non_radical_centrist
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User ID: 1327
non_radical_centrist
18hr ago
Canada was in the Afghanistan war, we had soldiers peacekeeping during the breakup of Yugoslavia. We've had soldiers die because their equipment was inadequate. It's entirely plausible one day there'll be another 9/11-esque attack, but on Canadian soil, and we'll need to carry our fair share of the response. We need a navy that can patrol the arctic to assert our sovereignty on it over Russia.
Yes, Canada doesn't need to be as militarized as say Israel or South Korea. But at the very least I think it's totally reasonable for Canada to try to avoid some needless waste due to stuff like politicians pandering or avoiding responsibility.
non_radical_centrist
19hr ago
I've been reading a couple books about the sad state of Canadian military procurement. I think procurement for the sort of country Canada is is a legitimately difficult problem, but one that's eminently solvable with better informed voters and if party leadership had some more integrity.
There are three or four principle problems with Canadian defense procurement, that date back to debacles like the Ross rifle which constantly jammed in WW1 and the Avro Arrow which was an overengineered interceptor, and are still issues with more modern boondoggles like the F-35 and the Seahawk replacement acquisitions.
The first is just that Canada is an expensive country to properly defend. We've got an enormous, sparsely populated country, so ships and planes need to be able to travel far distances and need to be able to do it with infrequent refueling. Plus they need to be able to withstand the extreme cold and the ice in the arctic. This is part of what killed the Avro Arrow; no other country wanted to buy it and help Canada recoup the costs because no other country needed the (expensive) capabilities it offered. This is just something Canada needs to accept, that sometimes it will have to pay more to get the job done in Canadian conditions.
The second is a desire to build in Canada, to provide jobs to Canadians and build up a Canadian defense manufacturing industry. I'm sympathetic to this idea- it seems like a great deal to pay just a bit more and keep all the jobs and capital within your own country right? But in practice it's not just a bit more, it's multiple times more. There was an Iltis Jeep procurement order that, if bought from Volkswagen, would've cost $26 000 per jeep. Because the government wanted it to be built in Canada, it cost $84 000 per jeep. At that point you're paying more to build in Canada than you are paying for the actual thing you want. It'd make sense if the alternative was buying military equipment from China or even a neutral country like South Africa, but not from a NATO ally. And if Canada does want to build up its industry, I'm of the opinion it should be done in the style of South Korea- only subsidize Canadian manufacturers if they can actually export internationally and produce stuff other countries want. That's the only test that can't be faked to confirm Canadian manufacturers are really producing good stuff worthy of subsidy. In general I think among allies, there should be more cooperation and specialization for military production. Let the USA build the planes, South Korea and Netherlands build the ships, Germany build the jeeps, and so on. Not to assign official responsibilities to countries, but to let them compete in a freer market, so whoever's actually best at making the goods can get the contracts. And if your country isn't actually competent enough to build anything anyone wants, you should just suck it up instead of spending tons of taxpayer money propping up an incompetent industry.
The third problem is that procurements become very political. In the Avro Arrow case, the liberal government stalled cancelling it even after they knew it was doomed to avoid the bad press for it; then the conservatives taking over after the next election also stalled cancelling it to avoid the bad press. Then with the Seahawks replacement, Chretien attacked the conservative government over the EH101 replacement for being too expensive. Then when he took over as Prime Minister, he wasted 500 million and years of delays trying to find a different replacement after realizing the EH101 was just the right choice for a replacement by any fair measure. Then Justin Trudeau did basically the exact same thing when he called the F-35s too expensive only to realize they were the only plane that offered what Canada needed, but only after he delayed their procurement for years and wasted tons of money in the process.
The fourth problem I honestly think is basically unavoidable, and that's that procurement has to go through a ton of bureaucracy. The Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of Defense, the ministry of industry, and Public Service and Procurement Canada are all involved in any big ticket procurement order. And if you try to bypass one, once it finds out it'll stall things up for a couple years insisting on doing its own analysis. One of the books I read recommended making a dedicated new ministry just for military procurement, like what the UK and Australia apparently have, to streamline things. Personally I doubt that'd make things significantly better. It sounds like the Yes, Minister sketch that goes "We've completed the study of which bureaucrats we can cut." "What'd you find?" "That we're short of 8000 bureaucrats". I think large bureaucracy in modern governments is basically inevitable, and trying to cut it down or reform it is basically a waste of energy until you've first fixed some larger scale problems like public sector unions.
non_radical_centrist
19hr ago
A lot of corruption is by dumb people too. If you're smart, usually just being honest produces better outcomes than trying to game the system.
non_radical_centrist
3d ago
Yes, I don't think any of that is that difficult.
non_radical_centrist
6d ago
It's voluntary, but when it comes to the Delta Gamma of this email (assuming that the email is real),
The fact that that's newsworthy at all, and is from ten years ago, suggests to me that that sort of extreme pressure is an exception not the rule
non_radical_centrist
6d ago
For scene girls (what does Gen Z call them?)
Alt girls is the term for goth-lite girls these days, scene is basically never used by gen-z
Why isn't there one for girl nerds? For scene girls (what does Gen Z call them?)? For purple-hairs? For radfems? For Blacks? For academically obsessed Asians?
