cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
2mo ago
Those problems exist without immigration. They are in fact active policy choices on the part of cities and universities respectively.
cjet79
2mo ago
America is one of the least dense countries in the world. It is a net exporter of food. The US is about three times larger than India in size.
"The country has limited space" is only true in the trite and meaningless sense that it is not actually infinite. But it is certainly not running out of space or even getting all that tight.
The lifeboat metaphor is the ultimate "their is a fixed pie of resources" perspective. And if I believed that "fixed pie" story to be true I'd agree on immigration restrictions. But it's objectively not true and I'd have to lobotomize all the parts of my brain that know anything about economics to believe it.
cjet79
2mo ago
I knew I shouldn't have included the lifeboat one. Its a terrible immigration metaphor. Our "lifeboat" is an entire freaking continent. So its more like some guy washing up on the beach from a ship wreck and then saying "don't let anyone else come ashore".
But also part of the point is not what he is saying, but how he is saying it. "we can't let anyone else on". Like when did "we" become a "we".
And since were doing credentials: My family has lived within an hour of here longer than europeans have been to america.
I assume you don't live in America? In that case I say "go for it" whatever immigration policy floats your boat. I don't think most countries have a strong enough culture to assimilate immigrants. American culture dominates the world, so most of them come halfway pre-assimilated. And America is generally rich enough to have economic opportunity for them.
cjet79
2mo ago
That is frustrating. I do wish skilled immigration was generally very permissive in the US. Even though it already directly impacts my ability to get programming jobs (my profession).
I've always had a sense that "stop illegal immigration" is the bailey while "stop all immigration" is the motte. I think Vivek and Elon didn't realize that when they waded into the H1-B visa debate a few weeks ago.
There is this weird emotion I get watching anti-immigration stuff. Its maybe like being the first hipster in your grade level that gets into music, and you find all these awesome classic rock songs. And then everyone else starts getting into music and they just like pop garbage. Don't read too much into that metaphor. Its just the feeling.
I recently joined a family society. On my mother's side we can trace our ancestry back in the US to the 1620's. My dad's family is what I consider more recent immigrants. They came here about 150 years ago sometime after the Civil war. My dad is anti-immigration, my mom is not.
... I just realized what the feeling is. Its elitism. I feel a sense of elitism over most of the anti-immigration people I personally run into. Just as a matter of demographics most people in the US came here or are descendants of people that came here within the last 100 years. The same way that you might look at a guy with a broken hispanic accent who just attained citizenship saying "shut down the border" is how I look at most people saying "shut down the border". Or the same way you might look at a person, still dripping wet after pulling themself onto the lifeboat and saying "we can't let anyone else on".
"Hey scum stop talking about founding stock as if you are part of the founding stock, you are a recent jumped up German immigrant. Be happy we let you in and stop trying to gate keep." Is what I'd say in my head to my dad if we was annoying enough to talk about "founding stock".
Anyways, I hope the political winds shift back on this issue. Middle class immigrants seem like the best immigrant class to get, I don't understand why the US makes it so hard.
cjet79
2mo ago
Somewhat understand this. At least one party is usually financially aware and responsible. If that can be priced into the product then the end result is that unreliable borrowers just don't get to be able to borrow money. If people are willing to accept that then so be it. My understanding is that they tend to complain about this result: "Banks wont lend money to the underclass"
cjet79
2mo ago
I have personal opinions and covering all the edge cases and minutia would be a lot of effort, but I'm fine with it being defined by a common law court system.
cjet79
2mo ago
More that communities need an immune system. An identity that doesn't rely on a community is mostly safe from being exploited by sociopaths.
cjet79
2mo ago
I did and still do oppose marriage as an institution of the state where they act as gatekeepers. It was originally used to prevent mixed race marriages.
Legal contracts between consenting adults are not something I think the state should be able to veto. I'm admittedly pretty libertarian in my beliefs.
cjet79
2mo ago
I've had a few weird nights in my life that were a bit similar to this.
Sometimes those nights are a turning point and other times they feel ephemeral. My only proof that they happened is the hangover or drunk texts sent during the night.
I've gotten some sense from reading a few biographies that these sorts of encounters weren't just common but they were how all things happened. The only way to find a place to rent long term in a small town was to know someone. And if you didn't know anyone going in, well the pub was always a good place to meet people.
cjet79
2mo ago
I think these examples match a pattern of bad behavior that a lot of modern society has become vulnerable to.
