erwgv3g34
My Quality Contributions:
User ID: 240
erwgv3g34
5mo ago
Yes, I also get the feeling that HBD is starting to go mainstream. For example, Bryan Caplan's "Let's Ban Discrimination: A Socratic Dialogue" includes this gem:
Leonidas: [frustrated] I’m not even going to engage that, Socrates. You’re ignoring my central point.
Socrates: Namely?
Leonidas: That the average Egyptian worker endures horrible discrimination at Greek hands.
Socrates: How do you know that?
Leonidas: Open your eyes! [He waves in the direction of the street-sweepers.] Egyptians are much more likely to do hard, low-paid jobs than Greeks.
Socrates: Agreed. How, though, does that show “discrimination”?
Leonidas: [stunned] Isn’t it obvious?
Socrates: Hardly. Suppose the two of us were standing at the finish line of a marathon, keeping time.
Leonidas: Very well.
Socrates: Suppose further than out of the first hundred runners in the race, only two are Egyptian. One possible explanation for their poor performance, granted, is “discrimination.” For example, the judges could give Egyptian competitors unfavorable starting positions. But there are plainly other ways to account for their subpar performance.
Leonidas: Such as…?
Socrates: You tell me.
Leonidas: Perhaps… Greeks practice running more. We “try harder.”
Socrates: We did invent the marathon, after all. Can you think of any other explanations?
Leonidas: Well, uh…
Socrates: I promise I won’t repeat a word you say.
Leonidas: [grumpily] I guess you could say that Greeks just have more running ability.
Socrates: A distinct possibility.
Leonidas: So you’re justifying the mistreatment of Egyptian workers?
Socrates: Not at all. I’m trying to discover the extent to which Egyptian workers are mistreated.
Looks like the whisper network paid off.
To be fair, I don't think the original Star Wars or Star Trek are rightist. More the later fits more with the left.
Trek was always openly and notoriously leftist.
OG Stark Trek was explicitly anti-racist, but it was anti-racist in that colorblind, equality-of-opportunity way that is considered thoroughly and unacceptably right-wing today. You don't hear anybody on The Original Series mention microaggressions or privilege or affirmative action. The narrative doesn't hate white people the way so many modern narratives clearly do.
Other forms of leftism are notably absent. The economic leftism of The Next Generation is nowhere to be seen; Kirk talks about Scotty's pay in "The Doomsday Machine" and human merchants like Cyrano Jones exist. There is some feminism in putting women on a warship, but at least Kirk is allowed to act like a fucking man instead of a cuck. When he seduces the 19-year-old Lenore (played by a 21-year-old Barbara Anderson) in "The Conscience of the King", nobody talks about how problematic and creepy it is for a powerful older man like Kirk to hit on a college-aged girl; it's just normal.
(Of course, it would be even better if Karidian told Kirk to back the fuck off unless he was willing to put a ring on Lenore and insisted on chaperoning their dates, but again you don't have to go full trad to improve on the current situation)
erwgv3g34
10mo ago
As Anita Bryant famously said:
As a mother I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children. Therefore, they must recruit our children.
The recruitment of our children is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality, for since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit, must freshen their ranks.
What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable alternate way of life.
She was called a bigot and cancelled, but time has proven her right.
In 2022's Batman, there is a scene where a gang of white men attacks an Asian man and tries to pressure a new member into beating him up. The recruit is a young black man, the only nonwhite person in the group, who clearly does not want to do this and resists the temptation of these bad men. This is not an outlier for the movie, as every villain is very deliberately cast as a white man. This scene is especially egregious though because it is deliberately set up to reference to the stories of violence against Asian people in New York and other American cities. If you recall, this violence was also blamed on white supremacy despite the demographics of the majority of the perpetrators.
One of my biggest redpilling moments was when I learned that the tale of Epic Beard Man, which I had greatly enjoyed online in video and in meme form, had been adapted into movie called Bad Ass. Only, instead of a black thug harassing and attacking a poor old white man until he was forced to defend himself, the studio changed so that the bad guys were a pair of neo-Nazi skinheads.
