The typical internet autist has limited understanding of how power brokering, innovation & the general spread of ideas actually happens at the highest levels. They view it from their salaried man's lens. This is where money, work and power are assets in a zero-sum transactional relationships. Your manager pays you money to gain power on you and extract work. An activist gives you free food to hold their posters. That sort of low-level thinking stops scaling pretty quickly.
First, power is never owned. Power merely flows through you like water. You wield it as a custodian by guiding it's path, but if you try to obstruct it or grab on it, you'll lose it just as quickly. Second, narrow scientific innovation can be done in a lab with sweaty dudes dark spaces. But, innovation at the grand scale often comes out organically from random physical interactions in a space. Actually, even sweaty science dudes know this. That's why the big-tier-1 conference is their favorite time of the year. Lastly, the transactional costs of work are not fixed. Will power allows you to change the cost of work. But, willpower can't be brought and it can't be hammered into you. It has to be felt in the air and built environment around you. WEF conferences organizers understand this better than most.
To normies, conference organizers can seem like low-IQ bunch to internet nerds. They don't do anything, just organize, get the logistics in order and let the smart & powerful people do smart & powerful people things, right ? Of course not. Any person on theMotte or HN can appreciate how invisible moderators who don't generate content, are still the most important people to facilitating an invisible sense of culture within a community. I'd like to think that I ended up on here organically. But, I am also certain that the mods have been careful in how their message goes out, which led to a series of mod-approved internet hops which ended with me reaching here.
The power of organic collisions cannot be replaced with something else. At the same time, it is incredibly difficult to create an environment that forces collisions, while making it seem completely organic. Your favorite bar worked really hard to make it seem like you just 'ran into it'. In the same vein, WEF has managed to sustain something really difficult : a place for the world's most important people to congregate, have organic collisions and not have every conversation leak out to the press. By slapping their face on everything, they also protect their participants. The news headline goes "WEF endorses XYZ crazy idea. Subtitle : by abc person" instead of "ABC person champions crazy XYZ idea in public. Subtitle : at wef."
What the average person fails to understand is how throwing a big party every year is any way useful towards getting work done. But, that's exactly how big decisions have been made for centuries and centuries. Even today, world leaders have video calls all the time, but physical G20 summits is where a lot of breakthroughs happen.
The WEF markets itself as a place for the important people of the world to have organic collisions. The most important people in the world find it to be valuable, so they keep coming every year. The self-fulfilling prophecy propagates itself. But, do not let the appearance of an organic meet mislead you into thinking that the WEF doesn't carefully utilize the little power that flows through them to divert it in a certain direction. It is a light touch, but on a huge base, it can have large impacts. I am personally of the opinion, that more communication among people who easily get siloed (top billionaires) is always a good thing. The WEF is far more a reflection of the content that the powerful want to consume than any agenda they might have. But somewhere in there, they are able to plant seeds that add up over the years. It is effectively run for what it is. But, a grand operation in prescriptive consensus building it is not.
edit: I guess I need to put a disclaimer here. I have a huge conflict of interest. Someone I have positive feelings towards presently works for the WEF (in a foot soldier role, but still). What limited things I hear sound fairly innocuous.
fartVader
1yr ago
The way I see it, more evidence is always a good thing. But, just like all forensic science, should be used to complete a hypothesis, not lead it.
I find fears about the legality of surveillance to be overblown. Not because it isn't happening, but because it will happen whether you like it or not. The NSA didn't wait for internet surveillance to be legal before widely deploying it.
In 2022, we live in a world where there is no real power balance between the state and the citizen. If the state wants to fuck you over, they will be able to. Your consent, safety and privacy are illusions that the state maintains so you can sleep at night, and that's that.
At the same time, to keep up appearances, public society has their hands tied. They can't use this technology to solve issues that are technologically tractable but are legally blocked off. If the NSA is going to spy on every camera in America irrespective of legality, then I want to see who was robbing my house.
In the same way, these geneology databases are going to happen whether you like it or not. If it's going to be at the disposal of 3-letter agencies, then I would want for it to be used when a loved one gets killed.
The USA gets the worst of both worlds. It allows overt violence in terms of what law-enforcement can do, but takes away all peaceful tools for conflict resolution from the same law enforcement.
It makes the immigration process painfully difficult, while allowing weird loopholes that encourage illegal immigrants to be 'at large' in the country.
