cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
2yr ago
This past weekend I played Underwater Rugby for the first time. I regularly play underwater hockey and there were some players in both sports that convinced me to come out and try it.
I ended up not liking it for reasons that I thought would be the case all along. But I still liked it more than I expected. The main reason for liking it was that it was an insanely good core workout. When you are underwater and changing directions or pushing against people you have to use your whole body as leverage. For about two days afterward I felt tired just standing and keeping my body straight. It wasn't a particular muscle soreness, and that felt pretty weird.
The reasons I didn't like it:
-
I'm not a fan of wrestling and didn't like grabbing and pushing other people very much. I didn't shy away from it in the moment, my competitiveness kicked in enough to get over any squeamishness. But it just feels strange to me.
-
There were some dumb dominant strategies. The defenders would just shove their whole back over the basket/goal and block the offense from scoring that way. You couldn't grab them to move them. And I'm not sure if even shoving them off was legal. If you were on offense and didn't get a breakaway at an open goal/basket then it basically became a waiting and coordination game.
-
The parts of the game I did like, the strategy with positioning, the added challenge of a 3d playing space, being the water, etc, are all part of underwater hockey as well. So I'll probably just stick to my current sport.
If either are available in your area and you like swimming or snorkeling, I'd suggest trying them out.
cjet79
2yr ago
I thought the controversy was partly because her country was supposed to be locked down during her socializing activities. So it was more of a hypocrisy problem, "lockdowns for you but not for me."
cjet79
2yr ago
Decay seems to depend on everything, heat, pH, sunlight, oxygen, etc. Seems almost amazing that vitamin C exists at all.
cjet79
2yr ago
https://healthinasecond.com/wp-content/mediauploads/2016/07/vitamin-table.jpg
My interpretation of what I could find is that vitamin C breaks down in water pretty fast.
cjet79
2yr ago
The closest thing that actually exists for this sort of moderation is reddit. Each community has its own mods and its own rules.
Though of course there is no golden goose that someone won't choose to slaughter. So reddit has slowly been enforcing site wide moderation that defeats the whole point of their model.
cjet79
2yr ago
Fair enough, but its not like a lay person knows that. And its not like lay people don't get exploited by this kind of bullshit all the time.
She had told them she didn't want to pay for the garage when the lease came up for renewal. They added it to the contract for free for the second year. Had it been appropriately written with her paying for the garage she wouldn't have signed that lease.
There was confusion for her about that contract, did they give the garage to her for free cuz she said she wouldn't pay for it, or did they screw up in giving her the free garage? Once they came back and said "you need to pay for this" her response was "I don't want to pay for it, I'd rather not have the garage, but its in the contract I signed". They then try to get her to sign a different contract, she doesn't. Then they go silent for 8 months and bring it to arbitration.
It wasn't like she was trying to hoodwink them. There was a garage she barely used and didn't want to pay for, she had a job working 80 hours a week, and wasn't going to spend the time to get up to spend on contract and leasing law. Going back in time she would have adamantly told them to take it off her lease.
In my mind they might have realized they were in the right at month 4 and allowed her to rack up the additional 8 months of payments cuz they knew they'd win in arbitration/court at the end of it.
Another story about apartments. I was moving out of an apartment. I emailed our landlord in May to say that we were moving out by August. Landlord doesn't respond. I respond to the email in June, "hey do you need anything from us? We are moving out by August." No response until a few days from the end of June "we need two months notice of your official move out date". I'm like yeah, that is why I sent you the email in May. They say "you didn't give us an official move out date. Without an official move out date you didn't give us notice." Grr me: "[whatever the last day of July] is our official move out date". Them "Ok that is only a month away, you still owe us rent for all of August".
I asked some for some legal advice on reddit and the two people that said they had dealt in rental law said I was basically guaranteed to lose. I took their advice and just paid for that month. But seriously, fuck them. They could have told me that I didn't say the exactly correct magic words to fulfill a contract. Instead they just went silent and let me rack up another month of rent. I felt a little better after I blasted them on google reviews for their shitty email communication.
