cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
5mo ago
DO NOT POST AI CONTENT
We've only said this sporadically in the past. I'm talking to the other moderators and maybe we will have it added as a rule under the "content" section. Or maybe I'm wrong and all the other mods like AI content (highly doubt that).
We all know how to go and use an AI. If you want to have a discussion with AI themotte is basically just a bad intermediary. No one is here to have discussions with AIs. Thus posting AI content is in no one's interest.
You can of course consult AIs on your own time, and maybe they can be used as a sort of sanity or quick polling check.
cjet79
3mo ago
This is one of the topics that really broke my trust with the medical 'experts', along with the covid stuff.
There are some basic common sense things to know about medicine and if someone is going to make a claim contradicting it they need to have a lot of evidence and some damn good explanations.
The idea that halting a major development milestone would be harmless breaks every bit of common sense about child health. The idea that infection with a sickness does not grant any kind of immunity is also insane.
cjet79
8mo ago
I felt this way in 2016 and 2020.
I'm libertarian and have never really liked the main two parties.
Trump has oddly grown on me. It might just be my serial contrariasm. The constant hate thrown his way has made me more skeptical of all criticism about him. If they were willing to lie about him being a Russian spy than what else are they saying that is a lie?
His actual governing record was not bad from my perspective. No new wars, a slate of justices that flipped the court, and a government that was mostly focused on fights I didn't care about.
cjet79
2mo ago
Scott's post begs the question though: what does he think reform of the institutions looks like? I think what we are seeing is what we should have expected.
Governing institutions in a democracy cannot survive by being only trusted by one political party.
What will it take to restore most Republican's trust? Either gutting those institutions entirely, or reforming them with punitive measures until they seem cowed and fully cooperative.
Thatcher and Reagan in the 80s are some of the more recent examples of this phenomenon.
The left isn't capable of reforming institutions, just like the right isn't capable of reigning in their strong-men (and women). They need each other to play those roles. And obviously if you identify more with one side than the other you don't like having to be the side that reigns in the other. My side's honest mistakes and forgiveable excesses, are the other sides willful maliciousness and unforgivable escalations.
I recently spoke with my mother who has worked on cancer research contracts with NIH. She is a lifelong moderate Democrat (pro choice). She had spoken in fearful tones about Trump and Doge. But recently when Doge began taking an axe to medical programs she sounded pretty happy. Apparently they cut some kind of dog cancer research program that my mom always thought was dumb (there is some joke in there about DOGE's meme name sake, but I'm too lazy to find it). Her words were basically that they cut the things she would have cut.
I live in the northern Virginia area. I know many people who work in government. The common refrain is that "yes they definitely needed to trim the fat and slim down government, but this just seems crazy the way they are doing it". But there was an opportunity to trim the fat during the Biden administration and they didn't take it. They were too busy starting dog cancer research programs. So maybe this is the only way you cut things, with a side of bad ideas from a strongman willing to do it.
cjet79
6mo ago
One disagreement I'm having with both sides in this debate is how they conceive of the labor market. The market is fixed from an individual perspective in the short-term, but flexible at the market level and in the longterm, and policy makers should keep the latter things in mind. But our supposed policy makers are only thinking and speaking from an individual perspective.
@Rov_Scam has a good summary below that points out that the disagreement is partly around a management vs employee understanding.
From the short term perspective of both an employer and an employee the labor market is mostly fixed. There are a set number of roles that need to be filled and a set number of jobs that can be found.
The problem is that in the long term the labor market is absolutely not fixed. It is very flexible. Lots of personal money and well-being, and lots of corporate money is on the line to eke as much efficiency out of the labor market as possible.
If conditions change way too quickly (like they often do when the Fed YoYos its monetary policy, or when you have big external shocks like covid) there is going to be a lot of pain and suffering in the transition. Workers are likely to suffer the brunt of this pain. It simply takes longer to train and reskill then it takes to fire someone that no longer makes monetary sense for the business. There are levers that the federal government has to lessen those burdens. They could make training expenses tax deductible. They could lower employer contributions to social security during economic shocks (though this would require the discipline to lower them once again during economic booms).
