fartVader
4mo ago
The US certainly discouraged Indian interference in the Bangladeshi genocide of 1971. Since that was at the peak of Kissingers powers, that is one real genocidal accusation that he cant easily shirk responsibility for.
fartVader
4mo ago
Fully agree on frogs legs.
Objectively a better chicken and wont be convinced otherwise.
Dunno about pig offal, but chicken liver takes amazing. It's my home town delicacy. I also cook really great gizzards, but theyre admitedly work.
Haggis is the mosy disgusting thing in planet earth and i really did give it a fair try.
fartVader
5mo ago
To be fair, Thailand seems to have some of the best beaches in the world. The part that surprises me most about India is how many beaches we have, and how almost all of them are heavily 'used' (abused?). (to put it politely).
1.4 people and nature do not go well together.
fartVader
5mo ago
I like that you gave the example of India. It is filled with instances of "place vs place". If anything, Kashmir is the more recognized version of 'place vs place' within India. Kashmir is well known, but the political instability around the region has made it difficult to recommend as a tourist place.
Kolikkumalai India vs NaPali Hawaii.
The western ghats, eastern 7-sisters and Himalayan areas are seriously underexplored.
I especially see the 'place vs place' phenomenon with food.
Pate, Escargots, Foie Gras & Caviar are all seen as delicacies. On the other hand, goat brain (bheja), frogs legs, tripe, gizzards, etc. are all seen as disgusting offal eaten by barbarians.
I see a similar trend in American Carnival food vs east-asian street food. Indulgent street food vs shitty gas station food. Korean street food gets praised to high heaven, while the exact same stuff in the USA gets made fun of for being hill-billy food.
fartVader
5mo ago
I work in academia and so does everyone I know
I have been fortunate to be surrounded by people much smarter than me, but academia style snark was central to me not doing a phd. Thanks for calling me out. Admittedly, my comment came off as snarky. I should rephrase it.
Some examples: Most middle manager jobs don't help in any realistic way. Most manual labor is yet to be robo-automated because human labor is cheap, not because we can't do it. Most musicians/artists do not produce anything other than shallow imitations of their heroes. Most STEM trained practioners act more as highly-skilled monkeys who imitate what they are taught with perfect precision. Hell, even most R1 researchers spend most of their time doing 'derivative' research that is more about asking the most obvious question than creating something truly novel.
There is nothing wrong with that. I respect true expertise. It needs incredible attention to detail, encyclopedic knowledge of all edge cases in your field and a craftsman's precision. However, if a problem that needs just those 3 traits could be done badly by an AI model in 2010...... then it was going to be a matter of time before AIs became good enough to take that job. Because they were already recognized to be solvable problems, the hardware and compute just hadn't caught up yet. These jobs are stupid in the same way sheep herding for a Collie is hard or climbing a mountain as a goat is stupid. They are some combination of the 3 traits I mentioned above, performed masterfully. But, the skills needed can all be acquired and imitated.
That is the sense in which I say 90% jobs are stupid. Ie, given enough time, most average humans can be trained to do 90% of average jobs. It takes a couple of order-of-magnitude more time for some. But the average human is surprisingly capable given infinite time. In hindsight, stupid is the wrong word. It's just that when expressed like that, they don't sound like intelligence do they. Just a machine made of flesh and blood.
Here is where the 'infinite time' becomes relevant. AIs do actually have infinite time. So, even if the model is stupid in 'human time', it can just run far more parallel processes, fail more, read more & iterate more until it is as good as any top 10% expert in whatever they spend these cycles on.
Now coming to what AIs struggle to do, let's call that novelty. I believe there are 3 kinds of true novelty : orthogonal, extrapolative and interpolative. To avoid nerd speak here is how I see it :
- Interpolative - Take knowledge from 2 different fields and apply they together to create something new.
- Extrapolative - Push the boundaries within your field using tools that already exist in that field, but by asking exploratory what-if questions that no one has tried yet.