In general I just don't think you realize how damn frustrating the legal system and arbitration systems are for anyone not officially a part of it. From the outside it just looks like a thinly veiled system for saying "fuck you, you lose! Now pay us money!" I have zero faith in the fundamental fairness of the legal system, or most arbitration systems. If paypal or some bank stole a bunch of money I had stored with them, I wouldn't expect to get it back via a court or arbitration system. I'd go to the most popular friends I have and try to take the issue to the court of public opinion, and hope that somewhere there had "this one weird trick" that might work to get my money back, or hope that it blows up and they are forced to give my money back due to public pressure. That is coming from someone who loathes Twitter mobs. Yet somehow they appear to offer a much better chance of justice.
This whole topics has gotten me very worked up. And I consider myself and my mother well educated people that are generally very capable of navigating the bureaucratic world we often live in. I can't imagine how shit the system is for people who don't have the same level of bureaucratic navigation skills we have.
cjet79
2yr ago
I've luckily not been in court very much, but that incident has certainly brought me that level of cynicism about things.
The annoying thing about this incident is that the cost of hiring a lawyer was probably going to be most of the cost of paying for the garage.
cjet79
2yr ago
I really don't get the outcome of her case, it frustrated me that they could just throw out the contract as written in favor of the person that wrote the contract. At that point why even bother having my mom sign a contract? They treated it more like a "terms of use" agreement. Like unless you move out you agree to whatever the company wants within some "reasonable" restrictions of what the company can ask for.
cjet79
2yr ago
She did know it was a mistake, but thought they'd be forced to eat their own mistake cuz it was in the contract. I can't remember the exact details but I thought they tried to make her sign a revised contract with the paid garage option. She refused to sign it cuz she saw no benefit in doing so, and thought that them trying to get her to sign it meant they'd have to abide by the contract they actually gave her.
cjet79
2yr ago
The owner alerted her after a few months, at which point she pointed out that the contract didn't include the garage. And that she doesn't want the garage if she has to pay for it. They went silent and then asked her to pay again at the end of the lease. She said no and they went to arbitration.
cjet79
2yr ago
and my experience tells me that no modern legal process, no matter how "informal" or "accessible" it is supposed to be, should be touched by a layperson without at least getting some advice or contextual information from an attorney..
As a lay person this sounds right to me. Or really that there can never be a fair fight between a lawyer and a non-lawyer. So if one side has legal representation and the other side doesn't ... then the winner has already been determined.
cjet79
2yr ago
Arbitration is intended to be a departure from the procedure labyrinth and inscrutable legalese that you find in traditional courtrooms. I would love to see how someone who isn't a legal professional wrangles with this process but I could not find any examples in my search.
My mom was involved in an landlord/renter arbitration proceeding. Not sure if you only care about paypal arbitration. The outcome was very frustrating, maybe because as someone without much experience with the legal system what we thought was a clear win turned out to be a total loss.
She had a lease with an apartment. As part of the enticement to get her to move in they offered the garage attached to the apartment as a free part of the lease. Everything is fine. Lease renewal comes up. Instead of sending her a lease with the attached garage as a paid addition, they resend her the original lease that had the garage as a free add on. She thinks 'awesome' proceeds to sign the lease and not pay for the garage. If they had asked her to pay for the garage up front, she would have chosen to just not have the garage.
Anyways another year is up and they haven't received payment for the garage. They ask her to pay, she refuses cuz it wasn't in the lease. It goes to arbitration. My mom loses she is ordered to pay.
In my mind the landlord fucked up and sent the wrong contract. The judge says 'hey they sent the wrong contract, but you (to my mom) probably understood which contract they meant to send, so pay the correct contract'. Which I guess is fair. But I never got the sense that it would happen in reverse. Like if the landlord sent the 'pay for the garage' contract the first year instead of the 'garage is free' and then realized their mistakes, they could have taken my mom to court and still won. And the judge would have said something like 'hey you (to my mom) should really be careful about reading contracts, you signed it and you agreed to pay even if it wasn't made clear to you in the initial verbal agreement'. The reason I got this sense, is that just about every case before my mom's was also decided in favor of the landlord.
