try to be deliberate and slow about things. It can feel real shitty when a cabal of people meet in secret to discuss your punishment and they decide permanent banishment is the solution. For longtime users that have put in the time and effort to be a part of the community here we don't lightly jump to permanent bans as a solution.
Please keep any discussion civil.
cjet79
1yr ago
Though this is a quote, I believe that it is so precisely said that it is worth posting on the top level.
Incorrect. Don't do this.
cjet79
2yr ago
I think if pride just meant LGB then there wouldn't be much backlash during pride month.
Gay men and lesbian women seem largely accepted by society, and I don't know of many recent controversies surrounding them.
The TQ part of the alphabet seems to be the lightning rod lately. The Ts mess with long established gender dynamics, more than LGBs ever did. The Qs often seem like they are faking for diversity points or engage in levels of ridiculousness that is hard to take seriously, for example there are popular videos out there of people identifying as birds and goblins. There is a real question of how much I have to buy into some strangers' fantasies and fetishes.
Importantly, as a matter of sheer numbers the TQ part is also a very small section of LGBTQ.
This makes me wonder if some kind of split is coming. LGBs can either continue allying with TQs and risk some society wide backlash. Or they can jettison the political hot potatoes and go fully mainstream tomorrow. I suspect democratic politicians in swing districts will be doing this, and so will large multi-national companies.
cjet79
8mo ago
It's not the politicians lying that was the problem. It was the intelligence agencies covering for them and joining in on the lies. As well as other parts of the machinery of government that we expect to be non-partisan and stay out of elections.
cjet79
10mo ago
This is one of those things where my real life observations don't match up with what everyone is saying online.
My wife is pregnant with our third kid. I live in a single family home neighborhood but the bus stop right outside my house has about three dozen kids spread over 5 busses. (For some reason the neighborhood is split between two school districts for elementary and middle school).
Over the five years I've been in the neighborhood I've made friends with many other parents that have young children. Most of them just two kids. But quite a few with more than two, including two families with five kids.
My older brother has three kids. My younger sister only has one, but that kid is less than a year old and she has spoken about having three.
I had Bryan Caplan as a professor in college when he was collecting information and anecdotes for his "have more kids" book. I met his kids when they were young, because Caplan was willing to invite people to his house for a big Caplacon board gaming event.
My wife's cousin's are all having kids, the ones that aren't are having trouble conceiving, not choosing to abstain. My cousin's are mostly not old enough to be married, but the few that are only one of the three married ones is choosing to not have kids.
Most of my older coworkers have kids. Most of my wife's older coworkers ha e kids.
Basically my life is filled with being around families with kids.
I know its possible to be in a social bubble, but in so many other ways I straddle social bubbles. Of all the people I've described their living situation ranges from dense urban to no one within miles rural. Their political views are all over the map, all types of conservatives, liberals, and libertarians.
It takes me a while to come upon the problem. Its a problem of margins. Each family with kids is slightly smaller than they used to be. And there are slightly more people not having kids. And it's fully possible that most of these changes are happening with people outside of my large social bubble.
So I have no real intuition on why fertility rates are a problem. My wife and I like having kids. I find them generally less restrictive on my social life than a pet. In fact most of my social life is because I have kids. I meet new dads at the park and the pool where my kids play. There is a wine tasting I'm going to tomorrow with a bunch of neighborhood parents at the neighborhood pool.
Yah childbirth is objectively not a fun time. My wife is a geriatric pregnancy and the first trimester has been filled with her not feeling good. Mostly she jokes with other moms about how they seemingly totally forget the annoying parts of child birth. She has maintained a career through it all, and has more of an active job than I do.
I think there is a general neuroticism in the population that makes them worry too much about things. A lot of people kind of freak out about parenthood. My inside take is that it's not that hard and not that big of a deal. If you are placed into a situation you tend to figure things out. But if you spend all your time freaking out about the thing and avoiding it then yah you'll prove yourself right and not be able to do it.
cjet79
1yr ago
That sentence also stuck out to me as very strange. I generally think of it the opposite way. The US has generally won every specific engagement its been in. They seem very good at winning battles. The rare times they do lose become rallying cries for the improvement and betterment of the armed forces.