- Orthogonal - True geniuses are here. I don't even know how this operates. How do you think of complex numbers. How do you even ask the 'what if light and matter are the same' kind of questions ? By orthogonal, I mean that this line of inquiry is entirely beyond the plane of what any of todays tools might allow for.
The distinction is important.
To me, Interpolative innovation is quite common and honestly, AIs are already starting to do this sort of well. Mixing 2 different things together is something they do decently well. I would not be surprised if AIs create novel 'interpolative' work in the near near future. It is literally pattern matching 2 distinct things that looks suspiciously similar. AIs becoming good at interpolative innovation will accelerate what Humans were already doing. It will extend our rapid rise since the industrial revolution, but won't be a civilizational change.
Models have yet to show any extrapolative innovation. But, I suspect that the first promising signs are around the corner. Remember, once you can do it once , badly, the floodgates are open. If an AI can do it even 1 in a million times, all you need is for the hardware, compute and money to catch up. It will get solved. When this moment happens is when I think AI-security people will hit the panic button. This moment will be the trigger to super-human hood. It will likely eliminate all interesting jobs, which sucks. But, to me, it will still be recognizable as human.
I really hope AIs cant perform Orthogonal innovation. To me, it is the clearest sign of sentience. Hell, I'd say it proves super-human sentience. Orthogonal innovation often means that life before-and-after it is fundamentally different to those affected by it. If we even see so much as an inkling of this, it is over for humans. I don't mean it's over for 99% of us. I mean, it is over. We will be a space faring people within decades, and likely extinct in a few decades after.
Thankfully, I think AI models will be stuck in interpolative land for quite a while.
(P.S : I am vey sleep deprived and my ramblings are accurately reflecting my tiredness sorry)
fartVader
5mo ago
Truth is, 90% of all work is stupid. The difference between a committee of competent Harvard grads from every major (smart and competent, but no genius) and the kind of people who create true innovation is a couple of orders of magnitude.
AI might be around the corner, but super-human intelligence that can innovate (Neumann, Terence Tao) is much much much farther away than we think.
fartVader
5mo ago
If it was anywhere even near sentient AI then the Feds would have taken over by now. No, I don't mean 1 random DC strategist on the board. I mean that OpenAI's network would have been air-gapped and massive gag orders would have been placed on anyone. No multicolored twitter hearts. OpenAI, for all their generation defining technology, still has a rather spotty record of crying wolf when it comes to sentient AI. I don't think this one is any different.
But, but , but ......... it is likely that they have stumbled upon another step change improvement over GPT4, which likely means they can destroy another few hundred startups, businesses and careers.
It wouldn't take too much to make all but the top 10% of the following jobs obsolete:
- Translators
- Data Analysts
- Simple CRUD backend makers
- Simple Form/static front end makers
- Generic Consultants
- Virtual Doctors
Note, the biggest issue with Agents has been that they lose context part way through that process or meander. But all current agent architectures are super-naive when compared to the kind of swarm-RL stuff that has been out for a good decade. With GPT-4 Turbo 128 they have effectively solved all RAG, which allows it to pretty much surf the entire internet without meandering for a lot longer. Thus making its intelligence upto-date and functionally infinite.
My guess is that they have managed to fully stabilize agents for certain usecases and are fairly sure that they can deploy 'robot employees' for certain jobs in the span of a year.
But I might be wrong.
If it is just better MCTS, slightly better RAG and better GPT-4 RLHF then I will be soo disappointed. Yes, it is much better, but honestly, it speaks more to Google's incompetence and Facebook's complete not-giving-a-fuck for OpenAI to build up this kind of lead. None of this is fundamentally novel.
We are in an era of free-lunch where people think OpenAI are the best around just because everyone around can barely walk without tripping over themselves. (I say this as someone who still considers OpenAI to be the best applied engineering team assembled since Xerox Parc)
fartVader
5mo ago
Most of my sauces are greek yogurt based. Starches also help create low calories sauces.
