muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
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User ID: 1018
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
Not the bespoke weapons, no. But evidently a modern civilian drone factory can make drones that are effective for military use. I believe a protracted total war, the side with more "Gigafactories" and difficult-to-predict quality of innovativeness and engineering that comes from running the factory will be better equipped to churn out useful equipment. In a massive war, you need massive amount of weapons, and wih current production numbers, it looks possible the West would run out of the bespoke weapons.
If the decisionmakers Alice and Bob realize it, it will affect their calculations of outcomes of protracted total war, such calculations will affect their diplomatic strategies. If either side don't realize it, they will walk into it blindly into the next protracted total war, and it will affect the outcome.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
Don't know about Singaporean system, but any prestige from conscription hinges on the implementation details. My hypothesis:
Conscription system where everyone is called up, avoiding draft is difficult, and candidates to officer and specialist tracks are selected by reliable, standardized tests and methods for IQ and other desiderata, compulsorily administered to all -> Military is unpleasant, but has some prestige to offset, because (a) if you made it to the officer track, your rank signals your IQ (b) no matter your personal rank, there is a high chance that in you observed relatively intelligent and competent superiors during your stint.
Conscription system where draft avoidance is easily possible -> Highly competent, affluent people who have most to gain from college or have family networks or otherwise good prospects of lucrative career have the highest opportunity cost from the draft -> They avoid the draft -> The majority of the elite in your country doesn't serve -> If you manage to nevertheless recruit competent officers, the elite won't observe their competence first-hand -> Avoiding draft correlates with elite status and signals good things, military career signals bad things. -> Prestige plummets.
Won't outline the failure mode where instead of standardized tests the officers are selected by either political patronage or nepotism.
I have no citations nor will to dig them up (=> what follows is not a high confidence claim) but my gestalt impression of the argument "details of parenting don't matter as long as minimum standards are met" comes from studies that measure parenting and quite generic statistical measures of education, income, or perhaps questionnaires about life satisfaction on 1-5 scale. I can't escape the feeling that there are many details that are substantial to the personal lived experience that are path contingent (including parental choices), but all those dimensions are collapsed into nothing in such studies and look like random noise.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
19d ago
Also Nordics/Protestants being stuck up by-the-book types was a stereotype well before Europe started moving towards democracy.
Less decisive historical observation than one may think, as the confound of comparatively democratic power structures in the Nordics goes all the way back before the French revolution. Things were meetings of free men since before the middle ages. When the Swedish realm adopted European style Riksdag of estates, they had a fourth estate of free land-owning peasants.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
27d ago
Doesn’t Ron Desantis disprove your rule that non-elites can’t achieve high office or even Joe Biden?
I agree with MaicTheTrue. Ron DeSantis is one individual. Think of base rates: there is only one Ron DeSantis. Perhaps a handful of other politicians with similar backgrounds. What is the probability your kid is going to be the next one?
Think it in terms of sports. Some individuals become the elite sport stars worth millions of dollars and have a pretty nice life until they retire. it doesn't change the fact that 99.x% of kids who want to become top players in a major league never become one. For a parent of perfectly ordinary good kid with ordinary good talents, it would be very irresponsible to encourage their kids to start on the path of all necessary requirements to become a top athlete (invest heavily in training and start their sports career in their teens). It makes sense if you have a pretty good probability that either your kid is in the top 1/10,000 talent bracket or if you are from gang-ridden favela without any other prospects and there is absolutely nothing to lose. Neither case applies to most people in the first world, where there is a secure career path option.
I believe it is quite the same thing if you want to become an elite political operative. You need right personality, some intellectual capacity, right social talents, in-born ambition, and looks (or charisma, which is often again, the looks). If the kid is not naturally popular in his/her group of kids and demonstrating the instincts of top political operative by age 11, I don't think it would be useful feed them the ambition to be a top politician.