But stopping this transition from happening altogether is not a good thing. A flexible labor market is the goose that lays the golden egg in America. If you want a Western world economy with low labor market flexibility then Europe is the go to example. And I think a few decades ago when the split really became apparent and obvious it looked way better to live in Europe. But now, after a percentage point or two of higher growth in the US has had its time to work the magic, the European bargain doesn't look that great. They are about 20% poorer than the US on a per capita basis, and the labor problems became severe enough that they had to start importing large number of migrants to do the shit work. Europe raised a welfare loving underclass, and they got it good and hard. Their migrant crisis is made far worse by the fact that portions of their economy would be collapsing if not for that immigration.
Work vs Ceremony
American society, for better or worse, tends to intermix what a "job" is supposed to be. There are two definitions:
- A job is work to be done. Getting the work done provides something valuable to people. Its valuable enough to other people, that they will pay you money to do it. Pay is determined by the work done.
- A job is a ceremonial position designating your social status in society. It is to be rewarded to good people, or people you like. Yes there are some activities associated with the job that must be done by the job holder, but they aren't super important. Pay is determined by the social importance of the position, or people holding the position.
One of the major complaints about DEI in the workplace is that it turns every job into a ceremonial position, and that is just not a sustainable practice for a profit oriented company. Nearly all government jobs are ceremonial positions. Notice that all nearly all requests that teachers, firefighters, police officers, etc get paid more is because they do important things, and that we shouldn't let person doing important thing be poor. It is rarely suggested that these positions should get paid more, because they will do more work.
If you get deep enough in the bowels of the federal government and its myriad of agencies, you'll realize just about all of those jobs are ceremonial, and they contract out when actual work needs to get done. Which is why there is an absolute army of federal contractors and federal contracting businesses. It is very common for the federal government to attach ceremonial job type requirements to these contracts. They want veterans, women, or minority owned businesses to serve the contracts.
I think the "job as a ceremonial position" is a toxic idea for an individual to hold. It stagnates your skills, and makes you focus not on what you are adding to the world and to the economy, but on your personal characteristics that are often immutable.
cjet79
7mo ago
On cabinet picks. I have a conception of what a cabinet should be for Trump, and his picks don't surprise me because they line up with that conception, even if I don't have the specifics and the details down. I keep seeing news stories or people posting here that think he has cabinet picks that don't make sense, but some of those specific cabinet picks make the most sense to me.
My conception of Trump is that he picks opinionated and individually competent people to head up things. He wants them to have opinions that may not be the same as his. If they work for him and with him he will support them in their goals at a higher level. If they work against him or his directives he will fire them. How the people under him get along with each other is largely inconsequential to Trump.
Trump does not have strong ideological beliefs, but he does have strong social beliefs. By social beliefs I mean he finds friends, allies, employees, bosses, enemies, etc to be very important distinctions. He plays Tit For Tat strategy almost religiously. He would never put a political/social non-ally in his cabinet. But he doesn't care too much if you conform on some ideological spectrum. Trump is after all a bog-standard democrat from the 90's, and he just won as a republican presidential candidate.
Contrast this with Obama who was willing to make ideological or party based cabinet nominations like Hillary Clinton, even though she was absolutely not an ally of his. Or Joe Biden who picked Kamala as his VP even though I don't think anyone has ever claimed they are allies or friends.
I think you can see Trump's cabinet picks best by looking at his history with John Bolton, who was his National Security Advisor, and was ultimately fired by Trump. Bolton has been on a tour lately saying that Trump's cabinet picks can be summed up as requiring "fealty" to Trump. I think Bolton is a dirtbag, but he is correct here. But it shows a reason to like Trump, not dislike him. The president is the elected position. He is temporary King. Cabinet people are meant to serve the King and enact his will. If they don't they can be fired and replaced. No one ever elected John Bolton to National Security Adviser. Its a little crazy that Bolton thinks its ok to be picked for a specific cabinet position to advise the president, and then the correct course of action is to betray that person and work against them.
cjet79
8mo ago
This isn't really the right place for this kind of thing. We are a discussion forum, not a place for organizing political action.
If you want to discuss that website, or discuss who you prefer for president, or discuss why we need approval voting all those are fine.
cjet79
6mo ago
I mean it's a bit discordant.
It's like hearing
"The barbarians are in the gates, the Muslims, Pakistanis, and Indians are part of a gross rape ideology and we've let them in the country. They are of course supported by the worst group of all, the Scottish Protestants."
