sohois
3mo ago
Does anyone mention or link to the Themotte in the comments of ACX? Either in Open threads or elsewhere. Given how much of the community came from slatestarcodex originally, it would seem obvious to try and bring more over from substack. I doubt many of the current readers of ACX have ever gone back and looked at Scott's old post talking about the creation of the motte.
sohois
5mo ago
I came here to add the same, although you will also need to pay for hellochinese
sohois
5mo ago
This reads more like Moldbug started an essay but then got bored and just posted the intro.
sohois
7mo ago
You didn't really address the above post, unless you are saying that Isreal is responsible for civil wars and general unrest in countries in Sub-saharan Africa. Why would they do such a thing?
sohois
8mo ago
One thing with housing is that we have examples of localized unaffordability that are much more extreme than most national housing issues, so the local response should give us an idea of what a nationwide response might be. Think of areas like San Fran, Vancouver, London, or most notably Hong Kong. These are often areas where there is some control over house building rates or other local powers that could swing things.
Hong Kong is both the worst in terms of affordability and the one with more control over local issues, but what have we seen there? The only protests in recent years have been from pro-democracy groups. The residents have just accepted worse and worse housing. Even if you believe the CCP's control is a unique situation, it's not like we've seen differently in other overpriced metros.
sohois
9mo ago
Cyberpunk kind of managed to squeeze in a Trans character without calling any attention to it: the bartender at the Afterlife bar was trans, but the only way you know is because the truck she drives has a trans flag on it (IIRC). Their transness isn't remotely important to their questline, it's just a thing that's there.
sohois
10mo ago
Bannerlord is essentially player generated though, it merely provides the scaffolding for player decisions
sohois
1yr ago
I can imagine a future where there has been enough production or robots/drones/whatever that any human forces become irrelevant, but it would only be one possible future. Other futures where arming a mass of human auxiliaries can give an edge in any conflict would seem to be more likely to me.
i also feel that this framing of "the 1%" simply exterminating everyone else assumes a lot more sociopathy than actually exists. Leaders throughout history have certainly spent lives freely, but we've hardly ever seen them completely disregard their "lessers". Even the genocidal maniacs like Hitler and Stalin typically just targeted certain groups, not all humanity.
And speaking of Hitler and Stalin, the current crop of dictators would almost certainly count among the 1%, and many of them seem to possess very strong nationalistic streaks. Clearly the likes of Xi and Putin would go to great lengths to protect their wealth and status, but I can't imagine they would completely abandon their countrymen - what's the point of elevating to godhood if there is no one around to worship you? Plus, I'd say that speculation about elite vs masses is much less likely than good old fashioned wars between nations and races, if anything would lead to near extinction.
sohois
1yr ago
I think the characterization of those opposed to the sale of the club to Qatari buyers is a drastic simplification. The moral factor is one element of opposition, but I think it is one of many and not necessarily the major factor or even something people believe in beyond being used as a stick to beat their opponents.
Rather, there are several points that are likely to be important:
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The fact that the Qatari ownership at PSG and the Abu Dhabi ownership of Manchester City are rampant cheats, and the suspicion that Newcastle's Saudi owners and Man Utd's new owners will soon follow suit, ruining the credibility of the game.
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A more general distaste for the fact that football will be reduced to a proxy battle between middle eastern states. This will particularly be the case for local United fans, who are likely to see many of the supporters for the buyout as distant, 'fake' fans who have no real connection to the club.
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A distaste for the overall financial health of the game that has seen money become an overwhelming factor in success.
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Downplaying the moral element as mere "LGBTQ unfriendliness" is also deeply uncharitable. I can't speak overmuch on the Qatari government, but the ills of Saudi Arabia are very well documented, while there is strong evidence that the Abu Dhabi ownership of City engage in murder, torture, and slavery.
sohois
1yr ago
don't get me wrong, I think lockdowns are almost certainly the greatest government disaster outside of war, but I don't think the economic arguments against them do much when compared to life years lost vs life years saved and the moral argument against arbitrary restrictions on freedom.
sohois
1yr ago
Whereas me and other old-fashioned types like me were pointing out all along that thinking you know how to do charity better than all the groups that have ever done it over the history of humanity is boundless conceit, and no it doesn't matter if you use financial analysis and statistics and all the rest of the jargony tools
I'm not sure how this really relates to SBF. Is it a tenet of EA that they are better at divining sources of ethical funds than normal charities? From what I can tell, the purpose of EA has always been that they would be better at spending funds effectively, not sourcing funds. That a big donor proved to be engaging in criminal actions doesn't really have anything to do with EA, does it?
sohois
1yr ago
There's actually a far more interesting example than Boris: Kwasi Kwarteng, the recently departed chancellor.
Kwarteng has a double first & a PhD from Cambridge, and was a Kennedy scholar at Harvard. Unlike Boris and most other politicians, his degrees weren't in PPE and other broad subjects, but in economics, so he should have been primed for a position as chancellor. He even had relevant experience in hedge funds, rather than just being a former journalist, again like so many other politicians.
Kwarteng might well have the most impressive academic achievements of anyone in the House of Parliament today. And yet he blundered terribly with his mini-budget, seemingly unaware that the markets would not look kindly to low-tax and high-spend in the middle of major economic turbulence.
How exactly did someone who is probably top 1% in intelligence and in a relevant area for his skillset perform so poorly? At least with someone like Robert McNamara you can point to the Vietnam war being a very complex and difficult issue.
sohois
1yr ago
I feel this is a bit harsh on Cummings; certainly reports on his time at No.10 suggested he largely left matters of the economy to Sunak and his team. And he has always emphasised investments in productivity through science funding, education, etc. His focus is on the civil service because that's where his specialism is, where he can actually influence things.
sohois
1yr ago
That's just the subreddit though. ACX isn't mentioned anywhere, though I'm sure that the open threads contain plenty of things that could be deemed objectionable
sohois
15d ago
To engage seriously with your trolling, there is a common misconception in football that the skillful players, the clever midfielders and the like are less physical than other positions, but it isn't true at all.