It has an incredibly harsh sentencing system, but does not allow law enforcement to actually be sure of who the criminal is.
I am more uncomfortable with an innocent man going to prison or a serial killer being at large, than having my DNA be public. I am more uncomfortable with safety & sexual assault concerns due to street criminals, than being IDed using a country wide face recognition system. I am more uncomfortable with cities decaying due to people with mental health problems slowly dying due to fentanyl abuse, than non-consensual detaining of these people a homeless-shelter with stringent sobriety rules.
It is not that I trust the Govt. It is that I'm sure the Govt. WILL violate my rights if they really want to get me. (see Assange, Snowden or dozens other cases where the national guard gets called in). If those rights will be violated anyway, I'd rather also reap the benefits of this intrusive technology.
fartVader
1mo ago
Oh they do, and they care a LOT.
Here are the countries that explicitly avoided signing up for any Belt-and-road deals. That list of QUAD countries (US-Aus-Japan-India) and Israel.
Israel and Israel-Saudi relations are the center of how the next generation of trade routes to the west pan out. On one hand you have the West-Israel-Saudi-India corridor. West friendly nations with a poor endpoint in India, but all of Israelis, Saudis & Indians are economically ascendant. On the other hand, you have the Belt-and-road initiative that goes China-Pakistan-Iran-Iraq-Turkey-West.
The Iran-Iraq-Turkey corridor looks comically unrealistic, but if Israel becomes a no-go zone and Saudis pull out then the competitor wins by default. If the Houthis can keep the Suez Canal unstable, then China suddenly finds itself in control of how the next generation of trade routes pan out. If Hamas loses, then Saudi-Israel relations normalize, Houthis become irrelevant and now China is left holding the worst option with B&R.
fartVader
7mo ago
India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.
The Hindi constitution begins with a "Bharat, as in India" to doubly drive home the order agnostic nature of those names.
"othering" non-Hindu groups
The original name is derived from the Indus = Sindhu = Hindi, and the the other option was Hindus-stan. Given that context, Bharat is easily the least Hindu of all 3 names.
Modi suggested - not calling them I.N.D.I.A but "Ghamandiya"; the Hindi word for arrogant.
Petty politics aside, that's a good comeback.
I don't know about other renamings, but India - Bharat - Hindustan have always been interchangeable to me. I avoid using Hindu-stan because it evokes analogies to our neighbor: Pakistan has used its name to erase all plurality within its borders.
Bharat is the natural name that comes out when speaking Hindi (or any Sanskrit derived language), and India is the one that comes naturally when speaking in English. That being said, when saying it out loud, 'Bharat' evokes a clearer sense of civilizational identity. 'India' on the other hand, feel untethered to the people it represents.
My prediction is that we continue using both terms as we always have. India will switch to calling itself Bharat in official events, but that's about it.
fartVader
10mo ago
Relevant - https://youtube.com/watch?v=mKc32jQIY0w
the trouble is that some children are timorous and some children are reckless. In order to save the lives of reckless children, warnings are calibrated for their safety, the result of which is that the timorous live in a state of perpetual terror. What I needed to be told is, "Do you know what? Most days you won't die. It's fine," you know?
The answer here is simple.
Can men respect
womenpassive-actors as agents?
The type of man that's described in traditional media, does not describe that average man. Hell, it doesn't describe 99% of men. It describes a human of initiative. Sacrifice : A human who chooses to set aside their own interests for the greater good. Growth: A human who starts from the bottom, and chooses to put in the work to improve. Moonshots: Someone who chooses to act even when the odds are stacked against them.
The hero is not male or female, the hero is superhuman. Gender doesn't matter. The hero has been portrayed by a man for a long time, but that's arbitrary. It can be a woman. But, girl-boss feminism is incompetent at portraying the hero. Because, the key subversion of a hero is that he seems super-human, but is in fact, a weak person.
Writing an effective 'weak' character needs 2 things.
First: Recognizing the freebies that comes with being an individual of a certain demographic.
Second: Actively depriving them of those freebies; so that the journey appears difficult and relatable to all.