I sure started paying a lot more attention to which demographic controls Hollywood after that.
(Which statistic also explains why there are OVER NINE THOUSAND holocaust films but only one Holodomor film).
Meanwhile, normies don't even understand that movies are not intended to be a faithful representation of reality, let alone that they are actually propaganda. If you talk to 100 IQ people about films like The Untouchables and Gladiator it becomes clear that they don't think of them as fiction, but as documentaries, and are surprised to learn that the things they saw onscreen bear only a very loose resemblance to reality.
(Not that documentaries are always much better, but at least they pretend to care about the truth; meanwhile, a movie like Alexander feels perfectly justified in condensing three major battles into a single engagement for no other reason than that the narrative structure of the film doesn't have room for three major battles against the Persians).
Making things worse, normies just don't watch old movies, so all the preconceptions and biases they bear come from The Current Year. Perhaps, much like C.S. Lewis recommended the reading of old books, we should recommend the watching of old films. As Eliezer Yudkowsky said in "Eutopia is Scary":
Movies that were made in say the 40s or 50s, seem much more alien—to me—than modern movies allegedly set hundreds of years in the future, or in different universes. Watch a movie from 1950 and you may see a man slapping a woman. Doesn’t happen a lot in Lord of the Rings, does it?
(But that's hard to do when so many old movies are not easily available; I have a theory that the real reason behind perpetual rabid copyright expansion and piracy crackdowns is to prevent old material from competing against the Cathedral's contemporary brainwashing).
I'd like to conclude by recommending a great thread over at CultureWarRoundup about the misconceptions that the popular Netflix miniseries, The Queen's Gambit, is sure to promote among the general public.
erwgv3g34
1mo ago
From "Book Review: On The Road" by Scott Alexander:
Even more interesting than their ease of transportation to me was their ease at getting jobs. This is so obvious to them it is left unspoken. Whenever their money runs out, be they in Truckee or Texas or Toledo, they just hop over to the nearest farm or factory or whatever, say “Job, please!” and are earning back their depleted savings in no time. This is really the crux of their way of life. They don’t feel bound to any one place, because traveling isn’t really a risk. Be it for a week or six months, there’s always going to be work waiting for them when they need it. It doesn’t matter that Dean has no college degree, or a criminal history a mile long, or is only going to be in town a couple of weeks. This just seems to be a background assumption. It is most obvious when it is violated; the times it takes an entire week to find a job, and they are complaining bitterly. Or the time the only jobs available are backbreaking farm labor, and so Jack moves on (of course abandoning the girl he is with at the time) to greener pastures that he knows are waiting.
erwgv3g34
3mo ago
erwgv3g34
5mo ago
From "Nuclear Warfare 101" by Stuart Slade:
Aha, I hear you say what about the mad dictator? Its interesting to note that mad, homicidal aggressive dictators tend to get very tame sane cautious ones as soon as they split atoms. Whatever their motivations and intents, the mechanics of how nuclear weapons work dictate that mad dictators become sane dictators very quickly. After all its not much fun dictating if one's country is a radioactive trash pile and you're one of the ashes. China, India and Pakistan are good examples. One of the best examples of this process at work is Mao Tse Tung. Throughout the 1950s he was extraordinarily bellicose and repeatedly tried to bully, cajole or trick Khruschev and his successors into initiating a nuclear exchange with the US on the grounds that world communism would rise from the ashes. Thats what Quemoy and Matsu were all about in the late 1950s. Then China got nuclear weapons. Have you noticed how reticent they are with them? Its sunk in. They can be totally destroyed; will be totally destroyed; in the event of an exchange. A Chinese Officer here once on exchange (billed as a "look what we can do" session it was really a "look what we can do to you" exercise) produced the standard line about how the Chinese could lose 500 million people in a nuclear war and keep going with the survivors. So his hosts got out a demographic map (one that shows population densities rather than topographical data) and got to work with pie-cutters using a few classified tricks - and got virtually the entire population of China using only a small proportion of the US arsenal. The guest stared at the map for a couple of minutes then went and tossed his cookies into the toilet bowl. The only people who mouth off about using nuclear weapons and threaten others with them are those that do not have keys hanging around their necks. The moment they get keys and realize what they've let themselves in for, they get to be very quiet and very cautious indeed.