It stops sounding like a coherent set of problems, and more like just someone angry and ranting about all the people they don't like. As a piece of rhetoric it's bad because it makes whatever legitimate issues you have with the first set of groups sound less convincing.
cjet79
8mo ago
I think they exercise the veto power prior to Trump doing anything, and they exercised it without any serious consequences. There were generals lying to Trump about troop levels in foreign countries, and not only were they not court marshaled for insubordination they were lauded for their efforts. And I'd be pretty happy to with generals that were willing to stand up and defy orders like "shoot american civilians" but they used their "backbone" to defy the president by continuing to wage wars abroad that the president and voters did not want.
I agree that there is a good use case for a veto among the bureaucracy and state agents. But they basically demonstrated the worst level of judgement in exercising it pre-emptively, used it for dumb things, and then suffered no consequences. Theoretically good, but in practice it was awful.
cjet79
4mo ago
Third kid arrived on Friday, little baby goblin. Slowly starting to look more like a baby girl instead. Still cute and makes my heart flutter holding her.
Just came home from the hospital. Babys two older sisters love and adore her already.
I'm doing my part to be above replacement rate for population growth.
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
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
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
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
9mo ago
I was reminded of an old Scott Alexander post about how to handle the culture war. It was basically have two different elections, one election is just for the culture war and one election is just for hard policy stuff. And don't allow people to vote in both.
It was one of those "out-there" ideas that get tossed out so you can just think about things from a new perspective. But it seems it was prescient in a way. What we have with this latest election is almost that exact division. Where the presidential candidates are almost pure culture war outgrowths. And the Vice presidential candidates are these policy oriented wonks.
cjet79
1mo ago
I am sometimes reminded of how bad life can get.
My dad's cousin has a 14 year old grandson, that he wants to bring on their annual fishing trip.
Turns out the boy is a furry (hearing my dad describe it without the word or understanding of what a furry is was entertaining), but this was the least bad thing. The boy was recently arrested for molesting his younger ten year old brother. His younger brother lives with his mom (who is apparently a prostitute). His dad remarried and has a younger daughter, he has threatened to molest his step sister too if he moves in with his dad. The boy can't be placed in foster care because he is a danger to other children. It's looking like the main option might be juvi.
Where is the American Dream?
There has always been a dream of wealth and fortune in America. Drawing immigrants and inspiring the population. A sense that you can start from nothing or very little and pull yourself up through hard work, a bit of smarts, and a bit of luck. But I find myself a little unsure of how do this lately.
Learn to code
A decade ago there was a refrain among the elite "learn to code". That was how the coal miners in West Virginia would replace their dirty global warming causing jobs with something less harmful for the environment.
I know how to code. I've been coding for more than a decade. I'm out of a job and unlike in previous years I'm not being assaulted by job offers on LinkedIn every day.
The talk I'm hearing (and believing) around twitter and silicon valley is that AI is replacing coders. Or at least that is enough of a perception that hiring is down.
I'm at least a senior web developer, but for the new kids coming out of college... I don't know. I used to know guys a few years younger than me asking for help finding a job out of college and I'd do a resume tune-up and send it back to them and they'd tell me thanks but they managed to get a job already.
Nowadays I don't even think telling people to go into coding is a good idea.
Heal the sick
There does seem to be a consistent growth industry in medicine. I'm certain this is true. However I feel this is a bad omen.
Medicine has this feel to me like it is a consumption industry. The typically unhealthy are often old people that aren't really producing lots of goods and services anymore. It's savings that they are using to prolong their life.
Maybe if all the medical spending was on life extension I'd feel this was a good use of money.
But forget about how I feel about the industry. Is this any place to get rich as part of the American dream? If you enjoy terrible hours, lots of bureaucratic red tape, and years of mandatory training then it's all for you. It's certainly not available as a quick career pivot.
Become a social media star
Another avenue of wealth open to seemingly everyone is to go on social media and become an internet sensation. Sell advertising and related products.
Im honestly not sure if this is a realistic avenue these days or not. I do enjoy quite a few niche media things. They seemingly make a living even if they aren't wealthy.
The downsides seem numerous.
- Your business is beholden to the social media sites you live on.
- You may end up with fame, but without the traditional trappings of fame that would protect you.
