curious_straight_ca
No bio...
User ID: 1845
curious_straight_ca
4mo ago
fascist policies enacted to stop transmission of an illness that doesn't kill people
Lockdowns aren't on the pareto frontier of policy options for even diseases significantly deadlier than covid imo, just because rapid development and distribution of technological solutions is possible, but ... covid killed one million people in the united states. Yes, mostly old people, but we're talking about protecting old people here. No reason to pretend otherwise.
You provide no substance here; the story of Carlson's supposed texts is old and baseless. Dominion sliced apart internal communications and arranged them to falsely portray things like Carlson hating Trump
The texts were:
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait,” he texted an unidentified person.
“I hate him passionately. ... I can’t handle much more of this,” he added.
“We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest,” he wrote in another text message, referring to the “last four years.” “But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”
Even for this, I agree it's possible he was just really mad at Trump and is usually pro-trump even in private, and that was his defense. People say a lot of things, in a lot of contexts, and cherrypicking can do almost anything. But ... on the balance, those are very strong statements. What makes you call it baseless?
But no, you don't understand, if you truly understand how they are criminals who will take whatever they can the only rational consequent is "Can they prove they didn't?"
... are they? I know some people in the Democrat Establishment. Mostly, they follow the law and the rules and try to do what's right. I don't think this is good evidence against election fraud, but it is strong evidence against them being moral mutants who hate truth and all that is good. Are my enemies innately evil?
But NPR's quality is leagues above russian and iranian state media. And the latter are regularly censored on matters of minor corruption in ways the former is rigorously guarded against. There really is a kind of "state-run media" that the soviets had, and that Russia today has, that the US doesn't have today. Trying to pave over that distinction as an 'own' makes your concerns, even when otherwise correct, look silly and easily dismissible.
Musk’s only relevant goal right now is to humiliate them, rob them of their power to control the narrative, and demoralize their audience in any way possible
... It's just musk doing yet another epic musk thing, like "legacy verified. may or may not be notable". Robbing power? NPR continues to post exactly what they did a month ago, the same people as last month trust it or don't trust it, etc. Nobody's been demoralized.
(I didn't expect NPR to ragequit twitter though, that was dumb)
That clip is debating "should lethal force be used to prevent theft of a car" (in the specific instance of a probably black 13yo).
Note that in the US, using lethal force solely to defend property is generally illegal! Although "In basically all states, you can use nondeadly force to defend your property—and if the thief or vandal responds by threatening you with death or great bodily harm, you can then protect yourself with deadly force."
Also, this isn't motivated primarily by ethnic tribalism, it's motivated by wanting to save the downtrodden from harm, hence the 13yo example.
The eu novel food regulation is a broad system for regulating "food that had not been consumed to a significant degree by humans in the EU before 15 May 1997, when the first Regulation on novel food came into force.". More "central" examples, from that page:
Examples of Novel Food include new sources of vitamin K (menaquinone) or extracts from existing food (Antarctic Krill oil rich in phospholipids from Euphausia superba), agricultural products from third countries (chia seeds, noni fruit juice), or food derived from new production processes (UV-treated food (milk, bread, mushrooms and yeast).
The novel food catalogue has several hundred items! A few insect products were approved along with hundreds of plants, and someone tweeted about it.
That Food 2030 link sets out "10 areas known as pathways for action":
Governance and systems change, Urban food system transformation, Food from the oceans and freshwater resources, Alternative proteins and dietary shift, Food waste and resource efficiency, The microbiome world, Healthy, sustainable and personalised nutrition, Food safety systems of the future, Food systems Africa, Food systems and data
This is a variety of goals, and 'eating bugs' only fits into one (dietary shift).
From a WEF opinion called What will we eat in 2030?:
One can imagine a different food system. If we lived in a world where demand was different – perhaps because people wanted to eat healthily and sustainably – it is possible to imagine a much greater mix of big and small farms, producing a larger range of produce, employing more people and creating a more local and circular economy. So what might we eat in 2030? I think demand will be shifting and more people will want to eat a healthy diet, one that is less intensive (and wasteful) of resources. The increasing emergence of localism, wholefoods, organic, artisanal and “real food” movements is a sign of this – at least for the rich and dedicated. So our diets may be more veg and fruit, whole grains and vegetarian food or new alternatives (soya products, or perhaps insects or artificial meat), and less fried and sugary things. We’ll still eat meat, but, perhaps more like our parents and grandparents, see it as a treat to savour every few days.
