muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
No bio...
User ID: 1018
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
Anyone relate?
I am in the bottom quantile of unfun quartile of people I know. From what I can observe, cjet79's advice sounds about right, as it includes many things I don't regularly do, and seems to include stuff socially adept, well-adjusted people apparently do.
I can anti-recommend things that I do a lot: lurking and occasionally posting on this forum, related areas on internet, most of the internet really, reading econometrics journals and books that were likely reviewed in the Economist.
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
1mo ago
In great power politics, the wars are sufficiently rare that anomalies also count. (The French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were anomalous in their scale. WW1 was, again, anomalous.)
Predicting the outcomes of wars is unpredictable business. Before the 1st Gulf War, very few people knew for certain it was going to be a quick, decisive victory against inferior conventional force. If American strategy calls for small wars in the Middle East or quick decisive naval wars in Asia, what Washington is going to do when faced with an adversary who is perfectly aware of the American strategy and thus presents something that is neither?
And anyway, the current nuclear stockpiles are a fraction of what it was in the 1980s. During the Cold War, the end-of-the-world thought stopping does-not-compute aspect was heavily colored by fiction and propaganda. After the nuclear exchange, a world will end, but the world will not.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
If they caused all the messes in the first place, should we really gonna trust them to fix the latest one?
Do you have a proposal how it should be fixed, then?
I can understand a position of a libertarian who argues that municipal fire brigade ought to be dismantled, and people should buy insurance of private fire-fighting companies: two alternative, realistic solutions are presented, and their respective pros and cons can be weighted.
Arguing against state enforcing border control on the grounds that they are going to mess it up is different, because without border control, the end result is no migration control at all (not much different from the mess-up). Unless you have a plan for private migration control.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
Why would I believe the paper that starts with a generated introduction had a real experiment behind it, and the results section was not also generated by an LLM?
The only thing keeping the science honest is the replication of experiments. If it is very cheap to describe and publish experiments that never happened, but running a real experiment to verify is costly, why would anyone try to replicate any random experiment they read about?
Unless someone comes up with a solution to reorganize the Science (or the eschaton is immanentized), I think the medium term equilibrium is going to look like even more weight given to academic credence-maintaining networks of reputation, less weight to traditional science (publishing results and judging publications on the merits of their results).
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
2mo ago
Then the only remaining option is to either look outside the internet or stop relying on teachers.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
Scattered thoughts.
In favor of your thesis: There was something going on with the Western music during the Enlightenment. Mozart was a contemporary with the enlightenment. Beethoven started his career moving to Vienna right on cue with the War of the First Coalition.
Against: There was a great deal of unequivocally bad music, too. It was an era that produced Portsmouth Sinfonia (transgressive and subversive, but of the kind where you stare at the subversion too long).
Written by the victors: Did the adults in the 1960s music like the music that now gets called great? Did they think they were seeing a peak in art, or where they scratching their heads why nobody is making new subversive Lindy Hop. (I once met a guy who lamented how the big band exited the popular consciousness when rock become ascendant, and thus, last of good music died.)
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
5mo 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
1mo ago
"Need" is a strong word. There are plenty of people willing argue that the US really didn't need to intervene in WW1 or WW2 or Korea or Vietnam or station Elvis and other assorted troops in Germany or doesn't need to defend NATO either. Generally, superpowerdom has been considered a prize worth the costs. Perhaps stakeholders in Washington decided it is longer worth it. But that is secondary to my argument.
I think it is mistake to infer that Ukraine is a niche scenario. It used to be a niche scenario (for couple of decades) partly because the US was the uncontested superpower. Starting a large-scale war that the US might notice was considered a bad idea. Ukraine is what a contested hegemony looks like. Putin made a calculated move presuming that the West overplayed their hand supporting the west-aligned Ukrainians and would not / can't supply Ukraine. And perhaps the Washington stakeholders decide, they won't. Same goes for Taiwan, and any other piece of territory previously under their hegemonic protection. It would imply the US will fight only unaligned small countries, not other great powers. The implication for any Middle Eastern or other small country is to quickly align themselves with any of other ascendant great powers so that they are not unaligned small country no longer. Probably the US would be fine. Isolation worked okay for China for a quite long time. But it is an admission of making an exit from the great power politics.
