sohois
1yr ago
That makes sense for the racism analogy, but I have no idea how the eugenics stuff went in there and no one, not Jemisin or her editors, noticed what it was
sohois
1yr ago
You can see the name of the poster being replied to the right of the user name, and it appears to last even beyond deletion.
sohois
22d 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
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
10mo ago
I'm not sure Bethesda have really made a great game for many, many years and I don't expect that to change with Starfield. Like everyone else here, I think they'll probably make something very engaging but which will feel hollow in the long term
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 don't disagree with your point, but I'm not sure that West is the best example; I'd be very surprised if he was unable to produce extremely popular records or sell out concerts in the future, and so wouldn't say that his career is finished. But West would be a rare exception
sohois
1yr ago
The ChinaTalk substack is a pretty big one for Chinese news
https://www.chinatalk.media/
It's more of a general China politics/culture substack than just translations, but it does contain plenty of translated articles and interviews as well
also, while the language stuff probably isn't of interest, you may enjoy Slow Chinese. It's an advanced Mandarin blog, but perfectly readable for English readers who just want insights into current events
sohois
1yr ago
I'm not sure if this is a bug or even something that can be fixed, but when typing a comment yesterday I clicked Formatting Help since I'd forgotten how to post links. I was promptly redirected, and lost my entire comment when I came back. Very irritating. I guess I just expected it to work like reddit, a drop down box and not a redirect
sohois
1yr ago
Kiwifarms has posted extremely convincing evidence of Keffals being at best a dangerous person for children but much more likely a paedophile. And it had no effect at all.
I can't imagine a tactic of burying them under annoyances would help much at all
sohois
1yr ago
People seem to credit him for inventing rationality and AI safety, and to both of those I can only say "huh?".
This seems pure pedantry. Obviously, the concept of rationality and ideas around optimizing for truth or utility have existed for a very long time. And there is plenty of science fiction which featured dangerous AI.
But I really can't imagine anyone even vaguely familiar with Yudkowsky or AI alignment or the rat-sphere would struggle with the claim that Yudkowsky "invented rationality and AI safety."
Capital-R Rationality is the modern groups that formed around the Bay-area subculture which Yudkowsky largely founded. It is MIRI, CFAR, Effective Altruism. It's Yudkowsky, Scott Alexander, Julia Galef. It's LessWrong, SSC, and even this very forum.
And AI Safety? Yes, the concept existed. But the entire modern edifice of AI alignment all arose from Yudkowsky's initial writings on LessWrong. He was responsible for drawing attention to it, he lead MIRI for a while, he set down a great deal of theory.
I'm really struggling to believe someone smart enough to post on TheMotte would so easily be confused by this.
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
At that point, why even bother with a reddit-like design? We might as well have migrated to DSL and just become a regular old forum
sohois
30d ago
I think given your budget you probably don't need to overthink it or look too much at advice here. You have enough to afford something recent without too many miles so really the only thing you want to think about is which car you like the look of. Plenty of people don't worry too much beyond that and do just fine.
Any of the prestige sedans will work for you. Some people will claim X brand has so many issues or to avoid one specific car, but most of this will just be anecdotal. No one owns enough cars to say that "every BMW is a pain". There will sometimes be known issues with certain models - e.g. the Jag XE ingenium engine had problems with the timing belt in early models. But these are rare and not normally catastrophic to deal with.
Other than Teslas, which have pretty poor reliability used, you can buy any of Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Volvo, Lexus, even Alfa Romeos are offering reliable cars these days. I would just look through these brands and find the one you like the look of most, then go and buy one. Personally I like the look of Jags, XE and newer XFs. I think the 2010 stylings of Audis and BMWs was a bit safe. Mercedes always does a decent job. I like the Volvo s90 a lot but that might be outside of your price range, and I'm less keen on the lower end volvos.
It's true that maintenance will be more expensive, much the same as a big house will cost more than a small house. Nice things always cost a bit more. But you would still be looking at a yearly service + MOT of around £300-£400. If you have issues it will run up the price, but this is true of any car. Of course you can also spend plenty on valeting, modifications, bodywork, tyres, etc. but this will be your choice.
When you come to buy, there are a couple of things to be aware of:
- Look for cars with "full service history" if you want maximum peace of mind, as this means they have been taken care of
- With a private sale, you can get extra detail by doing a free HPI check at sites like: https://hpicheck.com/. These will also give you a rough valuation
- Avoid cars marked as Cat N or Cat S. This means they have previously been written off
- Even if you know nothing about cars, just use your senses when test driving. Does it sound weird? Are there funny smells? Does it feel weird?
You're not that likely to get saddled with a lemon in the used car market, and although caveat emptor applies, there is some legal protection for complete deceptions. Mostly just a bit of common sense will be enough.
sohois
1yr ago
What binds the 1% together as a military force beyond wealth? Who says that the forces of a Musk would align with a Bezos would align with a Gates would align with a Soros?
sohois
1yr ago
If you had bought $100 dollars worth of bitcoin you could have been a millionaire. No other investments have been quite so explosive.
sohois
1yr ago
Google hires dozens of people from the business program I did every year (which might sound like nothing but it's just one program) to essentially be sales development and account managers for ads.
sohois
1yr ago
I think reddit style discussion works much better when discussions are very large, with many participants. Forums are much better when it's smaller in scale, and you're not constantly producing these monstrous chained quotes. If you get rid of the megathread approach, small scale discussions would dominate I believe
sohois
1yr ago
I'm actually going to argue against slatestarcodex, despite it being the genesis of this place. /r/SSC was very intelligent, but I think a number of factors have drastically dragged down the level of discussion there.
One is just size, with the subreddit having grown rapidly as Scott's following has grown, and that will always bring down an average. And there is the problem of the motte itself: a lot of good commentators might have started at /r/ssc, but ended up migrating most of their comments to here, or to DSL, or even to lesswrong or the ACX open threads.
The somewhat directionless nature of the subreddit is another problem, since the early selection effects of the subreddit have now faded away, bringing in a lot of random commentators.
I'll still go there regularly, but nowadays it seems like only 1 in 10 comments is worth bothering with, compared to a much higher proportion before.
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
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
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?
Sounds like you would have liked it less if you actually knew League a little - everyone knows Jinx as a crazy murderhobo, so there was no subversion since you would expect some traumatic event to create her.
More options
Context Copy link