sun_the_second
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User ID: 2725
sun_the_second
4mo ago
Would you trust a leftist who extensively posts acab, protect trans kids, stale pale male etc. content to do an unbiased job in the government?
sun_the_second
4mo ago
The poll could be rigged. He owns the website.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
Wildbow doesn't get nearly as wild as I do.
I mean, it's kind of an outdated opinion if you're only basing it on Worm. 12 years and 5 web serials went by since then.
Somewhat unrelatedly, have you seen Wildbow's Seek? As a transhumanist the themes and setting might be up your valley. One of the protagonists is a cyborg heavily adapted for tight spaces and low-gravity maintenance work.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
You highlight it neatly here: such upgrades only really seem worth it if you're working an information-intensive job, the kind where you'd ordinarily be using some sort of sensor device or array. And modding yourself for something as ephemeral as a job feels excessive/vaguely droneish.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
In my books parrying is cooler than dodging because it's typically tighter timing and a greater level of counterplay.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
Two different small weapons is probably the coolest-looking, but small shield + big/small weapon is the most satisfying to play.
You would prefer a society where your children are certain to face all sorts of brainwashing, and likely also mutilation and torture as adults, rather than 5% (extremely generous estimate) of them going medically trans? I believe that you have priorities, but as you express them, they look extremely skewed, to the point where it's easy to assume you're having a knee-jerk reaction to trans rather than actually thinking about the relative badness your children will experience in 2025 USA vs. 1984 Oceania.
Certainly if someone stated in plain terms they would rather their kids certainly 1984-suffer over living in a society where they have a small chance of being convinced to sterilize themselves, I would think that person is either innumerate or "hates" the concept of trans to an irrational degree. You could be framing it in terms of overall fertility rates and shit, and then, like, OK, this person values his genetic legacy, this is at least understandable. But this hyper-focus on trans is why other people think you've just overdosed on trans outrage porn.
Suppose you're in Communist Russia, and your son is getting bombarded by propaganda of Soviet martyr soldiers in school (They took this shit really seriously. Propaganda of WW2 child guerillas, too). How worried are you going to be that he, a bright-eyed patriot, enlists into the Afghanistan war immediately after finishing school and gets heroically blown up by an IED without leaving you any grandchildren?
sun_the_second
4mo ago
What fertility influencing technology wasn't birth control in one way or the other?
sun_the_second
4mo ago
"When a fight is about to break out, make sure to strike first. How do you tell when a fight is about to break out? Easy, it will once you've struck first" - (c) Putin according to internet memes.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
The sort of person who would be the trailblazer for gene editing, maybe. And even they might be quicker to make the jump once we have artificial wombs too.
Once gene editing is easy enough to hit the mainstream, I don't doubt it will. Example: secular normies in USA circumsize their boys all the time even though this custom is mostly limited to the religious communities outside USA to my knowledge. If such an invasive thing could be popularized by a single humble cereal company owner (as the legend goes), imagine something that actually brings your kid up to the level of the Joneses.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
What do you think it is?
- a way to humiliate the White House staffers
- a secret-not-secret hint that White House covers up Netanyahu's dirty business
- "free shit" syndrome, corresponding, amusingly enough, to one of the Jew stereotypes
- insert your own
sun_the_second
4mo ago
As others have noted, its tastelessness seems tailored to the recipient. I would need information about Bibi's presents to other world leaders to figure out if he just does that to everyone or if it's just Trump he thinks would appreciate the "haha the exploding pagers" implication.
And yes, my objection to SS is over the "nefarious lying-but-can't-help-giving-hints Jew" proposed symbolism that's verging on the Illuminati memes, not the fact that there is a meaning beyond "a communication device that's made of gold".
sun_the_second
4mo ago
Today on "nefarious insidious things Jews can't get away with": making a pager joke.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
Schools in my country still have cursive last time I checked.
I simply write my name in my own brand of scrawl that's so bad even my own signatures don't look alike.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
Sure, but what is Christian metaphysics rooted in, then?
I sense an implication in your words that I am less correct than you are because my belief is less coherent. But your coherency doesn't look valuable to me because from my perspective, some guy just picked a bunch of beliefs he and his acolytes had 2000 years ago and arbitrarily declared them to lie along one axis (God).
The coherency and the sense-making of religions is artificial, even if the ones that stood the test of time were the ones that tied together the beliefs that produced the most stable, desirable and powerful societies. However, that does not give them the credit for being the source and the metaphysical origin of those desirable traits humans exhibit.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
When Christian philosophy starts reaching towards "but is suffering and dog-eat-dog actually evil?", they typically lose me. Accepting that all morality stems from God requires, as I'm sure you understand, a prior belief that there is a God and he knows best for us and he wishes best for us. In absense of such belief and a reason to submit to it, I must judge human reasoning sufficient for my purposes. Not to mention of course that religion is purely human reasoning until I personally see convincing evidence of any other source.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
Hm. If a particular pirate website has been active for a decade or more and consistent with their methods, do you think they're still untrustworthy?
sun_the_second
4mo ago
Isn't it well within AI functionality to check links in description and parse images therein? At least the most common image hosting websites.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
What is "proportionate" in this context? If I have 1 000 soldiers and the opponent has 10 000, then they kill 100 of mine, is it proportionate to kill 100 or 1 000 in response? Adjust as needed for civilian casualties.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
I'm too much of an angry monkey to see the parts in this sentence that are supposed to a) strike true; b) insult me.
