There are 45 thousand wet markets in China according to my google search. How likely it is, that novel coronavirus comes from the market literally only a few miles away from a lab studying novel coronaviruses? At least 1:10,000 let's say. Let's even say that Wuhan is a huge hub, not unlike another 113 large cities with population over 1 million in China. Again, how likely it is that a new virus appears in Wuhan and not in any other large city? And I am not even talking about other facts such as that China is notoriously opaque communist dictatorship falsifying uncomfortable data.
Nevertheless even if you are convinced that the virus is of zoonotic origin, the lab-leak could never have been anywhere close to conspiracy theory realm. In fact it would require some conspiracy to explain this away - such as bat > pangolin > human transmission in Wuhan chain of events to explain zoonotic origin. That one is more complex. Additionally even if we accept wet market theory, that one is is still compatible with lab leak - such as let's say infected bat carcass being sold on wet market for profit by some careless employee in charge of incineration inside famously corrupt Chinese environment.
The fact that even reasonable rationalists mocked and suppressed this theory is wild to me.
georgioz
5mo ago
See, this is the point of many of these ideologies that divide people into the groups and believe in some divine struggle. They need to portrait the enemy as very powerful and almost impossible force to counter, which puts them squarely into the victim category. But at the same time they need to provide some alternative and make their side of the conflict as powerful enough to overcome that adversity. It reminds me of the old joke:
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It is 1935 and Kohn and Goldberg are taking a tram in Berlin. And Kohn sees that Goldberg is reading the latest issue of Der Angriff
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Kohn: Hey, why are you reading that Nazi slop?
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Goldberg: We are hounded all the time, our businesses are confiscated and I feel all powerless. This is the only place where I can read how Jews are awesome and how they actually control everything. It keeps my spirits high.
georgioz
5mo ago
If I may suggest, instead of defining fascism - which is quite a contentious concept, try defining neoliberalism. The history of the term - unlike woke - is actually an exonym and yet it is used all the time.
I do not understand this whole discussion about daylight, mostly because how huge the timezones are. As an example the sunlight difference for Central European Time (UTC+1) timezone is around two hours - so as I write this the sunrise in Northern Macedonia is around 6:50 AM while in Northwestern Spain it is 9:00 AM. Even difference between Berlin and Paris is 25 minutes. You will never have ideal amount of sunlight in the morning for the whole timezone, unless you are specifically hunting for a location that suits you specifically. In my experience many countries softly adapted to this, for instance in Spain many people do live till later times, in summer they can have sports matches late in the evening. In the east it is on the other hand normal to have 8-4 or even earlier shifts.
But I agree with you that changing time is actually good for more stability, especially to have more light for whatever time is usual to go to the office in that country. So I am absolutely for keeping time changes twice a year.
georgioz
7mo ago
Depends on what you mean by theocracy.
I also see this term as well as "separation of church and state" as very confusing. After some deliberation looking into constitution of my country to me theocracy means that the power of government rests in religious institutions. As an example, if local archbishop or some religious council has power to unilaterally declare a new religious public holiday or enforce blasphemy laws, then it is theocracy.
However, this does not mean that people any society where religion has sway is automatically a theocracy. If local church preaches blasphemy laws and general public votes in religious leaders who establish such laws via structure like parliament then it is not a theocracy. To me it is sufficient to have differentiation between government and church structure, not that religious people cannot be part of government implementing their religious ideas.
Paradoxically this is often lost on many secular atheists, who deem anything not in line with their own secular ideology as theocracy. It is just a power move where they want to make secular atheism as reigning state religion preventing other ideas from establishing themselves.
georgioz
9mo ago
I am not disputing the fact, tattoos may have different meanings in different time and places. In the past, sailors got tattoos indicating if they crossed Atlantic, or other deeds. Prisoners got their own tattoos and so forth. All useful signals for judging people. In modern time, some girl has a tramp stamp or flower tattooed on her ankle, somebody else can have some other patterns tattooed. However it still is a signal of some behavior. I do not have interest to now have PHD style post analyzing all the tattoos, I will generalize.
In fact I can go even deeper. What if I find tattoos stupid, disgusting and weird. That is my judgement and I do not care why you got them or any other excuse. That is my judgement and I do not give shit about what you think in the same way people with tattoos often claim that they themselves do not give a shit what other people think about their tattoos. In fact it may be a lie and maybe the think that my disgust with their tattoos is also some sort of signal and they will judge me for my "bigotry" or lack of empathy or whatever.
