istinetz
6mo ago
Looking it up on Youtube I see a BBC documentary from 2002, an Al Jazeera documentary, a Jocko Willink Podcast discussion and some small high production value channels giving an animated breakdown.
And now compare it to response to the Iran hostage crisis, in which 50 people were held hostage, but eventually returned and not killed.
Obviously the media coverage is incomparable, but even that aside, Iran is still blockaded and starved. It is impossible to invest in Iran, it is impossible for Iranian companies to succeed globally.
And honestly, Iranians had incredibly good justification to be mad at Americans.
istinetz
1yr ago
I keep noticing people using the word "democratic" in place of "socially left". E.g.: if a middle eastern country, after elections and with parliamentary majority, passes a law forcing women to wear hijabs or whatever, that is democratic. If Slovenia votes in 3 separate referendums that they don't want gay marriage, and it still legalized, that is undemocratic. Yet people use the opposite labels to describe such events.
istinetz
1yr ago
I don't understand what is the point of these walls of texts and how are they relevant to this discussion.
If I want to know what GPT will say on a given topic, I can ask it myself, you don't need to copy-paste walls of text. This answer is not particularly interesting or surprising.
I will defend the opposite view.
Out of the roughly 8.5 million people who live there, 37% are foreign-born. With over 800 languages spoken there, it's also the most linguistically diverse place in the world. [...] Walk around long enough and you'll bump into a wedding or funeral or some other celebration that's done in a beautiful traditional style. [...] The city is a patchwork quilt of hundreds, maybe thousands, of groups, some taking up a single block while others, like the Chinese or Hasidic Jews, basically run whole neighborhoods. Walking in a straight line for maybe an hour feels like traveling through half a dozen countries.
Yeah, you have the language, the foods, the music, but those will eventually melt together. Even you provide a constant stream of new immigrants, and they willingly self-segregate, the million small markers of culture will eventually disappear. Only a few larger ones will remain, as a symbol of identity, like some Americans celebrate St. Patrick's day.
Now, all these people, at least most of them, enjoy the fruits of globalization. They drink coke. Eat pizza and sushi. Browse reddit. But overall, their primary cultural identity is unaffected.
Which brings me to my second point. The larger empire will tolerate the harmless and meaningless traits of the constituent cultures, but not anything meaningful. You can keep the foods. You can keep the songs (most of them). You cannot enforce a community with your norms.
While the EU is nominally in favor of cultural diversity, it means they will subsidize folk dresses and bland exhibits with 27 flags. It does not mean they will allow an Eastern European country to be against gay marriage rights. It does not mean they will allow a country to practice eugenics, or protect key industries. You might agree with these decisions, but my point is that the EU and ANZAC allow only surface level diversity.
Because culture is downstream from economics and politics. Japan's building codes make it very easy to make tiny restaurants on the first floor, so their streets are alive with such restaurants. In the Middle East, the climate is dry and the laws forbid alcohol, so they have cuisine with figs and shisha bars everywhere.
Yes, you have a constant stream of immigrants that self-segregate in neighbourhoods, and that slows down the integration. It might take generations to melt them, but it is happening nonetheless, because the laws are the same, the economics are the same for everyone. The first generation will do everything the same as back home, the second will adjust, but their children will eventually meld.
istinetz
1yr ago
I feel quite safe where I currently live
Dude, this is absolutely not safe. I would hate living like this
istinetz
1yr ago
At no point did white people decide that sub-Saharan Africa was worth settling.
istinetz
1yr ago
Honestly, as a non-American, it's kinda pathetic that this guy ended up one of the 2-3 most powerful people in the US.
I mean just read it. He's pure animal.
istinetz
1yr ago
Yeah, agree. If Hillary or Trump end up the only options for president, something has gone very wrong somewhere in the process.
Effective Altruism != Rationalism.
they have 90%+ overlap though. The line is very blurry.
Edit: it's pretty funny to me that one of the replies claims I'm wrong because EA is a subset of rats, and the other reply claims I'm wrong because rats are a subset of EA.