Baldur's Gate 3? You filthy casual.
erwgv3g34
1yr ago
"have my kid walk through dense masses of whores, addicts, thieves, bums, and lunatics."
What you describe is not an endemic problem for high-density walkable neighborhoods. If some random noname russian cities can solve them, then it can be done in US as well.
Great! I'll tell you the same thing I tell libertarians who talk about how open borders aren't fiscally suicidal because we can just get rid of the welfare; solve the problem first, and then we can talk.
I see no reason to believe modern America has the social technology to fix the problem of the underclass making dense/cheap/walkable neighborhoods unlivable and public transportation unendurable. That is a coup-complete problem. Until that day comes, we need expensive, car-centric suburbs as the only legal way to keep ourselves isolated from the human refuse while still living within working distance of cities.
erwgv3g34
1yr ago
From "The Simpsons and Cultural Decline" by Free Northerner:
I’ve been watching the first two seasons of the Simpsons the last couple weeks. It’s been years since I’ve watched the show, but I still remember the first ten seasons or so as some of the best TV yet produced.
The first season came out in 1989-90, just 25 years ago, and I remember the show being controversial when it came out; I wasn’t allowed to watch it until some time in high school, about a decade after it first started showing. It was controversial enough that Bush actually used the Simpsons as a negative example of a family. Yet, re-watching now, it’s amazing how tame and traditional it is compared to media offerings today.
Obviously the ‘offensive’ humour in the Simpsons is nothing compared to stuff like Family Guy or South Park, but that’s not the whole of it or even the most important part. It’s not the stated messages, but the basic assumptions in the show.
The Simpsons family is intact and stable, if slightly dysfunctional, and hold to functional, almost traditional, family values. They all love each other, however much they might bicker. Homer is a flawed man, often selfish or stupid, but still loving and caring towards his family. Marge is shown to love and respect Homer, despite her occasional anger at his flaws. Bart disrespects Homer occasionally, but it is shown as a clear deviancy for laughs; it also clearly shown that he does look up to and admire Homer. The kids fight, but at heart care for each other.
...
The Simpsons has a subtext of Homer as patriarch. A few times in the first couple of seasons Homer makes a family decision, whether it is selling the TV to attend counseling, buying a new TV, or choosing a camping spot, to name a few examples. The rest of the family complains or looks unhappy, yet it is not even questioned that, however flawed he or his decision may be, it is Homer’s place to decide these things. The show just assumes the father makes the major family decisions.
...
The episode Homer’s Night Out, centres around a picture of Homer dancing with a belly dancer at a bachelor party. The (non-nude) picture creates a town-wide scandal, brands Homer as a ‘swinger’, and is seen as something fundamentally deviant and abnormal.
...
The show assumes that normal people go to church on Sundays and say grace at mealtime. Prayer is a casually accepted part of the show, as is religion.
...
Other, less remarkable, moral lessons are also included. The pro-family/loyalty message of Life on the Fast Lane. How Marge’s sisters constant denigration of Homer is shown as negative, destructive behaviour. In one episode, Marge is casually referred to as Mrs. Homer Simpson.
All this is not to say the Simpsons is a font of traditional values, it is a liberal show, it does have some fem-centrism, and is rather subversive, but it is a good example of just how fast our culture is collapsing. Just a couple decades ago, the Simpsons was a controversial show that was held up by the president as an example of family dysfunction. Yet compared to today’s cultural wasteland, where broken families are common, disrespect and degeneracy are the norm, and the husband as the head of the family is, at best, a joke, it is very tame, almost traditional.
erwgv3g34
8mo ago
What the fuck is it about sex that makes humans crazy?