Hollywood writers can't write a relatable girl-boss, because it starts with needing to cast a sexually undesirable woman. It starts with recognizing, that they need to thoroughly deprive their character of the 'women are wonderful' effect. Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 is a properly relatable girl-boss, in part because she is NOT 'Hollywood sexy'. It also helps that all 3 male characters in the movie: John, Arnold & T2 are incapable of sexualizing her. She spent the entire first movie being weak, and she is relatable not because she wins, but rather because she tries against all odds. Linda Hamilton grows, she sacrifices, she shoots for the moon and she is relatable.
Honestly, America in particular seems to be inept at writing relatable women. Vidya Balan has played many a relatable woman. (Kahani, Bhool Bhulayya) in Bollywood. There's a never ending list of manga where you can respect, admire, empathize with the agenthood of the woman. Some examples are Kakukaku Shikajika & Silent Voice (The manga). I have yet to complete The Mother (2009), but it also gives me a similar vibe. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of many post 2000 American films that qualify here. Even British TV has more relatable women. Olivia Coleman played only relatable women before her big break in TheCrown. There is something about the brilliance of Victoria Coren Mitchell or the sharp wit of Jo Brand that makes them girl-bosses of a type that I am kinda jealous of, even as a man.
complete tangent :
one could argue that women actually deserve no "empathy credit" for their interest in male protagonists
This. My favorite movie is Pig (2021). I have shown it to 3 highly empathetic (1 is a licensed therapist) women. The movie is about 3 weak men, grief and the weaknesses of men. All 3 of them reacted with either platonic appreciation or confusion as they watched the movie. They understood the universal themes : grief takes time and death is sad. But they didn't understand where the weaknesses of either men came from. The feeling of abandonment without the warmth of a mother. The level of intense pair-bonding that men undergo and isolation in their grief, the desperate incompetence of a father who has only ever played the role of bad cop. I never cry, but I was bawling my eyes out at the end of this movie. my 'daily weeper' female friends felt nothing more than a general sadness in the air.
Women and men only relate across genders when it is the proverbial 1% superhero, and that's because the superhero has no gender. Women don't relate to the 99% weak men, and men do not relate to the 99% weak women.
fartVader
1yr ago
Indian farms are very different that western farms.
This was an incredibly poor & pre-mechanization Indian farm. The cows were the transportation, they provided milk to the family on a daily basis, protected the children when the parent wasn't there (my mom has actual stories where their cows intimidated strangers who try to come near kids of the boss) and most importantly, they pulled the ploughs. In that sense, the cows were more similar to shepherd dogs.
She does not have that kind of fondness associated with chickens. No matter how close of relationship she built with a chicken, it never seemed to understand things quite like cows did.
Ok, If you are going to India ........ hit me up. India is an amazing country, but doing it wrong can leave you with a slum-dog millionaire impression of the place.
I'd recommend:
- Western ghats = Mumbai - Goa - Hampi - Bangalore - Mysore - Kochi- Madhurai. Best cities, great food, ancient civilization, crazy architecture, rainforests, safe.
- Leh Ladakh = Alien Landscapes, peak bike-trips & glacial lakes beyond imagination, safe.
- Himachal = Mountain temples, Buddhist towns, Alps but better, safe.
- Few days in Delhi. No more - Amazing last-millennium architecture. Scratch the Taj Mahal itch. Epitome of gluttony. Worst people.
Skip:
- Taj Mahal & Golden Temple- The entire region has 1 thing to look at. It's like Niagara Falls. Worth looking at, but really out of the way. Too touristy as well.
- Rajathan, MP - Everything is far away. It's hot. Food is meh, and sorta unsafe. Great architecture, but Delhi + Ajanta/Ellora + Maratha Forts cover about 90% of the same. Udaipur might be worth it. But again, kind of out there.
- Chennai, Varanasi, Kolkata, Dharavi, Hyderabad - Yeah just skip.
- 7 sisters states - Safety is hard to gauge here without a good guide. You're better off doing Nepal or Bhutan with a good friend instead.
- Bangladesh, Srilanka
- Vaishnodevi, Ganga - Too crowded and dirty. Better places on the recommended path with no crowds and honestly, better architecture & views.
Most of the standard worries of white people visiting India are borne out of stupid things that no Indian does.
Don't shop on the street. Proper stores will have reasonable prices, with fixed rates & higher quality. I spent ~25 years in India and never ate shit from the streets. There are a million better options more a marginally higher cost.
The best chaat in India (my favorite cuisine) costs about 2 dollars of a meal. They have indoor AC seating, use mineral water and wash hands after every serving. You don't have to go eat at the street side spot to save 1 more dollar. Your loose-motions are on you.
