twodigits
3mo ago
Is anyone here familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's book Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know? Is there a high-quality review anywhere that summarizes what I should know going into it? I understand that Gladwell has a bad reputation around here generally; is there a good general summary of his offenses to help me keep an appropriately skeptical mindset?
I realize that there's probably some irony in worrying about being biased toward excessive trust in someone who's writing in part about how people are biased toward excessive trust.
twodigits
4mo ago
Can you speak plainly? Are you saying that only people currently in the filter should comment on it?
twodigits
4mo ago
I thought that Substack was ACX threads' substrate. I also thought that ACX was always on it, and that the "move" was from the Slate Star Codex domain to the ACX Substack. I wasn't following things closely at the time. Thanks for clarifying.
twodigits
4mo ago
Approving a comment "eventually" doesn't mean much when it doesn't appear as a new comment. It just hides the fact that the comment was hidden.
twodigits
4mo ago
It adds a barrier and allows more targeted rate limiting, I guess? The controversy was a while ago, and I didn't pay much attention at the time.
Edit: I feel like I've also seen Nitter display isolated posts the same way Twitter does.
twodigits
4mo ago
Not sure that I'd call that a "bug" to be "noticed". Didn't Musk publicly announce it, saying that they were finally fighting back against scraper bots, or something?
twodigits
4mo ago
I wash hats and scarves. Not sure why you wouldn't. Aren't they starched the same as anything else? I don't categorize them as pajamas, though.
twodigits
4mo ago
Do you think that they have reasons other than the ones mentioned; or are they just stupid?
twodigits
4mo ago
Was planning to comment on that today myself. It makes sense as a hazing/selection process; to select for posters who are committed/neurodiverse enough to not just give up and leave, but patient enough not to chimp out over being ignored.
It does seem to create a dilemma over what to do if the filtered post was one you really want an answer to, though. In most cases it'd be egregiously obnoxious to keep posting the same question; but the filtering/wait period introduces that nagging doubt that maybe the person with the perfect answer is on here and just didn't see it.
twodigits
4mo ago
- If you want your family/clan to thrive, they need other people to have kids with. Who if not your neighbor?
- Didn't you just say that smart immigrants are worse?
- If you have a growing internal population, why do you need immigrants?
twodigits
4mo ago
I have underestimated the complexity of the question and your preparedness to consider it in detail. I idly wonder whether there are any real-world circumstances that would make those distributions likely, but I'm not willing to press the point.
twodigits
4mo ago
I have nothing to add to the discussion, but I found out about the movie myself through a promoted tweet recently, and in the name of sunk costs I'm going to quote some of the replies.
"Uhhhhhhhhh never mind, dammit can we not have stories focused on white people. My dumbass thought this was gonna be black Harry Potter"
"Hollywood doesn’t know how to make black lead films without making them about white people."
"Woulda been a fun chance to make a movie about a magical society of wise, semimystic black people strategically deploying to change people's lives. "
"Looks like they botched it. Would be much better if it was a group of heroes that did true MN stuff, like a janitor offering uncannily wise advice to a troubled guy working after hours at the office"
"Learning about magic just so you can end up being a side kick for some other guy to get the girl you like. Idk what’s worse - the person who wrote that as the pitch or the people who green lit it"
"The plot is that black people exist to make white people happy and the black guy has to get the white girl???? This is all kinds of cringe wtf"
"Aw man. The story is bout the worst type of negro possible: a light skinned SIMP"
"they couldn't make it anything funny or cool because key and peele already did a sketch about it"
"Quentin Tarantino makes better black films than black writers and directors."
"DamnI didn’t realize the klan was still making movies"
"This movie seems racist to both White and Black"
"Not to be racist or anything but this seems like it's funded and supported and written by Jews"
"You mean they're not fighting the Grand Wizard of the KKK?"
"I was thinking they had to stop like a rouge member from giving white people bad life lessons but this does seem way more boring"
Since the initial promoted tweet was negative, it's not surprising that the replies are too; but it does make me wonder whether there's anyone with a positive view on it. The only theory I saw for who the target audience is was "The aim is to show it overseas and make asia think white people are evil".
twodigits
4mo ago
Whereas if it were easier, higher achievers would tend to earn more, increasing inequality. What am I missing?
there is less inequality but the upper ceiling is so much lower that it's legitimiately harder to get paid the same amount in PPP dollars there than in the US.
Why do you say "but" when those are the same thing?
If a population could mutually agree to all have fewer babies, while pensioners agreed to stop collecting to make way for new generations, it might be good; if that's somehow easier than the rich all agreeing to build as many houses as possible, and so on. But if your rivals/enemies/the lowest-functioning are having lots of kids, you don't want them to be the only ones. All those kids are going to be taking up jobs, housing, etc., but at least your kids are in that group, and having more kids means more success chances for your family overall. Importing a bunch of foreign competitors doesn't benefit you even genetically.
Or maybe I went off half-cocked, and I'm missing the point just like you say Kulak did. Seems kind of rude of me to have butted into the exchange and demanded an answer, really.
twodigits
4mo ago
I don't know. Are we really at the point where a concept can be declared off-limits for thought experiments because a comedian made fun of it once?
twodigits
4mo ago
I'm not trying to morally compare the current Canadian government to the Nazis, but
I would never screencap this and post it to Twitter for cheap laughs from people who hate us, but
twodigits
4mo ago
I still cannot wrap my head around the idea of low/middle wage immigration to a country with billionaires and wealth inequality.
I'm not an English expert, but this seems nonstandard. I thought that "immigration" was the word for the phenomenon from the destination country's perspective, in contrast to "emigration" or just "migration". But the use of "to", along with the emphasis on the traits of the country (implying that it's what's in question), implies that you're talking about the migrant's perspective: "I can't wrap my head around the idea of choosing that kind of country to migrate to". It looks as though this led to different people taking different interpretations of your question.
twodigits
4mo ago
Is this supposed to be a gotcha? Are you implying that you can't see any functional difference between the two options? Or are you just trying to bait them into saying something that you can label as racist/eugenicist?
Would it be antagonistic or obnoxious if I jumped in to argue with some of this?
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