disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
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User ID: 426
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
HBD is a useful scientific frame insofar as it goes against the default blank-statist universalism of academia writ large, but the number of people who truly give a shit about the phenotypic variance populations on psychometrics is a rounding error. The issue is that people like to make interventions which don’t do anything. We can quibble over effect sizes, but right now I could use embryo selection to get a marginally smarter child compared to controls. There isn’t any known environmental intervention that can more the dial on adult g.
I’m actually quite sympathetic to giving more credit to random noise, but nobody has time for the humility that would demand.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
4mo ago
Ne Zha 2 is currently the best selling movie you’ve never heard of. It’s a sequel to an animated film from 2019 which was… fine? Impressive for a first-time director with a small budget but nothing to write home about.
But Ne Zha 2 is worth writing about. To get the CW part out of the way, it was animated entirely using Chinese firms, allegedly after the director felt exploited and ignored by other international animation groups. Maybe (probably?) AI was involved and some other animators don’t like this. It still looks better than any other effects work I can think of.
But the movie is just broadly excellent. The dialogue and characterization are sharp, the plot is tight (except for an indulgent act 3), and again, it’s visually astounding. Worth seeing in theaters!
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
There’s a big difference between technical capacity and legal or economic feasibility. We’re already past replacing bad docs with LLMs; you could have a nurse just type up symptoms and do the tests the machine asks for. But legally this is impossible, so it won’t happen. We can’t hold a machine responsible, so we need human managers to insure the output is up to standards; but we don’t need lawyers to write contracts or programmers to code, just to confirm the quality of output. It isn’t as clever as the smartest scientists yet, but that seems easily solvable with more compute.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
9mo ago
Untargeted night bombing raids were effectively hitting only civilians, but the whole period has so much stuff going on that I don’t think we’ll change each others mind here.
I would consider the fact that Churchill's side won pretty much every every war he was involved in to be evidence to the contrary.
This seems very silly? Stuff Churchill actually was responsible for, like Operation Wilfred or the Gallipoli campaign all seemed to end disastrously. Britain barely came out ahead in WWI, and in WWII the British contribution to the European theater was essentially their naval blockade, while the actual war was won by Russian soldiers and American industry.
Madagascar
Germany had beaten France and claimed their colonies. They were offering the transport of civilians out of a war zone, but that wouldn’t help British war aims, so it was denied. If you inhabit the frame of winning at any cost, then sure, Britain was playing to win, but so were the Germans, and what they did sure does seem evil. If Britain was losing the war, would you be surprised if they started killing the Germans they had put in concentration camps?
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
9mo ago
The British sent bombers targeting Germany for IIRC 9 months before the Germans retaliated. I can’t speak to Germans bombing civilians in Poland, tho I would believe it.
On Churchill: yes. This is why Churchill sucks. He was a warmonger who was terrible at war and failed at everything he tried to do. He was still responsible for pushing the RAF to terrorize the German civilian populous in the hopes that the Germans would retaliate in a way that would pull America into the war. Additional beef: Hitler’s offer to turn Madagascar into a Jewish-German colony was denied by Churchill because he wanted to maximize the number of mouths Germany had to feed on the continent. Decent odds Madagascar would have been turned into a charnel house anyway, but we won’t know thanks to Churchill.
Agree with Germany being dumb, but I think it was more that the Nazis thought that their struggles were due to a Jewish conspiracy that ran Europe, rather than perfidious Albion being perfidious. German theory-of-mind takes the L once again.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
9mo ago
Culpability isn’t a very useful metric when this stuff seems pretty overdetermined. Germany and France will try to unify Europe under their control, UK will try to stop said unification, Russia will try to expand the empire, Americans will sell stuff. The stuff I’d like to argue about is whether to treat a particular player as behaving in a respectable way or not. WWI, with all its slaughter, had its deaths concentrated among men explicitly waging the war, with some exceptions for starvation in Germany near the end. We don’t revile Germany for its behavior in that war today, because their conduct was within the relatively wide bounds of honorable conduct for that conflict. WWII on the other hand has widespread and unrelenting barbarity by nearly all players, excepting the US and France. The Germans are rightly reviled not because of their blitzkreig through Belgium but because they liked to kill civilian Jews for bad reasons. We too should revile the British approach of sending planes to scatter bombs indiscriminately amongst civilian German populations for different but still bad reasons.
Very few people care about the alliance between Poland and the UK because the alliance was explicitly built as a last-second deterrent for German expansion, not because the Polish and British governments had a long and close relationship of mutual protection. Local players had their own reasons for disliking said expansion, but from the American perspective there really wasn’t any reason why we should care.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
Do you feel like regular use of Tylenol is wrong?
