guajalote
3mo ago
I predict if her numbers continue to climb, he's gonna mention her daughter's married to a black guy. Way too tempting for a guy like Trump.
I think it's very unlikely he will do this, simply because neither Trump nor most of his supporters care about this. I think you are making the same mistake as the media by assuming "Nimra" is a racist dogwhistle. It's not, it's serving a different set of purposes:
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It calls attention to the fact that she doesn't use her real name, which makes her seem fake and insecure.
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Like all Trump nicknames, it's a power play. If you can give someone a nickname and make it stick, it reveals a kind of power you have over them. And I think it's clear that Haley could not do the same to Trump in reverse -- all prior attempts at nicknames (Drumpf, Cheeto, etc.) have failed to stick.
guajalote
10mo ago
The question for the floor is: why the high degree of correlation? Is there an underlying principle at work here that explains both positions (opposition to AA plus opposition to debt relief) that doesn't just reduce to bare economic or racial interest?
In practice, I think things like party affiliation are the driving factors behind the correlation. But I also think there's a rather simple "underlying principle" that ties both decisions together.
Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine you find an intelligent person who's fluent in English but totally ignorant of American history and law. You hand this person a copy of the US Constitution and have him read it carefully. Then you ask him to answer two questions based on his understanding of the plain text of the document:
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Does the Constitution allow the government to treat people differently based on their race?
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Does the Constitution allow the president to spend money without congress's approval?
The answer to both questions is clearly "no" if you're just reading the text of the document without bringing any external knowledge or biases to bear. In order to answer anything other than "no" to both questions, you either need to come up with complicated interpretive arguments or you need to just not care about the text of the Constitution.
So I think a rather simple underlying principle unifying both decisions is: "the plain text of the Constitution is binding."
guajalote
6mo ago
In my experience most high-level US politicians have an unreal level of charm in person that is almost impossible to fully describe unless you've experienced it firsthand. I've met several politicians who I intensely disliked from afar, only to find myself instantly charmed by them in person. Never met Clinton, but he probably takes this to another level.
guajalote
5mo ago
I think you are conflating two issues that are mostly unrelated. Housing costs are probably being driven up slightly by increased demand due to immigration, but the effect is tiny compared to the supply-side problems caused by excessive red tape that makes housing expensive and difficult to build. The population of Houston, Texas is about 20% foreign-born immigrants, yet housing is extremely affordable because there is no zoning, no rent controls, and few regulatory hoops to jump through if you want to build housing.
Nobody worries about immigrants buying up all the food, or all the cars, or all the cell phones. If demand goes up, the economy will just produce more of these things to meet demand. It doesn't make sense to worry about immigrants buying up all the housing either, unless there's a problem on the supply side that makes it impossible to meet demand. Fix the supply side problem if you want to fix the housing problem.
I say this as someone who's mostly convinced of Big Yud's doomerism: Good lord, what a train wreck of a conversation.
Couldn't agree more. In addition to Yud's failure to communicate concisely and clearly, I feel like his specific arguments are poorly chosen. There are more convincing responses that can be given to common questions and objections.
Question: Why can't we just switch off the AI?
Yud's answer: It will come up with some sophisticated way to prevent this, like using zero-day exploits nobody knows about.
My answer: All we needed to do to stop Hitler was shoot him in the head. Easy as flipping a switch, basically. But tens of millions died in the process. All you really need to be dangerous and hard to kill is the ability to communicate and persuade, and a superhuman AI will be much better at this than Hitler.
Question: How will an AI kill all of humanity?
Yud's answer: Sophisticated nanobots.
My answer: Humans already pretty much have the technology to kill all humans, between nuclear and biological weapons. Even if we can perfectly align superhuman AIs, they will end up working for governments and militaries and enhancing those killing capacities even further. Killing all humans is pretty close to being a solved problem, and all that's missing is a malignant AI (or a malignant human controlling an aligned AI) to pull the trigger. Edit: Also it's probably not necessary to kill all humans, just kill most of us and collapse society to the point that the survivors don't pose a meaningful threat to the AI's goals.
guajalote
6mo ago
I think your sister's stated explanations are simply an attempt to rationalize her feelings. They're not a description of her actual underlying reasoning.