I hate what i call 'non satiating calories'. You could go throigh a pot full of mayo dip withour realizing that is a 1000 calories by itself. On the otherhand, the yogurt based dip is 200 calories and no one notices the difference. (Very important to use full fat yogurt.)
fartVader
5mo ago
Not sure how true it is, but the "letter to america" was likely written by Al Qaeda's head propagandist and Osama's advisor - "Azzam the American" https://twitter.com/IsmailRoyer/status/1725353618675474837
Now here is the spicy part - Our dear Azzam is a radicalized son of California Liberals. Oh wait, it gets spicier. Not just any liberal, but a part-jewish descendent of ADL leadership. Say what you want about the jews, but if you want a wordcel, you hire a jew.
American intelligence officials allege that Gadahn inspired bin Laden's September 2007 video, in which bin Laden, among other things, made reference to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Al Qaeda hired a jew and he started writing about money & wall street. You can't make this shit up. Best piece of black comedy I have read all year.
( I have deliberately written it in a snarky tone. LMK if this breaks our rules)
fartVader
5mo ago
I had great success with this method last year, but haven't been able to keep it up this year as work has gotten impossibly stressful. So I'll say this before even starting : "you cannot build new habits if you don't have some extra juice left in you by the end of the week."
That being said, here is what works for me (as the ADHDiest person you know)
Detailed tracking is impossible. So focus on broad rules that have an impact.
Here were my broad rules for diet:
- No liquid calories. Especially on weekdays. (Alcohol, Lemonade, Soda, Tea, Sweet Coffee)
- No deep fried things
- No oil-based sauces. (Yogurt based sauces are a great substitute)
- Smaller servings of rice & wheat
Generally speaking, if I keep this up, I just end up eating lower calorie meals without thinking about it too much. I also allows me to eat fairly delicious foods, so none of this feels like sacrifice. I love cooking, so to me this almost feels like an exciting challenge than a struggle.
Portion control is obviously important, so here were my broad rules for that:
- No breakfast except coffee. If I must, then it it is unflavored (full fat) Greek yogurt with berries. I don't explicitly intermittently fast, but this basically facilitated the same thing.
- No snacking outside meals. If I am craving something sweet, then it is fibrous fruits. (Plums, Pears, Pineapples, Musk Melons, etc). More importantly, never bring snacks back to the house. If I am really craving them, buy and eat them at the grocery store.
- Promote food waste. (jk). Sometimes I am only craving the first bite of something. I am human, I break my rules. I normalized throwing away the rest of the dish after the novelty of the first bite had run out. Total gratification stays the same, calories are much lower.
For working out, I pick a hobby I love : Soccer, climbing. But I don't enforce much other than:
- Put dumb bells / pull bar in a highly trafficked area in the house. If you touch them, you must do 2 sets.
- Cycle when possible
I was down to around 16-17% late last year, but I too have climbed up to 22-24% now. I have been in the midst of massive life change the last year, so I have been kind to myself. But, things are finally stabilizing. So, the target for the next 6 months is to be back to the 17% target before mid-next year.
LMK if you want suggestions for delicious low-calorie meals that still have decent amounts of protein.
fartVader
5mo ago
I am not much of a drinker, and have never been drunk. So, my choice of alcohol is almost entirely about taste.
My top are:
-
Catalan Vermuth : Casa Mariol ships in the USA or MorroFi if you're in Barcelona. It's the best. I'm glad I found it later in life. If I'd found it at 18, I'd be an alcoholic.
-
Vinho Verde : The cheap trader joe's stuff is great. Perfect with fresh sea food. Perfect for lunch. Perfect for those who don't want to feel like alcoholics for day drinking. Also a great cooking wine.
-
Azulejos Tequila : It was the first Tequila I tried, and could not for the life of me figure out why people in the USA hated tequila. Unfortunately, my first experience with cheap shots was all I needed to understand the unwarranted Tequila hate. AzuleJos is not only excellent tasting as a sipping spirit, but it has the prettiest containers.