You can get a properly hygienic bis-ass meal in India anywhere for under $7. If you must eat on the streets then remember that all food in India is prepared fresh. The best way to make sure no pathogens touch you, is to see the shit get cooked in front of your eyes. If it was exposed to fire for a few minutes before you eat it.......you're good. Do not eat cold chutneys and sauces from random places please. Lots of times, your sickness is not due to food, it's heat stroke. India is a hot country. Stay hydrated. Don't spend the entire day in scorching heat. My only 2 cases of terrible food reactions came from drinking unpackaged-cold-water and heat stroke respectively.
Same thing with hotels. Good hotels costs between 50-100$ a night. It's cheap, pay up. Don't try to go stay at the $20/night spot and then complain when the toilets didn't have soap in them. You brought this upon yourself.
Same with visiting completely random desolate spots. India is a big country. We have a lot of guides for everything. The curated stuff is good. If you're hiking through the forests of Jharkhand and get caught by violent Naxalite–Maoists then that's on you. If no Indian visits there. It's for a good reason. Thankfully, the spots I recommend (Western Ghats, Delhi, Himachal & Leh-Ladakh) are quite safe. Just don't hike through a Tiger or a Leopard sanctuary.
Don't be an idiot. You'll be alright.
compel or attempt to compel a student … to adopt
What comes before is relevant. It is not about convincing, it is about being compelled to believe something.
Mandatory DEI trainings do that. Forcing students to write a diversity statement before applying does that.
fartVader
1yr ago
At any rate, there are degrees of cancellation
and there are degrees to "cancellable comments."
Kanye has received the biggest ban hammer of them all, but he has also made the most egregious racial comments of any celebrity in the recent past. Every time I heard an absurd headline about him, I'd think he had been misquoted. Then I'd go watch the source, and it was every bit as deranged as the headline claimed. Even when around good-faith interviewers like Lex, Kanye pulled out every anti-jew stereotype in rapid-fire fashion. Almost as if to ensure the swiftest cancellation possible. When Alex Jones is the sane one in the room, you know Kanye has gone off on the deep end.
Soon after, Chapelle made some similar points about the over-representation of jews in Hollywood and Jon Stewart pretty much gave the 'go ahead' to Chapelle's statement. Now you might say that it's Jon Stewart in damage control trying to not let this thing Streisand itself. But, Chapelle is still popular as ever and untouched. Criticism of Israel is pretty common place and joking about Jewish stereotypes is pretty much permitted in the industry.
Sure, Kanye was the billionaire that got cancelled. But damn did Kanye do everything possible to get cancelled.
fartVader
9mo ago
I would love to see a new category called "unrestrained". An anything goes category that allows anything from cybernetics, PEDs, external instructions and bodily modifications. Similar to the Paralympics, it won't be so much about winning gold, as it would be about celebrating the diverse ways in which humans can manifest. Allow alternate rules. People can shout anything they want, women can go tits out to distract players, you can oil yourself up to be slippery.
Sell its rights to the most brutally viewership focused channel. Teams are chosen in a manner that encourages viewership rather than any objective sense of metric. Win of lose, everyone gets celebrated. Allow a lot more substitutions, so you can swap in people of the oddest profiles for the most advanced form of rock-paper-scissors.
WWE is more popular than MMA. Lets go balls out. The Lance Armstrong phase of cycling was the most fun anway. #BringBackSteroids.
Note - GPT4 is handicapped when it comes to performing on 'exam recall' style questions. It still performs admirably, but 2 changes will immediately make it perform better with no extra "innovation" required.
1. Using medical reports in the pre-training dataset.
Presently, most medical reports are privately held, and not available on the open internet. Unlike law, where a majority of cases have at least semi-redacted public documents, medical documents are not available to GPT-4 for training. GPT-4 went from 40th percentile to 88th percentile on the LSAT BAR, by simply adding legal data to the pre-training set. This would be equally easy to do with medicine if HIPAA didn't exist.
2. Retrieval + generate instead of next-word-prediction
GPT models have no sense of truth. This means, that they will confidently blabber about anything you throw at them, even if it is complete lies. Second, even if the model has read everything on the internet, it does not mean it can recall which bits it should be reading with ease. Retrieval style work workflows allow the model to first go search for the right answer or correct reference document on the internet. It looks for the page with the answer on it. Then, it uses its 1600 SAT verbal IQ to interpret it in a manner that GPT-4 is famous for.