Ambition is good thing, but it is better to direct it to useful pursuits.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
Don't take the attitude of scepticism ... into a maths class
I recommend the opposite if it is math math. All the skepticism, yes! After a while, it is a useful exercise to read a little bit about non-standard analysis, and then if you feel courageous, venture into essays by Zeilberger and other ultrafinitists, if for nothing else but to get an idea that a difference in opinion in math is possible.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
So I gather your professor has not ever fallen in romantic love? Or ever experienced philia, love of friendship? In my experience, starting it is not exactly amenable to conscious control or choice. The best one can do is to choose people one hangs out with (as it is difficult to love someone who you have never heard about but only in very abstract sense of "love").
Secondly, the "proof" proves too much. There are other immutable traits for respective hypothetical partners, such as relative age difference, or permanent mental handicaps.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
4mo ago
I agree KnotGodel is near the right track but not exactly, and GP had a point. In Culture Wars of the way way past, we have stuff like 30 Years' War, or iconoclasts, or Akhenaten's cult. What is the common thread?
My theory: in culture wars, culture is the fuel, war is the process, but the engine is the mass media technology. Each form of technology comes with its particular equilibrium where the locus of control is. (To torture the metaphor, it is a twin-engine aircraft and the other engine is the technology for waging war, but that is no longer the culture war, just the regular war.)
Outcome is likely to be Cuius regio, eius religio once again.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
4mo ago
I have been upgrading my priors to the effect "more shocking the video, higher likelihood it is AI generated", but this is not shocking enough.
If I were to guess, it is something mundane, and the tables have turned and past stereotypes have become a funhouse mirror: these days it's the Chinese who come from such a well-ordered society that they amaze Westerners with their ability to stand in line waiting for their turn.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
It's pure "this is cool, don't think about it".
He's a bad match for Star Wars.
I agree he wasn't a good match, but "rule of cool" wasn't the reason. Star Wars is a space opera conceived as "WW2 fighter planes, Jidaigeki, and Wild West, ... IN SPACE." In other words, rule of cool. None of the rich details of the exotic universe make sense, they are there because they look cool. Lucas wanted to cast a Japanese period drama samurai star as Obi-Wan Kenobi because of "how cool that'd be". Consistency is maintained in OT and prequels because of inertia and involving a single auteur whose vision of "cool" didn't change too much.
Hiring a "rule of cool" director was a good idea. The mistake of was that Johnson's brand of cool was different. Hiring a director who worships "canon" isn't necessarily a bad idea, it can work for some time, but eventually it will result in milking the original vision empty, producing soulless merchandise.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
By the way, just to nitpick: the Ogaden War took place 1977-78. Was it ever extensively covered in Western media? I'd be surprised somewhat.
I suggest Biafran war as a better example. Possibly millions died in famine; there was a dramatic airlift; the Médecins Sans Frontières was established as a direct response. Today? Some people have heard about MSF/Doctors Without Borders, probably nobody about Biafra.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
9d ago
It can’t be dismissed as silly propaganda
The evidence presented can be dismissed as silly propaganda. The original comment had a link to tweet with evidence that consisted of some claims and 4 photos presumably from Tinder. Same level of evidence would have been present before the war. Claims "go to any bar in Europe" are cheap.
At minimum, one would need statistics to prove it. (Recollections of experiences with/observing presumed hookers in MENA countries and engaging in hypotheses about cultural factors of mountain Slaves does not count as interrogating the evidence.) How many of Ukrainians in Europe are women? Apparently approx 4 million. How many relative to respective demographics stayed in Ukraine? Apparently there was 12 million women aged 14-54 in Ukraine in 2018. Assuming everyone of the 4 million were women from the 12 million, it is a Large fraction, but not all or a majority. More exact statistics would be needed, because I presume there are kids and grandmas included in the 4 million. How many of the women of relevant are single, and how many are engaging in low-grade prostitution, how many are engaging more chaste forms of dating? Evidence not easily found. How many of sex workers are voluntary versus coerced? Evidence not easily found.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
9d ago
You can basically say this about almost any state that existed for several centuries
There are plenty of the oldest states with centuries (heck, millenia) of continuity that have not done anything interesting for a century or two. (Switzerland. Sweden. Denmark.)
