magicalkittycat
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User ID: 3762
We don't need to solve aging, we just need to automate enough work that good living standards can be maintained despite a shrinking and aging population. Like does it really matter if the seniors at a nursing home get their food cooked by a sweaty 16 year old vs a (possibly even higher and more consistent quality) automated cooking machine? Does it really matter if the medical treatment and analysis they get is done by (possibly even higher and more consistent quality) machines and not extensive human labor?
Not really.
In many sectors "build another machine" is already far more efficient than throwing another human laborer in (to the point some run lights out/near lights out), so birthrates and youth stop mattering for them as much. As we automate more and more, this will become increasingly true of the general economy.
magicalkittycat
19d ago
Publicly funded retirement is a privilege
In the US at least, social security and medicare is an entitlement. You essentially earn "points" (not literally but figuratively works similar) in the program the more taxes you pay into it while working, and then come time of retirement or disability you get benefits paid out based off how many "points" you have.
There is an implicit, and in many ways explicit, agreement that this is earned. Some people try to argue against that by pointing that the cash you get out isn't the same cash you put in, but that doesn't actually change anything in the agreement. Money is fungible, it doesn't matter where it comes from whether it got stored in a big bank over the 40+ years of work or it went to seniors of the time and the money comes from workers today, the seniors of today earned their "points" in the benefits system and want to see the obligations promised to them by the government fulfilled.
The correct answer to this was for the government to never make such a promise to being with, not to rip people off.
Alternatives like "letting them die", or "trusting that families can always take care of them (they can't)", or even something truly drastic and inhumane like "euthanasia for everyone at 75" are going to either produce tremendous innocent suffering, or are radically contrary to most people's moral instincts.
Anti-old policies have a greater issue than just morals for unknown vulnerable strangers. Basically everyone has someone old in their life they love (I have both parents and an aunt) who are still independent right now but might not be in the next decade or two and it's something I really am having to plan for.
But beyond even that, while younger folk like me might want to deny it we are all aware we will get old as well. Voting in anti old policies is moronic then, it's literally voting against my future self. Euthanasia at 75 means I die at 75, and that's assuming the number doesn't ratchet down.
Sure my adult children might be able to care for me but more and more people don't like that, they don't like being independent on their kids and I don't like the idea either. Funding it through taxes on everyone essentially does the same thing, my kids pay a little for every senior and all the other kids will pay a little for me.
Really the bigger answer is automation and zoning reform. We can raise our overall quality of life despite shrinking and aging populations because robots do the labor (as automation has already been doing for a few centuries now) and zoning reform can help create accessible nice homes for the old to move to so young people with kids can have an actual house.
Being hit by cops is a physical action in the conflict, and its fairness is a moral judgement. Being charged for dubious reasons is a legal action after the conflict. There is no relation between these things. Both, either or neither could be true for all I know, but half of the reason you're catching so much flak is that you keep arguing against the photo demonstrating the latter when your original claim was that the photo provides no evidence for the former
It obviously has no evidence for the latter claim. But also without surrounding context, it doesn't really have evidence for the former either.
Imagine if a suspect says "I have a gun and I am going to shoot up all the cops here". The cops obviously rush him down and try to subdue them. They believe he is resisting (maybe he is actually resisting or maybe he is just frantically trying to block their efforts but the movements look like resisting in the heat of the moment) so they're hitting at him trying to get him to stop.
Could one call this unfair? No.
The other half is that you keep saying that he "double-checked" your use of ChatGPT and are using that as evidence. What he was demonstrating there was that ChatGPT contradicted itself (it told you that the claim was false, but later told him that it doesn't know whether it's true or not) and thus its opinion should be accorded zero weight
Those are functionally the same thing under it. If someone says "there is a panda outside" and you look and find no panda, you can reasonably conclude the claim as false. But if someone asks "there is a panda outside, do you know if this is true?" then you can't say you know for sure until you have a check.
(the explanation for the contradiction, incidentally, is that chatbots are shameless liars and sycophants).
