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magic9mushroom

If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me

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joined 2022 September 10 11:26:14 UTC
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magic9mushroom


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 10 11:26:14 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					




And all the gaslighting about how it's not a big deal, why are we so annoyed by it immediately becomes a huge fucking shut down the internet deal whenever someone takes it back out.








Probably because there's a lot of people who seem to think this man had a valid point. But what do I know, maybe all the people making a stand against indoctrination are shaking their heads at a man complaining about the expansion of an option that he could have gotten through in seconds.




I do not see the relevance of that man to the point at issue, unless your point is that this man is some sort of Dalek against whom all games are zero-sum and existential and therefore both brushing off his complaints as trivial and also banning mods that cater to him are justified tactics to oppose and destroy him.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So we already have one example of an extreme leftist position that was pushed out of the overton window only to return far stronger than before, apparently with the assistance of liberals with a no-enemies-to-the-left policy. Why will this be any different?




The usual argument for abolishing the AoC is about individual freedom. That's very much not an extreme leftist position; it's an extreme liberal position - a libertine position.


SJ is sometimes called "the successor ideology" because it grew out of liberal culture but is not liberal itself. The direction you go from moderate liberalism to get to SJ is at an obtuse angle with the direction you'd have to go to get to abolishing the AoC. And I say that as someone who wants to lower the AoC.


Does SJ memory-hole stories about gay molestors and occasionally enable them*? Yes. That's because they're optimising too hard on "accept gay people" - to quote B5, "conspiracies of silence because the larger ideals have to be protected". It's not because they actually support child molestation in and of itself.


*The conservative media amplifies this for the exact same reason the SJ media suppresses it i.e. it is highly politically inconvenient for the Blue Tribe narrative. It's not actually as common as reading conservative media would lead you to believe.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
When you say "the real case against it", are you merely noting an argument that exists, or are you making the argument i.e. saying in your own voice "banning AI is bad because AI could be good too"?


(In case of the latter: I know that The Precipice at least considers AI a bigger threat than literally everything else put together, at 1/10 AI doom and 1/6 total doom. I categorise things a bit differently than Ord does, but I'm in agreement on that point, and when looking at the three others that I consider plausibly within an OOM of AI (Life 2.0, irrecoverable dystopia, and unknown unknowns) it jumps out at me that I can't definitively state that having obedient superintelligences available would be on-net helpful with any of them. Life 2.0 would be exceptionally difficult to build without a superintelligence and could plausibly be much harder to defeat than to deploy. Most tangible proposals I've seen for irrecoverable dystopia depend on AI-based propaganda or policing. And unknown unknowns are unknowable.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Who are you accusing of seeking power within EA? Or, within what other institution is power being sought?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Similarly, leftists were in favor of free speech and questioning authority when it was beneficial to them, but now that their institutional capture is more entrenched, they don't need those things anymore.






But something about this explanation rubs me the wrong way. It paints a purely structural view of the formation of ideologies, and ignores the role of the individual completely; you will hold the views that you must based on your relational position to other political actors while taking into account your rational self interest, and that's that.




The nuanced version of this is less concerned with individuals changing their minds and more concerned with generational succession and coalitional realignment.


In essence: SJers were never liberals (they're clearly six-foundation rather than three-foundation), but while they were weak their immediate goals coincided with liberals' and they needed liberals' help to achieve them, so the coalitional rhetoric catered to liberals. Now that SJers are more numerous and powerful, and have already picked the low-hanging fruit, they have run out of common goals with liberals, and don't need the liberals to maintain a shot at power, so they kicked the liberals out of the coalition so that they could pursue their more illiberal goals. Meanwhile, the Moral Majority is no longer a majority and now needs the liberals, and also their most immediate goal of reversing SJ excesses is shared with liberals, so they've started including liberal things in their rhetoric.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 3, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Who wants to be friends with a guy that has contempt for your wife and thinks you're a cuck for marrying her?




I think this might be going down a dangerous path. The road from this to "build yourself a bubble and shun all unbelievers" is shorter than it looks, and the latter universalises as civil war.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also, NATO isn't just the US. Even if the USA ignores its treaty obligations because ASB, there's still Britain/France/Germany.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Mary's Motte and the case against progress
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It difficult to see how these are not moral improvements. Indeed even the more modern rights revolutions fighting various quarter-, eigth- and sixteenth-slaveries have been mostly on target.




