faceh
2hr ago
Well that's why I'm asking 'in vacuum.'
Its like a trolley problem where the only options are "hit this button to kill them more or less instantly, therefore minimizing suffering, or don't hit the button and they die anyway, but hours or days later, maybe in agonizing pain."
One could argue that the latter might add some deterrent effect, which is arguably the TRUE point of doing this at all.
Anyway, my argument is that its up to VENEZUELA to stand up for their citizens if they think some international law was violated. But then they'd have to own that they're aware of these drug shimpments.
The fact that U.S. citizens and Politicians are the ones pushing for sanctions on U.S. troops... while Venezuela just goes through the motions of prepping for invasion is such odd optics.
Seems kind of obvious, in retrospect.
I don't know where precisely the boat was intercepted, but if it was far enough from any land mass that a survivor probably couldn't swim to 'safety'... they were most likely going to die anyway?
Why waste a missile to double tap doomed men?
Unless the actual objection is now that the navy should have sent a rescue crew out to pick up anyone in the water which, hey, I'm willing to entertain, but that's a different question.
And on that topic, if there are survivors of a strike like this, is it more humane to leave them floating in the water to most likely die of exposure, drowning, or shark attack, or to do the double tap? Like, in a complete vacuum, which is more ethical?
I also note that the claims that these could be innocent fishermen or something have apparently evaporated.
faceh
3hr ago
I don't mind doing some light sparring with a female. But my favorite demo at that point is to shoot for the legs, then bodily lift them off the ground and remind them that now, I can simply slam them to the ground and the fight is probably over.
Then show them a few ways they can 'cheat' to make it a little less lopsided.
Today I was showing a quite young, very athletic, but petite female student how to wrist lock when the opportunity presents itself. Then I showed her how hard it is to land a wrist lock on a guy (me) that is giving more than token resistance. So final lesson: "IF you can do it, then you go in with the full intention to break the dude's wrist as quickly as possible. Don't depend on pain compliance. In fact, don't even assume snapping his wrist is enough. The longer the fight lasts the worse it is for you."
Best general advice I can offer them is "use the bigger muscles of your body against the (relatively) small muscles on theirs when possible." And God bless her she has internalized the "groin kick first, ask questions later" mentality.
Yep.
Technology fixes social problems which, I would argue, allows social 'rot' to spread underneath since now certain traits that were selected against on the population level are now still present but less noticed since we just use the tech solution (apply this logic to AI if you wish, lol).
When I first moved to my current area, 10 years ago, I was in the cheapest apartment I could find that still allowed pets. This was my first apartment after living in a College Town.
After years of no problems with Amazon deliveries, I started getting about half of my packages swiped off my stoop. I wondered for a bit if it was Amazon Delivery drivers being incompetent, but nope. I did the classic approach of filling a cardboard box with trash and leaving it out, and that, too got taken.
But a few months later, Amazon introduced An Amazon Locker at my local mall. So I could ship items there and pick them up at my leisure.
Problem solved! Except now it was a 15 minute round trip to pick up stuff, so I would have to schedule it around my other errands. The whole POINT of Amazon delivery is to NOT have to leave the house!!
And of course, I had to live with the knowledge that some of my neighbors were wanton thieves, which was the real issue. Can't leave my door or my car unlocked ever, knowing that. I did own a large dog at the time so I was relatively certain they'd not try to break into my unit.
(They've since added a locker at the convenience store w/in walking distance from that apartment. I have to assume they track package theft and use that as a basis for where they put the lockers).
Yes, I'm GLAD that technology solved a social problem... but it didn't actually solve the problem. Just routed around the symptom. I VASTLY prefer my current neighborhood, where not only can I leave Amazon packages sitting out for days, the Neighborhood facebook group will actively coordinate to find misdelivered packages and, if packages are going missing, immediately use the doorbell cameras to figure out if there's a thief about.
And we do that without using that classic bit of technology known as a gated community, so I can feel reasonably good that my neighbors are actually being neighborly.
One way to determine if a piece of tech is an 'unalloyed' good or if its just a hack borne of 'necessity' is whether people still choose to use it/pay for it when they genuinely don't have to do so. I never use Amazon lockers these days since the technology of bringing items to my doorstep in two days is the one I actually want.
faceh
22hr ago
In a hypothetical future age of abundance, how much better can things really be?
I can imagine claiming some largeish planetoid in the asteroid belt and converting it over to suitability for human habitation, and have a couple Aldrin Cyclers that can drop off and pick up visitors.