Both are relatively easy (as in doesn't need any major innovation to do) changes, and should immediately make the lives of every doctor a LOT LOT better. Y'all are doing 80 hr weeks anyway. Maybe this will help secure so WLB. Ofc, it won't actually happen because Doctors are Evil.
fartVader
1yr ago
It is a culture war issue because of the selectiveness in cancellation.
-
There are rappers who have murdered people & are heroes of the music industry
-
Chris Brown pummeled Rihanna to within an inch of her life
-
Ezra Miller seems to be collecting a bingo card of cancellable stuff, but being they/them protects him
-
Drake has been openly being creepy towards 14yr olds while topping charts
culture where it’s socially acceptable
Do you want to pretend as if the entertainment industry suddenly grew a spine ? It has been ground zero for every kind of socially unacceptable thing for decades now.
old men
If the claims are to believed this was in his 30s. He was sexually approaching his coworkers when he was out of his marriage. The question is, how cancellable would this have been if he was an attractive man instead ?
Enough to get him fired from the job. Enough for women to think he's a creep. Enough to ruin his PR.
All 3 happened at a much bigger scale for Louis CK. So, the accusation of 'he was not cancelled enough' is clearly false.
You don't have to defend his actions to also think that punishments need to be fair.
We have been adding lanes to highways since time immemorial (aka the 50s) and the congestion is still here.
Your induced demand analogy is wrong in 2 major ways.
First, Induced demand means that when more people can fit a car commute within their time budget, they do so, until the resource (lanes) runs out. But there is an upper limit to this : the number of people who need to commute on a daily basis. Or, the number of people who are employed in a salaried 9-5 job in that city. The upper bound is the number of salaried jobs available in that city.
Similarly, the number of people moving into a city will be upper bounded by some multiple of the number of salaried jobs that the city can support. People aren't asking for 'free' rent. They want the rent to reach this lower bound where demand tapers off.
The second mistake is the obvious counter to induced demand. People talk about induced demand to support funding for public transit: a more efficient form of transportation that scales far better with increasing demand. YIMBYs are effectively asking for the public transit equivalent of Single-family-homes. Why not have a more efficient form of housing that scales better with increasing demand, if increasing demand is inevitable.
You make my point for me. Highways are terrible for the same reason single family homes are terrible. Induced demand is a reality. Transit is a good solution because it addresses induced car-lane demand better just as apartment-buildings do for induced housing demand.
So there is real demand to live in London.
And it historically kept being met. In the 1980s people randomly decided that cities around the world were 'full'. By what mechanism did the degree of fullness get determined and why stop at this arbitrary time in the late 20th century ? (rhetorical question of course)
Almost every capital city in the developed world (and big parts of developing) is struggling with unaffordable rent, insane house price rises etc.
The struggle is not proportional or comparable at all.
India has entire dense metro cities springing up on the out-skirts of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. These outskirts city have (planned or completed) fast metro transportation to the city core and very reasonable prices. Downtown & the coolest suburbs are expensive, but new re-development projects are adding dozens of extra floors and the price-per-sq-ft for these new fancier-apartments is actually a bit lower than the houses they were replacing.
The American rise in housing prices without a proportional increase in city population is unique. American city prices are soaring as populations stay stable. Something is off.
are freedom of movement and affordable housing compatible at all
I am glad you asked that. I would say 'yes' to a point and the US is the farthest away from that point, ie. as long as housing supply is flexible.
In 95% of American cities, the answer is a resounding 'yes' and in the last 5% it is still a resounding 'yes' once you go 5 miles away from the city core. Freedom of movement does become a problem when a city has vertically 'topped out'. But no US city is anywhere close to facing that problem right now. (Yes, not even NYC. Lower Manhattan, Midtown, & central-park-areas are the only topped out areas of NYC. Brooklyn & Queens are practically sprawling.)
there is the minor problem that I have with YIMBY people
Be more specific what you mean by YIMBY people. People who ask for a free-market in housing ? People who ask for the world's most restrictive zoning to be more in line with the global overton window? People who want the possibility of transit to exist and want density around said transit ? People who want to walk and be healthy ? People who are simply sick of paying too many taxes subsidizing a wasteful (in energy & money) lifestyle choice that is being shoved up their throats ?