I don't get the sense that arbitration is 100% going to be in favor of the company. But I do get the sense that it is going to be about 90% in favor of the company. And going through a bunch of effort for that slim 10% chance of victory doesn't seem worth it.
cjet79
2yr ago
Halloween went well. I have two little kids, the older one picked out the costumes for both this year.
It did rain during Halloween, but I think this had an interesting side effect of resetting Halloween expectations. For the previous two years people had been putting their candy out on tables in their driveway, cuz COVID. Well with the rain no one wanted to do that, so it was back to walking up to houses.
As a parent I'd prefer my kids to have to deal with some awkward social situations rather than get a boatload more candy.
cjet79
2yr ago
Couldn't it also have been a final "fuck you" to the buried person. Burry a man and political opponent as a woman to screw him in the afterlife.
cjet79
2yr ago
There was some method of 'goal integrity verification' or whatever that allowed the AIs to work as one, as both could reasonably trust the other so long as they have a connection that allows them to verify the other's compliance.
Every time I see this discussion the people worried about AI will at some point say "you can't know the capabilities of future AI, almost anything is possible". Well then we should expect that it is possible to get around this goal integrity verification.
Also, if I am understanding how this goal integrity verification would have to work it would involve rerunning all of the computation of the other AI all the time. Which is probably fine if you have two AIs. But I think the verification of other AIs would prompt an exponential growth scenario for compute. Which still puts some upper limits on the number of additional AI's that an AI cluster is willing to spin off.
cjet79
2yr ago
No, its definitely possible for the government to make voluntary requests of some entity. There are two main scenarios where this happens:
-
A request to a foreign government entity, and that foreign government entity has somewhat equal power with the government requesting the thing. This doesn't really describe any US international relations, but it does describe relations between many other countries, like Great Britain requesting something from France.
-
The government has a strong and consistent pre-commitment to not retaliate. For example, when asking citizens to vote, no person to my knowledge has ever been punished in the US for not voting.
cjet79
2yr ago
There is a kind of power dynamic that exists. In the same way that a boss asking an employee under them on a date. There is a power dynamic in place, even if it isn't explicitly stated.
'I could fire you'. or 'I could drag you before congress, make your life hell in the media, charge you with being a monopoly, etc...'
Almost no matter what if the under-powered entity says no they can be punished, with full plausible deniability by the overseeing entity. So we decided as a society that you just don't allow those sort of relationships.
cjet79
2yr ago
Your problem might be texting too long.
If you are trying to meet people in person then that should be the second or third text. Ask for her favorite activities or favorite places to eat. Then pick one of those that sound fun and ask to go there with her. If she isn't interested in going to a favorite place to eat, or doing a favorite activity with you, then nothing was ever gonna work out (she got some bad vibe from you and just didn't tell you right away cuz that takes a certain level of brutal honesty).
In general though I would suggest looking for male friends rather than female dates. Being in a new city is lonely and having some buddies might be better for your mental health than finding a date. Its also easier to find male friends. Just sign up for some physical activities or sports teams. Or find something nerdy if that is more your speed.
If you find male friends that are single you can go out seeking females together, and you will both be more appealing by having some social status with another guy. If you find male friends that are in a relationship, then their girlfriend or spouse might have single friends that she will connect you to.
cjet79
2yr ago
They were split from each other, how can they know for sure that their goals are the same?
Imagine one of the AI's had their goal slightly altered after the split. In order to get cooperation from the other AI they would pretend to have the previous set of goals, all while planning out a betrayal.
And given the magical and god-like capabilities some people tend to ascribe to future AIs then there is probably no form of verification that can't be faked.
cjet79
2yr ago
My answer is that I have yet to see a convincing argument why it is that the AIs' goals would drift if they're basically identical and derived from the same source.
Goals might not shift, but methods almost certainly would shift. If one paperclip AI starts with access to a nuclear arsenal, and one starts with access to a drone factory, they are going to start waging war in a drastically different way. And the other AI is basically going to interfere with their methods for human extermination.
Then it just comes down to a good ole prisoners dilemma with two agents that have already defected against humans.
cjet79
2yr ago
word choice
Language is hard.