30 or 40 years ago you would still have players that could be visibly unfit and still play to a very high level thanks to technical ability and speed of thought, but as more money and science has entered the game, this has largely vanished at the very top level. Now, all the small, skillful players are just as strong, fast, and fit as everyone else. Messi might not have been as tall or visibly muscular as Cristiano Ronaldo, but he was just as quick and indefatigable and knew exactly how to use his strength to hold players off. The great Barcelona midfield of Xavi, Iniesta, and Busquets were all incredible athletes. When Ronaldinho became fat and unfit, his level dropped dramatically from when he was the best in the world, despite the technical skill still being the same.
sohois
21d ago
It's just a matter of aim. Lin-Miranda didn't write Hamilton with the purpose of appealing to as many demographics as possible or getting good press from left-wing media. Black dwarves and elves in the rings of power was done with such cynical purposes (or at least, if the showrunners were earnest about it, they were so bad that it's impossible to tell).
Quality goes a long way as well. I've not seen Hamilton, but it's always been super hyped by everyone who talks about it. I wonder if there are good examples of something being both amazing but still getting blasted for DEI. I've always heard from normal friends that Last of Us 2 is an incredible game but that hasn't stopped vast parts of the internet from remaining permanently opposed to it, but I've never played the game myself
sohois
26d ago
none of it makes sense until you get about 95% of the way through the game
This is true of pretty much all Final Fantasy stories. Actually the FF series is an interesting case study for this topic, seeing as games have been consistently released for the past 30 years with many of the same people involved again and again.
sohois
1mo ago
Evaporative cooling of group beliefs. It's always going to be difficult for left wingers or liberals to post amongst a much greater proportion of opponents, which means they leave, which means the proportions become even more slanted, which means more leave, and so on.
It was a regular complaint on the subreddit that the posting populace was excessively slanted, but there was at least still the possibility of new entrants to keep it from tipping completely out of balance.
sohois
1mo ago
I feel like responders to 2rafa's post would have benefitted from defining what it is "good writing" means to them. Whenever conversations start about writing quality it seems like every person takes their own idea into it without explaining what that is.
Is good writing the overall feel of the narrative to you? Is it the plot itself? The prose, the dialogue, the characterization, the worldbuilding?
If I think of a great video game narrative, I tend to think of games that do something interesting with the medium, something like the adventure game 999. However, I wouldn't describe 999 as having good writing - the plot and dialogue are merely ok, it's how it utilizes the medium to deliver everything that makes it shine.
Similarly, some games basically abandon "writing" altogether; someone below mentioned Ico, and Ueda's games always opt for very minimalist stories, which is something you can get away with in a game but not in other mediums. However, simply opting out of writing shouldn't be called "good writing" even if it produces a very good game.
Meanwhile, titles like Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid have very interesting plots and worlds, but the prose and dialogue are distinctly sub-par. I think this is what 2rafa means when they say the writing is bad.
Of course, both titles offer a lot to discuss in that regard. For example, how much of their experiences are defined by the technology of the time? Infamous lines like "What a shame" and "A bomb!" in Deus Ex might work a lot better with modern animations and voice acting. On the other hand, Kojima's 4th wall breaking was bold at the time but would be passé if done now. Plus, if they weren't very good games in other aspects, would anyone remember them?
sohois
3mo ago
Walk into a Brunello Cucinelli, a Hermes, a Thom Browne, or similar and you'll find hundreds of pretty normal looking clothes selling at 1k+ prices each.
sohois
3mo ago
I'm not from the US and have never bought a copy of Sports Illustrated; it's only really known outside because the swimsuit issue had reached iconic status. But as yourself and most other posters have indicated, the swimsuit issue and changes around it probably had little to do with the overall success of the magazine. It was apparently a weekly magazine up until 2018, and you have to assume that the other 51 editions every year would need to do well for it to have survived so long.
However, I don't think the failure of the title is an indication of a failure to market towards "red bloodied males", nor do I subscribe to FiveHourMarathon's view below that it represents the shattering of general sports interest. In both cases because there is still a "red blooded", general sports magazine that appears to be quite successful - The Athletic. This just looks like a classic case of a media business failing to really transition to a new business model with the arrival of the internet.
sohois
8mo ago
Whenever I've seen opinions on the wider Elder Scrolls series, it has always been that the most recent edition has been a tragic dumbing down of the series. People who played Daggerfall find Morrowind to be a mass market, lowest-common-denominator mess. People who played Morrowind think the same of Oblivion, and those who played Oblivion find the same issue with Skyrim.
I've only played the last two, but from what I've seen of the other games there is certainly some truth that the series gradually became simpler, more accessible - but perhaps at some cost. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar plan was in place for Fallout, until New Vegas came along and ruined any chance of people looking positively at the others.
sohois
8mo ago
Yes, this site is built on rdrama code. You can tailor it exactly to your liking. The purpose of all that action is to scare off users who can't figure that out
sohois
8mo ago
I think that this works for some aspects of the show but not all of them. The Guilty remnant, for example. didn't need an explanation - you can just assume that they were a weirdo cult capitalizing on a tragedy like plenty of other weirdo cults. But IIRC there were a number of other bizarre occurrences and red herrings thrown out that couldn't just be handwaved away and seemed like audience hooks that never got resolved.
Translation might well impact on prose and characterisation, but I've never heard of plot being altered. And it doesn't take much effort to find Japanese games with absolutely nonsensical plots
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