Sure, it mentions insects, and meat reduction ... but along with 'organic, whole foods' and 'small farms, local economy'. This isn't an 'elite planning to force people to replace meat with insects', it's just vague vibes about Creating A Better World.
curious_straight_ca
5mo ago
Okay, teleport back to the 1700s. You're a Christian. A high decoupler invites you to a talk about how to assess the historicity of the bible. Do you accept?
On the one hand, yeah, it's a trap to convince you to be a non-denominational Deist damn you to hell for eternity and expel you from polite society.
On the other hand, the person's more right than they know, because the Christian God actually isn't real!
The ideologies and material practices of the next 50 years will be different from those of today, in ways that will necessarily not be emotionally 'coupled' in the way today's issues are. By refusing to 'decouple', you're covering your ears as the world changes around you.
curious_straight_ca
8mo ago
But the strongest possible incentives have failed to stop aging, or find a way to increase IQ.
PGT-P, polygenic testing for diseases for pre-implantation embryos in IVF, is available right now. The exact same technology works for IQ, and could be used today if people weren't worried about legal/regulatory/PR pushback. 50% chance it already is being used secretly.
Also, even before that, we know how to increase IQ: use sperm/eggs from smarter parents. This isn't something most average parents would want, but it'd work. In a few decades, there'll probably be direct gene editing for something like 'your kid looks like you but has the intelligence-related-genes of someone much smarter', and even though valuing your child looking like you but not valuing them acting like you is quite confused, that'll probably sell. Black on the outside, jew on the inside.
It's the same principle as - you think your wife conspired with a corrupt family court to take your children, so you forge documentation to get a school to turn them over to you, breaking a court order. Maybe you're right. But there are processes for addressing that, and if you ignore those (or in trump's case try them but perform terribly and don't prevail), you don't have a right to lie and manipulate other processes.
This is a fundamental way modern governance works. The process prevents conflict by giving both individuals and the state a - usually fair - 'final authority' to appeal to, instead of using violence, coercion, or deception. Even if it's sometimes wrong, it's better to have a single source of truth to prevent conflict - whether that's individual conflict over who owns what or who deserves what, or political conflict over who has power. It's known who wins and how that's decided, according to the process and the court, the monopoly on violence enforces it, so nobody bothers to even fight. If you're wrongfully convicted, your supporters don't suicide bomb the cops/accusers and start a blood feud, they collect evidence and appeal. If someone screws you on a deal, you sue based on the contract both parties signed. If you lose an election and are upset, you file a lawsuit.
It could be argued this is a fundamental pillar holding up modern life. I'm not entirely sure - certainly a neoreactionary government would have less of this at the top-level, but that isn't ours. And if the election wasn't stolen (and I'm very unconvinced by arguments that it was), then Trump's actions is not good for democracy.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
The democrats aren't the real racists, you can't beat universalism with slightly-different-universalism, and progressives support AA mostly out of a genuine (even if incorrect, confused, or inverted) desire to help historically-oppressed black people. People who couldn't get into harvard still support affirmative action at harvard!
curious_straight_ca
2mo ago
No, I don't think so. We can already clone Von Neumann, and we can't actually engineer smarter people than that in the way we engineer airplanes or computers because we don't know how either intelligence or neurology work at that level.
We can certainly do iterated embryo selection on top of Von Neumann ... but I don't think that's going to work that well, you're running into non-additive effects there.
Sunday Fun Thread
Walter Isaacson: I got this text message from Elon Musk at 4:44am CT showing a screenshot of some text messages in which he tells Mark Zuckerberg they should fight this Monday at Zuckerberg’s home in Palo Alto.. The message to zuck appears to be sent at 1 AM.
Is this all just an elaborate joke? If not, it's hilarious that Elon's unparalleled skill at running companies coexists with this.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
Brianna's activism isn't mostly for 'ethnic spoils for my tribe', it's mostly for 'pls stop killing us racists :(((('.
Also, white people aren’t allowed to be considered downtrodden
There's clearly a racial component, but people like brianna are more than happy to complain about police violence, poverty, or the opioid epidemic among poor whites, and try to help them with policy.