People who weren't "crazy" about sex did not reproduce; we are not descended from them.
erwgv3g34
1yr ago
Accordingly, when i see some AI-doomer post about how GPT-4 has passed the BAR exam in some state or gotten an A on Bryan Caplan's mid-term economics exam, my first thought is in not "oh shit here comes the fast take-off". It's more "and just how diligent were people grading the papers being?". In one of those threads the topic of grading on a curve came up and the question was asked why should we ask professors to go through the effort of calibrating tests to the material when it is so much simpler/easier/more efficient to ask a spread of arbitrarily difficult questions and award the top x% of answers 'A's. I ended up biting my tongue at the time because my knee-jerk response was something to the effect of "because that's fucking retarded and ultimately defeats the purpose of even administering a test in the first place" But upon a moment's reflection I realized that was a very "thing-manipulator" thought to have.
Thus we come back to the issue of inferential distance. I struggle to articulate just how brain-meltingly stupid and arbitrary the whole concept of "grading on a curve" seems to me. But I also recognize that grading on a curve is a widely accepted practice. From this I infer that my concept of a test and it's purpose is wildly different from that of Bryan Caplan and a lot of other users here on theMotte.
Perhaps this is my "thing-manipulator"-ness talking, but it seems intuitively obvious to me that if a teacher or professor is grading on a curve, they are not grading you on your capability or knowledge of the subject. and if they are not grading you on your capability or knowledge of the subject what re they grading you on? It seems to me that if a teacher and their students are on their game it should be possible for 100% of a class to earn a 100% grade. Just as if manufacturing is truly on the ball it should be possible to achieve a 100% pass rate from the QA department. Granted this never actually happens in the real world because life is imperfect but it's something to strive for isn't it? A man might just find himself a member of the '72 Dolphins.
What is the purpose of a test or inspection in the first place if not to verify capability?
That was me. And this complain would make a lot more sense if education was training people to actually do the tasks they perform at their jobs. But it doesn't. Calc tests and econ tests are just academic-themed IQ tests, because nobody actually uses calc or econ in their jobs except for a tiny minority, and that minority could be easily trained on the job instead of outsourcing the task to a 4-year high institution that charges tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege. Employers are using degrees and GPAs to select the top x% employees, not to verify that the student has achieved an objective standard of excellence in subject y (otherwise, would use nationwide standardized tests instead of whatever crap the professor came up with, in which case, WOULD make sense to effortfully calibrate objective passing grades against the material).
From "The Magic of Education" by Bryan Caplan:
Why do employers care about grades and diplomas? The “obvious” story, to most people, is that professors teach their students skills they’ll eventually use on the job. Low grades, no diploma, few skills.
This story isn’t entirely wrong; literacy and numeracy are a big deal. But the “obvious” story is far from complete. Think about all the time students spend studying history, art, music, foreign languages, poetry, and mathematical proofs. What you learn in most classes is, in all honesty, useless in the vast majority of occupations. This is hardly surprising when you remember how little professors like me know about the Real World. How can I possibly improve my students’ ability to do a vast array of jobs that I don’t know how to do myself? It would be nothing short of magic. I’d have to be Merlin, Gandalf, or Dumbledore to complete the ritual:
Step 1: I open my mouth and talk about academic topics like externalities of population, or the effect of education on policy preferences.
Step 2: The students learn the material.
Step 3: Magic.
Step 4: My students become slightly better bankers, salesmen, managers, etc.
Yes, I can train graduate students to become professors. No magic there; I’m teaching them the one job I know. But what about my thousands of students who won’t become economics professors? I can’t teach what I don’t know, and I don’t know how to do the jobs they’re going to have. Few professors do.
Many educators sooth their consciences by insisting that “I teach my students how to think, not what to think.” But this platitude goes against a hundred years of educational psychology. Education is very narrow; students learn the material you specifically teach them… if you’re lucky.