In the end the argument stands: people do judge other people and I do not see any problem with that.
A fundamental cause of the war, according to the author, is that Germany and England had conflicting views of security. In general, England's policy was to play European powers off each other, always supporting the second-strongest power against the strongest power to ensure that no one country would dominate the continent and thus be in a position to challenge Britain. In the early 1900s, that meant supporting France in opposition to Germany. Germany's idea of peace, on the other hand, was precisely to dominate and unify the continent under German rule, thus ensuring that they would have no problems on the continent.
I would not say that this was the major cause of the conflict. There are much more fundamental reasons. Let's go through some of them:
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Demographics: after unification of Germany in 1871 it had population of 41 million people. By 1913 the population increased by 65% to 68 million. Population of France was 36,1 million in 1871 without Alsace-Moselle they ceded in the war, and in 1911 it increased only marginally to 39 million. French were scared of rapidly industrializing and growing Germany. But in turn Germany was scared of Russian Empire which increased from around 85 million in 1870 to around 160 million in 1910, and it also industrialized very rapidly.
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The change in foreign policy of Russia and it's turn from the principle of Holy Alliance since 1815, where three Emperors of Russia, Austria and Prussia formed a coalition on monarchic principle against revolutionaries and other threats. This alliance got steadily weakened despite Russia supporting Austria in 1848 against Hungarian rebels only to be betrayed during Crimean War in 1853. Then with unification of Germany this soured further until Russia formed Franco-Russian Alliance in 1894.
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Britain was in a bit of a pickle. You are right that they wanted to play continental powers one against another, but at the same time they were terrified of Russian expansionism. They had valid fears of Russia influencing Central Asia in so called Great Game - the primary concern was Russia expanding into India via Afghanistan, but also establishing Warm water port in East Asia. Brits viewed Russia with suspicion.
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One of the key moments where situation changed was when Russia lost war in 1905 to Japan, which turned its focus more on to the west in Balkans while negotiating alliance with Great Britain in 1907. This put Russia more directly onto collision course against Austria which also wanted influence in Balkans. There were some precursors such as Russia supporting Serbia in Balkan Wars at the expense of Austria. This solidified two competing blocks in Europe.
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There were some crisis situations also concerning Germany, France and UK such as Agadir Affair. The conflict was brewing for some time.
I of course omitted many other things such as German naval rearmament, which however stalled before WW1 with Germans focusing more on the army, and thus it was not a direct cause of it, but it contributed to tensions. I still think WW1 was not inevitable. The collision course was there, but with a little bit more luck and/or more diplomatic skill or at least not outright incompetence during the July crisis, the world could have survived this period of tensions.
georgioz
9mo ago
I asked you before, what concrete actions are you taking when you strongly believe that we will have utopia/apocalypse in 10 years? Do you have any bonds with longer than 10 year maturity? Do you find it stupid to invest in any new whisky with a plan for aging it for more than 10 years? Along the line with your demographics skepticism - do you consider people stupid for having kids now, if they won't matter in 10 years? A this point I am really curious.
georgioz
9mo ago
See, for me the human life is about enjoying life, meeting your family and friends, being able to grieve for your lost parents or even putting yourself through some tough events subtracting some supposed utils to achieve one of the myriad of goals you may have. Medical system is down there on the chain of what human life represents to me. I thought most people implicitly understand it, but that is apparently not the case.
georgioz
10mo ago
According to Morgan Stanley 41% women aged 25-44 were single and childless in 2018 and the number increases around 0.4% a year. Also according to Pew the married women are voting more conservative, it's the strongest predictor of conservative leaning women, 26 points difference compared to never married women.
There is something happening to political coalition making, it is novel and I agree also dangerous.
georgioz
11mo ago
I agree with other posters. This win to me feels more like a "win" when during the pandemic the governments got away with almost all they wanted to do including complete lockdowns. The problem here is that while it was a formidable show of combination soft and hard power, it did not actually deal with the underlying issue of the pandemic. And this show of power came at the cost of further degradation in their perceived legitimacy. It ultimately won them nothing even mid-term.