The US achieving its foreign policy goals seems heavily related to just how realistic and specific those goals are. If the goal is something specific like "kill that guy, or destroy that small country's military" then they do well. If the goal is more nebulous like "spread democracy, or prevent the spread of communism" then they seem to consistently fail.
cjet79
1yr ago
1 day ban.
Please take a look around at other top level posts. There is an expected minimum level of effort.
Edit- increasing ban to ten days. You have been warned and banned before for this exact thing.
cjet79
2yr ago
As a youth interested in sci-fi and fantasy, Transhumanism always sounded so cool. I can't help but feel that now that it is actually happening, people have made it so lame.
Some of it must be a definition problem. The "trans" part can mean two things: Transition or Transcend. The modern lexicon seems to always have it meaning Transition. You transition from one standard human role to another standard human role. This to me is the lame form of transhumanism. The cool form of transhumanism would have that baby being born in a medical pod. You are railing against role players, actors, fakes. Hollywood seems to have permeated all of society, where the best thing people can do is just play a different role. So boring. I wish you had the real transhumanism to be angry about.
Pod babies, semi-immortal brains in vats, machine enhanced human bodies (more than just a couple of medically necessary interventions like pace-makers), nervous systems transfers, rampant human cloning, etc. None of it exists, none of it is even that close to existing. Transcendent humanism seems deader than ever. Where I once had a hope for it to come about, I'm now more certain than ever that the future belongs to the machines. Not even machines simulating human brains, or building an afterlife for biologically dead humans. Just boring machines running algorithms.
Unless AI turns out to be a real bust, none of this will matter, because biology is just too slow. I tell you this as someone who doesn't see some versions of the "borg" as a bad outcome: the borg ain't happening. There are a couple larpers out there, but they'll all either be dead or swept into the zoo exhibit with the rest of us before any cool Transhumanism comes to pass.
cjet79
2yr ago
Would be funny if games just started saying we have x number of trans characters, without any need to identify them, or even think about it ever in the development process. Free controversy/advertising without effort.
cjet79
2yr ago
I am married now and don't really do the whole dating thing. But I am still on the lookout for new friends, and although friendship is lower stake, politics does seem to matter a little more with friends than it used to.
The underlying problem is that people seem to inhabit entirely different worlds nowadays depending on their politics. Your social media bubble and news diet can make your perception of the world completely different from that of your neighbors. The news stories you know about, the 'must watch' shows, the latest international incidents, etc. Its just hard to culturally connect with someone that has nothing in common with me. I am politically libertarian, and I was never gonna agree with their politics in the first place, but I have at least learned how to handle political disagreements in a friendly way. I don't know how to handle disagreements about reality itself.
The pandemic seemed to have made this far worse, with fewer people inhabiting a shared local reality, and instead inhabiting a shared political reality in the online space. But the pandemic also created a filter for shared local reality that I have been enjoying. All the people who aren't very worried about the pandemic tend to be the people out in the world interacting with each other. As long as I am someplace that is fully optional to be in (like a restaurant, and not like a school or grocery store) then I can safely assume I share at least some of my perception of reality with the people around me.
cjet79
9mo ago
I have a female cousin that lives in the south I could easily imagine going through this and being highly successful at it. In the sense that she will excel at the fashion, the making friends, and the finding a marriage partner before she leaves college. She won't be forced into this type of situation, it will likely be because she strongly desires it. She has an older sister who went the route of "super nerd goes to college early for physics and math, and immediately gets high paying job right out of college". So its not the family pressuring her into it either.
The reactions of other posters here describing this as hellish and horrible (@quiet_NaN and @Stefferi) kind of confuse me. I see this as a quintessential human activity. Its a socially competitive and cooperative activity, forming tribal bonds, creating a larger group culture through fashion, searching for mates, and navigating a different world as you grow into full adulthood and autonomy. I also understand that I would be bad at this activity, or at best just mediocre. I'm a guy so that certainly puts me at a major handicap for sororities. But I skipped out on greek life and most parties in general while in college. I was never a social butterfly and struggled into my mid twenties with conveying and receiving proper social ques.