-
Taylor Fladgate 10 year tawny port - This rubs my Vermuth itch in the USA. If you like sweet wines, but like more character than just plain sugar, then this is the one for you. Perfect dessert wine.
fartVader
5mo ago
Sam sounds like he's advocating a form of genocide by another name.
You're right. External change of the type that Sam Harris wants can only be facilitated through genocide. Or atleast soviet style totalitarianism.
However, internal change is entirely possible...... but that needs some cunning politicking.
Islam stays stuck in the 1st millenium because the global islamic idenitity is flows through a small network of highly conservative Arabs. Break the Muslims away from the middle east, and only then can you begin to reverse the rot. Thankfully, South Asia and SEA are ethnically distinct enough that it should be kind of possible with them.
Second, coopt scripturally nonviolent muslims into the global elite and dangle the carrot. Ahmediayyas are mandatorily nonviolent muslims and have a decent track record to back it up. Some sufi and african-animist muslims have stayed decent non violent. At the same time, dilute islam. Saudis are trying the capitalistic approach to dilution, but coopting prediluted muslin subgroups is another approach that works well.
What's most important with internal change, is that the instruments of change need to be onboard. Your muslim global elite needs to put in effort into this sort of conversion. That's the impossinle part. Somehow, the global muslim elite seems to love their conservatives and sympathizes with violent terrorists. Somehow, the more 'westernized' they are the even louder their support for conservatives. Yeah, that's a non starter.
fartVader
5mo ago
Wonder Woman is a hyper sexualized Amazonian played by the top model of Israel who wears skimpy clothes while being a bad-ass and falling in love. It is literally the opposite of woke. Her rogues gallery (villains) are also women and she was never gender swapped.
A strong woman != woke movie.
If wonder woman had been made in the 90s, it would not have been THAT different.
fartVader
5mo ago
as a tighty-whitey guy, I've always wondered if boxers roll up your thighs.
I'm surprised they they are more popular than briefs / boxer-briefs in the first place.
fartVader
5mo ago
I'll bite. I say no.
Age of consent for adult-child intercourse should be treated as iron clad. The second child abuse (especially child sexual abuse) becomes quantifiable through a monetary value, pandora's box opens. These kinds of thought experiments should always be rejected by answering with a blanket no. It's on principle on what laws, morals and values mean to be society. The free-market value of human dignity is pathetically low. That is reason enough to not allow it to interact with money. Nothing good will come out of it.
People conflate questions phrased like 'should X be allowed' with 'should you do X'. What you choose to do with your own free-will is your choice. Whether society chooses to support you is a whole another question all together.
fartVader
5mo ago
Embarrassingly, I know from personal experience, that pepper spray can cause searing pain much further out than broom-distance. You can safely pepper spray (morel like bear spray) from ~10 meters out.
safety goggles, a respirator
Yeah, and building respirators and safety goggles for all Hamas members is a great way of bankrupting them. They're making pipe bombs here.
fartVader
5mo ago
Most countries in the global south did not exist as independant nation states pre ww2. Most were coming out of a colonial era of subjugation.
Most of these countries don't think about global peace. Their concerns have always been local to their geographic neighborhood.
- Our ability to carelessly navigate across international waters
- Banning the kind of explicit colonialism that marked the 19th century
- Being able to trade your resources with the highest bidder, instead of one that has an army on your shores
- ...and many more
Having global peace enforced on us by a global superpower with a certain value system has led to the deliberate creation of this modern world. The Global South does not appreciate just how anomalous this peace is and how fickle it can be if nations start pushing too many buttons and pitting competing interests against each other to a maximum extent.
fartVader
5mo ago
I'm a pesky civilian, so maybe I am missing something. But the rules of war sounds like saying that a man shouldn't kick another man in the nuts. No, if you are more armed than me and the outcome is my death, then I am going to kick you in the nuts. A few times, for good measure.
laws of war to purposely destroy the environment. But, bombs are grandfathered into everyone's expectations.
Man, war is ridiculously pedantic.
fartVader
5mo ago
Utilitarianism in war : what are some under-explored tools of war that are effective but dismissed out of hand due to bad optics ?