But let's grant it true for great powers and aspirants. The realist argument of international anarchy doesn't really favor any side: as long as any country has sought keep or obtain greater status by periodical war, the neighbors of the same country have been wary of such attempts, or they have been its willing dominions, or its already conquered unwilling puppets. In international anarchy, it is natural for Russia's neighbors to seek to preempt Russian actions (unless Russia can win them with soft power).
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
19d ago
"Comparatively democratic" is intended to be read literally, as in, comparatively more cratos in the hands of demos than in other parts of Europe. Not as, it was democratic as 20th century had democracies. But lack of serfdom since early Middle Ages, continuous presence of institutions for deliberative, representational decisionmaking, and right to participate (in the said institutions) granted to large part of population, all of that, it is the traditional social capital argument.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
20d ago
Although I realize there's a pathway from ironic to non-ironic, as famously happened with "based".
Far too common than people acknowledge. A leas this is how high fashion seems operate: first the select few wear something weird or outdated ironically or jokingly. The next day, it is the trend.
modern military stuff is more like a custom bespoke piece, where each individual tank/ship/airplane/whatever requires tons of individual workers to pore over it and custom assemble it
"Bespoke crafting" sounds true, that is how the hardware has been ordered for past few decades, but at the same time, it looks like such mode of production is not working very well when put into a test of a large-scale war (Ukraine). What seems to count is the ability to mass-produce hundred to thousands of missiles, thousands of cheap drones, and millions of artillery shells. Nobody seems to able to produce hundreds or thousands of tanks and airplanes, but if either side possessed such ability, it might decide the war.
I think there is a deterrent effect, and there should be deterrent effects for all punishment, but that the deterrent isn't strong enough for capital punishment to justify it, and it is mostly about revenge and satisfying vindictiveness.
I think the "anti-revenge" argument proves too much. It ultimately depends far too much on how much deterrent effect there is.
Most acts of violence are done in heat of the moment or otherwise irrational decisions: thus deterrence effect must be small, as the people who are committing illegal violence are not weighing their options and consequences rationally. And in fact, despite the all might of the (Western, developed) judicial system, most (Western, developed) countries have still some amounts of criminality. I acknowledge it is a point of contention, but let's assume for the sake of the argument that deterrence effect is small-to-negligible. Thus, any punishment worth its name is unjustified as deterrence, as deterrence doesn't happen to meaningful extent.
If there is no meaningful deterrence, and the idea of revenge is verboten, what reason remains to administer any punishment at all? If we are talking about a criminal who is a high-risk repeat offender, there is still argument that we should incapacitate to prevent them committing further crimes. However, not all people are like that. Some want to commit one, specific murder. Or some goody-shoes comes and argues they have a very good method to "rehabilitate" them (or prevent committing any more crimes, which is functionally same thing), and it involves electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, perhaps sniffing their internet traffic, and perhaps soon, AI. (Thus, they'd have a system of no other punishment than what is necessary to monitor they won't do it again.)
Thinking about this, I came to conclusion that justice as a concept must involve retributive elements, that is, a form of revenge, or it is not justice. A method that prevents the perpetrator from committing more crimes does nothing to the victim of their previous crimes. It is fully defenseless in the face of fait accompli: when crime has been committed, it can no longer be prevented. There either can be retribution or no retribution: admittedly is retribution is weak of ghost of justice as it can not make the crime undone, but it is still more than nothing, because acknowledges the pain of the victim (as it is administered in relation of the crime) whereas preventive methods won't ( as they focus on the future of the perpetrator), neither do deterrent methods (because they are concerned only with deterring other people, and the method of deterring crimes may turn out to be unrelated to the crime itself).
