urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
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User ID: 226
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
3mo ago
If AI ends up being as cheap, efficient, and transformative as people want to claim, it should drive down the price of all goods to near 0.
The value of goods is not based solely on labor -- that's Marxism. The value of goods is based on scarcity, which cannot be alleviated by AI (even with advanced robotic labor) for two reasons:
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We live in a physical universe with physical limitations, on a single molten rock with limited, albeit abundant, natural resources. The price of the phone in your pocket is based in part on the physical materials used to assemble it, and any use of those has an opportunity cost. The glass in your iPhone can't be used in someone else's Android. So both the raw materials and the assembled goods have an inherent value because they are scarce and alienable.
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Human consumption has a huge status component. Even if AI-powered robotics could produce any and all goods, human labor and artistry will still remain valuable, perhaps even moreso, because of its scarcity. Inevitably there will be profit to be made in appealing to conspicuous consumption, and so profit there will be.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
3mo ago
Now phones are just broken as a concept. I never pick up unknown numbers and now miss all sorts of important calls like drs appointments etc.
Fair warning, zoomer take here. I seriously wonder why phone numbers even still exist, and especially why they exist with barely any real security, confidentiality, and authentication requirements. Companies use them to verify identities, people call them with personal information, but the system is set up with absolutely no reliable guarantee that who you're talking to is actually the person, and not some bot, spoofed number, or sim-swapped identity thief. And we've taken things like area codes and just destroyed the whole system.
They were great -- if expensive -- I'm told, in the days of Ma Bell. But now they seem like a bolted-on addition to our telecommunications system, which is founded on the internet. And outside of the US, people don't even use SMS!
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
3mo ago
· Edited 3mo ago
Yeah, and it caused a massive constitutional and political crisis that contributed to the total end of the Federalist Party as a going concern because Jefferson and Madison could present Adams as a tyrant while unilaterally claiming the power of nullification for the states, with public support. It never reached the Supreme Court, but the Sedition Act absolutely precipitated the first major constitutional crisis of the country; in relevant terms to today, people convicted under the Sedition Act were pardoned by Jefferson when he became president. A comparison to the COVID restrictions appears completely apt to me.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
Agreed. In part, Trump won because he made things about the future, and provided a vision for an America he wanted to create, whether you liked the vision or not. He brought 2016 energy to the 2024 campaign. His debate performance was generally bad (not as bad as Biden's!), but his RNC performance was good, and the assassination attempt gave him a huge boost; that iconic photo will be what you see in the encyclopedia when you look up the 2024 election. Biden and Harris just didn't seem to have a vision, the core of the campaign was "we are not Trump."
It's my belief that the winner of most presidential elections is the one with the strongest, most compelling vision for the country. "It's morning in America." "Putting people first." "Compassionate conservatism." "Yes we can." "Make America Great Again." "Build Back Better." Biden's vision in 2020 was a return to normalcy, and he narrowly won on that basis, largely due to the pandemic.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
The stultifying status competition struck me when my girlfriend lived in the DMV — it just seems so insane to me to care about things that are so trivial, like your bureaucrat code or whether you live in Bethesda or Rockville “North Bethesda.” I just don’t get it. The sort of raw, fruitless ambition, disconnected from anything that ambition might actually reward, like a more enjoyable job or more flexibility for your family.
I can grok the love of status and I can grok the love of money, but for me those things are always concretely connected to their ability to relieve stress, provide for loved ones, and increase slack. To love them for their own sake is just strange… though it perhaps shouldn’t be so strange, as I’m fascinated by network switches and could stare at blinkenlights all day, and those are just tools to many people.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
It's no different than HPMOR, in my view.
Yeah, and I also think HPMOR is very silly and shouldn't be treated as serious. Harry Potter fanfiction is not the means by which serious people discuss or disseminate philosophical treatises; it insults Harry Potter by trying to make it something it isn't, and insults philosophical treatises by trying to make them something they're not. That Yudkowsky used Harry Potter fanfiction to distribute his ideas indicates to me an unwillingness to choose the right register in which to communicate, a bit like TYPING IN ALL CAPS LIKE YOU'RE A BOOMER WITH A BROKEN CAPS LOCK or refusng 2 us propper gramar to rite yur txt bc its to hard 2 rite n propr inglish. It indicates a disrespect to your content and your audience, while also implying you don't believe your work is strong enough to stand on its own without adding a gimmick.
And that's exactly what I charge our cultists here are doing: they're disrespecting themselves by describing extremely significant and important themes in metaphysics and social reality through video game references, which aren't reality, indicating that either they can't justify their views in more complex terms or don't have the patience, lucidity, and self-control to choose to do so, both of which are damning.
I have some minor personal experience with cult shit, and this is definitely cult shit.
Sure, maybe. But I don't see "cult shit" as meaningfully distinguished from crazy; by crazy I don't simply mean schizophrenia or something along those lines, but simply that these are people whose reasoning and behavior are separated from reality and whose ramblings are therefore fruitless and best to be ignored. I don't really care, Margaret, whether the delusions came from neurological abnormalities or from manipulation as part of a cult.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
I just can’t imagine being so much of a loser that I’m going to base my moral convictions on characters in a video game. That’s the thing that really strikes me here, not the murder and the consequentialism or even the rationalism, it’s that this is a person of obvious intelligence who has founded their entire worldview on video games and the Matrix movies.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
Well this makes no sense at all.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
Woke and catholic women seem to find different parts of my beliefs/personality to be a deal breaker.
I realize I’m asking you to list your flaws, but could you elaborate on your thoughts here?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
Ordinarily Congress can’t just specify what they think the Constitution means, though there’s caselaw about the possible ways in which courts might defer to Congress in certain cases.