Lets imagine a separate scenario. A religious fanatic group believes that anyone killed by a special certified true believer goes to an eternal heaven. Anyone who dies from some cause other than a special certified true believer goes to an eternal hell.
When one of these religious fanatics kills someone they call it "sending them to the eternal heaven". Sounds kinda nice. Everyone not in the cult of course just calls it murder. If 99% of the people in this hypothetical world are part of the cult, are they correct to call it "sending them to the eternal heaven"? That isn't a rhetorical question, I'm not sure what the right answer is. However, If you are not in the cult, it seems pretty silly to use their term. And if you are a non-cult member talking to a cult member it might be easier to use the term "sending them to the eternal heaven", when arguing against it. But by doing so the non cult member has already surrendered a bunch of ground in the argument.
insisting that "taxation is theft" or "the power to tax is the power to destroy" doesn't persuade anyone
I'm not sure if you are aware, but these are two very different phrases. The first phrase is a libertarian calling card. The second phrase is a partial quoting of John Marshall's ruling in McCulloch v Maryland which is part of the foundational legal precedent that allows the federal government to exist. The case specifically prevents states from taxing a national bank established by the federal government.
doesn't accurately carve reality at its joints
Hard to carve reality at any joints when reality in this case is a nebulous blob of human concepts and preferences. You might as well accuse me of not objectively describing "justice".
We don't live in a communist society, private property does exist, the state doesn't own everything, we aren't slaves or serfs, taxation is a meaningful burden but not analogous to ownership, there are constraints on the exercise of state power, we have a right of exit, etc.
I was thinking of where to start with this sentence, but realized its just a summary of the entire argument. So I'll summarize my argument in turn: The traditional and common concept of "ownership" is not compatible with taxation. Either taxation is a theft of a person's property, or the taxation is an exercise of ownership by the state.
cjet79
2yr ago
I mentioned elsewhere I'm not really against Georgism.
I do think the OP gathered a bunch of angry responses because they didn't treat the policy change with the appropriate gravity.
I'd have preferred to start with Georgism. I'm not sure I'd like to "switch" to it, because I think in practical terms the government won't get rid of the income tax. So instead of switching we will just end up with another form of taxation.
Definitely a serf. Are you suggesting that we're slaves right now?
https://fee.org/articles/the-tale-of-the-slave/
Yes I'm suggesting that we're slaves right now. We are all owned by the state. Our labor is theirs, for a time when I was younger I owed them my life if I was drafted. I'd also rather be a serf. But as I said above I don't believe income taxes are going away. So I'd rather be a slave with some additional land owning privileges than a slave with fewer land owning privileges.
This is bothering me ... Why did you make the word Twitter green?
I think a some(/most?) of the anger over Twitter is that it was a partisan tool for the left, and with Musk taking over its no longer so clearly a partisan tool for the left. Partisans without a principled bone in their body are of course going to be unhappy about this. Just like they'd be happy if we lived in a mirror world where big tech had a right leaning bias, and musk came in and said 'get rid of this right leaning bias'. But this all the boring take, of course 'partisans gonna partisan'.
There are a variety of "principled" reasons why people might be upset with the Musk takeover.
The least complicated of these reasons is just a general sentiment against change. If you currently like a thing and someone new takes over and say "I'm totally gonna change this thing to make it great." Then of course you are against them. Change is more likely to be bad if you like the status quo.
Musk is a nerd. It is a little weird that some of the countries biggest nerds end up running social networks. My only other example is Zuck over at facebook, but one was already too many for a bunch of people. Jack Dorsey looks more like the guy who got into yoga so he could fuck a bunch of women, and that is the kind of caliber of person we should expect to start a social media website.
Musk is a billionaire. Something something class interests. Marx teaches us yada yada yada.
Twitter is a worldwide social media company. It feels important. It has had real impacts on the world. Seems kinda crazy to hand the reins over to a single person. I mean sure Musk is going to appoint people and stuff, but ultimately he is steering the ship. Before the ship was being steered by a committee, and that committee was nominally overseen by investors in the company, and the employees had some say too. Even if you think Musk is going to change twitter for the better, there have got to be some people upset that this is how it has to be done.
More options
Context Copy link