Finally, the system of no justice that I outlined is not fantasy, but the Nordic model slightly exaggerated. Yet it is proving impossible. According to their stated principles, Norwegians should let Anders Behring Breivik out as soon as their relevant officials are reasonably sure he is no longer danger to society or rendered harmless, as he has already sit the 10 year mandatory sentence they had in the books. Practically, by their stated philosophy, they should: after a hypothetical release, Breivik would be under constant monitoring, probably would not have chance to commit nor organize any further acts of terrorist violence, and he is getting pretty old. Yet they can't bear themselves to do it, and twist themselves into all kinds of legal knots that are not very believable as written but taken seriously because everyone involved deep-down knows it would act of injustice to let him walk free again. (I agree that he should sit for life, or should have faced capital punishment long ago. The Norwegian unwillingness to administer their law according to its written intentions shows they apparently also think their chosen system is illegitimate, in this case. And if it doesn't fit in this case, why not the other cases?)
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
To my knowledge, Israel and Finland. I think both are offshoot developments the old German system, where a prospective officer candidates were volunteers but had to serve a lengthy period of time first in enlisted and NCO equivalent positions in regular regiments before and between officer school exams.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
7mo ago
Left and right votes would be thematically appropriate for this forum.
Critics of the hereditarian hypothesis have posted critiques of the study, but, to my knowledge, no clear alternative hypotheses or explanations for the genetic model fitting basically perfectly.
Erm, I think your links present a very clear alternative hypotheses. To quote the Vince Buffalo tweet thread you yourself linked:
On the Clark paper: correlation functions often decay over various distances (genetic, environmental, spatial, etc). Observing a correlation that varies over genetic relatedness is not evidence that the cause is genetic, since many other processes create correlations that decay.
Fitting a parametric model for the rate of decay, as he does, is one way to check the plausibility of a model. However, many correlation functions have very similar forms. A good fit is not evidence of the right causal model.
His model has 2 degrees of freedom: heritability (h²) and corr. due to assortative mating (m). The genetic trait correlation function ρ(k) = h²((1+m)/2)ᵏ will fit data from many different non-genetic processes very well, which we know would also be decreasing over distances.
So, my take is the dataset is interesting, and yes the "genetic" model fits. But so would many, many alternative models that aren't in the paper. That the genetic model fits is not evidence genetics is the cause of the good fit. Many models with 2 df fit decay in correlations.
To put it bit more bluntly: If I measure how many Christmas postcards people send to each other (during 90s when people sent Christmas postcards), I would be surprised if I did not observe excellent fit for a genetic model with two free parameters for correlations of much postcards people send to each other: parents and children send more frequently postcards to each other, siblings quite and grandchildren and grandparents quite often , uncles and aunts less, cousins and other more distant relations less, decaying more and more as relations become more distant. It is not due to genetics causing postcard-activity (in a Platonian state, where children won't know their parents, sending postcards to them would quite difficult indeed!). It is because we intentionally organize ourselves socially in a way that closely mirrors our genetic relationship (for various good reasons), barring some random accidents.
Or here is what Turkheim says:
"Except for wealth"? Isn't wealth the alternative hypothesis? And that is what the modeling does: observes surprising persistence of family effects out to fourth cousins, for which there are at least two hypotheses: environmental family effects (C) and assortative mating (AM). /1
The models don't include C, by fiat. They just show that if you are willing to push AM up high enough, you can get a genetic model that fits the data. Kind of like doing a twin study, observing rDZ=rMZ, and concluding that it fits an additive genetic model with enough AM. /2
Assortative mating covers a huge amount of territory here, basically lumping all stratification processes-- genetic, environmental or phenotypic-- under a single rubric with an implausibly high value. Ignoring family environment is justified post hoc. /3
If you had told me a year ago that 2023 was going to bring a wave of maximalist genetic explanations of social structure, I would have said you were alarmist. Now? In a progressive era of surprisingly thin GWAS findings? But here we are. More soon. /end
To be scientifically more convincing, the study would need is a setup that could falsify a genetically determined environmental explanation. Lack of it is quite surprising because the object of the study is social status in the UK. Social status of king Charles is hereditary, yet not caused by any action attributable his genes themselves. I am surprised hereditarians would put so much stock on this study -- there are much better other evidence for a hereditarian positions, such as GWAS studies which usually attempt to control for this sort of thing (usually including principal components of genotype as covariates in regression models, which doesn't necessarily always work convincingly but probably results in directionally better estimates than no control at all). The Clark study, despite the impressive N, is quite weak evidence: if there is other more convincing evidence (that can rule out genetically-correlated social environment), then it is only confirmatory observation. If there is no such evidence, it won't convince a critic on its own merits.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
That is an interesting idea. However, agreed, it is not going to be limited to "NPC"s. "Spook contractors" controlling discourse sounds ... not far-fatched, but a bit abstract and conspiratorial.
