cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
10hr ago
You can assert what you want. It's not going back to that way. It was a doomed way of life as soon as agriculture developed.
Personally I'm not so enamored with a hunter gatherer lifestyle. Glad we don't have it, even if it means children no longer know enough to navigate the environment.
cjet79
1d ago
Its fair to say that a human mother in the environment that humans evolved in is capable of taking care of a child once she reaches puberty.
But that doesn't mean that a human mother that has just reached puberty in our environment is capable of taking care of a child.
Is that a failure of our society and environment? Eh, I'd say its a tradeoff. We live in a much more complex environment, but that complexity generally allows for the support of more human lives. If we had only hunter gatherer tribes throughout the entire planet, would we be capable of supporting 1 billion people? It doesn't seem like it.
cjet79
1d ago
On the future of TheMotte:
People always bet against themotte. I always bet in favor of it.
I was one of the SSC mods gung ho in favor of moving to a new subreddit rather than letting the culture war thread just die. I thought for sure it would work out.
I was one of themotte mods gung ho in favor of moving to a new website and off of reddit. I even took a bet on it about how many comments would be on the threads after a year. I won the bet.
I'm calling it now, I think themotte will be around and active in 2030. At least 1k comments in the main thread a week. Some checks put in place on AI contributions. Moderation mostly the same. If its not still around, I think most of the internet wont be around either.
A slow trickle of refugees from other sites. The evaporative cooling will seem not as bad, because battle lines in the culture war will shift enough. You can see this with random topics that come up on occasion. Despite a lot of demographic overlap on here, people only sorta kinda align on culture war stuff. Go off topic like bike lanes, coffee, music/movie interests, etc. And you'll find strongly held different opinions. There are even plenty of culture war topics where I feel things have reached a sort of debate equilibrium for now, but that future events might fully blow up that equilibrium. Immigration, women, fertility, Europe, etc.
On moderation:
I am one of the less active mods. This is not because I hate the work, its just that my real life stuff is kinda busy. I do like the challenge and puzzle of moderation decisions. The challenge is impartiality, trying to gauge your own bias, trying to make a system that is fair and works. My belief in the continued success of themotte is that I think we have something unique in the moderation. And that there is a lot of room for niches with regards to moderation. You can see some extremes in moderation in comparing 4chan, x/twitter, reddit, and other social media sites. I think our specific style of moderation is difficult to achieve, not desired by a large swath of the population, and strongly desired by a tiny/small group of the population.
On interest and engagement:
Themotte will never feel as fresh and as interesting as when you first joined. Thats just the nature of things. I don't think its the worst. I've been involved in this stuff for over a decade now. When I first found the SSC blog and then the subreddit it felt like this huge moment. Finally! I had found a community I could engage with in the exchange of ideas. Not just an echo chamber that all agreed with my weird libertarian ideas, but genuine smart people with different views on reality. That excitement has mellowed a great deal over the years. But I keep coming back, because there is no other place like it. If there were other places like it, then it wouldn't need to exist. But also, because this place exists, there is far less need to create something like it.
The closest place I've found to the experience of themotte is in real life interactions with neighbors. There is an expectation of politeness and not being a jerk. I can have genuine and meaningful conversations with very different viewpoints. Its maybe why themotte didn't need to be a place that existed for a long time, because these kinds of interactions were findable in real life. I'll admit to quite a bit of "privilege" here. I live in a nice neighborhood, in one of the richest counties in America, around a bunch of middle class professionals that are content to live a good life rather than participate in a rat race to the top. So I know its rare.
cjet79
1d ago
I do think themotte comes up anytime a culture war discussion gets shut down or someone asks "why aren't we talking about the culture war here?"
cjet79
2d ago
Accomplish: saving time and energy on email and maintenance of basic life stuff. I want to make sure im not missing bills, personal emails that are important, or that a routine email of some sort doesn't also contain important information I need to know about. There is a low effort version of this that I've arrived at that only takes about 30 minutes to an hour a day. I do miss things with this level of effort. But probably get 60-90% of the information i want/need. I'm unsure on the exact range of what I'm missing because some things are nice to know and I won't get a second change to learn about them. Other things are important and tend to have multiple reminders. Some things are important and don't have multiple reminders.
Testing so far: I've been experimenting in a limited file system on my computer. Basically just making a mod for a silly game. The AI's I've used have tended to be overly cautious and have made small and minor changes. They have undoubtedly been useful. As in converting 5-10 hours of my effort into approximately 1 hour of my effort.
Giving a stochastic piece of software with no understanding of what it is doing access to your computer is a pretty foolish decision, IMO.