I think there's a thing here where, in order to 'fight the left' while still maintaining progressive moral values, people rhetorically twist the left's actions into what the left calls evil - so "white genocide", "black ethnic tribalism", "the left wants us dead", etc, even though those are not accurate. Considering the idea of 'should carjackers be killed', outside the context of 'if they are black' or 'if they are 13', is more useful - and brings up - is every life 'of equal value'? Where does the 'value' of human life come from?
curious_straight_ca
9mo ago
Every time they come up in my circles, everyone starts screaming "FED! FED!" and until they deal with those optics they are going to be left out to hang.
Funnily enough, this FED-screeching happens in both relatively normal freedom-loving libertarian and neo-nazi groups.
I don't think there are any particular reasons to believe PF are "feds" (presumably meaning: led by federal informants?) beyond them being a group that does IRL protests. Which is a decent reason to believe they have informants, but not a decent reason to believe that they, as a group, are primarily lead by feds.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
The condemnation of EA over this is kinda funny. If SBF showed up to any other charity, or person or organization, including everyone criticizing him, and offered billions of dollars over a decade, I don't think they'd say "uh, what if this large heavily invested business secretly committing fraud though? I demand an invasive audit of your books to make sure, and I won't take the money otherwise." And that goes double for just 'advising SBF'.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
Yes! Mask mandates, as implemented, clearly didn't work. But this does not mean masks, if used properly, don't work - yet that's how everyone is interpreting it, including the other reply to your comment.
curious_straight_ca
2mo ago
I think it's clearly true that humans are a lot less biodiverse than is possible or normal for other species, and that the range in human cognitive ability and behavior would be a lot larger if older human populations were still around.
Africans have more genetic diversity than literally every other ethnicity on earth taken together, so any classification that separates "Africans" from other groups is going to be suspect.
I mean, some African subpopulations seem to do a lot better than other African subpopulations, but it's reasonable to compare American whites to American blacks even if you don't generalize that to all of Africa so I don't think this proves much. I think it's reasonable to not expect the properties of American blacks to generalize to Africa, but that isn't the core of HBD so whatever.
Race isn't a valid construct, genetically speaking. It's not well defined; even HBD proponents disagree on how to classify people beyond Blacks/Whites/Asians
This is kinda ridiculous. You can tell what a non-mixed person's ancestry is by looking at them. There are extremely clear associations, you can get something looking like a map of europe by doing (something like a) PCA on genetic variation. Yeah, there's no single entirely correct categorization, but no single entirely correct categorization exists for fish either, and I think we can talk about fish. And different ancestry groups have differences in so many different traits - skin color, kinds of athleticism, body shape, hair, etc etc etc - that it's not implausible there'd be a statistical difference in intelligence.
Intelligence is not well-defined and not construct valid. There's no single definition of intelligence on which people from different fields can agree. (Among other things, this is why AI specialists have been struggling with "general AI" for the better part of a century)
... I mean, there's a whole literature on this, but IQ tests have strong associations with achievement and capability in every area. And just like, anecdotally, I can personally observe that some people are clearly much smarter than other people. And, funnily enough, when I get these people I know to take IQ tests, the ones I judged as clearly much smarter score ~130+, and those that I didn't don't.
There's no single genetic explanation that was ever put forward to account for traits purported to be "genetic" in origin by HBD proponents. This is because HBD proponents do not care about genes, and because they do not know about anything related to genetic mechanisms
No, this is because valuable complex traits are highly polygenic - many different genes have a small effect on the trait. This is because any variant that has a strong positive or negative effect is highly selected for/against, so the only genes with remaining variance have small effects.
Heritability does not imply genetic determinism. Many things are heritable and do not involve genes. These include epigenetic mechanisms, microbiota, or even environmental stress on germinal cells (this can carry over two generations if someone is pregnant - the stress then applies to the cells that would become the germinal cells of the foetus). That's not even addressing the environmental confounding factors. When confronted with their lack of an actual genetic explanation, HBD will fall back to utterly bizarre retorts like "uuuh you don't need to find genes for something to be grounded in genetics".
The effects of epigenitics, microbiota, and environmental cells are just quite small. The evidence just isn't there. Environmental confounding is very well addressed by existing studies. "lack of an actual genetic explanation" - again, complex traits are extremely polygenic.
