faceh
8mo ago
think there will always be people who choose blue for one reason or another,
But this is an interesting thing to state, since people choosing blue presumably HAVE reasons for doing it. And those reasons might be salient as well.
For example, someone might pick blue because they WANT to die. Am I going to know that in advance? No. So I don't see why it should change my behavior.
"I want to save everyone" is comprehensible logic, but it requires us to believe there are people in need of saving.
faceh
1yr ago
Torturing them for sick pleasure is not.
Can you expound on this, though.
If raising an animal with the explicit intent of cutting their life short for your own sustenance is 'legitimate,' why does it matter if you engage in torture or abuse during said short life?
faceh
1yr ago
I think the argument, at least as presented in the Miniseries, is that without the massive sacrifices of the people responding to the Chernobyl disaster the actual impact would have been cataclysmic.
So its one of those "it only turned out okay because a lot of people were aware of the danger and worked hard to prevent it" things.
faceh
1yr ago
Ding ding.
If humans can outperform evolution along a handful of narrow bounds using targeted gene manipulation, I don't find it a large leap to believe that a sufficiently 'intelligent' digital entity with access to its source code might be able to outperform humans along the narrow bound of "intelligence engineering" and boost it's own capabilities, likely rapidly.
If there is some hard upper bound on this process that would prevent a FOOM scenario I'd really like to hear it from the skeptics.
faceh
1yr ago
I can grant that.
But the net result of making it harder for men to act as authority figures in general is to make it simultaneously harder for them to act as authority figures for a specific person.
So basically, if women want to make themselves independent of "males" so they're free to choose which male they want to depend on, it is fair to ask how that's working out for them.
Well except this is the same "you value property above people?" arguments made in the riots from antifa to BLM, and who has to clean up the mess after the glass-smashing? The ordinary people that the glass-smashers claim to be representing.
Fair... except that destroying the Mona Lisa isn't directly demolishing the livelihoods of your fellow citizen.
Likewise, the glass-smashers weren't acting out in a response to a harm that was inflicted on THEM PERSONALLY. So there's a much tighter justification available to Helen.
Helen is motivated by the same basic, instinctual drives that caused Bad Guy to do what he did, and nobody comes out of this looking like the better person.
Right, but in the circumstances that Johnson managed to contrive, her position was basically "let the villain not just get away with murder, but thrive for his complete theft of wealth that was properly Andi's... and that he committed murder to maintain... or force him into a position that he can't readily wiggle out of."
Indeed, there's perhaps an argument that if Andi was the true genius behind Alpha's success, and thus the Billions of dollars in wealth at issue would have, by law, passed to Andi's only surviving heir Helen, that her actions at the end were her own attempted reclamation of wealth that she would have received anyway had it not been for the thief's actions.
If we accept the premise that Helen would have been rightfully entitled to everything Andi rightfully owned after Andi wrongfully died, then her act of destruction at the end was really only destroying things that were hers by right anyway. A way of preventing the thief from keeping the benefit of his ill-gotten gains, which historically has been an oft-used tactic ("If I can't have it then you can't either"), and destroying the Mona Lisa was her way of making it stick.
What was her other option? Go for a long-shot legal solution (that had already failed Andi) and then accept the eventual loss and ignore that her family's entire legacy was stolen out from under her?
faceh
1yr ago
Well this gets into my other conversation on the topic.
If we care about the object for the good it provides other people, then surely the solution is to create an extremely convincing forgery and just... never disclose that the original was destroyed.
Much larger deceptions have been enacted throughout history for the purpose of maintaining the symbolic importance of a given relic or person.
And I don't think you would be able to convince the person with a dead sibling that she should refrain from violently enacting revenge on the killer even if it destroys a single cultural artifact... provided that it is the only real way to enact such vengeance.
I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable telling someone "no, your loss isn't great enough to justify destroying this cultural artifact just to hurt your sister's killer." Scale it up to something like, I dunno, The Sistine Chapel or the Statute of Liberty, where the true value is mostly bound up in the physical structure itself (and would be hard to recreate) and I start to agree.
At least part of this is due to the fact that a painting can be more easily 'replicated' than a building, especially one as meticulously studied as the Mona Lisa.
faceh
1yr ago
Anyone living in one of these states would be well within their rights to vote in the Republican primary.
They'd also be well within their rights to move to a state with friendlier politics or push their own party to field candidates who are more competitive in the above states in question, so as to make the available options better.