The woke oppose each and every anti-criminal policy because they believe, correctly, that such measures will have a disparate impact on blacks. It's a doublethink situation similar to Dreher's Law Of Merited Impossibility, except instead of "it will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it" it's "blacks are not more criminal than average, and if you support any tough-on-crimes policy you are a racist because criminals are disproportionately black."
As Covfefe Anon says, "The Woke Are More Correct Than The Mainstream".
erwgv3g34
1yr ago
We live in Sequel world now, no further universes are allowed.
New universes still come out occasionally, but they have to prove themselves as books first. Both The Martian and The Expanse started out as novels.
Also, you're not allowed to not care.
"You may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in you."
But even though you may not be allowed not to care, you are still allowed not to watch.
There's a certain degree of wokeness to all modern media of which must be tolerated
It must? Why?
Not only do you have all of old media to consume, not only do you have anime and k-drama providing modern alternatives, but you always have the option to drop out and walk away, as the Amish do.
The problem with that is you are brain-draining the labor class of all their natural leaders, and assimilating them into the gentry culture that considers working class culture its enemy. When the union leaders and managers come back from their elite colleges to manage the coal miners and Wal-Mart workers, they will no longer be working class kids who rose through the ranks and who understand and represent the interests of their people; they will instead be culturally-foreign occupiers.
erwgv3g34
4mo ago
What's worse is that even if you understand it, you can't make other people understand it. I may understand that I have a great lifestyle by historical and international standards, and that even by national standards my lifestyle is at worst average. My family don't, and are disappointed that I am not the kind of average that is depicted in media. Women sure as fuck don't understand; they are resentful of a husband that does not make at least six figures and takes them out to expensive restaurants and exotic vacations.
erwgv3g34
7mo ago
Have you read Scott's take on The Iliad? It's called "Atreus, Atreus, and Pelides: Attorneys At Law" and he summarizes it as "- when Prince Paris of Troy abducts Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, the Greeks' course of action is obvious - sue him!"
erwgv3g34
7mo ago
Re the Twilight example, obvs there are some fanfic writers who became high grossing professionals, people have to start somewhere. I don't think that gives us many clues about how to actually use the talent of fanfic and other amateur writers appropriately though.
E. L. James doesn't just happen to have some old fanfic on her resume from way back when she started her writing career; Fifty Shades of Grey is LITERALLY a Twilight fanfic called Master of the Universe with the names changed.
I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair, it just won't behave, and damn Rose for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I have tried to brush my hair into submission but it's not toeing the line. I must learn not to sleep with it wet. I recite this five times as a mantra whilst I try, once more, with the brush. I give up. The only thing I can do is restrain it, tightly, in a ponytail and hope that I look reasonably presentable.
Rose is my roommate and she has chosen, okay, that's a bit unfair, because choice has had nothing to do with it, but she has the flu and as such cannot do the interview she's arranged with some mega industrialist for the student newspaper. So I have been volunteered. I have final exams to cram for, one essay to finish and I am supposed to be working this afternoon, but no - today - I have to head into downtown Seattle and meet the enigmatic CEO of Cullen Enterprise Holdings, Inc. Allegedly he‘s some exceptional tycoon who is a major benefactor of our University and his time is extraordinarily precious... much more precious than mine -and he‘s granted Rose an interview... a real coup she tells me... Damn her extra-curricular activities.
I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair – it just won’t behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward hair in a ponytail and hope that I look semi presentable. Kate is my roommate, and she has chosen today of all days to succumb to the flu.
Therefore, she cannot attend the interview she’d arranged to do, with some mega-industrialist tycoon I’ve never heard of, for the student newspaper. So I have been volunteered. I have final exams to cram for, one essay to finish, and I’m supposed to be working this afternoon, but no – today I have to drive a hundred and sixty-five miles to downtown Seattle in order to meet the enigmatic CEO of Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc. As an exceptional entrepreneur and major benefactor of our University, his time is extraordinarily precious – much more precious than mine – but he has granted Kate an interview. A real coup, she tells me. Damn her extra-curricular activities.