And that check is the real difference. I went and used both my wording triggers it to search the internet. His wording does not trigger the search. ChatGPT does not look out the window for a panda with his wording.
If you add just three words before his wording, "search the net", ChatGPT says it can not be verified as true and is a meme wording.
No—the specific caption claim is not established as true; without the exact photo it can’t be verified, and the widely shared “charged with assault for blocking a cop’s punch with his face” wording is generally a sarcastic meme rather than a documented charge description.
It looks outside and can't find a panda.
.In case @stoatherd's second explanation is correct, and you are very confused about the meaning of some of these words: the verb "charge" has multiple meanings. The meaning of "charged" assumed in the context of "charged for bruising the officer's knuckles" is meaning 6 ("someone formally accused him of a crime"), not meaning 12 ("someone ran at him with the intent of attacking him in close combat").
Yes I understand that, why do you think I said court documents would suffice as evidence.
magicalkittycat
21d ago
- The average person who supports people being able to abort Down's syndrome fetuses yet views eugenics as fundamentally wrong is a person who simply does not make the connection that those two things are related in any important way.
There's an easy way to resolve this if one takes the term eugenics to carry an implicit meaning of an external authority or pressure on the parents.
Which given the definition of eugenics you can often find has something like this in it.
the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations' genetic composition
It does seem like a valid interpretation that it's an external force doing it for their Greater Cause as opposed to the parents own decision regarding what QOL they are willing to accept in raising a child.
magicalkittycat
22d ago
I didn't lie about what he said, I addressed his specific claims. There has yet been no evidence presented that the guy was charged for bruising a cop's knuckles while blocking. But even if that was the case and he was charged for it, there's also no evidence it's the only thing he was charged for.
Perhaps he flashed a weapon. Perhaps he threatened to hurt one of the cops. Or something else like that. Maybe he did something that the cops rightfully thought needed subduing, and he was charged with flashing a weapon + resisting arrest or whatever. I don't know, no one has presented a single thing about the case beyond "guy on X said so".
The idea that he was unfairly abused from the picture is unsubstantiated then. Cops are supposed to subdue potential threats, and police doing their jobs properly is ridiculously more common than the extreme police brutality alleged.
Whether their behavior is appropriate is highly conditional on the suspect's actions. A photo of a cop rightfully subduing an apparant threat can look very similar to one of unfair abuse.
The language thing notwithstanding: you are lying, again. I did not "double check". I copy-pasted a thing from ChatGPT to show that your standard of "checking" with AI is nonsense. That was my entire point, as I've now explained to you infinity billion + 1 times. Why are you still pretending otherwise?
You might not have intended to but you did double check. You asked if it had any knowledge about the case and it did not. That's a double check. If it was real then it might have known about it and told you.
magicalkittycat
22d ago
Those claims are related since saying the cops response was unfair is conditional. After all cops subduing someone they believe to be dangerous is expected and desired behavior from cops.
If the only charge is "they bruised a cop's knuckles when blocking" then it would probably be unfair. But there has been no evidence presented that is the case. Why did the cops do that? Why specifically him? Like most accusations of police brutality, it's probably because he actually did something that the police rightfully thought needed subduing.
magicalkittycat
22d ago
Adoption would be a realistic solution if there wasn't an oversupply and under demand for adoptable foster kids as is. And considering these severely disabled children that require constant dedication for the rest of their lifetime would be far less wanted than even the typical foster child.
magicalkittycat
23d ago
It's not really a state capacity issue, we know why California takes forever. They're over the top voter friendly.
They automatically send out mail in ballots to every registered voter so basically everyone votes by mail + ballots are accepted as long as they're posted by election day (and received by a date far out, this election is June 9th). It's impossible to count ballots that aren't there to be counted yet.
Maybe those are dumb choices but the main state capacity wise would just be in the speed of their mail service.
Dude, I asked you: "So... you're not contesting that you lied about what he said?"
I did contest what he said!
I said that I can not find any even semi decent evidence the claims of the X user he cites as his argument are real.