Fuck a house in a nice neighborhood, I want my nearest neighbor to be 400,000 km away.
That's what I'D do with an AI-induced boon.
Buying comfortable solitude might be the next frontier in that sense, There's only so many private islands out there, although we can certainly build more.
I think much of the decline is explained by the cost and time of travel being reduced. Disparate populations are still easy to reach, but before we had mass communications, information about unsavory individuals might propagate slowly.
Snake Oil Salesmen are a well known trope in Westerns, where it was possible to arrive in an isolated town, scam the relatively trusting townspeople, leave before they realized the scam, and arrive in another such town before word actually spread.
Even today, it can be hard to punish a scammer if they stay mobile. Or simply operate outside the jurisdiction of the people they're scamming (oh look, India again).
Dunbar's number is probably pretty closely correlated to the largest community you can operate the runs solely on trust, rather than introducing contracts, mediators, and other dispute resolution systems.
Still, there is something 'magical' about being able to leave your garage door open, your car unlocked, and expect to find your Amazon packages left unmolested on your doorstep, and likewise be pretty certain that if someone DID try to take your packages or steal your car the neighbors would either intervene or call the police, who would in fact take it seriously enough to try to catch the miscreant.
One thing that has really stuck in my craw in the modern era are TSA agents stealing items from luggage. It was (is?) an epidemic, and I really can't see how you maintain trust in a system when the people tasked with enforcing the rules are the ones violating them flagrantly. And, oh dear, I have to note that A Majority of the Security Screeners are nonwhite.
faceh
22hr ago
I'm actually unfamiliar with the criminal justice practices of Tsarist Russia, was the death penalty meted out with regularity?
This seems likely to be the largest effect.
Social selection effects 'alone' seem insufficient. Gotta actually remove/filter the least cooperative/most dangerous defectors out of the gene pool for a few generations, allowing the cooperators to proliferate.
The other factor is probably there being even higher-trust subpopulations that were either allowed to live in isolation, or those subpopulations leave to a new land and form a society where everyone is extremely high trust (and defectors get burned to death or killed off by the elements). Then norms these cultures produce probably rubbed off on others they came into contact with.
Butttt if we're going with long-term evolutionary explanations, I'm a fan of the idea that long, harsh winters tend to produce human populations that are good at long term thinking and directly linked to that, cooperation in iterated games. "If we start fighting over food supply now, all it will achieve is everyone dies when winter arrives."
Then of course winter itself forcing people to live in close proximity and anyone who was intolerable to be around would likely be kicked out of the house and would more than likely die.
A good test for this would be to see if current Inuit cultures seem to have similar 'high trust' norms.
Japan
I recently was reminded of the series they have over there where literal toddlers are sent on errands that require them to operate very independently and overcome some basic obstacles, and navigate the risks of the local environment.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=z5GB-uiX4f4?si=7rg1ZGv38B4Ue86c
And nobody finds this odd, every single person does their best to assist without overly coddling the kid, and generally you get the sense the entire social structure of this community is designed for the safety of their children.
That's the dream, imho.
faceh
1d ago
But simply "being prepared" is not a visible thing.
Correct, although there are visible signals a man can send, and a few of those are actually hard to fake!
More importantly, these are things a woman can sniff out in advance of committing to a guy if she wants to! Or she could ask her dad, who probably has the better insight into male worthiness.
A fire extinguisher basically can't, unless I failed to maintain it in working condition.
Think, for just a second, what the approximate equivalent of 'failing to maintain' the relationship with a male partner might look like, though.
The reason I'm willing to believe that post is hitting on truth is simply interacting with the Indians in my local community over the course of years now.
And the tendency to try and 'get one over' on others, even when it is detrimental to the relationship is nigh-universal. Sometimes this is benign. But I'd be reluctant to put anything meaningful at risk in a deal that might go sour because of this factor.
I had a potential client with a 2.5 million dollar net worth (if I assume he was honest on this point) balk at paying me $1200 to fix a problem for him. This was already steeply discounted! I also noticed that its about 50-50 that any given Indian-American potential client I actually work with will follow through on actually finalizing their work, since, I suspect, that would mean handing money over. And I get the sense that the act of handing over money is seen as somewhat of a 'defeat' unless the amount you hand over is much less than the amount that was agreed to.
I'll still work with them, of course, but it has colored my expectations across the board. I would NOT take one on as a business partner unless I had a pre-existing extensive relationship with them.
And these are all otherwise decently smart, well-presenting, well-off individuals.
My conclusion is basically one of two things.