I definitely notice the best-written fanfic regularly beat the pants off of the average professional TV show. In a sane world, they would be allowed to sell their products on the bookshelves directly with a mandatory royalty fee paid to the copyright holder. In our world, best bet is either to rewrite their existing work into original properties, if possible, or hire them to write something new, if not.
I want to discuss the Pathfinder fanfic "in His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die". I'm going to start by copy-pasting the submission statement I gave it on /r/rational and then I will dive deeper into the culture war aspects of the work:
Iomedae can tell Lily how all these vegetables are picked and which are the best ones to pick. ...some of them are out of season. It is super weird that they're here. How did they do that, preservation magic? On vegetables?
Evelyn Steel: "I don't know a lot about the Costco supply chain but they might be from somewhere far away where they're in season? Transport is pretty cheap with container ships, like we saw in the video. Or they might be grown in a greenhouse - that's a big building with a glass roof that lets in the sun, but where you can keep it warmer inside than outside and sort of make the plants think it's the right time of year."
Iomedae: "That is very good. Say to the seasons, no! We stronger!"
So I was reading Eliezer Yudkowsky's Twitter feed, as one does, and suddenly I saw that he had retweeted a post about a glowfic. Now, I've never been able to get into glowfic before; I've bounced off planecrash more times than you can imagine. But the quotes seemed interesting enough that I decided to try taking a look anyway...
...and I was hooked. I binged it over several hours, and are currently refreshing the thread several times a day in hopes of catching the next update.
The basic premise is that a 15-year-old Paladin chick named Iomedae gets reverse-Isekai'd to Earth on her way to join her holy order as a novice. At first she falls-in with a group of illegal immigrant workers, but later comes to the attention of the authorities after stabbing a man who attempts to rape her. Unfortunately, while fifteen may be old enough to be considered an adult back in medieval fantasyland, here in twenty-first century America it means Iomedae is distinctly underage, so she gets assigned to veteran foster mother Evelyn Steel.
What follows is an absolutely glorious outside look at contemporary American society through the eyes of a teenage Paladin from a medieval fantasy setting. You get the good (21st century USA really is an absurdly rich place by both historical and international standards; praise God and Costco!), the bad (adolescents are legally treated as children despite being biological adults), and the ugly (the realities of what immigration enforcement actually entails). Toss in a generous helping of economics, ethical philosophy, effective altruism, and taking ideas seriously, and you have the makings of a rationalist classic.
Negatives? I don't like Lily. She was cute at first, but her speech impediment got old really fast. Eventually her posts started getting translated into standard English in footnotes, but even so I don't think she is pulling her weight as a character; I don't see how the story would be worse without her.
Finally, if you like this story, you may also enjoy "that I may be as bold in my beliefs"; an AU where Iomedae ends up in Sunnydale defending her immigrant worker friends from Buffyverse vampires with the help of Slayer Karen Teller.
Now, as I said, Iomedae is from medieval fantasyland, and her writer does a good job portraying her someone who has different values and ideas from a modern American. I particularly liked the way she reacted to the modern concept of rape:
Doctor: " - most cases of rape among students at school are cases of students who are already dating, and go somewhere private together on purpose but with different understandings of what will happen from there, or of a person getting so drunk or high they cannot meaningfully consent to sex and then someone choosing to have sex with them anyway, or of adults seeking out sex with people under the age of consent, which we call statutory rape."
Iomedae: "Okay I think the word rape not mean what I thinked it mean. What is the word for making someone have sex with you by being stronger than them or having a better knife."
Doctor: "...that is rape. It's just a very rare kind compared to all the other kinds I just described."
All the other things he described were just - situations in which obviously someone will have sex with you because you weren't trying to stop them. Which is pretty different from situations where people will have sex with you even if you are trying to stop them. But maybe if there are lots of people around who will go off with random teenage boys or get insensible with drink around them then most people do not try to go after people who'll forcefully object. Maybe in America you really pretty much only get raped if you are without papers or astoundingly reckless.