Not sure why "cast a fruitless vote in a primary consisting mostly of people I inherently disagree with" somehow comes across as the optimal choice for influencing outcomes.
I'm really not sure how one can conclude this tactic is actually effective at improving the situation.
faceh
1yr ago
It's not like some people in Florida don't support Democrats.
And they will have their representatives and they will have their local governments composed of dem-friendly candidates.
It would make no sense for them to have a majority if they aren't representing a majority of the voters.
It's bad when elections don't matter, and incumbents just get put back in office with no competition.
Hmm. I wonder what I'd find if I looked at those Dem-leaning districts and checked incumbent win rates, especially at local levels.
Your point is fine, but you're aiming it at a state where it might apply less than average. Florida was considered 'purple' for decades.
I don't think I need to make a point about the current makeup of the Federal Congress and incumbency advantages.
faceh
1yr ago
Well that actually clears things up even if I find the point of view to be almost unrelatable.
These are good numbers to use, but I suspect that as soon as I scale them for the population of the respective states it will make things a little clearer as to how each state has been faring in shouldering their share of the influx.
Here's a 2016 study from Pew that estimates the total number of 'unauthorized' immigrants and their percentage of population on a state by state basis:
https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/interactives/u-s-unauthorized-immigrants-by-state/
See also @netstack's post below which indicates Texas and Florida have far more immigrants in absolute numbers than anywhere but California, and that as a percentage of the population its heavily skewed towards border states.
To get REALLY specific: based on these numbers, in order for Martha's Vineyard to have a similar share of immigrants in their borders, which I've arbitrarily set at 3% to approximate the ratio of the whole U.S., the community of 15,000 people would need to have 450 illegal immigrants living there.
They declared a crisis over Fifty. So they really aren't prepared to shoulder their fair share at this rate.
Do you disagree?
faceh
1yr ago
"a public school that is run to spread controversial messaging to kids as truth" and "a privately run religious school which actively tells you to not do more than study religion all day".
From the perspective of outcomes, why should it matter?
At least the Hasids aren't making it mandatory to send other people's kids to their schools.
Moreover, you seem to think that I would support the teachers unions but not the Hasidic Jews.
Well make your position known, if you care.
faceh
3d ago
The genes that foster safety in groups and willingness to cooperate will outpace the genes that might make a man rape/assault someone.
Right, but in this situation, as stated in the question, there are no groups to cooperate with or intervene, the male's behavior is based solely on whatever he himself chooses to do in the absence of any observers, and thus no immediate social consequences.
I am going to argue that in the ancestral environment, if a random male happens across a random female, both complete strangers to the other, in the middle of the woods, nobody else around, rape WAS probably a common outcome. And this would eventually lead to general norms that women shouldn't travel anywhere alone.
I have seen decent evidence that many males of certain cultures are willing to engage in violence against females even in the full view of other people. Can't say what that percentage is with precision, but I'd have to assume a higher percentage would willingly engage in violence if there were no observers.
I think I will stipulate that the number has to be <50%, but 3% is probably the absolute lower bound.
faceh
8mo ago
faceh
10mo ago
It think the issue is that this will be subject to a power law distribution, not a normal distribution.
It won't be the case where if a guy is at least moderately attractive/charismatic, puts in constant efforts and is reasonably intelligent he will on average land a six figure job by 27. It's going to be more like a 20% chance he lands a massively high paying job, another 20% he lands something paying high-five to low-six figs, and like a 60% chance he ends up in a standard job paying 'enough' but not extravagantly. (Figures are blatantly asspulled at this point, can look for actual figures later)
There's just so many pitfalls that can prevent a guy from breaking through to true wealth early on.
And of course consider that a guy who busts his ass to this extent in his early life might actually hamper his dating chances during that time because he won't be nearly as fun for women since he works all the time.
So what you're proposing sounds like it could be a recipe for creating the older, established guy who leverages his wealth in his late 30's to play around with the younger women he couldn't get when he was younger.
Now, I agree it's a good ideal to strive for, but I'm pretty sure that the only way there's actual change in norms is to reign in female behavior somehow.
faceh
10mo ago
I'm saying that compared to virtually any other demographic white women are more liberal on average, with this especially notable amongst the college-educated ones.