Does anybody think that by jailing some twitter commenters, the underlying conflict on the ground will get any better? That there will be no more stabbings, terrorist plots and more of the low-level simmering race and religious war? The show of force is the show of weakness.
georgioz
1yr ago
No, it does not involve any of that even if you talk about papal infallibility doctrine that was so far used twice in history. Catholics do not have to listen to whatever pope says in some interview. So far Catholic Church is against gay marriages in line with Persona Humana doctrine. Just couple of excerpts:
At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.
But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God.[18] This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.
I know that in Slovakia we have quite “benevolent” laws, when things like EULA are not recognized, as we require intent in form of paper. Which makes sense - you cannot recognize who clicked “yes” and then keep someboy responsible, we are very much paper country in that regard. Also we consider downloading anything as legal - not uploading in torrents - but in general I saw a lot of rulings favorable to “pirates” here - as long that they were careful for normal things. Things like child porn are a big NO and you can expect to attract attention like a magnet and some large physical operation with some very “liberal” explanation of law. Don’t do it here.
My rule of thumb is that anybody who solely uses the unit of power for battery storage like "12 GW" is a moron and should not be part of the discussion at all. Peak output of storage is not the hard problem, the overall capacity is.
I had to look into several sources to check what we are talking about. Here is Bellefield solar + storage that claims to have battery storage of 1 GW output for whole 4 hours for overall capacity of 4 GWh. California consumes 259 TWh of electricity per year, Texas uses 365 TWh. Even if the output of this battery was infinite, it could power California or Texas for around 8-10 minutes. You would literally need thousand of such storage sites to cover potential output loss for one week.
It was obvious for a long time that Culture War was not healthy for Scott's professional career as he continuously withdrew from touching it by longer and longer pole. TheMotte started as a thread under Slatestarcodex subreddit before getting separated after it drew some heat into its own subreddit and eventually moved over here. The overall thread is that Scott became more mellow and kept himself at distance from CW stuff - and not without reason.
As for Litany of Tarsky it cannot be taken that seriously as object of destruction can be anything: human life, some other value or even Truth itself. I take it more as just a stronger way of saying "be intellectually honest". It works if it is more inward looking - don't be afraid to be wrong in your intellectual pursuit and destroy your previous belief. It does not mean you have to be Pavlik Morozov and destroy your own family by "telling truth" to police about their misdeeds because they should be destroyed by the Truth. I don't think it is supposed to be an argument in favor of always telling the truth to Kant's inquiring murderer in the skin of NYT journalist - although the edgy style of writing and general disposition of rationalist community may actually lead many to exactly that conclusion.
georgioz
1yr ago
Sorry, it was just bad writing. It should read something like "Hypothetical person identifies as nonrestrictive ...". It is common to use "I" in hypothetical examples in my language but maybe it seems weird in English.
By the way I actually think that it is more prudent to care about people close to me as opposed to people far away. And it is mostly due to the fact, that helping means involving oneself into other people lives, which also brings certain level of responsibility. As Scott Adams says: There is nothing more dangerous than resourceful idiot, in my language we also call them "idiot with initiative". You know the type: a good meaning person who decided to water your succulents so they rot, the moron who cleans your cast iron skillet with soap only on larger scale. You can also think about it as skin in the game principle where you are responsible for outcome of your actions however well meant. Only in the case of charity it also goes the other way - that people who disagree with your type of help can actually address you directly and hold you accountable. In Catholic teaching this is reflected in the principle of subsidiarity.
georgioz
1yr ago
If somebody sincerely believes in Christian God, I think it is safe to assume that he also believes in Satan even if that is not the word you hear often. We can play the game all day long but it is not psychologizing to assume that.
For the n+1-th time, emotions are not incompatible with rationality.
Write that to the OP.
Further, presumably @zataomm takes umbrage to arguments that rely entirely or mostly on emotion, not a claim that emotion is entirely out of place in an argument.
So do I. I do not understand why anybody should give a shit what reading some arguments made OP feel: if he is disheartened or if he hates humanity or if his hand hurts today as he slammed it against the table reading these arguments. It is tangential to the discussion and it has nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is his incredulity with why people are emotional if somebody defends bestiality.
Which is BTW the hidden point that may have gotten over your head: the other people maybe also feel disheartened and lost faith in humanity and hate the society after reading arguments supporting bestiality. This would be equally emotionally "rational" response. So by rationally examining his own elevated emotions, the OP answered his question at least as it pertains to certain part of the outraged mob. Now I hope his curiosity is at least partially sated.