Literally every public HBD proponent operates outside academia and is virtually unknown in the genomics community
So, this is a subtle trick. The comment's been attacking several things as foundational to HBD - the construct validity of IQ, the relevance of heritability, genetic explanations for traits like intelligence and personality that are claimed to be genetic, the relationship between genes and race. And then we say "HBD operates outside academia and is unknown in genomics". This is true, if HBD means "race genetically causes low IQ". It is profoundly and either maliciously or negligently false if we take HBD to include the validity of IQ, polygenic scores, and the heritability of and genetic explanations for intelligence. Those are well studied and in significant part accepted in academia. The positions this comment takes, especially about the validity and heritability of IQ, are not what is currently believed in academia.
Literally anyone who's been working on HBD stuff has been receiving funding from shady organizations like the Pioneer Fund whose express purpose is to prove a hierarchy of races and justify eugenics since the 1930s so their neutrality can be questioned.
... okay? This is "every progressive organization was funded by SOROS, a globalist jew who loves criminals and hates wites" tier. Funding doesn't make something false, Soros has funded plenty of good causes.
Many public HBD figures have been found guilty of fraud. Cyril Burt would literally forge results, while Lynn would take the average of two neighbouring countries' IQ in order to derive "data" from a country's unknown national IQ.
Yep, and anti-HBD people do bad things too. Stephen Jay Gould, one of the big names! Or consider modern research policies that just ... ban the use of biobanks to research the relationship between race and IQ.
I'll also link you to this, which probably does a better job than me, but I like writing anyway.
And if this is all too abstract and not connecting, try this - for a direct demonstration of one of the practical consequences of HBD, jewish overrepresentation. Once you've seen it it's hard to stop seeing it. But it's not necessarily a (((conspiracy))), they're just smart.
Let's say we add the new lanes, and congestion stays the same, and travel times stay the same. Is this a failure?
Let's say you have a single supermarket in a town. It's too crowded, the lines are always long. A second supermarket opens in a town. There's enough demand that, now, both supermarkets are too crowded, and the lines are too long. Is this bad? No, it's strictly an improvement - more people are buying food now! And the supermarket makes more money!
The same is true of 'induced demand' - the goal of 'reduce congestion' wasn't accomplished, but a separate goal of 'more people getting to where they want to' was. The extra people who drive on the new highway are benefitting greatly from the change - they can now get to places they couldn't before!
No, it would be a net decrease, because the cost of doing so would be very high, and those resources could be more efficiently used elsewhere.
That's ... not a net decrease. That's a 'suboptimal policy'. It's only a net decrease if those resources would be used more efficiently elsewhere absent the highway. Which, I think you would agree when looking at the rest of the city budget, they're not likely to be any time soon.
It would suck for anyone who currently lives in the area and has to deal with additional car traffic
A net decrease would require comparing that 'dealing with additional traffic' to the new jobs or new activities the people the additional traffic brings, or the economic benefits from the businesses employing / serving the additional traffic. And ... I can't see how that comes out net negative. Having your property sized does suck, yeah, and I'm not sure how to factor that cost in - but that's basically a universal cost of development, so it doesn't obviously bring the total negative.
You shouldn't take stated goals on their face if there's some reason to believe otherwise ... but what reason is there? Businesses paying to get access to politicians or influential people is hardly surprising or a WEF exclusive.
circumventing the democratic process
How do you think democracy works? "The people" aren't drafting legislation and regulations, interest groups, lobbyists, staffers etc promote or write them, and networking and conferences to that effect are necessary and normal. There's always some elite, even if only by stratification of competence and interest, iron law of oligarchy etc. "a democratic republic" has always been about delegating the responsibility of creating and enforcing laws to 'representatives'. Nothing outside that norm is happening here. Of course, those 'elites' can be malicious, democracy may be a lie and harmful, but that the people aren't having a vote on Proposition 5928: Eat The Bugs Act is entirely expected (was there an explicit vote on the Air Fryer Act or the EUV Lithography Act?)
Why do you think insects are being suddenly and simultaneously approved for consumption in all these countries
Maybe some companies applied for approval, and tried to create buzz about it by pitching it as green and sustainable? There is an application process.
