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coffee_enjoyer

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joined 2022 September 05 11:53:36 UTC 

				
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coffee_enjoyer


								
								
									
								
								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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					joined 2022 September 05 11:53:36 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Two thoughts


    

  • As the AI is sourced from social communications, we are pretty much reading the emotional feelings of ghosts. Would you say a reasonable human would have an emotional response from a recording of a dead musician? Sure. In this case, we are reading the emotional apparitions of social ghosts. Fragments of real peoples’ emotions — it’s even possible we may come across our own!
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  • The selling point of AI was never its omniscience, rather its omni-sociality. The Human Interface is the most natural and efficient interface for humans to acquire information. The race to AI is nothing more than the race to a sufficiently humanized interface. The humor and pity and humanity will be key. Children will be hooked on AI because they develop an emotional relationship to it as a father/sibling/friend. Ghoulish!
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t think it is ideologically extreme for billionaires’ wealth to be forcefully taken from them. They violate the spirit of society (as well as capitalism) by lobbying Congress to bring in millions of laborers to strip Americans from high wages. Then they waste this money on whores and yachts, like Bezos, and a few pet progressive projects. They are vermin and I believe it would be better if they were eaten than allowed to keep their ill-gotten gains. They are the single class most responsible for the destruction of the West because the artificial deflation of white collar wages reduces entrepreneurialism (risk-taking and business creation increases with wages/employment to fall back on), and thus they are responsible for reduced development of technology, in addition to reduced fertility and lowered happiness. You violate no ethical principle by wanting to take their wealth forcefully, but violate many by submitting to what they do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s so hard to tell who to trust on the incident. Does the university professor on Twitter have a relationship with the government? Does their field have an ethics culture of minimizing realistic risk assessment for a perceived greater good? Obviously, the government itself can never be trusted on accurate reporting — consider how they reported air quality days after 9/11. The media largely just repeats what the government says. “How can people become conspiracy theorists” is answered by the thousands in Ohio who must be frantically searching Twitter and obscure forums to determine whether their children will die of cancer if they don’t relocate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Whichever state has unlocked UFO-like technology must be wealthy and intelligent. I just wouldn’t be surprised if Germany had a black budget projects.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I put the chance of alien responsibility at 0%. America and China UFO-ing around the globe to flex their muscles about 50%, Israel/Germany/Russia UFOing for surveillance at 49%. What other states would have the intelligence for an object like that? Lastly, Nazis in the Arctic coming back for WW4 I put at 1% just for fun.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
NYT implies racism is responsible for Black babies dying in childbirth (contrary to the very evidence they present)


https://archive.is/LuD27


Years back there was a popular news item that black babies were more likely to die in delivery than white babies. Intelligent minds disagreed on the cause, and the NYT blamed racism. There was a good discussion in it on the_motte. Newly published research now shows that the wealthiest black women also have high infant mortality rates, which does not trend down as income trends up as it does for whites. More strikingly, and not mentioned in the article but obvious in the graph, the poorest Hispanics have 25% less than the infant mortality of whites, and the poorest Asians have 50% the infant mortality of whites. (Theirs, too, trends down by income).


That’s an extraordinary piece of information: our poorest immigrant populations have wildly low infant mortality rates. Rationally, we should conclude that multigenerational Americans are struggling hard, both white and black. That should be the focus of the article. It’s not. But my takeaway is that the immigrant populations are healthier or (in the case of Hispanics) having younger babies. The idea that racist hospital workers or general ambient racism is selectively allowing black people to die and immigrant babies to thrive is obviously ridiculous when there is no accompanied evidence. Any hypothetical racist structure would harm the recent Chinese and Honduran as much as the African American except for most picky of racists.


There are two possible reasons for the plight of black mothers. The first is that their behaviors are bad. There is some evidence that black behaviors are worse on average, in particular that even the wealthiest black families have higher crime and obesity rates than expected. But it may also be that intelligent  black women are being swooped up by corporations at a higher rate, and if they are marrying black men (or becoming single mothers) then they may be the breadwinner of the family. The added stress of being a working mother may lead to the increased infant mortality rate which is not found among white mothers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ancient beers were caloric and very high in B-Vitamins. Brewer’s yeast was the single most accessible and inexpensive B-Vitamin supplement in the ancient world by an order of magnitude. This was used to make unpasteurized beer. There are studies on malt showing that it healthier and less inflammatory than fructose. Next, ancient grains were higher in protein, fiber, magnesium and so forth. Long-chain fibers which you’d find in ancient grain are one of the best prebiotics for your microbiome. Beers in antiquity were fermented (probiotic) and packed rich prebiotics. The portability and shelf life is also of obvious importance.


Sorry, no sources. It’s actually really stupid that we haven’t continued drinking ancient beer. Made right it’s the single most nutritious thing you can drink.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Actually, neither a lot of leftists nor a lot of transgender people are boycotting Hogwarts Legacy. A small cabal of extremely online transgender activists (is this redundant?) are applying pressure against the game. You might think they failed in their stated goal, but the stated goals of activists are always exaggerated in order to arrive at a better middle ground.