The restrictions on sexual promiscuity seem designed to overcome "race to the bottom" situations. Which is something that girls might want. If two girls are going after the same guy, and one girl puts out first, then she might easily win a close competition. The incentive turns towards putting out as fast as possible. Before the girl herself is ever comfortable doing so. But if all girls put out too easily then guys might not have a reason to settle down. The standard set of rules in any situation like this is to ban behavior that encourages the race to the bottom, and then punish defectors. The punishment here is social ostracization.
As someone who has "done the time, but not the crime" when it comes to social ostracization I don't get the big deal. It sucks in the moment to be socially ostracized, but long term you can find new social groups and ultimately move on. Its certainly better than the punishments in what I'd consider "backwards" civilizations where they might throw acid on your face, stone you to death, shove you into a religious sisterhood organization against your will, or some other form of heinous community execution.
Ultimately I think the voluntary or involuntary nature of this activity is where people get hung up. If its fully involuntary it does indeed seem hellish. But to consider it involuntary you have to basically remove all assumptions of agency from these young women. That they had no other college options, that they could only pick from the sororities that strictly enforce this social competition, and that they cannot slightly pull back once inside the competition to a level where they are comfortable. I think it is either voluntary every step of the way, or its a learning experience for them about the dangers of allowing the expectations of others to dictate your life decisions. There are far worse ways to learn that lesson.
cjet79
10mo ago
Food shortages in the US. Lovely. I do have an economist friend who was annoyed with this. I suggest him and his buddies look into making estimates about how many people will starve to death given different food pricing laws.
Of course people like free money, but the free money leads to the inflation that leads to the calls for price controls. The price controls lead to shortages. The shortages lead to government takeovers, or onerous regulation that forces private entities out of business. Its happened before in a dozen different leftist/socialist/communist countries. It would be nice to not repeat the cycle here.
I mostly have hope in the legal structure and republican opposition stopping the craziest parts of this slide into a leftist dystopia. Of course they have to spend political effort and will to stop these things, and while they are busy stopping things from getting worse things certainly aren't going to get better.
cjet79
1yr ago
This is the only video I could find, and only by adding "Joe Rogan" to my search terms which is apparently an alternate tag for "original video". In the video Alex Jones is telling people to avoid a confrontation with Police, and to march to the other side. He is a hundred or more feet away from the capitol building.
Mostly you can know that Alex Jones had zero involvement, because there is no footage of him having any involvement. If there was anything remotely implicating him it would have been blasted on every news channel. Your vague intuition of "Alex Jones would do something like this" is the exact same intuition as the people that put that intuition there in the first place. If they could have fed it, they would have.
Its also part of my continuing frustration with the state of the world. Common perception has diverged massively. You have the intuition that Alex Jones would do something. I have the intuition that Alex Jones would be set up and blamed for doing that thing while being totally innocent. The evidence for your intuition is easily findable in a bunch of second hand news sources that all vaguely hint in that direction, without ever saying enough to get hit with a slander lawsuit. The evidence for my intuition is buried and nearly impossible to find despite it being something I heard on the most listened to podcast series in the world.
This is similar to people using the term "NPCs" to describe others. I've never liked or ascribed to that terminology. The feeling you describe is not totally unfamiliar to me, but it isn't quite right for me. You describe feeling like you are a part of the tribe, and suddenly realizing you are not. I never felt entirely comfortable with the idea that I was in the tribe in the first place. I slowly had it confirmed over the years that "yes, your feelings are correct, we don't want you in the tribe". There wasn't a grand illusion that broke, I was just always sitting in the far wings of the theater where I could see the flatness of the background facade that looked so beautiful from the center seats.
Your questions at the end imply a certain yearning to return to the comforting embrace of the beautiful illusion. And you noticed that people still under the illusion got mad at your for pointing out things that might break the illusion for them. Your yearning to return seems to validate their anger. I have no illusion to return to. I'd burn down the illusion if I thought I could.
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