I suggest putting in some skin in the game. Is it feasible to get a LLM to produce a Motte post (or a full persona) that is obviously not spam, doesn't violate any of themotte.org rules, and is actually so good it get voted in as a quality contribution?
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
On part of the promise surely works: You can still run your own instance and federate with those instances that want federate with you and build your own social net. However, social networks with free-for-all blocking are often very brutal brutal.
In retrospect, it should have been obvious that decentralization is not sufficient for freedom. Imagine a school cafeteria where you have freedom of association -- but the ruling clique can also say that loser nerds are not welcome to sit in their table.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1yr ago
Putin has been president since 2000. Two decades should be enough to build an organization -- from doctrine to senior appointed personnel -- that gives if not accurate, then directionally truthful reports. Ukraine built a fighting army in 8 years. In the meantime, Russia has had an epidemic of people falling out of window.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
Intentional obfuscation - sometimes. Far more I observe obfuscated language caused by the authors being sloppy and/or avoiding speaking plainly if they didn't understand something.
Most common: Enamored with big words yet trying to meet the journal word count limit, a big word is used in a way the meaning of the sentence becomes imprecise. Sometimes they have obtained a minor result, but big words are used to make it sound more important than it is. (Others will misunderstand and take the big words a a face value.)
Sometimes the authors are sloppy to extent that they understand meaning of some concept differently than others and never bother to make it explicit. Often the difference in understanding is a genuine difference in scientific opinion, but sometimes (especially in a run-of-a-mill study) it is because the authors failed to understand something. Sometimes the authors have followed "best practices" but do not understand the arguments for the best practices, producing slightly nonsensical approach. Sometimes authors claim to have found a $thing when they actually found $anotherthing. A mistake or misunderstanding is seldom admitted.
Sometimes the authors are sloppy reading or understanding the previous literature: when I see a paper cited in support of simplistic oneliner statement, these days I am never certain the cited reference supports the statement as clearly as implied ("It is known that system of soothing provides excellent results, thus we followed the approach of Tarr and Fether (1845)" -> go read Tarr and Fether, there is no single coherent system of soothing described, but three, and if you ignore the discussion but look at the results, the implications are unclear. Sometimes I suspect malice, more often I suspect laziness -- they never read Tarr and Fether, but they read something else that claimed to use the method of Tarr and Feather and misunderstood it.)
yeah. Naive calculation: Suppose Alice has a factory that produces tens of hi-tech bespoke post-Cold war optimized tanks during one year, say 50 units in year. Suppose Bob has several dozens of factories that can produce 500,000 of civilian vehicles each year. Bob needs only engineers to redesign the civilian car production line into something useful in military use -- perhaps, integrate anti-tank guided missile launcher and drone platform and minimal armor against small arms fire -- and then Bob can produce 10,000 modern anti-tank vehicles for each Alice's hi-tech bespoke tank. After the first couple of months, if both realize their current designs are not performing adequately in the field, assuming it takes equal time to come up with a redesign, after the resign and couple of months of production Bob has produced 80,000 upgraded vehicles against 8 Alice's upgraded bespoke units. But frankly, I presume if you have factories producing hundreds of thousands units for civilian consumption, your engineers are much better at setting up production lines, adapting and rolling out new redesigns than if your experience is producing hundreds of bespoke units to a contract.
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