So what did these extremely limited in number activists accomplish? They made “you can support the game and not support Rowling” a popular opinion online, which presupposes the immorality of Rowling, reminding the public of her ill repute. They spooked the game developers, who may have specifically added a transgender character at an important location in the game. The game developers may have also amplified the diversity as a defense against activism against them.


So, for such a small sliver of the population — perhaps 0.1% engaging in anything approximating a boycott — they actually had some influence on popular sentiment.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
An adult is unlikely to claim to want to teach a classroom for free but instead just sit there doing nothing. You can also have parents decide, or administer a test every two weeks, or etc. There is a huge middle ground between our current bureaucracy and placing a person of ill repute inside a totally unchecked environment


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That is a fantastic point. There’s been an overall decline in “free natural labor”, having been replaced with stressful paid labor in every case. Teaching the young is something that both men and women naturally find enjoyable and would do without pay — but they wouldn’t do it in stressful bureaucratic conditions and they wouldn’t do it every day. Instead of factoring for this in our culture, we simply eliminate this natural teaching instinct and focus on paying the stress-laborers. This is clearly inefficient, because if you can get people to do prosocial helpful things for free it’s always going to be more efficient. Other ways natural labor has been replaced: advising council to members of your community (therapists, psychiatrists, job coaches)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It would be cheap and extraordinarily simple to put 1000-student cohorts into different conditions and conclusively determine what is actually effective. It boggles my mind that such simple research hasn’t been done to conclusively put the issue to bed. What are we paying academics to do exactly? What are we paying the education bureaucrats to do? They have completely lost the plot. Fire all of them and replace them with a dozen highly motivated bloggers and we might actually get some conclusive answers to all of our questions. If some theorist has a new theory in education, let him prove it (double-blind controlled). Allot some money. Fuck, if you didn’t want to experiment on American kids, open up two schools in Nigeria for $400.


My God, even just paying kids to do an hour-long computer-driven program to determine the time-efficient benefit… like this shit costs nothing… fire every pedagogue and start over…


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for February 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think you may have accidentally a word


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for February 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We can test this pseudo-empirically. Passionflower and lemon balm are gaba agonists which should make you feel similarly poor and lemon balm is serotonergic. L Theanine is an GABA agonist and has effect on serotonin. Ginger is protective against alcohol’s renal damage and serotonin-depleting effects. Of course just because something


It could also just be that, for whichever genetic or microbiota-related reason, you don’t like alcohol. In my case I hate alcohol 90% of the time, it makes me feel sick and uncomfortable, but I like the effect of lemon balm. Just because things affect GABA and release/increase serotonin does not mean they do so with the same perceived psychological result of course


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for February 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Google tells me this is an extract on lavender oil. I don’t know for sure, but I think lavender oil is estrogenic. Just adding for info:


https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/104/11/5393/5544509


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The game was just released for early access yesterday or so, and the go-to community for discussing the game has a front page post on the issue, including calling out the mods for removing the previous posts on the issue talking about the issue. That qualifies as strong evidence that normies are indeed concerned about the issue. You can click through some of the profiles to see if they’re manufactured.


Just for fun I clicked through the accounts from one of the top Reddit threads. I see a he/him bio’d food blogger, a Romanian Harry Potter fan with gastritis, a 6-year Harry Potter fan… so yeah, I don’t see much evidence of astroturf or anything


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s not really discussed on Twitter, but then again I don’t think that’s where most people discuss video games anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hogwart’s Legacy has gotten controversy because of Rowling’s transgender kerfuffle, but the game has another representation issue: it prevents you from playing as a pale-skinned Northern European. You can’t play with the natural skin tone of the book’s characters, or the author, or the race of the actors in the films.


JK Rowling is an Anglo-Saxon, a Briton, with fair pale skin. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson also have pale skin from (mostly) Northern European ancestry (Radcliffe is half Eastern European). Pale skin of this type is a genetic feature of certain human populations. These are pale folk; they belong to the global minority who have pale skin. Putting Rupert Grint in the Mediterranean sun wouldn’t result in a tan, but a burn.


For some reason, the game designers have decided to prevent you from playing a pale-skinned character. The most pale you can make it is closer to my skin tone, which is partially Southern European. You can see the skin options here as well as normal apolitical people complaining about not being able to represent themselves in the game. A post on the game’s subreddit got thousands of upvotes from Northern Europeans confused why there isn’t a pale skin feature.


I find this actually complaint-worthy. Surely whoever was responsible for the skin modifier has seen the movies in which the cast has largely fair skin. Was this some kind of weird progressive move that the devs made, some bizarre “deal with it Anglos” to dab on racists? It bothers me because I go on Twitch or YouTube and I see pale Harry Potter fans forced to play someone who does not represent their actual ethnicity... when the books and the movies were clearly representative of their culture. To be clear, a variety of races and skin tones are an excellent idea — my befuddlement is just at the exclusion of the original skin tone of the Harry Potter franchise.