You can see how this would be confusing to an outsider, right?
istinetz
1yr ago
voting should not require government identification;
I am so baffled by American debates about this. Why the hell don't you want to use IDs to vote? Anyone too stupid to get an ID shouldn't vote.
istinetz
1yr ago
Make a realistic compromise proposal, like the Camp David Accords. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" just isn't happening, it isn't in the cards. The US and Israel would be happy to create a compromise where Palestine accepts becoming its own proper state, smaller border because they've lost territory due to Israeli settlement, and Palestine stops launching missiles at Israel; and in exchange, they get billions of dollars poured into them to build infrastructure.
If I rephrase that with Russia and Ukraine, would you agree?
istinetz
1yr ago
People attribute this to the British's affinity for bricks and mortar over investing in companies and while I agree that plays a part (see the reverse in the US where the exact same Ryanair share trades at a 30% premium in the US over its European counterpart)
There is no way this is true.
istinetz
1yr ago
When casting a family/clan/isolated society, people usually pick actors who look the most alike.
WoT casting would like to have a word with this racist notion.
istinetz
1yr ago
It is understated. The 6500 dead workers come from the embassies of 4 countries for the period up to 2021. It is a hard number, not an estimate, and it doesn't include deaths in 2022 and dead workers from other countries.
istinetz
1yr ago
Yep, exactly. It's fine to try a second text, because we're only human, there is stress, work, a billion things to do in the day. Its not a good sign that you have to double-text, but it's fine.
Third one - no.
istinetz
1yr ago
you're right, I overextended with 'marriage'. Changed it to gay rights.
Though the ECJ does not care a lot about Romania's definition of marriage
istinetz
1yr ago
The filter will get better with time. There is a reinforcement learning layer built on top of gpt, with humans manually rating a sample of answers. Apparently someone recently decided to include fossil fuels use in this filter, but the training has not yet caught up.
istinetz
1yr ago
Remember that Saudi Prince @Alwaleed_Talal invested $1.89 Billion and Qatar @QIA about $400 Million in Twitter. They are the real Power at Twitter.
lmao what
istinetz
1yr ago
ESG was their invention.
No, it wasn't. I remember a few years back, they refused to participate in stuff like that, after most of their peers have succumbed.
istinetz
1yr ago
There would be no new businesses, no new music, no new books, etc.
I don't know how you made that jump.
Like, if you live in Liberaltopia, there's nothing stopping you from not associating with gay people. There's nothing stopping you from forming a group with other people and having each other promise that you will not do gay things or associate with gays. There's also no size limit imposed on your group--it could be just your friends or half the country.
There are no ways to enforce these shared norms. Imagine you live in an imaginary, hypothetical world where heroin, or murder, or dumping your garbage from the balcony is legal and normal. You and a group of friends agree that this should change, and you "form a group" and "promise" not to do that. So what? Your kids are still hooked on heroin, there is still garbage on the streets, and there is still a chance of getting murdered, because there are others who didn't agree and defectors.
You need a method to enforce that new norm. "Form a group" and "promise" is insufficient.
Surely, if gayness is in anyway bad, well, then in the free market of ideas, gayness will fade away while your non-gay group will grow and prosper?
Gayness, specifically, was an example, of something the larger culture will impose on the sub-communities. You don't need to argue if it's good or bad.
istinetz
1yr ago
A bizarre assertion, given that, according to my count, 13 of the EU's 27 members don't allow gay marriage.
you're right. I changed it to 'gay rights'.
Eugenics is not part of the traditional culture of any country. The reason it's not implemented anywhere is a lack of popular support; it has nothing to do with the EU.
It's an example of an edgy policy that would never be allowed by the EU. It illustrates that the allowed diversity is only surface level.
You're needlessly adversarial.
What the EU doesn't allow is protectionist restrictions that are meant to benefit one country's companies over those of another.
Which is exactly what I meant (and said). Your point about protecting local cheeses kind of proves my thesis.
Finally - why are you doing this?
Today, a 5 hour recording of a rather important internal zoom meeting of the second largest party in Bulgaria was leaked. It was a meeting of the leadership to decide whether to enter a complicated kind-of coalition with the biggest party.
Would you guys be interested if I go over it and post the interesting bits? Keeping in mind that the usual left-right divide is much less applicable.
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