erwgv3g34
My Quality Contributions:
User ID: 240
erwgv3g34
5mo ago
I dunno, if it's a battle for civilization you should probably use guns, instead of anonymous comments on an obscure message board.
You are glowing.
From 1984 by George Orwell:
At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation. In the face of the Thought Police, there is no other way.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
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.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
For example, it's become very common to put question marks at the ends of statements to indicate uncertainty.
But that's not a bad thing? I've picked up that habit from 2000s internet culture and I honestly like it.
The rest just seems like Eternal September. Once smartphones allowed any asshole with a pulse to use the internet, we got to see what a 530 SAT Verbal score looks like first-hand.
erwgv3g34
6mo 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.
Look, SkookumTree has staked his whole reputation on this. If he doesn't do it, he will never be able to show his face around here again; anytime he tried to wade into the culture war thread, he would be dismissed with "isn't there a Hock you should be doing?" The mods can stop us from posting it, but nobody can stop us from thinking it. Skookum would become the laughingstock of the entire forum. What's he supposed to do, delete his account?
Better to die with dignity.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
Modern preservations techniques are virtually the same as they were back then; build a human-sized thermos, fill it with liquid nitrogen, stick the patient inside, and occasionally top it off with liquid nitrogen to keep it full as it boils off. The biggest difference is that they now pump a patient full of cryoprotectants to prevent freezing damage from ice crystals, a process called vitrification.
The big changes that were instituted as a result of the early disasters were institutional, not technological. Cryonics companies will refuse to touch you until you have paid them cold, hard cash, or given them ownership of a life insurance policy with a reputable life insurance company. Patients are stored upside-down so that their heads are protected longest in the event of liquid nitrogen boil-off. Cryonics orgs are prepared to convert their whole-body patients into neuros if that is the only way to keep them suspended.
These are all bitter lessons that had to be learned the hard way. Family members would arrange to cryopreserve their relatives, then lose interest in paying for their upkeep as the grief faded. Patients used to be stored upright for optics reasons. Patients that could have been saved were never converted to neuro, usually because of family objections.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
The other thing that gets ignored is the chance that it doesn't work:
Two eggs failed to survive the thawing process. Three more failed to fertilize. That left six embryos, of which five appeared to be abnormal. The last one was implanted in her uterus. On the morning of March 7, she got the devastating news that it, too, had failed.
Adams was not pregnant, and her chances of carrying her genetic child had just dropped to near zero. She remembers screaming like "a wild animal," throwing books, papers, her laptop – and collapsing to the ground.
"It was one of the worst days of my life. There were so many emotions. I was sad. I was angry. I was ashamed," she said. "I questioned, 'Why me?' 'What did I do wrong?' "
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
Most of the early cryo-patients didn't survive, the most notable incident being the Chatsworth disaster.
Cryonics has learned from those mistakes. In particular, cryonic orgs now absolutely refuse to preserve a patient unless he has already provided enough money to cover both his preservation and his upkeep, in perpetuity. This is important, because most cryonics failures happened partly or wholly due to financial problems.
From "Suspension Failures: Lessons from the Early Years", first published in Cryonics, February 1992:
One important lesson to be drawn from this tale of woe is that cryonic suspensions should only be maintained by those who have a strong personal interest in being cryopreserved themselves and have made arrangements. This includes the financial backers as well as those in charge of daily care. Those who are personally committed generally have superior judgment and realize the advisability of the neuro option (head-only preservation) in cases where funds are limited. Such people will fight hard to maintain even someone they hardly knew, who is not a relative, as happened at Alcor during the Dora Kent crisis for instance. They are not afraid to take measures others squeamishly shun, when a patient’s survival is at stake. Neuroconversions carried out by such people have saved several patients whose funding ran out [28]. Not one of the many suspension failures was a neuro.
Of seventeen documented freezings through 1973, all but one ended in failure, while maybe five or six later cases, some of them privately maintained, were later terminated (or were continued under questionable circumstances, such as attempted permafrost interment). In most of these cases, finances were a factor.
And from "Don’t Ask, But Do Tell" by Mike Darwin:
Your statement “(CSNY) underestimated the costs associated with maintaining the leaky Cryo-care capsules (sound familiar?)” is incorrect. The estimates for the cost of cryopreservation presented to the public ranged from $8,500 posited by Bob Ettinger in THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY in 1964 to the $10,000 widely quoted by the media as being the cost of indefinite cryopreservation at both CSC and CSNY during the period from1969 to 1972. Of that $10,000 no less than $8,000 was to be invested for long-term care. $8,000.00 in 1969 had about the same buying power as $44,561.80 in 2006, or roughly twice what CI currently budgets for long-term storage for Option One Members ($23,000 per patient). The problem was that this money was never set aside, and indeed never existed in the first place. What’s more, with the exception of Paul Hurst, Sr. (and later Herman Greenberg), CSNY was not consistently paid, or in the case of Steven Mandell, paid at all. Steven’s life insurance was applied for after he was already (terminally) ill and did not pay out. Pauline Mandell never paid Cryo-Span for the CC dewar, the charges for “encapsulating” Steven, or for liquid nitrogen or facility floor space (rent). The $4,500 for the CC dewar, the $1,100 for the Sergeant-Welch vacuum pumps, and the costs of welding, transportation, and miscellaneous hardware were paid for by Curtis Henderson.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
While I don't think you should start having babies the second you turn 20 years old
You are right; better to get started as teenagers.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
Aella has talked about her troubles finding a man who is up to her standards before:
Aella: its v annoying that i seem to be searching for a romantic partner who's at least a little bit more powerful than i am
Geoffrey Miller: It's OK to be hypergamous.