Americans complaining about YIMBYs is the equivalent of Imams crying about women wanting to not wear an eye-slot burqa. "Have the YIMBYs gone too far ? How dare they ask to show nose-bridge in public or show ankle-bone." To the rest of the world, NIMBYs come across as clowns.
To extend this analogy further. A burqa clad woman asking to show her ankle bone is not a slippery slope to 3rd wave feminist post-gender society. The Muslim women just want some more rights within an oppressive system. But when the system is reluctant to give even that much, they react similar to women in Iran and choose loud revolt of the type that is deliberately meant to provoke. YIMBYs are in a similar place. They might have posters asking to eat landlords & creating a Le Corbusier-eque dream, but they are doing it more so to be provocative than as an actual ask.
Most YIMBYs just want uniform approval for 5+1 style apartment buildings, removal of deliberately obstructive building/parking codes and dense towers right on top of major public transit. Past that, allied groups want good transit infrastructure & protected bike lanes. This would be considered a NIMBY's dream in Europe or Asia. Only in the USA & Canada does this group pass off as as YIMBY.
I know I sound a little pissed off here. It is targeted more towards a hypothetical NIMBY in the sky than the OP necessarily.
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)
It'd be odd for India to start whacking Khalistanis in Canada about 40 years after the Sikh insurgency. Even more odd is that people with higher bounties continue to live free lives in Canada. If the Indian Govt. had to do a covert assassination, Nijjar wouldn't make it to the top 100 list.
“Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar,” Mr. Trudeau said.
“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.”
An Interpol notice was also issued for Nijjar. He was accused of being the leader of the Khalistan Terror Force
Trudeau himself seems misinformed since the guy was never granted Canadian citizenship. (might have been a citizen?) The guy came to Canada in 1997. Used a false passport. His refugee claim was rejected, but 11 days after that, he married a woman who sponsored him for immigration. That, too, was rejected. As of 2016. his Interpol wanted notice mentioned his nationality as Indian. (assuming that the screenshot being used by top media houses is legitimate)
otherwise model citizens
Are we going to forget the 1985 bombings. Model citizens who're only responsible for the 'worst terrorist act on Canadian soil'. The Sikhs overall are great people, but they do have a larger violent underbelly than most other Asian immigrant groups.
fartVader
1yr ago
BYU is Mormon AF and soft-republican. It has some of the best employment outcomes in the US.
fartVader
1yr ago
My understanding is:
-
On around 5 known occasions between 2000-2010, he approached women in private
-
He asked them if he could pull his dick out and masturbate in front of them. In at least 3 cases, this is after he had invited them back to his hotel room.
-
Some of them were people he had indirect professional relationships with. Afaik, it was never an explicit power dynamic. (they were trying to hire him, he worked with her boyfriend, they were rising comedians in the same industry)
-
The women gave him some verbal form of consent. (ofc, I dunno if it was an enthusiastic "yes" or a "do whatever you want, you creep"). Louid CK claims he got consent in every situations. Some women say that they didn't say no, not that they said yes.
-
On one occasion he talked about something sexual with another woman on the phone who was the girlfriend of a coworker who was trying to book him for a show. In this case, she did not give explicit consent to talking about sexual stuff on phone with him. He also started masturbating but afaik, the exchange was purely over phone.
I mean, it is bad. But is it that bad ?
Louis CK should've probably taken his own advice.
“At the time, I said to myself that what I did was okay because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true,” C.K. wrote. “But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them. The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.”
&
If you ever ask somebody, “May I jerk off in front of you,” and they say yes, just say, “Are you sure?” That’s the first part. And then if they say yes, just don’t fuckin’ do it
those who strictly adhered to the recommended CDC/Pfizer vaccination schedule have a 25% of dying by the decade’s end
Any double digit risk would be end-of-civilization numbers. That's worse than the Black Death.
Covid's mortality rate sits at 0.01*.Assuming a worst case annual infection (like the flu), that still's a 0.1% mortality rate.
Even a 1% vaccine mortality rate would lead to societal changes beyond our wildest imagination.
I have personally come to the conclusion, that as someone who is incredibly safe wrt. the risk factors, the boosters are not worth it. I took the standard 2 shots happily. Pre-Omicron Covid variants were very scary.