#1 Either the Indians who actually make it over here are 'the best of the best' to some degree, and in theory the best-suited to adapt to Western Cultural norms, and even they are acting on this 'defection-based' cultural baseline... which indicates such culture is endemic in their home country...
OR
#2 The Indians who make it over here achieved that by cheating the hardest and fooling the gullible Westerners intentionally... which indicates that this culture is so endemic in their home country that it is the ONLY way for them to get ahead.
(The third option is that those are the same thing: the 'most talented' Indians are also the ones best at playing that game, and that's maybe the scariest possibility of all, we're inviting the 'superpredators' of their society here.)
I have also had some perfectly delightful, non-scammy/defection interactions in various contexts, and in most cases they're pleasant to interact with when money isn't on the table. And I have a few Indian dishes that I really do enjoy, I would never say their culture is without its pros.
But as I've stated before, I have little problem, zero discomfort looking at the broader, population level stats and drawing the obvious conclusions from those. One of the big ones that still sort of puzzles me... how does a nation with 1.5 billion people produce so few Olympic-Caliber athletes? They've won 41 medals... TOTAL. That's one-third of what fucking KENYA has, and Kenya started competing in 1956, compared to India starting in 1900. Granted Kenya is a bit specialized in which events they win.
And my 'theory' is that that whole area of the world assumes that defection/low trust is 'normal' and act accordingly, and when introduced to a high-trust population, they're more inclined to view these folks as potential suckers (in the P.T. Barnum sense) than they are to realize they can achieve much greater things via cooperation here.
So that reading pretty readily confirms my priors... which makes me suspicious enough to want some independent verification.
If you know how I feel about high-trust societies... you probably get why I find this concept disgusting and mildly terrifying if true.
faceh
1d ago
There are a LOT of techniques in wrestling (and similar disciplines) that are unreasonably effective if you're willing to demolish your opponent's weak spots.
The good news is that there's now billions of dollar pouring into this particular area of research to find more and more effective options, so I'd expect they'll find one that works for your case relatively soon.
But I am very sympathetic to the feeling that the 'miracle drug' isn't helping.
Would I kill a stranger to protect my wife? Sure. Do I think I will ever have to actually do that? Almost certainly not. Does that fact, like, oblige some gratitude or something on my wife's part? Create some responsibility to me? I don't think so
And on that point I simply disagree.
If you are ever called upon to actually kill (or die) to save your wife or children, that sole act in itself functionally justifies the entirety of her gratitude for you, because the severity of the act is literally that large in terms of impact on your life and hers.
Even if I grant that we've rendered the present risk of having to do so to functionally nil (unless you go looking for trouble), if you have genuinely taken the time to mentally and physically prepare yourself for an act of ultimate violence or sacrifice, that risk is NOT guaranteed to remain low into the future and having an 'insurance policy' in place for such an event is is the wise thing to do.
Simply put, if you keep a fire extinguisher around the house for years on end, do you think "man why do I bother having this thing, housefires are a rare occurrence!" or, is it more like "I sure am glad to have this here because if my house catches fire I might be able to stop it burning down."
Have some gratitude for the fire extinguisher sitting on top of your fridge (well, that's where mine is) even if you never intend to use it.
Or, if you like, think of it as the equivalent of paying your life insurance premium every month. Hope to never to use it, still paying (in money, if not 'gratitude') for the peace of mind it brings.
The world is not, on the whole, a very civilized and safe place. And the only insurance policy one can have against the failure of civilization is someone willing to step up to fight the dangers. We forget and dismiss this at our own peril.
faceh
1d ago
That's actually a damn solid insight.
We have gone from a society where most basic systems undergirding it are in principle legible and comprehensive to ~a majority of the people (in a practical if not scientific sense of 'understanding') to one where these mechanisms are far more complex and often hidden (sometimes intentionally obsfuscated) so its now a world of 'magic' machines from the perspective of the average citizen.
And Boomers sort of presided over this period, and were never economically incentivized to learn how things worked outside of their narrow domain.
We do now have a TON of younger folks trained in computer science and coding who at least get how these black boxes 'think' and can manipulate them to some degree, but I doubt this unlocks full understanding of how the world's social systems work.
There's a point at which technique ceases to trump size and strength.
I should know, I've been training techniques for damn near 10 years, and I've got one buddy with ~40 pounds on me who can still ragdoll me at will if he decides to/I don't execute the technique perfectly. I can beat him at striking, though.
Look at Connor McGregor attempt to fight The Mountain from Game of Thrones.