I think for a lot of everyday liberals who haven't thought carefully about this stuff, the reasoning goes like this: trans/NB people are oppressed, and oppressed people are good and virtuous. Therefore if someone (in my estimation) is not good and virtuous, then they are not "really" trans/NB.
You see this a lot. When a trans person is in the news doing something bad, then they're not really trans, they're faking it. Similarly, if a member of an oppressed minority group doesn't hold the right opinions or vote the right way, they're self-hating or not "really" an authentic member of their race, etc.
guajalote
5mo ago
In my experience, things like low housing costs and a robust economy are far more conducive to poor people's standard of living than a robust wellfare state. Houston, for example, has a homelessness rate of around 30 people per 100k residents. The country of Canada has an average homelessness rate of at least 90 per 100k residents, with cities often much higher than that; for example in Toronto the rate seems to be in excess of 322 per 100k.
So while I would agree that Canada is more "concerned" about poor people, it's not at all clear to me that Canada is actually providing a better standard of living for poor people.
guajalote
9mo ago
At least in some recorded cases the Romans seemed to feel quite sorry for the Christians they killed. There are a bunch of accounts of Roman judges basically pleading with Christians not to make them sentence them to death, saying things to the effect of "listen, nobody cares if you want to worship your god, just go through the motions of paying obeisance to the emperor's genius and be done with it." The Christians would often be given long periods of time to reconsider their obstinacy and save themselves from the lions. The Romans generally didn't see true belief as a necessary component of religion, it was all about the ritual, so couldn't understand why Christians wouldn't just go through the motions like everyone else.
guajalote
5mo ago
I admit that there are areas where my model breaks down - my Steam library can't really be considered physical, it barely touches the physical world excepting that CPUs and GPUs are needed to make use of it.
I think your model breaks down all over the place. Obviously raw materials are not irrelevant, but they represent a tiny fraction of the wealth of a modern developed economy.
Go dig up a shovelful of dirt in your backyard. That dirt contains most of the raw materials needed to build a CPU. But there are many, many orders of magnitude difference between the value of that dirt and the value of a CPU. Almost all that value comes from intangible things:
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The knowledge and time of skilled electrical engineers and chemists figuring out how to design and fabricate CPUs.
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The university system that educated them and provided the foundational knowledge they built upon.
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A legal system that enables companies to enter into and enforce contracts with one another in a reliable way
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Systems of IP protection that incentivize R&D expenditures in CPU development.
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Consistent law enforcement and property rights that allow companies to invest billions of dollars in semiconductor fabrication equipment without worrying a government or criminal organization will take it away from them.
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Financial institutions that will lend money to these companies if they don't have billions of dollars sitting around to build semiconductor fabs.
On and on. It's intangibles (almost) all the way down.
Healthcare is about using physical goods like surgical equipment and drugs.
Like CPUs, surgical equipment and drugs are mostly made out of cheap-as-fuck raw materials that are then synthesized into useful things. It's engineers, chemists, biologists, lawyers, etc. that make it possible for this stuff to exist. And of course much of healthcare is made up of other sorts of intangibles, like medical training. Surgical equipment isn't of much use without surgeons.
Yes, you need to have ways for savings and loans to be allocated - but savings and loans are just claims on real goods.
You act like this is trivial, but it's not. There exist countries in the world today where you can't trust banks to hold your savings and the average person can't get loans because the economy is too unstable and risky. These are the so-called "shithole" countries, and they're shitholes not because of a lack of natural resources but because of a lack of the kinds of intangible goods I've been talking about.
guajalote
8mo ago
It seems plausible that the absence of affordable housing for the first type of person creates a pipeline whereby they are more likely to become the second type of person.
guajalote
5mo ago
They believe it’s important to explain their reasoning to their kids.
I think it's really valuable to explain your reasoning to your kid whenever possible. My parents did to me all the time. However, they made it clear that my obligation to obey them was not contingent upon my agreement with their reasoning.
guajalote
7mo ago
I mean that's kind of my point. In text form this exchange can be read many different ways by different people.