Can you guarantee that my brain isn't a stochastic piece of wetware? How a thing arrives at intelligence doesn't really seem important from a utility perspective to me. If its a philosophical objection I am somewhat more on board.
Giving free access to my computer for wetware systems happens pretty regularly. My wife has all access to my digital life. The main impediment for her is just her time and willingness to read all the shit I write. My kids have access to my system most of the time, and they just aren't really capable of doing much harm. There are probably a half dozen friends and most of my family I'd give access to my computer as well without much worry. Its just a matter of practicality and logistics that they don't have access.
I didn't provide many initial details. That was intentional. I wanted to see how people reacted to the basic thing without prompting in a particular direction. I've thought about and explored some of your areas of worry, and they are just not areas where I also worry.
cjet79
2d ago
Even with that recent poll, I'm finding it hard to believe Jewish people I know will switch parties. I mostly know very americanized jews. They seem very bought into the progressive stack.
Intellectually I know it should be possible. Black people should be a prime example. They were heavy republican coded after the civil war until the 1930s.
There is a general animosity I feel towards both parties. They are when slightly down in competitive races the party of competence and sane governance. And when up in unclose races the party of special handouts for favored allies, open corruption, and blatant lies.
cjet79
2d ago
Was there any hesitancy for any reason? Or was it just 'yes this seems useful, im gonna do it'.
cjet79
2d ago
On the personal utility front it seems like a clear win. I had a somewhat hard to articulate resistance to it before having the extended conversation. I realized I'm partly worrying about an intellectual erasure of sorts. That me as a mind with viewpoints and experiences is what I see as 'contributing' to society. But if I erase all the points where my mind is doing meaningful interacting I'm erasing the only use I have.
cjet79
2d ago
And the Sicilians, at least in the US (the other Italians might disagree).
I think that is why forms have the ethnicity category for white latins vs non-white latins. /sarcasm
One of my favorite scenes from the show community: https://youtube.com/watch?v=15QFAppht5o
"sweedish dogs! your blood is tainted by generations of race mixing with lap-landers. you're basically finns."
There was an original American conception of the importance of Englishmen. But I feel that quickly changed. When the Hessian soldiers were captured there was a specific and intentional decision to treat them as victims of their over-bearing monarchs/princes, and give them the opportunity of a free life in America. The religious divide was considered far more important at the time than any racial divide, and Americans were fully willing to make concessions on religious tolerance. They even let Maryland in.
cjet79
2d ago
I've been thinking about surrendering an increasing level of access and control to AI. Possibly just giving email read access. I had a long conversation with AI about it, but I'd like some real human feedback. It feels like a no return point, but maybe google already scrapes my email.
cjet79
2d ago
You are in the process of boosting your immune system.
The kids/families who don't go to day care have this experience when elementary school starts.
I can promise that it gets better. First fall/winter season at daycare was rough. Subsequent ones were certainly not fun either, but they were less severe.
cjet79
4d ago
Mane president in Brazil sounds like a lame position, why aren't they fighting more about who gets to be supreme court judge?
cjet79
4d ago
I think @George_E_Hale has a reasonable request to not use the word you used.
There is definitely a bit of a euphemism treadmill with this concept. But the once acceptable word was "retarded" and "tards" seems like it has always been a derogatory term.
I'm not putting this down as an official mod warning of any kind.
I also don't want this misconstrued as any official or wider spread rule. Two adults can disagree about appropriate word usage. As long you aren't insulting one another or getting nasty with each other or other users that might plausibly be on this forum then I don't think mods need to be involved.
cjet79
4d ago
is this the same judge that was getting in spats with elon musk and trying to have twitter employees in the country arrested for not censoring the platform?
cjet79
4d ago
People in power lie. The truth for them is what is convenient and what they can get away with.
I think irrational conspiracy theorists notice this habitual lying and just extend it everywhere. Even to the point of absurdity.
Rational conspiracy theorists can notice the lying when it is ultra convenient for those in power, and when it is easy to get away with it.
This will produce some false positives. Sometimes the truth is convenient for those in power. Some crazy jihadists carrying out 9/11 is certainly convenient if you want more excuses to mess around in the middle east.
I don't like blaming the victim in these cases. The problem is not that people are prone to conspiracy theorizing. It's that they correctly notice those in power are happy and willing to lie about the truth all the time, and it kinda breaks their brains trying to figure it out. The problem remains the liars, and their willingness to torch the public's trust, not those who are confused by it.