How about instead of having a meta conversation, we have the actual conversation where someone finally provides semi decent evidence for their claims a guy was charged for bruising and officers fists while blocking beyond "guy on X said so".
It all seems like a way to dodge that maybe said evidence might not actually exist. I couldn't find any! You double checked and didn't find it. So where is it?
You are lying, again. As I said in my comment, multiple times, the evidence was a photo. Not verbal evidence. Not someone on X "saying" something. A goddam photograph of a situation. You can disagree with his take on the photo; I'm not even endorsing his take. But pretending that the photo doesn't exist is a fucking lie.
Where in the photo does it back the claim the guy was charged for injuring an officer while defending himself? Seriously, go look at the photo and tell me how I can glean "This guy was later charged for blocking punches".
There isn't any way. It does not back up the claims at all.
So... you're not contesting that you lied about what he said?
I am doing exactly that? I explained to you where the many people come from. I was wrong however about it being at least 6 users, someone informed me how to see the upvote numbers and it's at +8/-1 now so it was probably +7/-1 before and someone has added on since my original check of 6.
To check I've got my facts straight: one Motte user links to a photo that they think shows unfair assault of a J6er. Six people upvote this.
Your facts are straight, at the time at least six people (turns out seven but I didn't know I could check the ratio then) had upvoted the comment saying
What about cops attacking nonviolent protestors on video, and then charging those protestors for the temerity of bruising the officer's knuckles.
And the only external evidence provided was a post on X, which also provided no evidence whatsoever that a protested was charged for bruising the officers knuckles. There was a video that maybe the X user believed was of police brutality, but nothing whatsoever was provided of what charges were or were not brought up of the guy.
Now could it be "Well people just upvote anything!"? No, because my comment was down voted where I said the tweet was a still image (I didn't see the video underneath but again it doesn't evidence the claim about charges were brought for what reasons), did a quick double check if there was any other corroborating evidence for the claims (I could not find any nor could the chatbots) and asked
Do you happen to have the charges against him where what they outline is that he blocked his face and that's what was the assault?
So it's not that people are just upvoting anything. What is it then? A form of endorsement. Which would mean that +7 people endorsed "Here's an X user making a claim without any external proof" as a fine evidentiary standard.
In fact you followed up and also didn't find any external affirmative evidence that the X users claims were real! https://www.themotte.org/post/3781/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/449800?context=8#context
You literally went to double check and ChatGPT said it doesn't have any knowledge of that case.
As I said "Random X user just claims it" is F tier evidence in my world. I gave particular examples of evidence I would consider as quality like a Fox News article or court documents.
So to clarify There has been no even semi decent evidence provided that a protestor was charged for blocking his face from police fists and thus causing the knuckles to be bruised. The only evidence, extremely low quality f tier evidence, provided is a guy on X claims it happened without anything else attached. And yet this evidentiary standard was endorsed by at least 7 people.
magicalkittycat
23d ago
Oh thank you very much.
magicalkittycat
23d ago
.. I was planning to go through the other users one by one, but I actually can't find any others. Could it be that you took a single Motte user who linked to a photo on X, lied about what they said, and then used this as a basis for "many motte users"?
There is an incredibly easy way to see it, TheMotte like similar sites has a mechanism built in! His comment has 6 upvotes at this time meaning at least 5 others are in general agreement. Probably more considering some users might have down voted so it might be +10vs-5 or whatever I wouldn't know.
Does (at least) 6 people count as "many" for you? I can change it to "several" if you disagree what constitutes many.
I never said it's not true, in fact my asking for better forms of evidence should indicate I am open to it being true. But "random guy politically motivated on X says it happened" is F tier evidence. All he shows is a video of police taking a guy down and hitting on him some but the video quality is low and cut so we don't see what is happening beforehand or can't tell how/if the guy was resisting. Additionally the video itself is not evidence the guy was even charged with resisting arrest yet alone for the specifics that are alleged in the tweet, he could have been charged with something else that happened prior to the video that caused the cops to take him down.