Second, it seems unwise to think only terms how Taiwanese or any other military situation would develop today or in 5 years' time while making decisions about having manufacturing base (development timescales counted in decades). Concerning Taiwan: Who knows what the future of naval combat looks like? Everyone thinks so when they enter a conflict. Afterwards, someone has always been surprised. (Nobody plans to start a long protracted shooting war. Usually everyone plans for a decisive victory.) No matter the specifics, or if the US sits out, it is not a good look for the US power projection capability if it so happens that during the first months of mid-to-large-sized regional war in Asia everyone, including China, both shoots up and shoots down more equipment than the US produces in one year. Perhaps again, the US will be fine after the first such war. But when there has been a couple of such wars, and China has learnt how to improvise and develop and learn?
Third, to make nuclear red lines believable you need to draw conventional lines much earlier. To draw a conventional lines, you need conventional forces and the support organization for them. If you have fewer conventional forces, then the lines you draw need to be proportional to forces you have. Suppose given points one and two, Washington decides to forgo both the superpower hegemony and large conventional forces to keep it. Do you still wish to keep Monroe doctrine? Perhaps, Mexico and Canada?
When Argentina tried to take Falklands, everyone knew the UK wouldn't waste nukes to keep the islands, and they didn't. Suppose they never responded conventionally, either ("Royal Navy was too costly, PM Hacker kept only the Trident"). Couple of decades later, someone is prone to have a bright idea to take yet another inconsequential far-off nominally British island territory ("let's conquer Bermuda for tax reasons, they won't nuke us for that like they didn't nuke Argentina"). The other islands would seek another overlord if they can help it. Perhaps the UK probably would still defend the Isle of Man or the Hebrides, because it is closer to home, but who will be sure? And if their general readiness to fight appears to be nil, and nobody thinks they would start shooting back, how much their threat of nuclear Armageddon is? Nuclear strike doctrines were developed during are when the Cold war belligerents had a large standing armies ready to shoot, and nuclear strike was yet another escalation beyond that. But if you won't fight conventionally? Psychological threat of nuclear annihilation looks more credible after you occasionally demonstrate willingness and capability to go to war in the first place.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo ago
I don't think we're there quite yet, but it's a sign we're close if so many are leaking through the cracks in the hallowed peer review process.
I think these cases demonstrate the "peer review process" is not and was not working very well in the first place, and to the extent it was working, it was because of the remaining scraps of integrity among people writing and submitting manuscripts. Thus the reviewers didn't have to do much serious reviewing, like reading all of the manuscript and thinking about it.
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.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
3mo ago
I’m not really sure I want someone who would have trouble setting up a home router making internet policy or other technology policies because they don’t understand how this stuff works.
I am not certain the comparison is favorable to young people. Let's imagine your average 70-80 year old who started their corporate career in their twenties: born in 1954-1944, started their career in 1974-1964, retired at 65 in 2019-2009. During their career nearly all job that involved paperwork got electrified and then computerized: they have seen electro-mechanical typewriters, teleprinters, faxes, calculators, sevral generations of copying machines and printers, DOS, pagers, MS-DOS, email, web during the dot-com boom, dumb phones, remembered several phone numbers, and used all major popular versions of Windows and Office and Excel until Windows XP (possibly Windows Vista, 7, 8, even 10 depending if we are talking about average 60-70 years who retired in early or late 2010s). And that is a median office worker. During their free time, they have bought analog TVs, read magazines and newspapers that had be bought and distributed by mail, sent mail by themselves, visited library that had physical card catalogue system that got computerized several times over, switched their sound system from vinyls to cassettes to CDs to (maybe) MP3s, bought a car that didn't refuse to start because of a failed firmware update, and when driving that car, navigated with paper map instead of spoon-fed directions, and quite likely tried to set up VCR at least once.
Uncharitably, the average 20 year old is more used to touchscreens than keyboards, does not know what is "file path", possibly not even what is a "file"; is lost if the document they need is not listed in the Word "recently opened", or is asked to install software not in app store.
More importantly, I believe the 20 year olds are much more susceptible to "fish don't know about water" myopia than the grandpa who remembers who things used to be. Assuming the grandpa is not demented.
Granted, the optimal person probably is someone 50-60 year old (they probably actually set up that VCR most often).
ETA: The point about VCRs is that it was more complex thing than any router setup I have done in the past 5 years.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
8mo ago
But terror bombing(e.g. striking civilian targets for the purpose of lowering the enemy morale) is generally not used because time and time again it was proved ineffective and even damaging to its goal. I can't recall any country that engaged in the open terror bombing campaigns from, again, WW2, and if you decide to go this route you should be open about it. Main effect is on morale, it should be supported by propaganda and fiery speeches of inevitable death in case of continued defiance.