We would need a sea change in culture for that to change. A teller of harsh truths is not lauded, they are hated. Confessing to crimes is not a path to redemption it's just a speedy path to punishment. An honest politician is an out of work politician.
cjet79
5d ago
Every game that would otherwise be too dark, no screw you I'm turning up the brightness. It's gonna look like broad daylight in the mines of moria and I don't care.
cjet79
6d ago
A lot of music discoverability seems to be based around the idea that I like the elements of the specific song and want songs that share those elements. That is sometimes true, but it is more often ass-backwards for me. I want songs that are the best example of certain elements, and once I hear the best example I want very different elements. So just grading on "pop" success has been an easy metric for me before. Whatever song from whatever genre that rises above its peers is usually interesting to me. But pop music seems to have compressed into its own sub genre of copying its own elements.
cjet79
7d ago
I have been making more progress on my eastern cultivation mod for Timberborn.
This is what the AI says has been accomplished:
We've accomplished quite a lot in Immortal Beavers:
- Built a working C# mod with AI-assisted development.
- Implemented cultivation progression: individual beavers advance to Qi Gathering, gaining major productivity and lifespan bonuses.
- Created a meditation system with cultivation experience and wellbeing effects.
- Built a functioning pill economy: refinery, Sustenance Pills, and dedicated storage.
- Verified gameplay in Timberborn, including production, consumption, progression, and storage.
- Established a sustainable AI workflow: Grok, Git, shared documentation, and smaller coding tasks to conserve tokens.
- Researched existing faction mods and identified a practical route toward a standalone faction.
- Redefined our roadmap around an entire cultivation civilization, including spirit stones, four energy-production methods, ley lines, and supernatural abilities.
Currently underway: Creating the playable Immortal Sect faction, initially based on Folktails.
In my mind the main achievements are figuring out the AI workflow. I have chatgpt doing quarterbacking. Used gemini briefly, blew through all the tokens twice now. Have a subscription to grok and its going ok in terms of token usage.
I feel the need to ask them to be careful and conservative about token usage. Like directing overeager interns that would gladly research an impossible software engineering problem for three months unless you tell them explicitly 'report to me every day about what you are doing, do not waste time on super difficult problems'.
This sort of thing feels basic. which is frustrating. it could be a basic prompt start for the models, but that doesn't serve their interests. so it becomes a basic 'if you care at all about money, you need to ask it to do this thing'.
the one thing majorly in favor of AI doing stuff is that it is fun. it feels like i am making so much more progress. i get to feel like a boss directing various AIs rather than a dumb peon figuring out the API for a random beaver game. This aligns with my advice on dieting, find something fun that you can easily continue doing, rather than a super optimal process that is hard to follow.
Also the real bangers where visual and musical align are awesome to experience, share those too.
Rich men north of richmond
a few bo burnham songs
some dance anthems
etc
edit was looking for it earlier but goo goo dolls iris playing in the rain is perfect: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_HZM0QiuUS8
cjet79
7d ago
I try to find new music on youtube. Find songs I like. I add them on a spotify playlist. Realize I don't like listening to them that much.
There is a class of songs that hit really well when I'm watching the singer, but fall off significantly without a visual aspect. One of the best examples of this is a singer "dax" on youtube. A dozen music videos I enjoy watching and listening to. But as soon as my eyes wander, or i listen to him without visuals he immediately loses my interest. I don't even like rap as a genre that much, but he is visually interesting.
I'm wondering how to find the opposite. Super listenable, but no good music video for discoverability. I haven't liked most of spotify's discoverability.
cjet79
7d ago
missed that post, but good one! Banshee in fallout is silly. Reminds me of when someone changed all the dragon models and sounds in skyrim to thomas the tank engine.
cjet79
7d ago
I've been trying to get an AI to help me vibe code a mod for the game timberborn. I'm trying to shoehorn in an eastern cultivation system. Immortal beavers, with super beaver constitutions and abilities.
I went to the mod page for the game and I'm not the first one to have the idea of AI coding some mods, especially if the sample mod images are anything to go by.
Made me wonder if any other games are having a modding Renaissance right now.
I don't know what you are saying or implying.
All I'm saying is that once agricultural civilizations existed they slowly expanded and conquered all their hunter gatherer neighbors until there were only hunter gatherers in the worst places for farming.
If you pressed a magic button that turned everyone back to that lifestyle and erased their memories, I think they'd just reinvent agriculture and conquer everything again.
The agricultural lifestyle objectively sucked back then it was worse in just about every way except for one thing: it supported denser human populations. In low tech wars numbers were usually enough to win the day.
More options
Context Copy link