This isn't so much a top level post as a seed to begin a conversation. I've always found it rather barbaric that the only acceptable way for a superior power to engage in war is straight violence & bloodshed. This is especially true with a truly imbalanced siege. In almost every occasion, the 'honorable' way of doing a siege costs more money, causes more deaths and eventually leads to the same outcome.
-
Chemical warfare is horrible. But are there way to engage in chemical warfare that neutralizes the enemy without any long-term consequences to the heath of those attacked ? Why limit yourself to flashbangs and smoke grenades ? Why not use FPV drones with mass-pepper spray ? You can buy a 1000 pepper-spray FPV drones for a $1 million. Train a few people to operate them as a swarm (like a school of tuna) and they will be very hard to take out. A single deployment of the iron dome costs Israel more.
-
Sound based violence has been used before, but can it be taken further ? Gaza is just across the border.
-
Why not identify 1 of the tunnels on high ground and flood them ? Maybe flood them with sewage just so it is extra disgusting.
It's war. You're willing to kill by the thousands. Less than honorable means are absolutely acceptable (with long term effects accounted for) if that means a lower body count.
What are some other avenues of war that could be tried to minimize body count but increase effectiveness ? Is there some long term pandoras box reason to keep these tools of war off the table ?
fartVader
5mo ago
The vibe-cession is real and the statistics are lying.
The true working class is those in their 20s and 30s, and they don't have houses. They are the ones complaining. Those in their 20-30s are the vibes. This has always been true. When people complain about the plight of an era, they are talking about those who are trying to setup the foundations for life as an adult. Not those who have been at it for decades.
First, Post-covid inflation and job growth were localized phenomenon. Housing prices are down in downtown-cores and rural areas. But, there are no jobs in rural areas and downtown cores are zombie-towns no one wants to live in. Elsewhere, Housing shot up in 50-100% over covid and it never came down. So even if average salaries have gone up and average inflation has stayed within range....... the localized inflation & job growth taken together might not paint as rosy of a picture. (as an aside, If I had sudden windfall, I would spend some time doing pro-bono work on improving economic metrics. How is economics stuck with such crude metrics in 2023)
Second, a bonus is a bonus and a promotion is a promotion. That's not supposed to be natural wage growth. (or so people think). In the run-up to Covid, a lot of people were getting huge bonuses and promos. This led to people thinking they have worked themselves out of the middle class. So, they spent like it, they lived like it and the ensuing whiplash was huge. The people who got swift career growth in the late 2010s, are now realizing that all those gains have been for naught. At the same time, they are stuck with higher responsibilities and the insane hours that come with the promise of a promotion or a bonus. Now yes, their wages have kept up with inflation, so things look all good. But, to them, it feels like they had been cheated out of a better life.
Even the big-mac index becomes a bad measure when 70s McDonalds is unrecognizable from the disgusting place that it has become today. Portion sizes are smaller, fast food tastes a lot worse and everyone working there sounds so much more miserable. Inflation measured in isolation tells you nothing about the ground reality. It's like statistics that go : "The average American is a millionaire".
fartVader
5mo ago
My personal intuition is that any inferences from an 'agricultural and manufacturing' era of the world are moot in the present. PPP is hard enough to quantify in 2023. PPP becomes completely irrelevant when you're comparing across centuries. It is the most vibes-based number you can possibly find.
More directly, Every SNP 500 company relies on having a global consumer base. In every mental simulation, if the US stops being the global superpower, it will get a lot poorer, even if other nations become similarly poor alongside it.
That being said, in a fully isolationist world, the USA would easily be the richest big country by virtue of having a large consumer base and being self-sufficient in practically every resource known to man. However, I expect it to be a much poorer and more miserable world to live in on average than what we have today.
fartVader
5mo ago
Related tangent.
Your typical globalist-hater doesn't understand that America's wealth comes from being the only global superpower. While the US is more benevolent that previous aspiring claimants to that crown, they are the only ones to have actually achieved it. Now, benevolent as they may be, American supremacy is maintained through the threat of economic and physical violence.