I suspect that people transpose a dislike for the medical system onto the things the system controls. If you had to cajole an ethanol prescription from your PCP every 3 months your relationship to booze would seem craven and desperate, even holding the quantity and quality constant. If you could pick up amphetamines at your local gas station, would it still feel so gross?
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
Bronze Age Pervert and his associated tribe love the word n*****. Amongst other things, it means that any engaged member cannot cash out their ingroup following for mainstream success. Much can be forgiven, but the sacred cows remain sacred. Yet their fondness for hate crimes is constitutively distinct from performing said hate crimes IRL. It’s an affectation, albeit an expensive one, and it help keep the clique weird and interesting and marginal.
If you’re a cool staffer in DC, pedophilia memes are a great way to distinguish between the back and front of house, like the cultural demarcation between chefs and waiters. If you’re a center left dem policy wonk, you spend most days providing obedient assistance to a public official who wields real power. But you are free from the scrutiny pointed at your boss, by and large, and you can engage in taboo violations that would utterly outrage your enemies and discomfort your boss’s base. Those taboo violations aren’t necessarily child abuse, just child abuse memes; art, fashion, jokes. You might get in trouble whenever the peasants kick up a stir, but that’s just proof that you are a debonair cosmopolitan with refined taste.
It’s quite possible that this encourages or facilitates the evils it’s poking fun at. But I’m not sure this explains more of Epstein et. al. than the simpler Mossad blackmail thesis. Powerful people are great targets to exploit, and so there are lots of people who would like favors. On the other side staffers direct a lot of attention towards deniability and message control. Bill Clinton had tons of affairs and is likely a rapist, but he’s known for one event, which occurred in the middle of his presidency. Who cares if John Podesta buys sketchy art, or Hunter Biden smokes crack? Maybe these pedo memers are terrible people, but morality is a pretty weak indicator of job competence; compare LBJ to Jimmy Carter. These days, it all boils down to sides. ‘MAGA’ was a meme aimed straight at the liberal icons, insinuating that things were at least better before the First Black President, or maybe the before all liberalism downstream of the Civil Rights act. This is a heresy, and so we get Trump derangement syndrome. Protecting Children is a similar idol to the right, and so this too triggers an auto-immune type disorder that appeals to the craziest and most engaged audience, sucking up all the oxygen from normie-type political concerns.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
1mo ago
So every alien in the US has a legal right for a stay of deportation for at least what, two days? Probably more like a few weeks? As long as they say the magic words? From first principles I’d say we should have a judge rubber stamping the deportation warrants with a chance for a public defender to object when appropriate. But I don’t see how a functional deportation process functions under a standard deportation process. How different would a ‘good’ process of deporting millions look?
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
There is the implication here that Ukrainians have, or should have, a kinship with Russia (similar to the kinship between Sweden and Finland), and I simply do not think this follows. I, in fact, have been under the impression that Ukrainians already didn't like Russia long before the events of the Euromaidan, as they very much wanted nothing to do with the legacy of Communism and the USSR.
Definitely not what I meant. Think more in terms of Hong Kong and China, or the varied demands America has placed on Central and South American states vis a vis drug manufacturing; some shared history, but most of it is a big player who gets to tell small players what to do. But since there isn’t any doubt that the big kids wins every fight, we don’t have entire cities reduced to rubble.
I think you’ve also papered over the real ethnic differences that underlie the ongoing conflicts in the Donbas for the past 10 years, although you certainly aren’t alone there. Western Catholic Ukrainians want to join the west and Eastern Orthodox Ukrainians want to reintegrate with Russia. This conflict wouldn’t have happened if splinter states for ethnic Russians were permitted, as the local referenda asked for. This war is not a noble fight between a tyrant and an underdog, but a civil war backed by opposing global powers. Seems bad to me.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
1yr ago
It’s easier to find a good critique than a good solution, and to his credit, 0HP has at least one pointed in the vague direction of a real solution in the form of his Christo-Nietzchean synthesis. The Neo-Nietzchean fake-and-gay critiques I suspect are correct, though the crassness is not quite my cup of tea. My most substantial disagreement is with his hope in high-drama politics to guide reform; I think the next election cycle or three is doomed, and the more technocratic arguments of Hanania will have to win out.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
Ban no-fault divorce, and add a huge increase to the tax benefits of both marriage and parenthood. In effect, a tax on being single, childless, or old.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
9mo ago
Culpability shouldn’t be a binary thing, where if you throw the first punch I get to burn your family alive and that’s on you. Britain make a last-second alliance with Poland which failed to deter German expansionism, and after Germany beat France the capacity of Britain to win a direct conflict against Germany dropped to zero. The whole of Churchill’s maneuverings were to provoke Germany into committing an atrocity that would bring the US into the war, which he did by targeting civilian German populations. Germany was culpable for starting the conflict, absolutely, but Britain was responsible for escalating the conflict to a total war.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
1yr ago
The above passage is IMO a very clever way of framing Jews and Jewish racial traits as foundational to not only sexual liberalism and communist worldviews but to those of the trad-cons and the alt-right itself. It’s as pro-Semitic as a race-realist speaking to an audience of Hitlerite memers could probably get without getting cancelled.
