coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
There wouldn’t be evidence he is out of Ukraine, because it’s wartime where secrecy of the location of an assassination target is paramount. The question is (1) does it appear he uses a green screen (2) is it more likely that NATO places him in Poland or keeps him in Ukraine. Per 1, many of his videos look a lot like a green screen to me.
It’s not some elementary variation of “absence of evidence”, because we should expect that if he were in Poland, we would not have evidence of that, like how we didn’t have evidence that Bin Laden was in Pakistan (amplified by 100, because NATO is in charge of his location)
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
All of your comment reads “I am unwilling to consider any other viewpoint or my opponent’s arguments”. Seriously, you just ignored my assertions completely and boldly. Maybe even heroically!
https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/mystery-volodymyr-zelenskiy
https://amp.spectator.co.uk/article/who-is-ihor-kolomoisky-/amp
https://twitter.com/ReflectionsV2/status/1581954021039869953
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1579541849240670208
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
There has been no independent inquiry in Bucha. It’s Ukraine / NATO claims without any real evidence for anything. No photographs of the faces of the victims, no consulting the family of the victims. Some of the corpse piles were surrounded by Russian aid packages, so to me it’s more likely to be “Azov killed innocents who took Russian aid” than “Random professional Russian soldiers randomly killed innocents after giving them aid packages”.
Some of Zelensky’s appearances strongly suggest he uses a green screen. With technology it is trivial to place Zelensky anywhere you want in Ukraine. I do not believe for one moment that he spends a majority of his time in Ukraine. But that’s neither hero nor there, because it is a smart choice to base your operations in Poland.
What makes Zelensky not a hero is that nothing he does is heroic. It is not heroic to be the figurehead for NATO operations in Ukraine. It is not heroic to be the darling of an oligarch who already fled to Israel, who boosted him up to Presidency. It is not heroic to sign someone else’s children up to die or to command to shoot defectors when they leave. Zelensky has only moderate skin in the game, no matter what he will be safe in NATO territory.
Ask “if Zelensky were a coward, what would he do differently?” Here we have to rely on the claim that he spends most of his time in Ukraine. Everything else he would do is identical. Even a coward can be secretly bussed into Ukraine from time to time for a photo shoot like in Bucha, and the claim “Zelensky is in Kyiv!” is suspect given the nature of 21st century warfare and technology.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
But then why would anyone become an academic or a researcher? Do people become maths professors because they care, or because they like the work and status? But working on a virus in a lab gives even more respect than being an academic, at least pre-pandemic. As much as I love race for the prize by the flaming lips.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
There are too many cultural differences in education for PISA to demonstrate aptitude. In middle school and high school. when I was administered state tests that weren’t graded, I didn’t care about doing well. This might be different in obedience-heavy China.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
I think they’re working on it because they enjoy the status offerings and respect, which may be chipped away if people realize how dangerous and civilization-ending the risks are. There is no more chance that they do the work because they care than a given plumber, police officer or teacher.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
The importance of creating your own news is stark, because news isn’t to inform but to emotionally manipulate. News is not filled with measured statistics and the latest meta studies, it is hardly filled with facts at all or any useful information. It is filled with to emotionally potent stories. (Consider: a story that traffic accidents have decreased gets little coverage; particularly bad accidents get more coverage, for no other reason than emotional potency).
Potent storytelling is the way to manipulate people, and both sides know this. The news might show you the corpse of a toddler that washed up on the shores of Europe, to generate sympathy for migrants. This same company might neglect to show you that Pakistani migrants raped thousands of white British children in Rotherham England. The news will get you worked up about Rahaf Mohammed, the Saudi who got refugee status in Canada. This same news corporation will neglect to tell you that she took the spot of a Christian who faced death in Pakistan, and will neglect to inform you that Rahaf is now a single mother with implants who was knocked up by a rapper and you can subscribe to her OnlyFans for only $39 monthly.
I do not believe it is hyperbole to call all news propaganda, because the news propagates for viewership, not for informing. As such, if rightoids like myself want to win, it’s a good idea to produce really really good propaganda shamelessly.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
TheMotte is filled with users who get personal enjoyment from learning information for its own sake, even when it has no tangible benefit to their lives. So you’re going to get pushback due to this natural bias.
I essentially agree with you that reading is overrated. But “reading” is a large category. The question I think is, what is the best way to experience great things? Books have competition: real life experience, music, listening to speakers, art. The words we read in a sense can only refer back to our previous experiences, and so a life filled with reading and little experience is lesser than the opposite.
But in order to experience great things we must know what the great things are. So there are some reads that are worthwhile, philosophy and theology, psychology, and some great literature, which provides us a map for great experiences. Philosophy tells us what provides lasting good, and homes our reason. Theology helps to organize the mind around this good and to feel it on a deeper level, and good literature fleshes out these truths in a story. Books are necessary for these topics because we have to take our time going back and forth over the sentences to understand the truth deeply.
Every other type of book? I’m not persuaded on their inherent value. Reading stories that aren’t brilliant has no benefit. History has no benefit unless it is motivating great actions. Learning facts has no benefit unless they are necessary for great things.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
I really do not like the commercialization of holiday songs and symbols.
The greatness of a holiday song is that the song is a unique cue for the spirit of the holiday. By only playing the song during the holiday, the song transfers onto itself the memories of the holiday. This transference also applies to holiday symbols.
When commercials and shops and other things begin to incorporate those songs and symbols, they no longer act as a unique cue, making it harder to access the unique memories of the holiday that were previously stored in the song (via memory interference). This doesn’t happen immediately, consciously, or fully, but it happens to a degree. The result is a chipping away of all the greatness and joy.