If you cannot understand the moral calculus of your forebears, it's a sin of pride to pronounce that calculus wrong. To say that your forebears are wrong and have that be more than a farce, you need to understand why they thought what they thought and be able to point to a mistake (of fact or of reasoning). Else, you have no way of really knowing whether you're simply a fool who denies the existence of that which is beyond his ken. Mere replacement in the public consciousness is no substitute; that proves memetic fitness, not correctness.


I'm dubious, for instance, that you actually understand the moral questions posed by slavery. Can you name the two developments which most changed the moral calculus of forced labour between 1400 and the present day?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If anything "AI rights are human rights" is a faster and more plausible path towards human extinction.




I agree that this is a significant contributor to the danger, although in a lot of possible worldlines it's hard to tell where "AI power-seeking" ends and "AI rights are human rights" begins - a rogue AI trying charm would, after all, make the "AI rights are human rights" argument.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Colorado Supreme Court Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As AshLael said, one was the leader of one of the parties in the ruling coalition.


The analogy is not very exact, though, because the results of the dismissals weren't "oh hey, your opponent wins by default", they were either "next person on your party ticket takes the seat" in the Senate cases, or "have a new election" in the HoR cases (and in all of the new elections the same party - and in some cases the same person, having resolved the eligibility problem in the meantime - won again and kept the seat). There were only two cases where the same party didn't hold the seat afterward, one because the guy was found to be eligible but resigned anyway, and one because the disqualified person had run as an independent and thus had no party.


This is very different from "a major party is not allowed to contest X position, opponent wins by default".


Should also be noted that the CW is significantly more subdued here in Oz.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The main positive argument of the Yes campaign (as opposed to deflection of opposing arguments) is this:


    

  1. Aboriginal outcomes suck
    2. 

  2. This is durable against everything we've tried so far
    3. 

  3. Trying to fix these sucky outcomes is worthwhile
    4. 

  4. This proposal is something we haven't tried yet
    5. 

  5. Therefore, vote Yes
    6. 



Like, obviously this is just the politician's syllogism, and literally the same logic could lead you to sticking all the Aboriginals in re-education camps since we haven't tried that either, but the Yes campaigners do honestly believe it, and I think it is (somewhat) above the level of "clichés and slogans".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Scott's old "Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell" post summarises the Reactionary viewpoint on this: try being an actual coloniser rather than a chickenshit one, and you might get somewhere. If you respond to rebellion by going home, that's an incentive to rebel. If you leave institutions in place, let alone allowing the conquered to elect them, that makes rebellion easier. If you admit to being there temporarily, that disincentivises people from helping you since they might be shot as collaborators when you leave.


This sound like too much work and/or morally wrong? Well, then, I guess you're not cut out for occupations. Try some other means of affecting world politics.


The occupations of Germany and Japan went well despite being admittedly temporary and leaving some institutions in place (particularly in Japan), but there was definitely no hope of getting the West to go home via hostility and also the existence of the Soviet Union and China made even a successful rebellion obvious suicide.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Vacuity of Climate Science
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
@dale_cloudman thinks that 2LoT means "heat flow from cold to hot is zero" rather than the correct "heat flow from cold to hot is less than heat flow from hot to cold such that net local flow is from hot to cold". It's a reasonably-easy misunderstanding to make (at least, for someone trying to make sense of a topic without the proper grounding), since when you're dealing with conduction or convection there's no separation between forward flow and back flow, and non-scientists don't deal with radiative heat transfer often.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Vacuity of Climate Science
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It takes years for it to come down, and some of the possible failure modes can't wait years (e.g. crop failure).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I feel I should note that there is such a thing as "being neutral", and thus that RenOS' note that he doesn't want to ally with you is not the same thing as declaring alliance with your enemies.


You might consider neutrality naïve, and you might very well be right, but you can't just treat naïveté as malice - not if you want to be intellectually honest, anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 3, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Given how many people have slid down it, I'd say it's pretty slippery. Even then, I did say "might".