Finally I'm not at all convinced 'the bugs' are unhealthier than much of the current american diet. Is there any evidence for that, beyond "modern food bad + insect disgusting + elites not nice"?
curious_straight_ca
2mo ago
Right, that doesn't get you to 250 IQ or above existing variation I think.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
There's a gulf between "never changing laws after this" (unreasonable) and "this compromise holds only until we break our opponents"
To both the LGBTs and the people they're convincing, "break our opponents" here means "convince our opponents our rights matter". Your arguments depend on the idea that gay or gay marriage bad somehow, which clearly can be argued for, and some people here agree with, but without that it's just "people who want law vote for it", which is not scary.
curious_straight_ca
5mo ago
Oh, Science, blah blah
Evolution by natural selection is easily the most important 'theological' thing to ever happen, it (together with history) explains every impulse that God is claimed to have given to man by independent choice. Every unexplainable natural phenomenon used to be attributable to God, and his role today in that front is minimal due to science - even today's Christians still claim various modern miracles (and if you investigate one of them deeply enough, it inevitably collapses). Like, how does Christianity relate to AGI? It doesn't! Does this mean AGI won't happen?
But that does not mean that someone proposing a 'decoupled' idea is right;
It means that some of them are in some parts right, and if you don't decouple you'll not be able to notice that
curious_straight_ca
2mo ago
Right, I'm suggesting that the mathematical model stops applying. Like, imagine humans are now cars. You can make a faster car than you did last time by copying the techniques of all the best car factories (this is sorta what embryo selection does). Maybe you could even go 10-20% faster than the fastest car ever by doing that, though I think non-additive effects will prevent that. But you can't make a car that goes at 1000 mph by picking out the best techniques from existing car factories. You'd need to do more technical design work than that, or have a LOT of new mutations and natural selection on them.
curious_straight_ca
6mo ago
The experts are wrong a lot. But, for almost everyone in the general population, and for many people here, your vague guesses and anecdotal impressions are a lot worse. It takes effort, discipline, and raw intelligence to do better! It's reasonable to not trust that everything's going great just because the economy numbers are up! But you shouldn't just jump from 'my costs feel higher than a few years ago' to 'clearly experts are wrong', dig deeper!
curious_straight_ca
9mo ago
The vaccines were kinda sorta effective, but not in the way that I had hoped they would be
I mean, they strongly prevented severe illness and death, which is the only really important thing.
It became clear that there was not going to be a covid-free future and the best we could do was get vaxxed and get on with life
To my knowledge, current circulating covid variants are not causing excess mortality, so that's as good of an outcome as being covid-free? It seems a bit convenient and too-many-degrees-of-freedom that the vaccines prevented death, and then the variants independently became less deadly and now covid's not an issue, but I think that's what happened. So I don't think that our current situation is particularly non-ideal, or that the vaccines failed in some significant way.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
From wikipedia- "SARS‑CoV‑2 is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus[14] that is contagious in humans.[15]". Specifically, it enters your cell, expresses a RNA dependent RNA polymerase to copy its RNA, and then the RNA is translated into proteins that, with the genome, form new RNA viruses that go on to infect more cells. This means that, like the vaccines, covid itself puts RNA into your cells to replicate itself. So that doesn't make the vaccine any worse than covid. Or any one of the hundreds of respiratory viruses that float around, hundreds of which you've been infected with. And the RNA itself from the vaccine is just a (slightly modified) spike protein RNA from the original coronavirus.
By this standard, plenty of previous vaccines are gene therapy - weakened live virus, adenovirus vector, etc.
We know the certain viruses like HIV are able to insert their genomes of RNA into the human genome but only after they have converted it into DNA. This is accomplished via a virus enzyme called reverse transcriptase – an enzyme humans don't have. So the upshot is we don't have a way for mRNA vaccines to be inserted into our genomes. SO current vaccines are safe.
Yeah, lots of viruses do this. Covid is much less likely to, because it doesn't have DNA as part of its lifecycle, and doesn't encode a reverse transcriptase to make more viral DNA.
this is just a case of 'not understanding what you are talking about'.
Not a defense of 'fat acceptance', but by normalization I think you mean positive acceptance? Obesity is, in any objective sense, normal in many communities in the United States.
Arguably obesity needs ... not necessarily more shame, it was and still is incredibly shameful in the eyes of most. I think a combination of explicit coercion, both towards the obese and towards those who create the conditions that lead to it (i.e. those who sell the food), is justified.
More options
Context Copy link