If you could find something like a Fox News article (I believe in the Scott Alexander most mainstream media rarely lies stance so I'd accept it) that explicitly said the charges were for "blocking" or whatever or court documents that said it or something, I'd accept it as true.
I understand that it's flattering to cast yourself as a principled person, and anyone disagreeing with you is just terminally stupid.
Thing is, it's not actually true
Actually pretty easy way to to check it, let's call it the Mr Rogers test.
If Mark tells you that John is a thief, you might be more cautious of John's behavior. If Mark then follows up with "Mr Rogers is a thief", then you know Mark's head isn't screwed on right, he just claims people are thieves if he doesn't like them for whatever reason and his claims about John hold little weight. Mr Rogers after all was famously a very nice guy and no credible accusations have ever been made that he stole from others, so Mark just claiming lowers Mark's own reputation.
So let's look at things that are very principled to use as our baseline to see if people's accusations have any weight here.
FIRE is extremely principled, probably one of the most principled organizations out there. So someone who makes claims against FIRE loses any weight they have in other accusations. The comment currently making claims against FIRE is at +14, so at the very least 14 people here throw out frivolous accusations just because they don't like when principled beliefs are against them.
Well maybe these are not the same people interacting with me, but there's not that many people on the site so there's a pretty good chance that several of them are. I don't give them any weight because they've already lost it by failing the Mr Rogers test.
And it's not just FIRE either. I learned recently that Trace Woodgrains was effectively bullied out of this site roughly a year ago, someone had linked his profile in response to me talking a view of his. Woodgrains is someone I've seen to be respectable and honest and he's constantly been willing to speak up against both left wing and right wing views he disagrees with. He's quite respected in the rationalist aligned community. Taking such major issues with him that he is effectively hounded off is a failure of the Mr Rogers test.
That's to be expected, it's the default of the internet really. Even people I disagree with substantially (but respect as principled in their beliefs) have it happen constantly. Micheal Tracey is experiencing that treatment right now. I think he's wrong about Epstein and his many other denials of public officials accused of abuse, but he is very consistent in holding this stance. Elliot Hamilton (among many other X users) falsely accusing Tracey of being a partisan hypocrite have lost any weight I might have given their accusations. If I ever had Elliot Hamilton say I'm being partisan, I know I can dismiss that because he just says it if he doesn't like what you say.
Edit: Actually here Trace Woodgrains speaks out another big of the issue that's still ongoing https://www.themotte.org/post/1018/smallscale-question-sunday-for-may-26/217142?context=8#context
I think it is torn between two purposes, one implicit and one explicit, and the implicit one has been winning for a very long time. Explicitly, it wants to be a respectful meeting place for people who don't share the same biases. Implicitly, it is a place for people who don't like progressives to chat about politics and culture. It works great if you want to be criticized from your right, or if you have an anti-progressive or a more niche idea to share, but people are doomed to disappointment at the gap between its implicit and its explicit purposes unless they share its biases, and if they share its biases they will only entrench those biases further.
Is it the case that there just isn't left or centrist rationalists capable of discussion here? Highly unlikely, Woodgrains himself is a good example of that. He's also a good example of what really happens, the community here is generally hostile in pursuit of the implicit purpose. Many users simply don't want to hear the arguments they disagree with, so the people who have arguments they dislike get burnt out from the hostility.
So Mr Rogers test, I'm not gonna put much weight into hounding from a site and people that also hounded out Woodgrains.
magicalkittycat
23d ago
I eagerly await you full-throatedly repeating this argument to the African American community.
Yes, police brutality against blacks is also rare and basically everyone who gets a conviction against them for serious crime they fought in court is guilty of what they are accused of.
Anyway, this slush fund is corruption, just because the other side does it doesn't mean it's ok that your side does it too. I do recognize that for a lot of people here it's a feeling of "look what you made me do" or "you made me do this", or maybe a bit of accelerationist, who knows, but the whole point is the ability to curb the extremes and either appeal or force each other to be better without violence and resentment.