Quick edit: while you might think, “only a user here would notice such a thing”, there really are a number of normies concerned about this issue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sounds like some of the security staff were in on the insurrection.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There may not be a lot of female Afro-Caribbean traders, but there are ostensibly enough discriminated against female traders, black traders, and Hispanic traders for dozens of boutique investment firms, which usually have fewer than 100 employees yet see billions in review.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What is the liberal argument for why the free market doesn’t solve the problem of “looked over” minority applicants?


If there were a number of minority business applicants who felt looked over in hiring and not adequately promoted, why wouldn’t they want to form their own business? For instance, they can simply form their own trading company. Ostensibly, if the problem is so severe as to warrant large scale national discussion and policy change, there must be hundreds of thousands of minorities capable of making way more money than they currently make if only they are hired properly and placed in the appropriate position. Importantly, they would be making money for anyone who invested in the business. As there are already exorbitantly wealthy minority investors, shouldn’t this be occurring? And if the liberal theory were correct, wouldn’t this just be free money for everyone involved? All you would have to do is establish a trading firm made up of whichever minority applicants are being discriminated against.


As a gratuitous example, if Goldman Sachs weren’t hiring Korean PhDs to work on algorithmic trading, someone could swoop in and make free money just by hiring them. Or better yet, a Korean investor could help someone start their very own Korean version of Goldman. We saw something like this with physics PhDs; someone realized they would be exceptionally good at applying their intelligence to understanding the market mathematically, and those who hired them made bank. Now everyone hires them.


So if I were a female trader, or even better, an Afro-Caribbean female trader, and I were not placed in a position which maximized company gains, I would just need to collect together a few dozen others in a similar position and start my own boutique shop with investment from African and/or female investors, of which there are thousands. This should be an obvious decision for everyone involved. It would be a day 1 decision. It’s how non-minorities often decide to start their own business, feeling like they could be better off starting a new organization. A relative of mine started his own company with some colleagues when he felt he wasn’t being optimally placed for his own economic gain (and the company’s, given that he simply left and took clients). It’s also how, for instance, Jewish Americans involved in banking were able to start their own companies — in some cases being hired by the majority who saw their value, in other cases starting their own companies having realized their own value.


Put another way, why on earth are women and Native American and Black traders who feel discriminated against not forming their own boutique firm with the investment of progressive millionaires and even billionaires? It’s free money! And half of all retail investors could invest in the enterprise (the Progressive half). The Portland school district could put their teacher’s retirement funds into their hands, knowing it’s the greatest bang for their buck. It would be like finding an undiscovered Ivy League school, churning out Yale-level talent without anyone realizing it. Why are we not hearing the success stories of all female or all-Latino or etc trading firms?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Serving fried chicken and watermelon at post-Michelle Obama school lunches is the #1 way to get children actually excited for black history month. Sometimes I wake up thinking about that time I got a churro as a teen during some Hispanic-themed cultural school trip. That churro definitely swung my positive valence for all things Hispanic by 5%.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yet, technological know-how is almost a separate domain of knowledge from ought-to. Artists don’t just show their technical skill, but they arrange things in a beautiful order.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I imagine median people would consider the greatest achievements in architecture and painting to be from the past. With music too, many would place Mozart, Bach, Wagner, and Chopin above modern composers in their ability to express inexpressible things.


There is no objectively measurable art, apart from what people find truly beautiful and great and enriching. “Photorealistic painting”, the point of painting is not and has never been to obtain photorealism.


Yes a moral leisure class is probably necessary to create good novels but their works were consumed by much of the leisure class


Nope wasn’t self congratulatory, were many authors they did not like and whose works failed


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Just a fun thought. There’s a notion that “great” contemporary “literature” ought to be appreciated along the same lines as older literature. The idea is that they are both approximately the same quality, one just happens to be newer. Hidden within this sentiment is perhaps the assumption that any time period and culture can produce literature of the same quality, you just have to find it. Why would one time period produce better literature?


But actually, a culmination of different factors led to 19th century literature culture and its great works. The culture was far more word-driven, with writing rather than imagery and speech being the primary method of communication. If you wanted to experience something far away you would read about it, and professing love to a girl far away would be done by letter. The tradition of Protestant Bible study gave birth to a rigorous study of Greek and Latin among the upper classes and an emphasis on grammar and rhetoric. Morality de-prioritized entertainment as a good unto itself and was skeptical of newspaper culture. The novel quickly became the method of massed produced artistic creation. If a young writerly man wanted fame, a hot wife, glory, and even his pick of concubines and a great state, he had to pen a novel which was then proclaimed as good by a class of well-trained critics and filtered through a moral and slightly religious lens.


So there’s very good reason to believe that no century will compete with late 18th to 19th century in the novel format. The men had more training, more cognitive capacity for the written word, more incentive, and a better filter through which literature was judged.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Lex might be a spook, designed to boost certain conservatives or infiltrate conservative-adjacent podcasting or something. Like, he’s not particularly good at his job, and his appearance isn’t particularly attractive to people who want to listen to podcasts, and neither does he have a sonorous voice. His proximity to Joe Rogan and Elon is bizarre, so I do wonder if both of them know he’s “their guy” from some federal agency.