A world where America is not the sole superpower, is a world that is unquestionably worse for Americans and the nations America protects. Now yes, some American protectorates have been coasting off the US, but that comes with them resigning their agency on matters of national determination. A world where every nation has competing alignments from its neighbors is world where the threat of war looms on every corner.
The $1.5T military spending of the US Govt, is a 'world peace spending' and in return the US gets to be the reserve currency of the world (and essential wage unilateral economic war on any nation of its choosing). Yes, that's a lot of money, but look at America's superior covid recovery vs all the other Pax-American nations. That difference is entirely owed to being able to print as many $$$$ as it likes.
From that perspective, America's military spending a total win-win. American allies get to save money on military and enjoy guaranteed peace. America gets to stay as wealthy as it likes and be the only nation that can truly impose its will on the world.
Now, the so-called global-south consists of countries that are finding their identity in a world where China is throwing its weight around. They don't value global peace, because they don't know a world before it. They don't value local peace, because they haven't enjoyed much local peace or stability during this Pax-American century. Many global south nations haven't been brainwashed (convinced) into favoring American values as baseline. They don't understand Chinese debt traps. They don't see the value in putting the nation state over the wider global religious identity. They don't value democracy in their bones, because they can't imagine majorities having favorable moderate views in their low-trust societies. Point is, they don't see the amazing win-win that Pax-Americana is. They might play along with it, they will change masters at the drop of a hat. They will dump any values they claim to hold, because it is all performative to them anyway.
That's where American global south allies come into the picture. Israel & India are the only 2 proper liberal western democracies in the region, and that matters. India is more independent and still ridding itself of its soviet scars, but Israel understands the value of Pax-Americana in its bones. And you cannot buy that kind of loyalty. It's the kind of loyalty that comes with a strong belief that any alternative than your current master is a worse one. And for that Israel gets rewarded. It is the only unconditional-American ally in the global south.
It is also why I think the America-India alliance will continue flourishing, even if India occasionally plays both sides. India (now) accepts Pax-Americana & liberal-democracy as the best overlords in their bones. Being a natural adversary to China guarantees India's 'loyalty'. Maybe not as a subject, but at least as a willing partner.
Lastly, to me, MBS (and allied Emirati Sheikhs) are the last peace of this puzzle. They might be the only practicing Muslims who have truly abandoned their global-religious identity in favor of Americanism.
The winds of change are here. The US cannot be the sole-superpower on its own. It needs allies and subjects that stay with it out of both convenience, belief and natural alignment. The EU-Korea-Japan-Canada-US nexus ensured that Global-North and its waters remained 'Peaceful' (by encircling Russia). The South exposes 2 new battle fields. Israel-Saudi-India-Australia-Japan are the 2nd front for encircling China, Oil resource & the Indian Ocean. The final front is around the South Atlantic + Southern Indian Ocean. But, Africa and South America aren't as important, so we haven't seen lines be drawn as strongly just yet. Maybe that'll emerge as the final front in 30-ish years.
So yeah, within that context, American favoritism towards Israel makes a lot of sense.
fartVader
6mo ago
There is something a pretty about a defaced statue. I much prefer that than having it be taken down. I can imagine many artistic ways of 'tastefully defacing' a statue than crudely spraying red paint on.
A statue that's taken down erases history. A defaced statue keeps all the layers of social change intact. If that's too much to ask, then I'd be all for relocating these statues to a civil war museum that accurately portrays these complex figures for who they were, without glorifying them. And please, do not replace it with George Floyd. Black people deserve better immortalized figures.
Hell, I have been in America for the last 6 years and I cannot comprehend this.
I have yet to see a manager in these jobs that isn't in their 40s, so may be skewed, but still. That's an excellent wage. You would struggle to make a tech wage that good outside the big tech cities or in consulting out of the Big-3 MBB.
How is there any poverty in the US at all ?
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