Yeah, it's always just an excuse for their own hypocrisy. One way you can tell that's the case is that "both sides!" use the same logic. It's like Scott's piece cautioning bias arguments https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/17/caution-on-bias-arguments/
It doesn't make sense that the pro Israel and pro Palestine side both felt the documentary was biased against them, so it's explained better by their own personality and victim complexes.
In the same way, it doesn't make sense that pro right and pro left sides both give the excuse that "the other one started it and we're just being equal", so it is explained better by their own personality and victim complex.
Hell just look at some of the conversations I've had here already. The standard of evidence for many motte users that cops unfairly assaulted a protestor on Jan 6th is apparently "this guy on X said so". Meanwhile cases, like a guy who shot a black man and was charged with manslaughter that have gone to trial, been convicted at trial and had the conviction upheld as illegal isn't enough if it's something they don't like. They're either shifting goalposts or have a standard of evidence that is completely alien to me.
This also of course goes into the classic partisan issue of thinking everyone is as partisan as them. The average American taxpayer, the victim of corruption from either party, is not some diehard progressive or die hard conservative. It's stealing candy from a baby and saying "but John stole candy too" as an excuse.
magicalkittycat
24d ago
As I've made ABUNDANTLY clear to you, I never claimed the fact that you have a job and a family is remarkable in and of itself. I was pointing out the specific pattern of behaviour in which you 1) write a lengthy comment in which you employ some extremely specious reasoning
Aka "reasoning you don't agree with" right?
- multiple people push back on it
So what if multiple people disagree with me? It would be really weird if everyone did agree.
- you airily announce that you don't have time to reply to all the comments because you have a job and a family
I replied to a substantial portion, and the reply that I can't do it to everyone was specifically when asked why I didn't reply to a specific one.
Denying that he's engaging personal attacks while engaging in personal attacks. You think you're so clever ("Maybe he's currently unemployed. Maybe he's a NEET and most people in his life are also unemployed. I don't care, I'm not passing judgement...").
Look I don't know why you continue to insist that
Q: "Why don't you answer every single question?"
A: "I don't have time for every single one cause I have a life so I answer some of them"
is something suspicious.
It's not suspicious, it's an incredible normal reason. This is a "Hitler also breathed air" tier argument. I'm trying to be good faith and assume you genuinely find the reason I gave as something shocking for some reason, instead of you acting maliciously.
I'm not unemployed. I have a good job. Most people in my life also have good jobs.
Well good for you. Why can't you understand it as something other people like me also have?
Seriously, mods – if accusing me and everyone I know of being an unemployed loser with no prospects (with the fig leaf of "I'm not passing judgement" wink wink) doesn't qualify as "antagonistic, uncharitable or unkind" behaviour, what the hell does?
Says the person throwing out completely spurious accusations based off evidence like "You answer that you can't reply to everyone because you have a job and family when asked that specific question" and "I think your views have a logic I disagree with". So do most people in the world!
Wait since when? It sounds like you are just pissy that they have principles. Meaning they defend free speech even when its a conservative in the executive.
Greg Lukiaoff the CEO has talked about this before and calls it "hypocrisy projection"
Hypocrisy projection: When someone who generally only cares about the free speech rights of people they agree with asserts that everybody ELSE is a hypocrite, usually without actually bothering to check if their opponent has, in fact, been consistent.
(this term is incredibly useful on social media bc it happens all the damn time)
https://x.com/glukianoff/status/1784609444124316135
You see this constantly in replies to FIRE lawyers, people who have no idea what they are will go "You didn't say anything about X or Y" when no, FIRE definitely did do that. It's constant from all political directions.
People just fling out accusations of hypocrisy at them to cover up for their own hypocrisy.
There’s also someone going by the handle “Law Boy,” who recently asked why there has been no commentary from FIRE on Columbia’s suspensions and arrests of protesters on their campus. Of course, people at FIRE have commented on this, in an official capacity, making the same arguments made above about content-neutral rules and civil disobedience. And of course, the goal posts were, to quote someone in the replies, “packed up and moved to Sudan” the moment this was pointed out.