If you imagine it as a verbal conversation where both parties statements are dripping with playful sarcasm, then it's clear they're flirting. If you imagine it as a verbal conversation where both parties are being dead serious, then they're both being pieces of shit to each other. It's impossible to create a neutral set of rules to decide which is which, especially when it's happening via text.
guajalote
11mo ago
The problem with the nanobot argument isn't that it's impossible. I'm convinced a sufficiently smart AI could build and deploy nanobots in the manner Yud proposes. The problem with the argument is that there's no need to invoke nanobots to explain why super intelligent AI is dangerous. Some number of people will hear "nanobots" and think "sci-fi nonsense." Rather than try to change their minds, it's much easier to just talk about the many mundane and already-extant threats (like nukes, gain of function bioweapons, etc.) that a smart AI could make use of.
guajalote
1mo ago
Varg
Likely a reference to this guy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes
Blue Pill, Red Pill, Black Pill
I think you're defining these terms too narrowly by tying them to gender and dating discourse. They are broad concepts that can apply to many things.
Blue Pill is idealism; believing the world works the way it's "supposed to." A person who is blue pilled about US politics might say "Politicians make decisions based on what they believe is in the best interest of the nation. Therefore the best way to accomplish our political goals is to explain why those goals are in the nation's best interest."
Red Pill is realism; seeing the way things actually work and trying to exploit those realities to accomplish your goals. A person who is red pilled about US politics might say "Politicians are human beings who make decisions based on self-interest. Therefore the best way to accomplish our political goals is to make sure accomplishing those goals is personally beneficial to the right politicians."
Black Pill is pessimism or nihilism; seeing the way things actually work and realizing that you cannot achieve your goals as long as things continue working that way. A person who is black pilled about US politics might say "Politicians are human beings who make decisions based on self-interest. Many powerful interest groups realize this and accomplish their goals by dumping large amounts of money into politics. Our political project will never be able to match the level of resources that our opposition has, therefore we have no hope of persuading politicians to agree with us and we shouldn't even waste our time trying."
guajalote
4mo ago
Yes, many examples. And I think there's at least some degree of truth to these arguments:
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There are hundreds of millions of guns in the US, so any large scale attempts at gun control cannot work.
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The government cannot significantly tax or otherwise confiscate the wealth of the ultra-rich because they will just leave the jurisdiction.
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Attempting to regulate carbon emissions at this point won't stop climate change, and many of the biggest carbon emitting countries won't get on board anyway.
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It's not possible to introduce effective mass public transit in most US cities because they have already been designed around cars.
guajalote
4mo ago
So I am willing to bet that even today Catholics and protestants know that it was mostly political strife. As were the other major Christian schisms and fights. If you look it is very often some inter elite fight.
I think this is partly true, but to the extent it's true you can say the same about the current culture war.
If you asked a devout Catholic in the 1600s whether people should be burned at the stake for questioning the transubstantiation of the consecrated host, most of them are going to say "yes," and their reasoning isn't going to invoke political strife or other secular reasons. They are going to give a religious account of why it's important to burn heretics - e.g. if we suffer a heretic to live, they might lead my children into heresy, causing them to suffer in hell for eternity. It's certainly true that this underlying belief and reasoning was stoked and amplified by political actors who stood to benefit from the conflict, but the reasoning itself stands apart from the political strife going on in the background.
I think you can say the same about culture war issues today. Much of the culture war is being driven by inter-elite conflicts or by conflicts between elites and the common man. But the underlying reasoning stands apart from this conflict - e.g. if you ask someone their opinions on trans issues they are going to appeal to object-level arguments to support their views and they won't perceive their views as being the product of cynical elites stoking the conflict.
guajalote
2mo ago
"By your logic" isn't a claim about what the other person thinks or believes, it's a claim about what the structure of their argument logically implies. If polygamy is bound to die out because its practitioners fail to reproduce, then the same reasoning should generalize to other analogous situations. If it doesn't generalize, that implies the claim being made is either wrong or insufficiently precise.
guajalote
3mo ago
Maybe if there is another financial crisis or 911 there may be an amendment to ensure that there are minimal delays for stimulus or other action for exigent circumstances.