Yeah, the part that really got to me was that it can be conversant on literally any topic, even if it might be outdated in knowledge or eventually refuse to answer about certain topics. And generally speaking it knows much more than I do on any of said topics.
So the pedantic philosophical question that comes to mind, for me, is whether you can really be said to be having a 'conversation' with an entity that already knows anything important you might tell it, and can answer any of your questions easily, whilst having no need to learn anything from or about you?
It becomes a wholly one-sided 'discussion' because the AI will never ask you questions about things it needs to know, and the chances of you having information it might find useful to add to it's corpus is vanishingly small. Can you have a 'dialogue' with an entity that understands any topic you might pick more comprehensively than you do?
So I end up feeling like a toddler talking to his parents and asking various questions about the world, and having absolutely nothing to offer them in return.
There's some hope that robotics and automation are going to stave off the impact. Life extension/anti-aging tech will probably be too late for the most part.
If we get AGI then no point in trying to predict the world after that.
But more to the point, Gen Z is the smallest generation (in the west) yet. Even if they started popping out kids like particularly horny rabbits there will be a protracted squeeze waiting on those kids to become productive citizens. And they don't seem to be having kids. So that's whence my 'fifty years' vague estimate comes from.
Will we even have enough people with the capacity to keep an increasingly advanced civilization functional?
faceh
1yr ago
While that should be a goal, I think it's far more effective to start with something personal that you can commit to daily: physical exercise within a martial context. The results really do permeate every aspect of life; social capability, overall confidence, (controlled) risk taking, career performance. Not to mention basic health and energy levels (side note: the wealthiest guy I ever could call a friend ALWAYs would say "health over wealth. I'd trade it all to have my knees back").
This is effectively a statement of my overall mindset for my daily life.
I work and try to perform well because that's good, but I would never, ever sacrifice my health to keep my job.
As a military-adjacent dude (never served, but did contracting for a long time) I really see this in the actual badasses (combat arms, SoF dudes) who leave the service and still really train hard on guns. It's partially habit and partially them keeping up a readily available social network, but the ones who keep themselves in shape, do a combat sport, and do meaningful range drills really do walk around with that cliche "cool confidence" that's impossible to fake.
Yup, and interestingly I don't think I would ever recommend a guy go the military route solely for the fitness and confidence boost, but one can't deny that it would provide those benefits if you commit to it.
Genuinely, males 'evolved' to have a Männerbund that provides them the structure and an outlet for aggression against an acceptable opponent.
But in a world as comfortable as the one we live in, there's really no room for such an organization outside the military... except in the martial arts context. And even that can lead to an unhealthy place (see Andrew Tate) and yet I think without that we end up with a specimen of male that is of minimal use to anyone, not even himself, and knows this.
According to utilitarianism, making them falsely believe X is just as good as X being true.
Unless there would be an immense amount of disutility created from either people believing X, or from them eventually finding out X is false.
I think there are situations where lies are harmless, even if later discovered.
The utilitarian calculation need not rest on the assumption that the lie will remain intact indefinitely.
Yes, and in most such communities, there are already "bad hombres" in control, and they spend an excess amount of time combating other bad hombres to stay on top of the pile.
Quokka-land isn't going to be more likely to have bad actors, indeed the whole reason quokkas exist is because they lucked into a habitat where they have no predators. The predators would have to be introduced from outside the community.
faceh
1yr ago
Is that what happened to the traditional financial system after the 2008 meltdown?
That involves a huge chunk of the population of the entire world losing money.
To the extent there is any coherent goal that one can pursue, leaving behind some legacy of your own to influence future generations is pretty much the only thing any organism can do that matters.
That is how 'life' sustains itself. It's pretty much the only reason anything you like about your life even exists. So however you choose to live your life (unless it is constant agony, I suppose), be thankful that there were people before you who cared about what happened in the future.
No!
But if you pursue goals that do not leave legacies, and I pursue goals that DO leave legacies, only one of our value systems/biological heritage is likely to propogate into the future and have impact on how that future unfolds.
Which is to say, your kind get out-competed in the natural selection race, and so its going to be a future dominated by legacy-leavers who will be very thankful that all their ancestors were legacy-leavers.
I'm thankful my ancestors were legacy-leavers, so it isn't particularly strange to me that I should want to leave a legacy.
If that isn't enough of a reason, I won't attempt any further to change your mind, and we have no quarrel anyway. Just don't interfere with other people who want to leave legacies!
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