The offensiveness arguably serves to stop the process of dilution and appropriation as depicted in Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths. You can’t take the homophobic slurs into the mainstream, so arguably you get to keep your ghetto free of grifters and maintain the spirit of contrarianism necessary for original thought.
Does Nietzsche have any specific policy platform? This is a distinct culture separate from neoliberal wonkery and it doesn’t express itself in that language, in the same way utils don’t make sense outside of a consequentialist framework. Their political goal is a new regime, with the specifics TBD, because their framework boils down to good leaders with real power -> good country. Again, naive IMO, but I appreciate that they are trying to build something.
There’s a subtle variant of racism 0HP advocates for that I’m coming to agree with but doubt I can communicate clearly. Too much of an inferential gap. I can give it a shot if you’re curious, but if you don’t agree with basic race-realist stuff it probably won’t get us anywhere.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
It’s more like: we should expect for life to colonize as much of the universe as it can. Since we can’t see other life in our lightcone, we are probably in the early days of universe colonization. A secondary claim would be: you should expect to be born into the most populous point in history. You are born now, so the very plausible interstellar future is somehow less populated than today. A very plausible mechanism is selection towards a singular group or individual that does all of the future colonization.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
I don’t know, 1 train line to nowhere seems more cost effective than 0, especially when people can build around the new infrastructure.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
What are y’all listening to?
I just discovered Lunar Society and I was blown away. The guest list is great but I’m most impressed by Dwarkesh’s ability to think through a statement and find something to push back. Very highly recommended.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
9mo ago
Do you think there is only one bad guy in WWII? I’ve never said “true villain”, nor “race traitors” for what it’s worth. I’m saying Churchill sucks, not that Hitler or the Nazis are the good guys.
Given that Germany was already at war with Britain why would you expect anyone in the British leadership to want to make life easier for the German high command rather than harder?
Given that the Nazi regime thought it was at war with the Jewish cabal that controlled Europe, why should the Nazis want to make life easier on the Jews rather than harder? The answer is that killing civilians is wrong and doesn’t advance your war aims, but everybody but the US missed that memo. The same can be said for the treatment of POWs.
I can’t speak at all for DeGaulle, although the French colonies certainly aren’t where the war was won or lost.
I think the crux here is that you want the winning side to be treated as the good guys, and I want all players to be held to the same standards. War is bad! The Nazis, Japanese, and Soviets were super evil! The British were their usual level of evil, with Churchill channeling their worst tendencies. The Americans were slightly more evil than WWI but still basically the most moral players in the war.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
After digging out 3 boxes of tattered 2001 era MtG cards from my childhood closet, I want to get back into the game but I’m not sure where to start. I have a handful of nice cards that have aged well; a vampiric tutor, some common-rarity Rhystic Study’s, some old shocklands, but everything else looks severely power-creeped. Should I start going to drafts? Just grab a prefab commander deck? Smash random shit together and just show up?
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
Biologics are a big category, of which the -mabs are the early success story. The next evolution would be exactly what you described, where we can construct a protein to block targets by way of a fancy ml chemistry algorithm instead of trial and error. Beyond that, we get into de novo synthetic proteins that have more in common with sci-fi nanomachines than penicillin. Then, ???.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
I get where you’re coming from, but pejorative names go against the spirit of this forum. We’re here for smart, civil discussion, and your posts fit the smart part. I get that you’re in a fucked up spot for fucked up reasons, but try to respect the rules that keep us from degenerating into endless, unproductive rants.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
The left and the right aren’t symmetrical, tho. Feel-good press bulletins get amplified, while the walk-back is a small blurb in the business section of the WSJ. Stuff getting worse or better doesn’t correlate with the # of words spent.
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
2nd half of the second act is usually a rough spot, but IMO Glass Onion wasn’t terribly egregious here. My big issue was
disposablehead
Hipster eugenicist
2yr ago
Since this is for state civil cases getting a trial to the federal Supreme Court is very unlikely, yeah? Sucks to be a defendant in Washington. Is this just another benign tumor of degenerate legal precedence or will this actually effect outcome do you think?
Does the invasion even happen without the CIA providing intelligence and training for the Ukrainians? Is Minsk II ignored without American armaments and implicit support? Yarvin says we don’t have this war without western deep state meddling, and that seems trivially true. Ukraine as Russian client state saves a lot of lives. If it’s worth it is a separate question, for Americans, Ukrainians, and Poles.
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