Aella: yeah, it's just annoying. it dramatically reduces mate options. like 99% of guys i casually meet are less powerful than me
Aella: if i go to specific events that are selected for ppl doin cool stuff, then it feels closer to a normal mating market, but those events are pretty rare
It's not that she doesn't want to settle down, it's that, because of the way female hypergamy works, her own level of money, success, and status has drastically shrunk the pool of partners she considers acceptable.
Which is too bad, because Aella is 30; if she is looking for a husband and children, she is on her last chance.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
Yes, it is rational to care about propaganda in movies. From "The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence":
In the ancestral environment, there were no moving pictures; what you saw with your own eyes was true. A momentary glimpse of a single word can prime us and make compatible thoughts more available, with demonstrated strong influence on probability estimates. How much havoc do you think a two-hour movie can wreak on your judgment? It will be hard enough to undo the damage by deliberate concentration—why invite the vampire into your house? In Chess or Go, every wasted move is a loss; in rationality, any non-evidential influence is (on average) entropic.
And from "Boycott people who hate you":
Using their products will harm you. Seek out alternative products
Boycott the Star Wars movie Rogue One. All the villains are white males. All the heroes are not. Not only will this depress you and persuade you that you are evil and villainous and doomed to lose, but this guarantees bad writing and a boring show for the reasons explained by Orwell. If it is written to political formula, it is written to formula, so all the characters are living dead, placeholders and formulae, not people that you might care about. They kill a few of the heroes to try and make you care, but you won’t care.
And that's just for adults who are aware they are watching propaganda. As @WhiningCoil says, it is ten times worse if you have children. From "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out":
First, as the leftists used to say, “Kill Your Television”. I am not one who generally thinks that machines are inherently evil. Television is an exception. It is no more and no less than a hypnotic mind control device. Don’t believe me? Sit a hyperactive toddler in front of a television and watch what happens. They freeze, turn away from everything they were doing, and stare at the screen. Gavin McInnes once noted that the “on” switch of his television was an “off” switch for his kids, and so it is. Do you think this device does not place ideas in the minds of those who fall into a trance in its presence? And what ideas do you think the Hollywood/New York axis wishes to place there? I recall reading one account of a father who, tired of his two under-10 daughters’ bratty attitudes, limited their television viewing to a DVD box set of Little House on The Prairie. The change in his daughters’ behavior was dramatic – within a couple of weeks, they were referring to him and his wife as “Ma” and “Pa”, and offering to help with chores. The lesson is obvious: people (and especially children) learn their social norms from television, far more even than from the people around them.
Ideally, one would cut oneself off from it totally. Many find this rather difficult (I must admit, myself included at times). Some keep a television set, but make sure it is disconnected from broadcast channels and use it only as a monitor for a carefully-selected library of DVDs. Others (myself included) don’t own a set, but download a few select programs from torrent sites and watch on laptops or tablets. My total viewership of television programs tops out at perhaps 3-4 hours per week during particularly good seasons. Any traditionalist should strive to do the same. In fact, traditionalists should reject – should “drop out” of – all popular culture (especially that produced after, say, 1966) to the greatest degree possible, and make sure their children are exposed to it as little as possible. Music, video games, even the web – either drop out of it completely, or, at very least, carefully limit the time and scope of it in your life and the lives of your children.
The Amish understand this very well, which is why they do not have televisions:
I once heard David Kline tell of Protestant tourists sight-seeing in an Amish area. An Amishman is brought on the bus and asked how Amish differ from other Christians. First, he explained similarities: all had DNA, wear clothes (even if in different styles), and like to eat good food.
Then the Amishman asked: “How many of you have a TV?”
Most, if not all, the passengers raised their hands.
“How many of you believe your children would be better off without TV?”
Most, if not all, the passengers raised their hands.
“How many of you, knowing this, will get rid of your TV when you go home?”
No hands were raised.
“That’s the difference between the Amish and others,” the man concluded.
I don't have children (yet; growth mindset!), but if I did, I would endeavor to make sure they did not have access to over-the-air television or streaming media like Netflix. Rather, I would take advantage of the decades of existing work that @quiet_NaN points out and provide them with a library of titles composed of classic Disney movies (Snow White, Pinocchio, etc.), Don Bluth Movies (The Land Before Time, The Secret of NIMH, etc.), and Studio Ghibli movies (Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Spirited Away, etc.). As Gwern says, "Culture Is Not About Esthetics".