I have yet to see any 'convincing' demonstration of a female submission artist defeating a male of similar size who did not want to be submitted. I will grant it can happen, but it is probably a fluke.
For demo purposes, it is hard to override the male instinct to 'play nice' with women so as not to inadvertently hurt them.
Thus, I think it is far, far better to not feed female ego on this point and just tell them straight up "your attacker will probably be a male, and probably be larger than you. Give up any hope of beating him on skill or strength and just CHEAT LIKE HELL and beat him on brutality." And carry a weapon and train with said weapon.
faceh
1d ago
Well I did discuss that and I think the risk is overstated, and is certainly the wrong risk to hedge against. Allowing fear of this risk to dissuade you from partnering up is a sign of excess neuroticism. And 'ironically' excess neuroticism makes it more likely your relationship will fail.
It does appear that strengthening the marriage covenant (i.e. making the expectations and restrictions on both parties clear and strict) is a necessary preceding step.
faceh
5d ago
outside of some form of codified decorum the half drunk guy with a gun wins more martial contests than all the other combat disciplines except sober guy with a gun
In a 1 v. 1 scenario, I would no-shit bet on a guy with a knife who sort of knows what he's doing vs. the guy with a gun.
We've tested this under pressure. Unless the gunman gets a shot off that actually incapacitates the other guy instantly, once the distance closes a blade does more damage more quickly and reliably. If its already close quarters, good luck actually deploying the weapon and getting a shot off under pressure.
And if the gun jams or slips from your grasp or the other guy manages to take it, you're screwed.
You're almost better off using it as a bludgeon.
There's dozens of bodycam videos out there of a cop getting jumped by knife-wielding attacker and they almost always get cut before the attacker is neutralized. And oftentimes the only reason the attacker is neutralized is because another cop shoots them in time.
faceh
5d ago
Well, are we starting with grappling or does the woman have to take him down?
I guess I can clarify, if 'dirty' tactics like eye gouges and groin strikes are on the table, then size isn't an insurmountable factor.
Problem is a dude can win literally by just dropping all his weight on her and holding her down.
faceh
5d ago
Yep, but it is worth asking what problem Jiu Jitsu solves and how common that problem is.
Arguably the way its practiced has so many constraints that in practice it fails if any of those constraints are violated.
If you're fighting a guy who boxes, is not wearing a gi, on a concrete surface, and he may be carrying a weapon, I dunno if its reliable.
Excellent conditioning though.
That said, wrestling (specifically Sambo) seems to dominate everything in a 1 v 1 context.
faceh
5d ago
And a "real" fight is chaotic so there's an irreducible element of chance involved.
The secret to winning fights is mostly "bring more guys, with better discipline."
The coach is not based enough to flat out announce the single best way to improve your running performance is to lose weight.
Interesting but not surprising.
What's really funny is now GLP-1 drugs have made it a simple matter of adhering to an injection schedule, so these difficult conversations need not happen. Someone just loses a bunch of weight out of 'nowhere' and their life quality and performance improves, everyone cheers, and then nobody has to acknowledge that being fat just sucks in about every way no matter what you do.
Martials arts well, as they say "weight classes exist for a reason." There's a bit more dimensionality to it, but simply put you will never EVER find a woman who can beat a man in her weight class without the guy being severely handicapped.
faceh
5d ago
There is an ongoing theory that BJJ is fake in the sense it doesn't work against someone unwilling to engage in BJJ with you. Although I think that only counts with regard to the sport aspect.
faceh
5d ago
That era was a mistake in a number of ways
Not clear to me, looking WAY back in hindsight, how it could have gone differently, though.
Like, I can see how the 2000's could have gone differently if, for example
A) 9/11 never happened. Or
B) Our response to 9/11 was more measured but also reaffirmed our national commitment to not letting other countries fuck with us.
But things like the 2008 financial crisis seem baked into the cake given the incentives involved.
Not sure how to interpret the 1960's in terms of 'the forces of history.' Mistakes were made but seemingly made from a bit of ignorance and irrational exuberance and as you say, the guys trying to keep things sane must have looked like real spoilsports.
Oh absolutely.
But I'm definitely questioning the need to double-tap the dudes. Okay sure if the specific order was "kill all of them" then the admiral in question might feel the job incomplete.
Or just... wait a bit and see if they even try to swim to shore.
Hence I give a bit more credence to the argument that the second shot was to sink the boat to deny the opponent the ability to retrieve it later.
I am quite skeptical that its maritime law that is going to successfully bring down Trump where every other approach has failed.
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