This is one of the most horrifying amendments I can imagine. If there's ever a constitutional clause that grants broad emergency powers to the executive, the president will find an excuse to declare a "state of emergency" from which we will never again emerge. We would still be in a "state of emergency" from Covid if such a clause existed.
guajalote
6mo ago
How you dress is never an invitation to be mugged, but that doesn't make it a good idea to wear a flashy diamond Rolex in a bad neighborhood. You have every right to do so, and if you're robbed the perpetrator is still 100% at fault, but that doesn't make it a smart idea.
guajalote
7mo ago
Same way I make peace with any other set of mutually exclusive choices I have to make. Say you choose to become a doctor instead of a professional musician. Certain doors are opened by that decision, and certain doors are closed. You gain certain experiences, you lose out on others. If those tradeoffs aren't ones you can live with then you need to make a different choice. Otherwise, you have to accept the tradeoffs. Nobody can have everything. You have to choose what you care about most and decide accordingly.
guajalote
8mo ago
I think this is the best way to keep politics out of gaming - just don't reference anything remotely political and let people do whatever they want.
Also, the game is based on 5th edition DnD, which is a fantasy setting where basically anything is possible. A high level wizard can easily change their gender or species if they so choose simply by casting a spell. A 20th level wizard can cast True Polymorph on himself and become a dragon (permanently if he so chooses). Or he can cast Magic Jar and inhabit someone else's body (permanently if he so chooses). Real-world concepts of gender identity barely even make sense in this sort of setting.
guajalote
2mo ago
Houston deals with them quite effectively, though not very ruthlessly. Housing is affordable so the homelessness rate is low to begin with. And every few months the police dismantle the homeless encampments and their residents are forced into free government housing.
guajalote
7mo ago
No, it makes it even less legible. Is this "pressure" or is it playful banter that both parties are enjoying:
Him: "Let's have our first date at XYZ Mini Golf."
Her: "No way, I hate Mini Golf. And if that's your idea of a good first date then you aren't getting a date at all."
Him: "You're just saying that cause you're scared you'll lose."
Her: "Ugh. Fine. But I'm only agreeing because you're being such an asshole about it."
guajalote
11mo ago
You focus on the gender dynamics, but I think phenomenon is not primarily about gender.
The two main drivers are, IMO:
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When two people like each other and spend significant time together, they build trust. This means they will tend to be more charitable toward one another and less dismissive of one another's beliefs. This reduces confirmation bias by making it harder to dismiss the other partner's politics on flimsy grounds, e.g. "they only believe that because they're ignorant/evil."
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When a person with orthodox politics spends significant time with a person with heterodox politics, on average the person with orthodox politics is more likely to change their views than the person with heterodox politics. This is because it is easy to hold orthodox politics without considering carefully (or even encountering) arguments against those politics, whereas it is impossible to hold heterodox politics without constantly encountering counterarguments. Thus, heterodox beliefs will tend to come into the relationship more "battle hardened" and "stress tested" than orthodox beliefs.
Where gender might play into the dynamic above:
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Women tend to be more agreeable and thus more likely to hold orthodox beliefs.
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Women tend to be more agreeable and thus less likely to have engaged in "stress testing" (e.g. vigorous debate) of their political beliefs.
The narrative will be: "why did anyone ever care about this shit?"
Think about the big protestant/Catholic culture war that waged in Europe in the 1600s, which was extremely bloody and widely agreed by its participants to be a big deal and today people (even devout Catholics and protestants) largely look back with bewilderment on that time period and have a hard time understanding what the big deal was. People were getting burned for saying the consecrated host is just a cracker. Today, Catholics still believe in transubstantiation but most have a hard time understanding why anyone would be punished (let alone killed) for holding a contrary view.
When talking about current culture war issues, it's hard for us to imagine how they could become irrelevant to the point that future generations would be baffled that anyone ever cared. But that's how people would have felt in the 1600s; it was a literal battle for immortal souls, how could this battle ever become irrelevant? Yet it did. I think our current battles will eventually suffer the same fate.
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