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
Then we must definitely hire him a female prostitute. If it works, he can die with dignity.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
Which is certainly a problem if you lose such a conflict, but if a clear assessment of relative power indicates you're much, much more likely to win, how is your opponents ceasing to exist forever not a goal to be much desired, enough to be worth suffering serious losses to attain?
Nobody starts a war unless they are confident they can win. Yet, many lose. Humans are irrationally self-confident and overoptimistic. As the infamous Konkvistador said: "War is computation with tanks. War is truth revealing. As war proceeds uncertainty collapses."
Perhaps a perfectly rational being could take into account the meta-uncertainty, and only go to war when they were a thousand times sure they could win. But for mere humans, a willingness to coexist acts as a deontology to prevent you from making that kind of costly mistake.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
How is it not at least somewhat hypocritical, how does it not speak of entitlement, to expect a woman to voluntarily submit to such misery, and not be willing to voluntarily submit oneself to a comparable level of suffering? If not "the Hock," what can match the ordeal a woman undergoes, being in a romantic relationship with someone she finds repellent?
How about working a job one finds abhorrent?
That was the deal. That was what marriage meant. The woman agrees to provide exclusive sexual access to a man, and the man in turn agrees to support the wife and her children.
It is not necessary that a woman should be attracted to her husband, any more than it is necessary that a man should enjoy his job. All that is necessary is that they should do their duty.
The welfare state, alimony, and child support destroyed the deal.
Who the hell is Aella? From your post, it sounds like she’s been mentioned here before
She's a prominent rationalist thinkfluencer/thought leader/blogger, similar to Julia Galef.
Aella leans heavily on her sex appeal; the first time I ever heard about her was on reddit from this famous NSFW photoshoot. More relevantly, she is known for doing weird twitter polls and conducting independent sex research.
She's been mentioned on ACX numerous times, such as in "There's A Time For Everyone" which talks about how Scott met his wife at one of her parties, and "Classifieds Thread 1/2022", in which she is described as a "shit-eating whore" (which is literally true, but resulted in the document being wiped from Google; here's the bowdlerized version).
Effective accelerationism. By analogy with effective altruism, the Nick Landian position of trying to to bring about superhuman intelligence as quickly/certainly as possible, even if it kills all humans. Should that happen, it was just the next step in the universe's evolution. The only moral action is the minimization of entropy, after all.
Even Eliezer Yudkowsky was a proto e/acc, in his younger days.
Lately, the term is getting watered down into a sort of generic techno-progress label.
- https://twitter.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1683462000360280065
- https://twitter.com/liron/status/1682825830630674432
- https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1683208767054438400
Either way, on the AI question, the e/acc's are the ones firmly on the side of full steam ahead, while ordinary people are calling for a pause and Eliezer Yudkowsky is shouting stop.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
But Scott has not publicly come out in favor of HBD, which we know from his leaked e-mail he believes. That's a huge heresy, the kind of thing you get fired for.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
And a part me laughs a bit. They fucked around and found out. They didn’t do anything when the other white ethnicities were getting blasted and some orgs like the ADL promote white hate. And then the gun was turned on them.
Not only did they do nothing, not only was it some orgs; subversive anti-white ideology has always been highly disproportionality Jewish. There is a reason things like the early life Wikipedia section and the coincidence detection triple parenthesis echo became memes.
Frankenstein is finally getting attacked by his own monster.
erwgv3g34
6mo ago
Osama bin Laden was definitely right about one thing – if people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they instinctively like the strong horse.
Obvious answer in my mind is cell phones/text messaging.
Really? 'Cause from my perspective, cellphones turned from actually useful communication devices into an unholy supernormal stimulus that people have to constantly struggle against in order to function. I'm a teacher; every day I have to take away students' phones, because nobody is going to work if the alternative of getting a dopamine hit is sitting right there.
The internet was bad enough when it wasn't following you around 24/7 in your pocket. You can't opt out, either; society is now built on the assumption that you have a smartphone. My school uses WhatsApp as the official method of group communication for staff.
The fact that phones went from small devices with a week-long battery life to gargantuan machines with a battery life of less than a day is just the cherry on top.
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
7mo ago
Yes, this is definitely part of the problem. Media comes out, stays on the shelf for a decade or two, and then vanishes, never to be seen again until its 95 years are up (if any copies even survive that long). Only a few works avoid this fate; super popular movies that are always in demand, like Jaws, or books that capture the attention of teachers and get assigned year after year to unwilling students, like To Kill a Mockingbird.
I have a theory that the REAL reason for perpetual rabid copyright expansion (of which Canada is the latest victim) is because the Cathedral doesn't want new woke media to have competition from older works.
From "Catholic Tumblr Gothic":
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