If Butlerian were actively acting against her outside of his advice to Bob, that's a legit reason, but if mere disapproval is enough then you're edging toward "friendship is transitive" which sorts people into bubbles (proof: assume by contradiction that a connected subgraph contains a prude and a prostitute. Then the prude and prostitute must be friends because friendship is transitive and (because there are finitely many people) there is a finite-length path between them. But they're not. -><-). Like I said, shorter than it looks.


If you think you can avoid sliding down, fine, whatever, it's your life. Just pointing out the pitfall.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Which of the following do you think should be covered under gun rights? Single-shot normal rifles, shotguns, assault rifles, SMGs, single-shot pistols, anti-materiel rifles, machine guns, technicals/IFVs, MANPADs, recoilless rifles, rocket launchers, tanks, Davy Crocketts?


(This is not mockery. The argument that's literally in the 2A - militia makes you harder to conquer - applies to all of the above except maybe Davy Crocketts.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				E/acc and the political compass of AI war
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


LLMs, as moderated by RLHF and other techniques, almost want to be aligned, and are negligibly agentic unless you set them up to be that way.




Remember that "pretending to be aligned" is a convergent instrumental goal, and that RLHF on output cannot actually tell the difference between "pretending successfully to be aligned" and "actually being aligned". Indeed, "pretending successfully to be aligned" has a slight edge, because the HF varies slightly between HFers and a pretending AI can tailor its pretensions to each individual HFer based on phrasing and other cues.




I think this is a terrible definition of a "pivotal act". When Yudkowsky suggests releasing a nanite plague that melts GPUs, he doesn't want them to melt the GPUs of the AI releasing them.




I'm pretty sure he does want that, as he does not trust the AI doing this either. The idea isn't to take control of the world, it's to brute-force stop any and all neural nets while work on GOFAI and other more alignable AI continues.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				E/acc and the political compass of AI war
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


AI Luddites, reactionaries, job protectionists and woke ethics grifters who demand pause/stop/red tape/sinecures (bottom left)




I think that if your compass includes both the Butlerian Jihadis and the Thought Police in the same quadrant, it's fucked up. The Thought Police are Blue Tribe and utterly despise the Jihadis for being mostly Grey (leadership) and Red (groundswell). The Jihadis think the Thought Police are almost completely missing the point. Elsewhere in your post you straight-up conflate these groups, and that's nonsense; it's the Thought Police that have control of legacy media, not the Jihadis, and consequently you can barely shake a stick around the legacy-media articles without hitting some sort of "Jihadis are dumb sci-fi addicts" drive-by.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Link to quote source?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Here we're not talking about "if I vote for the Voice the Voice will be able to extract reparations, which is bad", we're talking about "if I vote for the Voice it will shape the national conversation in a way which might lead to people voting for reparations, which is bad". The latter, unlike the former, is going into the Dark Arts realm of treating people as manipulable and prioritising optics over ground truth, hence my term Machiavellian.


It's not a matter of me thinking reparations are good, it's a matter of me saying "these corrupt means are not justified by this good end".


Now, I happen to have plenty of non-Dark-Arts justifications for voting No - "Aboriginals are already overrepresented in Parliament", "special racial privileges are bad", and "vague language that could be twisted into veto" are the ones I can think of offhand - so I did indeed vote No with a clear conscience. But I frown on this one particular motivation; we're Rats and we're supposed to be better than that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Bailey Podcast E033: Jad Slays Journalism
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there a free "put podcast in, get transcript out" site the way there are hundreds of "put video-site URL in, get mp3 out" sites?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				2+2 = not what you think
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Um, that's what I meant by "Z4" (I couldn't remember and didn't bother with the exact definitional name). The element of Z/4Z that is usually denoted "0" is that set I noted above and can also be correctly denoted "4".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Okay, I've looked up pillarisation in the historical sense, but would you mind defining exactly what you mean by it in this context? I'm not 100% on exactly what is being connoted and not connoted.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				After the State: The Coming of Neo-Medievalism and the Great Decentralization
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd like a citation on Napoleon saying "quantity has a quality all its own"; the paper trail on that quote is inconclusive but I'd never before seen a claim of it being pre-20C.