Being a principled person is a fun life cause you'll have people telling you're biased and unfair in every direction you can imagine and there's just no convincing them. They don't want to be convinced, you can lead the horse to a river, dunk their head in and make them drink it and they'll spit it out!
magicalkittycat
24d ago
Here is an example of them aligning with Democratic interests to facilitate homelessness.
They lost their way on free speech by standing up for free speech?
Cause that's what they're doing
On April 29, FIRE wrote the city, explaining that the First Amendment protects charitable solicitation by organizations or by individuals seeking assistance for themselves, and calling on the city to repeal or amend the ordinance.
They're the free speech org, of course they're against government ordinance that suppresses unliked or unwanted speech.
magicalkittycat
24d ago
What smear? He's the one who seems to find me answering "sorry I didn't reply to your comment because I'm busy and I'm busy because job and family and responsibilities" as some uncommon reason.
That's normal. Lots of people have families and jobs and other responsibilities. If he find it strange for some reason for me to have those things, then he's abnormal. Not abnormal (pejorative) but abnormal (descriptive).
And you, @magicalkittycat. I know you were paying attention. Falling back on personal attacks does no one any favors.
The closest thing to it was saying that I have a job and a busy life and that it's not unique to do so, and thus assuming that it is so unique or strange to fit the category of "employed with family" that giving it as a response to a question as why I don't reply to every comment is not indicative or whatever weird conspiracy theory he has in his head.
Now I don't know why it comes off as so unique to him. Maybe he's currently unemployed. Maybe he's a NEET and most people in his life are also unemployed.
I don't care, I'm not passing judgement. I have an aunt who lives off social security because she's disabled and hasn't worked for almost two decades. That's fine.
It's just a very strange thing to assume "job with kids makes me busy" is unique. It's not, it's normal and common.
Huh! That's weird. It's almost like ChatGPT's opinion continues not to be evidence.
Huh that response agrees with me? There is no evidence that what the tweet says happened.
If it's real then you could go find the charges or news stories on the case instead of relying on random tweet with still image as a source.
I live in the East Coast, that was 10:48am my time on a Thursday. I have a job, I had a meeting at 11.
I don't know what time zone you live in but "Hey I have a job that keeps me busy often" and "Hey I have to go during peak job hours at my time zone" should be expected together??
I cleverly used examples that we already have (at least to some degree).
Automated food production? Already the case for many steps and products, both at the farms themselves, and in preparing/packaging/etc. Combine this with self driving trucks (self driving cars are already looking better than humans like with Waymo, probably not too long for the trucking industry to start getting more automated) and even stuff like drone deliveries from store to house, and maybe in 20-30 years there will barely be any humans involved in getting food from the fields to your home. Heck, you might not even be a part of that process, COVID has made grocery deliveries really cheap and I use them from time to time and that's with human drivers still not the drones yet.
Medical care? Ok sure a lot of it will remain human, patients will want a human doctor to talk to and a human nurse to look after them but automation is already here and getting better. In all sorts of ways even. Like I got a sleep study recently and all the devices they put on me could read my pulse, detect my breathing, etc without a human monitor. And an auto generated report from what I can tell! Yes a human was there to set it up and look over it, and an expert looked the results and the report but it was mostly technology.
Heck technology even makes a lot of things possible that wouldn't be before. Consider the sleep study again and how they had constant monitoring of my pulse and breathing and oxygen levels. A human doctor, even if they taped their end of a stethoscope to me and listened all night long wouldn't be able to record with nearly as much accuracy as the machine can.
Now of course, automation still has a long way to go. But given the miracles we have already achieved and the amazing standards of living we already get from it, I don't think we should be so doubtful.
Heck one of the only reasons why automation hasn't already solved the crisis is that our living standards keep ratcheting up to match the increase in productivity. Like we're at the point where internet is being considered a basic human right despite most not even having it ~30-40 years ago. Imagine going back to the 1980s and telling people the Internet will be considered a human right. Many would be like "whats the internet?". That's how much we've ratcheted.
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