Even in the most at-risk group, the benefits* biggest risk reduction comes from the first 2 shots.
I think in such a hypothetical
Honestly, any (5+%) high enough mortality rate might lead to such out-of-the-overton-window outcomes, that we won't even have an inkling on how things will pan out. It will be mayhem like nothing we've seen before, at a civilizational level.
*All caveats apply. aggregate rates don't account for the most important individual risk factors such as vaccination status, healthcare services, BMI, age; which have order of magnitude impacts on that little number above. There is also the issue where now-a-days people don't even get tested for mild cases. So the infection rate numbers are very likely off by a lot.
ps. : I was able to use strike outs with a "", Is there a known formatting reference guide. This is only some 50% markdown?
fartVader
6mo 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
6mo 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
8mo ago
Never ask a white nationalist or a social justice warrior the race of their partner, as they say.
It is a 2 way street.
A black/brown man would never tolerate the sheer vitriol the comes out of an angry SJW's mouth. Similarly, the only people who truly find a white supremacists skin to be 'superior' are poor people-of-color who find whiteness (and the American passport) to be a proxy for status.
That being said, we can totally infer some weird revealed preferences about the sexual fantasies of these kinds of people.
fartVader
1yr ago
how is Justin Trudeau so popular?
Anecdotally, it is for tangential reasons. He is attractive & knows how to use it to appear charismatic. He performs all the 'good boy' rituals that headline-only readers enjoy. He keeps his corporate interests happy and the opposition is as incompetent as it gets.
Justin Trudeau has a discount version in 'Rahul Gandhi' in India. Son of royalty, given his position due to nepotism, attractive man, does all the right woke-rituals while running his own party as a dictator. Left-Media does everything to bolster his position while anyone is opposition is called racist/fascist/bigoted. The 2 main differences are Gandhi's lack of charisma & being faced with the most competent democratic politician alive in Modi.(maybe along side Netanyahu)
Trudeau needs some proper opposition.
fartVader
1yr ago
How is it so hard to find the Normies ? A good 70% of people I run into have no idea about politics and are too busy with their 1-2 "things" to find any extra time for it.
Hyper-online people who socialize through hyper online activities will find hyper online communities. Yes, you are more likely to run into polarized people in sociology-liberal arts circles, D&D/board game parlors or non-fiction book clubs. But, make friends through offline activities pick-up-sports or music or hikers and they tend to be normier and less online than the former group.
One thing I'd suggest is to develop a thick skin against people who watch CNN once a day or read google-news every morning or listen to NYT daily as their source of information. They have surface level knowledge of issues and surface level takes. No need to dwell on them too much. It is not like they will talk about it for more than 5 minutes, because that's as much as they know about it. Take in from one ear and let it out from another. Like hanging out with your grandparents. "LALALALA, grand-mom I didn't hear you tell me that I should stay out of the sun because if I become black, then no-one will want to be with me." You choose to love them despite those little quirks.
Try becoming friends with first generation immigrants. They usually have a lot for sympathy for those who feel outsiders in a culture, and are more tolerant towards opinions that diverge from the liberal consensus. First gen immigrants are also delighted to have a token American in their group, as they learn a lot about how to integrate through the eyes of the American.
I'd also suggest living with roommates who want to build a community. People are more tolerant towards non-consensus views of a roommate who has built good by living alongside them for months, than a random acquaintance they meet at the bar. Also, it takes zero effort to access your community. They are literally next door.
I like hiking for a similar reason. Your acquaintance is suddenly also your emergency contact. They pass you water if you run out and sun screen if you forget it. Builds good will. Then take the fact that you have 5-10 hours of alone time to talk about topics with nuance and your opinions get to stand by themselves, unencumbered by highly-polarizing elevator pitches.
Chris Rufo is so clearly the rising star of the new-republican party. The guy is smart, knows how to hit back against his main ideological opponent in the woke & seems to be raking in the cultural wins one-after-another. He has an elite educational background while also living around west-coast liberals. Yet somehow, De Santis and republicans seem to trust him.
I don't necessarily agree with him, but watching him navigate these seemingly unwinnable fights and come out on top is fascinating.
I see him get called out for straw-manning & being a bad-faith actor, but his videos pretty much come across as a 'fight fire with fire' approach. The worst things people have to say about him, also apply to his ideological opponents.
Like him or not, he is interesting to follow.
More options
Context Copy link