Like, if you begin to play your favorite song as a wake up alarm, over time the song begins to encode for the stress of waking up. With some mental effort you can remember why you liked the song originally and what it meant, but it’s not the same! There’s a small rewiring when we remember. Remembering is re-memory-ing.
I’ve been thinking of incorporating into my life “clear unique cues”, for lack of better terminology. A small little enclave of only joy, or serenity, with cues only for that space which I do not use in other contexts. The result should be a maximization of the potential of the space for its intended purpose.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
It is silly to read my post as extrapolating from one domain. There are also very limited intelligence-based domains with which to do this sort of national comparison.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Is this a falsifiable hypothesis?
those international competitions were some of the best options to gain success and status available to them at the time
Korotkevich from Belarus dominates programming competitions — ostensibly he has already attained maximum status and opportunity many times over as he has been the winner for years for Google Code. This is weak evidence against the motivational theory, because he seems to just want to dominate the competition. And indeed, chess players too generally just like dominating the competition, as a reward in its own fight. The second and third math Olympiad winners are Chinese and immigrant Canadian, so they’re in the top 2% of world opportunity. If “desiring opportunity” were the motivator we would see more winners from India, Malaysia, Bangladesh. The only non-Asian American winner, Reid Barton, came from a wealthy well-connected family.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Yes, there are actually few other relevant meritocratic domains that measure intelligence. You have popular strategy games, chess, math competitions and programming competitions…. I can’t think of much else.
This is a just-so story. Most poor nations do not perform very well. India, Malaysia, Bangladesh. And in America the poor do not perform well. Korea and China are not particularly poor, if we’re looking at math Olympiads. The greatest chess players right now (Carlsen, Nakamura) all had wealthy families and opportunity.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
healthy microbiome is associated w well-being, the reason short time frames are used is that these are intervention studies and it’s difficult to tell a person to eat a new diet for years. We know from correlation studies that refined carb intake is associated with poor well being. A short time frame can induce changes in inflammatory markers and some gut changes. For instance iirc there are profound mood changes from 10 days of very low caloric fasting
then most of them will be eating sugar at least some of the time. Are they constantly eating more and more sugar?
Yes? Look at the obesity epidemic. Addiction is not linear. Maybe only 10% of those who take opioids become addicted. But opioids are addicting. There’s a study on heroin users in Vietnam which show only a minority continued their addiction on returning home
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.64.12_Suppl.38
Do children brought up occasionally eating cookies eventually graduate to eating whole packets of cookies by adulthood?
Yes, statistically, given the rise in obesity
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
I do not do much improving because of inextricable low energy and some health problems. Most want to be a better version of themselves, but there are hindrances in the way. For lots of Americans I think there are emotional and psychological blockades.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
I’m not sure what you mean. League is not a game of fast reflexes or spamming abilities. What separates good from bad players is prediction and calculation based on memorized patterns, similar to chess. In chess, all of the top players under 30 are also fantastic at bullet and blitz. Some of the top players in league have taken reaction time tests and aim tests, and they’re not an extreme outlier or anything.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Because Russia has half the population of America, and is poorer. “Why do native-born Americans not perform as well as either newer immigrants or Russians?” is the strange phenomena.
It is certainly possible we’ve been consistently far behind, but the question of the cause remains
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Call of Duty and CounterStrike, no IMO. But MOBAs require quick, intelligent application of pattern-matching.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
NA has a larger player pool than Korea in League, and it is the most popular American e-Sport. If popularity dictated chess GMs, I do not think we would see an Italian, Norwegian, Chinese, and Dutchman among top players.
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
That’s remarkable that in 2021, Ukraine was not too far from America’s ranking.
https://www.imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2021
It’s also strange that Russia can beat America with their own population, eg no Koreans /Chinese
Why are Americans falling behind in “brain-y” competitions? Or, if we haven’t fallen behind, why have we always been bad at them?
League of Legends is holding their Worlds competition, and most of the North American region teams did not make it past the first stage. The performance of NA teams has been poor compared to Chinese and Korean teams. The one NA team that has done okay is mainly comprised of non-Americans. The NA region actually has more players than the Korean region, and there are serious incentives to get a high-performing team together.
I have also noticed that in the chess world, most of the top grandmasters are first or second generation Americans. Despite only comprising 25% of Americans, they make up 19 of the top 20 players (only Sam Shankland afaik is the exception). It is not as if the immigrant competitors are all from the former Soviet Union or another chess-heavy region, either, but you find Italy, the Philippines, Japan, and China represented too. (Possibly, because Hispanics are so much of 1st/2nd gen but not represented in chess world, it could be more like 5% make up 95%.)
What explains the loss of American high achievers in intellectual competitions? Google Code has similar results, as does Overwatch. Could there be an environmental cause?
coffee_enjoyer
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2yr ago
Consider (1) prohibitions are meant to reduce, not eliminate, (2) prohibitions have always worked to reduce in America, whether for alcohol or marijuana use (the latter having risen in legalized areas).
Black market would be a non-issue for Gatorade, which is a specially tailored product made by food scientists to cause habitual use. The black market would be for sugar, but since obesity is in part a problem of convenience, it’s still a non-issue. As someone who has smoked, I can assure you that tax-free tobacco is hard to come by.
You believe heroes can have offshore banking accounts paid for by corrupt oligarchs now hiding in Israel which comprise a permanent “nest egg” to fall back on. That’s great! I disagree. So what we have is a disagreement, which this forum was made for. Claiming that my entire post boiled down to “sounds like nothing but I am ideologically on the pro-Russian” is asinine and unproductive.
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