I found this extremely refreshing. The central example of rape is "woman was minding her own business when someone broke into her house and forced her". It is incredible how little of what gets called "rape" actually fits that category, and can be better described as "woman cruising for a dicking regrets the dicking come next morning". It is the worst argument in the world, enshrined into our legal code.
Or consider how she deals with the stifling secularism of progressive society:
Iomedae: "I - understand - you both have bad time with church. I am sorry that you did. I do not know enough to say more about it. And I have no guess if Jesus alive or no. But I think Christians good and cool. I believe you that my life easier if I pretend this. I no going pretend it."
Claudette Desjardins: "...Okay, fair, if all Christians were like you about it then churches would probably not suck."
Emily Bergeron: "I think probably a lot of Christians are lovely people who don't suck at all and don't want anyone to go to Hell? I mean, Evelyn's Christian. It's just, like, the obnoxious ones are louder." Shrug. "Also a lot of Christians, like, don't want their kids learning real science in school, or don't believe in modern medicine, whereas I feel like your god would be all in favor of technology and understanding the world better."
Iomedae: "Technology and Costco and space and understand the world very good and important and the job of all people. I believe you many Christians say or do bad things, but the ones I have knowed were good to me when they have very little to share, and my life was so much better with them, and things very bad for them now and it my fault, so I no going to - pretend I have no thing to do with them for life easier. And I think Jesus have right idea and I bet He does want me grow up be like Him, if He is real."
This is intensely upsetting. Why is this so upsetting. Probably because she does not have many allies, and she needs allies, and you have to make compromises to keep allies, but - she was not actually expecting 'denounce Jesus and the people who follow him' to be her new allies' first demand. She would not really have imagined that as in the range of demands allies made of each other; she hasn't asked anyone else to pray, or to pause before meals for her to pray, or even to allow her time in her day for it. She is trying to keep in mind that 'how to appease Americans' is valuable information even when the choice she makes is that it is not worth it to her to appease Americans, but it turns out it's still deeply unpleasant to navigate demands with that in mind.
I imagine more than one red triber has felt something similar upon going to college. But it goes further than that; Iomedae really believes in hell, the way she believes in the grocery store around the corner, and that is obviously going to have a huge effect on the way she lives her life.
And just so I don't get accused of only liking this story because it confirms all my biases, Iomedae also has words for modern immigration enforcement:
Iomedae: "I also angry it take years get papers. I think maybe I go different place where people can work without papers."
Well. This is really not going well, is it.
Evelyn Steel: "Iomedae, you're a clever girl and a determined girl and you know I can't stop you. I think you next year will be happier if you stay long enough to learn more about - what the places where they let you work without papers - are like. ...Actually, I should look this up, but I think there might not be very many places like that, just - places where the government isn't very good at government things and so they won't notice if someone is breaking the law."
Iomedae: "I pretty sure there many places where legal work without papers. That a evil America thing. No where else do that."
So, overall, I highly recommend this fic. It will make you think, and it will give you a great outside look at the assumptions we take for granted living in modernity. If you have never played Pathfinder, don't worry; neither have I. As long as you know about paladins and wizards from reading The Order of the Stick or similar you know everything you need to know to enjoy the narrative. Iomedae may have ascended to godhood in canon, but in this story that is just her awesome destiny.
erwgv3g34
11mo ago
This is called a hallucination and it is a recurring problem with LLMs, even the best ones that you have to pay for like ChatGPT-4. There is no known solution; you just have to double-check everything the AI tells you.
It's a play on Eliezer's paperclip maximizer thought experiment. Much like the paperclip maximizer has the goal of tiling the universe with paperclips, EA's actions (mosquito nets, etc.) have the net result of filling up the Earth with poor third-worlders. It's the same idea Garret Harding put forth in "Living on a Lifeboat" with a clever skiffy gloss.
More options
Context Copy link