The pattern is imitating the trappings of a victim or an oppressed person and constantly trying to pull on that identity for sympathy and special privilege.
It's a form of parasitic social domination. The people willing to do this are almost universally sociopaths of some sort. The few trans people I knew were not like this. They were shy and a bit embarrassed about their transition, and they mostly wanted people to not make a big deal about it.
I've known other people that have taken on other forms of victimhood for the purpose of social domination. Sometimes real victims, sometimes imagined or exaggerated. I find it important to identify these people and oppose them through all possible social channels. Unlike good parasites they will absolutely kill their hosts.
cjet79
2mo ago
Congratulations!
The simple advice is generally correct. Make sure to communicate. Keep the love alive. Make it a partnership.
cjet79
2mo ago
I read Zvi he follows AI much closer than I will ever bother to.
There are potential tricks around the problem you talk about. One of the easier ones is asking the AI to prompt engineer itself. "How would you request a task to do X" ... "How would you improve this prompt that is a request to do task X" ... keep doing that and asking separately "which is a better prompt to do task X".
The sense I get is that there is thinking that an AI is doing, but it is mostly like a dice roll. Rolling consecutively for a cumulatively high number isn't a great strategy, but you don't need to do that. You can instead do something where you re-roll for the best possible roll, then move on to the next roll and do the same thing.
cjet79
2mo ago
What crucial characteristic is AI missing? Agency? It's not missing it so much as they just choose not to implement it.
cjet79
2mo ago
I think we have AGI. Or at least sorta of. It's probably in the range of a 110-130 IQ person, but in just about all domains. Humans in specific domains that are very smart can still usually beat AIs. But college kids are almost universally not able to surpass them.
The only difference is agency. Which is why agentic AIs are some of the hype right now. AI just sits there and does nothing without human prompting. Which seems like one of the dream scenarios for AI safety obsessed people.
Agentic AIs seem like possibly the real wave of AI that will change society. When you can tell an AI "Hey go be active promoting a thing on the Internet". The Internet is probably going to be the first casualty of AI.
cjet79
2mo ago
This is a bigger problem with games that have solidified in their rulesets. If a game has an active and changing ruleset then usually the rules will get changed to respond to new circumstances, or a boring/broken strategy.
I personally enjoy newer games, a smaller player base, or constantly switching games (where I'm among other amateurs) to avoid running into ultimate strategies that make the games boring.
cjet79
2mo ago
We often have pretty different taste in novels, but I also love the xianxia genre. I'm just usually of the opinion that like one mega novel every few years is enough for me.
I've read A Will Eternal, which I think is supposed to be one of the more lighthearted works by Er Gen.
The other book I read I can't even find the title of. I tried for a while with chatGPT and it was unable to find anything.
Its hard to read about total sociopaths for me. I still generally prefer the Western trope of caring for something being the reason to gain power.
I'd say its worth people trying it out, especially if they have read a bunch of western fantasy and find themselves going down increasingly weird subgenres and getting bored with the mainstream hits.
cjet79
2mo ago
Or here is a crazier idea.
Turn it into t ball.
No pitching.
Also no homeruns. It needs to stay in the field or it's out. And only one strike.
Outs aren't counted. You just run through the hitting lineup for each inning. If someone is out they don't have an opportunity to score.
Those changes might make me watch baseball. Strikeouts and walks are the most desired results of the teams and the least desired results as a spectator, get rid of them.
cjet79
2mo ago
cjet79
2mo ago
My wife is pregnant so I was searching for a non alcoholic red wine. Apparently they are very difficult to make, or at least make in a way that a wine company will attach their name to it. Got a sparkling rose instead, guess we will see how that tastes.
cjet79
2mo ago
Gone forever is my preference.
I had to deal with it back in the day and I heavily disliked it. For many of the same reasons I dislike AI posting.
It becomes back door culture warring, and it started fights constantly. And I had to basically read a bunch of the articles to play judge when the fights started. So it also became a gish gallop attack on the mod process.
No matter how often I explain this people still want it back. But less effective moderation + having the BLR back is win in some users eyes, so I suspect they will continue to advocate for it.
I remember having this same discussion of illegal vs legal immigration 2 decades ago during the Bush years. Back then I was in a high school debate class, and I had all the studies lined up and arguments together about why immigration is good. And once I finished my opening remarks they said "oh we are only talking about how we don't want illegal immigration". My rebuttal of "well then my side is arguing for making all immigration legal". They didn't like that and insisted I needed to argue for illegal immigration.
And no the left did not completely dominate the media landscape back then.
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