- You are very connected with customers and consumers who are very accustomed to getting exactly what they want. It's a brutal set of obligations.
Where do I go make money?
Some of this really just boils down to my personal job security. Where do I go to start making money?
But the the rest boils down to where do my kids go to start making money?
My mom was able to give me good advice a decade and a half ago to go into coding. It worked out well for a while.
Now I'm in a bind of figuring out what to do next, and what paths to lead my kids down for good career paths.
The AI-lephant in the room
LLMs certainly change things. I'm sorta operating on an assumption that language based things will be solved and done for. If it involves typing up or reading and comprehending a thing that seems like something current AIs can generally do better than 95% of people.
I'm assuming other distinct areas will not be solved for. Not because I think they are unsolvable, but just planning becomes meaningless at a certain point. But they also don't seem currently solved.
cjet79
8mo ago
I mentioned it last week, but if you are going to sell yourself out, you should at least not do it cheaply.
Everyone seems to be jumping to Trump being the one to get benefits. But I think there is a much more mundane explanation: Kamala can't pay up.
If there is a bit of quid-pro-quo between newspapers and the democratic party, then the democrats can't necessarily do much back scratching if they are not in power.
And the newspapers don't want a reputation for always being willing to shill for the democrats. Its bad for both groups in that it lowers the credibility of them doing it in the future. But its also bad for the newspapers, because there is no reason to help out someone who is always going to help you.
Its noticeable that billionaire controlled newspapers are the ones not endorsing Kamala. The exact kind of people that would know how the game of favors is played, and have an interest in preserving the value of their own favors.
This also feeds into my increasing certainty that Trump has this election in the bag. I think the last time I felt this certain about an election was probably 2012 or 2008. Much of the election coverage has not been about trying to claim that the election is going to be fair, they are instead already replaying the post election 2016 stuff that Trump is a fascist. Basically the coverage they do when they want the government deep state machinery to act as a roadblock. If there was a lot of confidence in winning I think the media would be more focused on election integrity.
Scott Alexander endorses basically anyone but Trump
The main points:
I went back and read Scott's 2016 anyone but Trump election endorsement.
The main points:
I would maybe suggest in the future that these posts are counter-productive. The most recent one moved my needle more in favor of Trump. I can't believe I'm considering voting for a major party candidate (I've voted libertarian the few times I've bothered to actually show up). Going back and reading the old anti-endorsement was even worse. With hindsight answering the criticisms:
I really feel like there is some gell-mann amnesia going on with Scott. He reads these horrid stories about Trump. With the details sensationalized in the worst possible way. And he accepts them as fact. Meanwhile the New York Times threatens to dox him so they can run a hit piece article on him that they sourced from a weirdo on wikipedia with a knack for rules-lawyering.
He talks about how Trumps norms violations are loud and unsubtle. While the democrats only subtly and slowly violate norms. But this is a framing that has been shoved down our throats by the media. Every minor violation of Trump's is blown out of proportion, and every major violation of the democrats is minimized and not talked about. How is it not a massive norms violation to spend 3 years investigating and accusing a sitting president of Treason based on a campaign dosier that was almost entirely made up by his opposition? And the people doing this knew it all along. I don't think democrats or liberal leaning people seem to realize how much the Russia Hoax thing has utterly fucked their credibility on everything. Especially after the Hunter Biden laptop story came out, and it turned out that the intelligence agencies helped them cover up exactly what they had been accusing Trump of doing.
This is supposed to be a government system where one side wins, implements their things, becomes a little too unpopular for going too far, and then the other side wins and get to do their thing for a little while. They switch back and forth. We all learned in 2016 that no, this is not actually how it operates. There is actually a hidden veto by the bureaucracy and the deep state. If they don't like the president they can decide not to let him do his thing. People are righteously pissed off about that, and many of them would happily see that bureaucracy and deep state dismantled if it meant they never get to use their veto again. And one way to test if they still have the veto power, and one way to give someone an incentive to fix it, is to keep electing presidents that we know they will "veto".
Trump is a vote for restoring norms. For restoring the ability of democracy and the vote to actually pick a direction for the country, rather than have that direction dictated by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. I dislike Trump on most of his policies, but it wouldn't be a vote for his policies. Its a vote for voting on policies.
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