I'm interested in the process that happens before such strike as imagined by people who disagree with me. Does Russian/Ukrainian command has a secret policy of terror bombings but to keep it secret limits it to some fraction of its forces? What do they or some random rogue commander hope to gain from it? How do they justify wasting precious ammunition on targets that aren't relevant to the war effort?
I see two, no, three possible thought process that are not too alien to me.
Maybe I don't believe terror bombings are ineffective. It is difficult to judge whether extreme measures are truly ineffective, especially if you view some forms of violence positively and/or iare distrustful of progressive-liberal-coded research findings. I can imagine that a military commander, especially from a less Westernized military culture thinks that tough, aggressive, brutal measures are the effective measures, thinking the findings suggesting otherwise are mistaken or just outright liberal propaganda to serve the liberal sentiments.
Second explanation draws from banal realities of bureaucracy and greater number of civilian targets. The boss demands that important targets are hit. Successfully hitting hardened military targets may be difficult, especially after you have already sent missiles to all permanent military targets you knew of before the war, several times over: either are already destroyed, difficult to destroy, and-or the enemy found new locations. Hitting mobile or relocated targets requires current and correct intelligence of their whereabouts, which is slow and expensive. So maybe shoot some missiles to a school building (high chance of success) and dress it up as a critical infrastructure or troop location or important demoralizing terror attack in a report to the superior. This will be good for you as long as the superior will not reprimand you for terror attacks (or reprimands are not worse than reprimands for inaction or for failed attempts to hit the enemy HQ bunker hardened against nuclear attack).
Third: pure vindictiveness and vengeance (not necessary proportional) in retaliation for strikes and crimes by the opponent (real or perceived, recent or past).
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.
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
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
9mo ago
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
30d ago
methinks the Wikipedia definition is self-serving to some sections of the West, too. I think it is plausible there to be a totalitarian state presenting itself run by a committee without the Leader.
A better definition would concentrate on the degree of total control of the society, both private and public, or aspirations thereof. Instead of merely being satisfied by frustrating their political opponents in the public political life and being the boss, a totalitarian wants to use power of state apparatus to get rid of opposing thought.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
1mo 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
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
4mo ago
There's a movie called "The Punk Syndrome" about a Punk Rock band of guys with Autism in Sweden. Not banned, totally PC, but hard to find because no one funds it anymore? I saw it at a film fest in Taiwan, where it got a standing ovation (because no one knows Punk Rock like a bunch of documentary film fest attendees at a University in Taichung, right?).
A demonstration of the power of the internet for information retrieval and social aggregation: The production company has put the documentary film on Vimeo (and true punks they are, charge 4.70€ for rental streaming. Trailer is free.) Brought to you by information superhighway.
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
8mo ago
Left and right votes would be thematically appropriate for this forum.
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.)
I don't think it is about age like that.
Many <30 year olds, also many under 40, are comfortable and happy with the idea of censoring people who say anything they don't like. That is the online experience they grew up into. They expect that any forum with "free speech" is unpleasant, nasty, brutal, without any pretense of civilized community norms, and that the overall experience will make them angry. They expect that any good, nice public discussion place has effective mod team, that the spammers and obvious trolls are removed, and preferably is not public in the first place. And when you have got into habit of banning and censoring trolls, it is just so convenient to remove people of wrong political opinions or speaking in the wrong emotional register or who otherwise make for an unpleasant experience. Every form of communication they have lived and breathed has been like this, and when it is not, they will complain.
(The perception is not helped by the fact that after the meek and agreeable people have adapted to the perceived consensus, only the disagreeable odd ones out remain to rebel against it. After all, you need a pretty weird personality to be willing to tolerate the social censure or be oblivious of it until the banhammer hits. And today the disagreeable rebel scoundrels seldom have the wit, elegance or strong moral character.)
I hazard a guess the proportionally largest number of classical "I disagree with what you say, I respect / defend until death your right to say it" free speech idealist is to be found among those who remember the time before internet or got the early internet of 00's and its optimism never left them. Today, it is 2024. Those people are old and rare. Stress on the word 'rare'.
The first part was is that the youngsters like censorship. The second part, anti-censorship was never too popular in the first place. Turns out, among their own generation, principled free speech idealists were in the minority. Vast majority of people in every generation nod along. Free speech and free press used to be part of the package of approved ideas. Today it is much more contentious.
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