The principal-agent problem here is that hiring manager as well as the candidate are both employees. You already have conflict of interest where hiring manager may have interest in having this new non-standard perk available for his spouse as well. Also your definition of principal as "institution" is very strange, principal should be some person be it taxpayer or donor etc. You just dodge the question - there was some other agent in HR department who created benefit of "spousal hire", so this other agent (the hiring manager) is supposedly representing the best interest of "institution" in form of official benefits policy created by this other agent (HR benefit specialist)? What is next - that department of education as another agent in chain from taxpayer agrees with this policy as well? I am sure government bureaucrats would love to have the same policy for themselves. This just obfuscates what is going on here.
Maybe the confusion lies in the naming? Because it is official benefit and not some underhanded secret thing then it stops being nepotism and becomes "spousal hiring" instead? So if a new management of some University that governs endowment of tens of billons of dollars creates a new transparent policy that select superstar researchers and top university leadership will have free and unlimited access to room full of booze and hookers on campus, then this does not mean drinking and whoring on the job, it is just "award negotiated during hiring process"? I think it is in fact much worse if you take some morally shady practice and make it legal and official, it means you are trying to remove stigma from it.
Very good read, thank you. And I agree with the author that most Role playing games are not really those. I played D&D and Shadowrun, but my best game was Vampire: The Masquerade. I remember that my first character I spend maybe a week designing died during my first session. It was a result of unlucky roll and yes, my Game Master could have salvaged the situation but he would not. I then had a talk with him and he really did not like the roleplaying aspect - my character running around with weapons was literally "out of character" I wanted to build.
The next character I created more closely resembled me, it was easier to think about his actions that way and it eased me into the whole acting stuff. I eventually made some different characters and I really liked the actual roleplaying aspect, I think it really helped me socially in my future endeavors. To this day I have fond memories of my crew. We had a lot of fun sometimes playing through the whole night until dawn with Massive Attack or Tricky playing in the background and smell of cigarettes and cheap coffee filling the room. Good times. Plus the VtM and assorted games had incredibly high quality supplements that I read just for fun to gain some occult knowledge. The whole setting was incredible rabbit hole into one of the best worldbuilding that I have seen in my life, I have read supplements for other games just for fun.
Also I played Cyberpunk 2077 on release and I rate it as 8/10, luckily I did not encounter any bug at all. I did not mind little things people endlessly harped about such as behavior of the police. I went through the story, which to me was excellently constructed, acted and voice-acted. I got my load of fun for the buck I paid as far as I am concerned. I hear that a lot of things were fixed and polished and I am eager to return to the Night City with any future content DLC. Also for anybody out there who likes these sandboxy but story driven RPGs like The Witcher, RDR2 or Cyberpunk I can recommend a hidden gem I found recently that I already poured more than 100 hours into (my mark of superb singleplayer game): Days Gone. Thank me later.
Xi did not clamp on anything. China runs on corruption - there is 100 million members of CCP who suck the blood out of Chinese people. Corruption is how things are done. The whole thing has analogy of Medvedev´s anti-corruption campaign in 2009, the only purpose for it was to eliminate political enemies like it was done with Khodorkovsky in 2003.
I am not saying that corrupt officials should not be arrested. But it would be as if gang leader turned political leader did a campaign to eliminate murderers, thieves and drug dealers. The only thing that would result is domination of his gang and corrupt and ineffective police force under his thumb.
georgioz
2yr ago
Alternative explanation is that these large corporations are also existing in kind of incestuous environment. CEOs of various companies know each other and are sitting on boards of various companies together, or they can influence these companies by different means - such as controlling access to technology or market etc. Everybody knows how huge corporations can get what they want from government regulators and other actors, I see no reason not to think that they use similar underhanded tactics against or together with each other. I can easily see a conversation between Cook and Iger along the lines of: "You hire my nephew for this position in Apple and in exchange we will contract company of your nephew for that project at Disney".
georgioz
2yr ago
Quite to the contrary. A $1000 show means a guy next to you may be somebody to do business with. It becomes a networking event first with performance being secondary. It is something happening even to top 300,000 global wealthiest people - they attend certain events almost out of obligation. There actually are even lower level analogies, something like Vienna Opera Ball
Why do you care about what he cares about? So what if somebody has a chat about poor body hygiene of somebody else - what is it to you? Do you often go around snooping on conversations you are not interested in, so you can deliver some petty sermons about the fact, that you do not like their conversations and that they should talk about something else?
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