I think part of the reason why those fail is that the cool kids are cool for a reason. Many of the people in all of those sub-cultures really would have more fun being in a traditional sorority with all the really charismatic and hot people than being around their own kind.
non_radical_centrist
6d ago
I think it just comes down to reading a lot of stuff from different points of view. If you read two books that advocate for opposite beliefs, you can't come out too badly.
non_radical_centrist
6d ago
They want to ban immigration like how the union wants to ban automation. To reduce competition for jobs, at the expense of everyone else who could be benefiting from greater productivity.
non_radical_centrist
7d ago
I'd have a lot more sympathy for unions if they just demanded higher wages/safer working conditions, even extreme increases, instead of fighting against automation and other measures that increase productivity.
non_radical_centrist
7d ago
At times it seemed to be building toward something like "people are too complicated to perfectly understand, so don't get overconfident". But it always seemed to revert back to "this situation seems complicated, but let me explain everyone's exact thoughts and motivations". Similarly, lots of "here's the popular idea about this, but isn't it a little too neat and tidy? Let's look deeper", but then its own narratives end up exactly as reductive/simplistic/superficial.
That's Malcolm Gladwell's standard Modus Operandi. I've read/listend to a lot of his stuff, and he's extremely hit or miss with his research. He's pretty entertaining at least, even though he sometimes lands way off base with his conclusions.
I'm passingly curious whether you ended up making the post on policing.
No, I never did.
non_radical_centrist
16d ago
It's really seen more of a failure of her ethics than his, although discrediting one of the few journalists who liked him probably counts for something. Really the far bigger issue with him is that he cheated on his wife with dozens of women at all
non_radical_centrist
17d ago
Personally I think a lot of "wisdom" is over rated. My recommendation is to look for stuff backed by math, like game theory. This lecture series by Yale is great: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6EF60E1027E1A10B
I also recommend the book "Algorithms to Live By".
non_radical_centrist
17d ago
A journalist wrote some pro-RFK articles, then was revealed to have had a sexual relationship with him. It's particularly scandalous because she's thirty and he's seventy. I think they were just sexting not fucking.
non_radical_centrist
17d ago
It's created by the Heritage Foundation and is generally in line with the Republican party agena of the past few decades. Heavier on social conservatism than libertarianism, as Heritage is a social conservative think tank.
non_radical_centrist
17d ago
Many types of mental retardation also come with physical defects that make the person ugly. When that's not true, I don't think it's an instinctive "ick" so much as their condition makes them not very good conversationalists. So you talk to them for fifteen minutes and decide you don't really want to talk to them any longer.
non_radical_centrist
17d ago
That does influence it, but a lot of leftists still support Ukraine and will condemn the Uighyr genocide. Just not as loudly as they condemn Israel.
non_radical_centrist
17d ago
"look at which side is more Western and choose the other one"
The Western side tends to have significant dominance in warfare so they do often go hand in hand. But I think most leftists do support Ukraine over Russia; and the ones who do support Russia are the craziest of tankies.
non_radical_centrist
17d ago
I think support for Palestine among non-Muslims very simply boils down to people looking at which side has more people dying, and supports the "victims".
I do think mistake theory is usually a more useful model than conflict theory, but certainly there are exceptions. Hamas being one of them- there is no possible way for the state of Israel to arrive at a win-win result with Hamas, because they value the deaths of Israelis more than they value their own lives. Very few groups are like that though, that's the exception not the rule.
non_radical_centrist
18d ago
I think simplicity in strategy games is vastly under rated. Game devs always want to add more, and gamers are always excited by being promised more. But in practice, even a very simple game like chess has enormous amounts of emergent complexity and new strategies being discovered. A well balanced game with straightforward but engaging skill tests is better than an unbalanced super complicated game. Because when something's complicated but unbalanced, you can often pick out one overpowered strategy that actually makes a game where you choose between dozens of options easier than one where you pick between 3 options.
non_radical_centrist
18d ago
I always like anthropological perspectives. Comparing and constrasting all the different communities you've been part of would be interesting.
non_radical_centrist
23d ago
Solar and battery technology have rapidly expanded, greatly reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
non_radical_centrist
24d ago
It still exists, but I think there are fewer cases that go super viral, because there are less Toxoplasma of Rage ones. The ones that went super viral were the debatable ones- usually ones where the left were going "You should believe all women!" and the right was going "Hold on, the evidence of this is entirely he said, she said", then they'd argue back and forth for weeks about which position was better. It really came down to, what % likely someone committed rape is the minimum to cancel them, although few people thought about it in probabalistic terms. The right might feel you should be at least 90% confident, the left would feel you only need to be like 20% confident(which I sympathize with- if I was an employer, I'd fire anyone who isn't a rockstar employer if I thought had a 20% chance of being that toxic. But as a member of society, I wouldn't want to imprison anyone with a 20% chance of rape).
I think it ended when Joe Biden got MeTooed with one of those accusations that had a ~20% likelihood of being true, and then all the left suddenly went "oh hold on actually we probably do need stronger evidence and cannot just Believe All Women".
non_radical_centrist
1mo ago
There seem to be different related concepts here that can lead to different methods based on exactly what you mean by "hate". Do you want B to feel maximally unsafe, do you just want them to understand you hate them maximally without them necessarily feeling bad, do you want everyone else watching to think you just got an insane dunk off on them?
Option 1: Probably something that's toeing the line as much as possible to doxxing their information. Like replying to all their tweets with instructions on how to find a celebrity's address or something like that.
Option 2: Figure out some sort of organization that directly opposes their values, like a political thinktank/campaign or even a business they hate, and donate to them a large sum of money, then send this person a picture of the receipt
Option 3: This happens on Twitter all the time.
non_radical_centrist
1mo ago
I think people have downgraded on how bad it will be if he does take office, but upgraded on how likely it is he'll take office, compared to 2016 and maybe even 2020
Yeah, that scenario or any other sort of black swan scenario we can't place numbers on like societal collapse post-super volcano or the invention of like a Chinese super weapon that leads to a WW3 would also benefit from a better military
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