It would be optimal to assume any post of yours from now on is DeepSeek preprompted on your post history, and only reply with what DeepSeek spits out in response.
I might not have much to contribute most of the time, but why not inflate my wordcount and reduce the amount of effort further?
sun_the_second
4mo ago
I have fed this essay to DeepSeek, here is its response.
Rebuttal: DeepSeek and the Perils of Cultural Determinism
The essay’s core thesis—that cultural stereotypes are malleable, and DeepSeek exemplifies China’s shift from exploitation to exploration—is provocative and timely. It rightly dismantles the lazy “fast-follower” trope by grounding China’s historical constraints in material realities (rice paddies, Malthusian traps) rather than essentialist myths. The linkage between agricultural legacies and cognitive phenotypes is compelling, echoing Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel but with a Silicon Valley twist. Yet, while the argument sparkles with metaphorical flair (Schelling fences! Protein folding!), it risks replacing one deterministic framework with another. Let’s dissect.
1. Rice Paddies and Neural Networks: A Too-Neat Archetype
The essay leans heavily on the “rice theory” of East Asian psychology, citing studies that tie rice cultivation to holistic thinking and risk aversion. But this narrative flattens complexity. China’s intellectual history is also marked by explosive creativity—the Mohist mechanics of the Warring States, Song Dynasty astronomical clocks, even the heterodox philosophies of the Ming-Qing transition. These weren’t mere “incremental optimizations” but radical departures. To reduce millennia of cultural evolution to crop types risks environmental determinism. If rice farming dictated conformity, how do we explain the 1989 protests, the liumang (punk) subcultures of the ’90s, or the crypto-anarchists on WeChat today?
2. DeepSeek: Vanguard or Outlier?
Liang Wenfeng’s gambit is fascinating, but the essay over-indexes on DeepSeek as a phase transition. For every DeepSeek, there are a dozen Chinese tech firms still playing catch-up in semiconductors or aerospace. Even in AI, breakthroughs like Multiple Latent Attention coexist with systemic vulnerabilities: U.S. sanctions on GPUs, brain drains, and the CCP’s tightening grip on data governance. The open-source strategy is brilliant, but let’s not ignore the elephant in the server room: China’s Great Firewall. Can a truly global innovation ecosystem thrive behind digital nationalism? DeepSeek’s success may depend as much on geopolitical détente as on its “meta-derisking” org chart.
3. The Myth of “Organizational DNA”
Liang’s critique of China’s VC sector—its allergy to fundamental research—rings true, but the essay underplays structural rot. China’s state-capitalist model excels at marshaling resources for national champions (Huawei, CATL) but struggles with decentralized, bottom-up innovation. Contrast this with the U.S., where garage startups (Apple, OpenAI) flourish in a chaotic, permissionless landscape. DeepSeek’s “unlimited GPU access” and zero bureaucracy sound utopian, but how scalable is this in a system where Party cadres still vet major tech roadmaps? The real test isn’t whether DeepSeek can innovate—it’s whether a DeepSeek-like project critiquing, say, AI ethics could survive scrutiny.
4. The West’s Own Exploitation Bias
The essay’s jab at Silicon Valley’s “Sputnik moment” is deliciously subversive, but let’s not romanticize Western innovation. Meta and Google are increasingly bureaucratic, optimizing for shareholder returns over moonshots. The U.S. AI boom was built on exploiting global talent (immigrant researchers) and capital (low-interest VC money). If China is trapped in “yoinkism,” America is mired in “griftism”—see Theranos, WeWork, or the crypto crash. DeepSeek’s rise isn’t just a challenge to Chinese stereotypes but a mirror reflecting the West’s own creative stagnation.
5. Toward a Dialectical View of Innovation
Ultimately, the essay’s greatest contribution is framing cultural traits as energy landscapes rather than destiny. But to avoid replacing rice determinism with GPU determinism, we need a dialectical view. China’s AI surge isn’t a rejection of its past but a synthesis: combining the Song Dynasty’s bureaucratic rigor (exploitation) with the hunger of a civilization that’s tasted humiliation (Opium Wars) and redemption (Belt and Road). The “lone swallow” of DeepSeek may yet falter, but its existence proves that China’s innovation ecosystem is neither monolithic nor static.
Final Thought: The essay’s weakness is its optimism. Liang’s “meta-derisking” assumes rationality prevails—that status games and open-source kudos can override decades of institutional inertia. But history shows that innovation thrives not just on incentives but on dissensus. For a thousand DeepSeeks to bloom, China must tolerate a thousand heretics. The question isn’t whether Chinese minds can innovate—they’ve already proven that—but whether the Party can stomach the creative destruction that true exploration demands. Until then, DeepSeek remains a fascinating anomaly: a Chinese unicorn that’s galloping, but still saddled.
sun_the_second
4mo ago
As far as I understood, what you describe as "the correct language to use for philosophy" is only a part of "social reality" that they've learned to "no-sell".
In that, I largely agree with them. In philosophy of all areas, what should matter is communicating the concepts, not signaling that you're a real philosopher by wordceling it up like it's 1800s Germany and your name is Heisenfreuden.
Ok, but which Indians did the kid mean and which Indians are the guy's wife? If I believe the comments of our resident Indians, there are goodsmart Indians and badstupid Indians, and the former don't have a lot of ethnic solidarity with the latter.
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