But the 14th amendment, like a lot of the amendments, ends with a section that gives Congress a lot of leeway: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” A huge portion of civil rights law and federal power over the states comes from this simple delegation of power. Presumably the claim is that Congress would simply be enforcing the amendment to a class of persons to whom it already applies, just in an unenforced way. This is why the title of the act says “implement” — the claim is that the blueprint already allows for this but that they just want to build it.
All Congressional action comes under review by the courts, but Congress can of course claim any power it wishes even if the courts see fit to strike it down.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
· Edited 4mo ago
I linked the glossary below if you want to dive yourself.
Thanks, I appreciate it. I did look at the lesswrong post and I was bewildered at how seriously the commenters took the ideas of alternate personalities and behavior modification; for people who declare themselves scientific and anti-superstition they seem pretty stitious to me. Family systems therapy pervades the commentariat, which I find rather disturbing; I was sold that this was a tool to help people deal with mental illness and not a means to manipulate or explain the world in real terms, but they're treating it like they're talking about real-world magic. If this is what people mean by "therapy culture" then I agree wholeheartedly with the criticism of it. At this point, I'm ready to declare family systems therapy a cause of psychogenic illness, whatever good it might have done it's now clearly driving people mad.
That being said, I try to avoid prying too deeply into either delusional thinking or true crime; the former I fear might infest me (though I don't have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia) and the latter just makes me angry. I have finite grey matter and I'd rather spend it on things that don't make me feel like the only sane man in an insane world. We need connection to reality and to other people and to average people and to people of different perspectives to remain sane, and this is a great example of why.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
· Edited 4mo ago
His reply seemed indistinguishable from sarcasm to me, I thought he was inventing a term to tar them with. But you brought the receipts, and it does seem they are as disconnected from reality as he suggested.
At the same time, like all mass killers, the actual content of these people's delusions is irrelevant, and the only appropriate response is to medicate until sane and confine until natural death.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
· Edited 4mo ago
moldbug and why reactionaries must be purged from the community
When I first read about neoreaction, I thought it was really interesting that Bay Area computer scientists were getting into monarchism and treating it seriously. Then I read more deeply into it, and realized it was this bizarre monarchical system where kingdoms compete like corporations under a CEO and the fittest survive, like somehow social darwinism but worse, a capitalist abomination of monarchism. They make no reference to the actual historical reasons people support(ed) monarchies, like divine right of kings, providing a social ideal, which are just cooler and more passionate reasons someone might like monarchism. As it stands the neoreaction people offer nothing to the heart, belying its engineering origins. I regard it as what happens when libertarians who read Hacker News and Ayn Rand stop believing in liberty.
With respect to our rationalist posters, I think of the broader rationalist sphere as a bunch of very crazy people, most of whom have bad ideas that rarely diverge from their social mileu. People will disagree with me on this, but Scott is the singular exception, and the only one I respect: he seems like a basically normal, if very intelligent, guy who got caught up with the wrong kinda smart people and let them rot his prodigious knack for observation and empathy.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
Wait, is this actually what they believe, or are you exaggerating? This is Scientology levels of completely delusional.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
Why does Private equity play such a big role in modern investing? Is it a new thing, or did some regulatory change happen, or is there some reason I hear them brought up in almost any economic discussion nowadays, or am I just misremembering a time before private equity was a talking point?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
"Gender ideology" is an old term that's common in global politics, generally associated with Catholic social activism. Though it might be interesting to note that the general line is not "there are two genders" but in fact "there are no genders", because opposition to it globally often holds that the concept of gender is itself an ideological imposition on biological sex. And if the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as the social justice movement would just give itself a name, politicians wouldn't have to use the term "woke" to specify it.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
Yeah, the gaming industry over the past 10-15 years has been about finding new and more addictive ways to extract more value for less cost. I have my concerns about Hollywood, publishing, and the music industry, but at least there seems to be a sense that they want to create something that people enjoy or see value in, even if they are bad at it. But it's really, really hard to read the ways gaming CEOs and business publications talk about their customers, their products, and their strategies, and not come away with the conclusion that they're just as evil, twisted, and morally bankrupt as a casino operator. Gaming as a business seems fundamentally at-odds with gaming as a hobby or creative endeavor in a way that's not true for other creative industries.
I play video games sometimes, but the oxygen of gaming has been so saturated by multiplayer competitive grindfests and e-"sports" that I find it hard to even identify with gaming any more. Sometimes it feels like it's as unhealthy and toxic today as everyone's dad thought it was in the 90s. And everyone has the kid in their family who's kicked a hole in their wall because they lost an online match.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
I read the other day that China has been obtaining 4090 chips through clandestine means, somehow stealing them from graphics card boards and then returning them so they end up in the supply chain GPU-less. Is it evident exactly what silicon Deepseek is using, or is it a possibility that the underlying silicon is mostly nvidia chips that have been obtained despite export restrictions?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
· Edited 4mo ago
I'm fascinated that Hayes' deadname was even listed on the Wikipedia page -- I thought even for such horrendous people the policy was never to use a deadname. Was it the "then Linda raped the woman he kidnapped" part that made it necessary to clarify this was a bepenised individual?
But really what upsets me is that there was a strong feeling in the state of Connecticut that this was a profoundly evil case that deserved the death penalty, so much so that it delayed the abolition of capital punishment there. And then, like always, the Supreme Court of CT just goes and declares it unconstitutional anyway, because heaven forbid the legislature proscribe punishments for crimes according to the popular will in a democracy. I'm weakly anti-death-penalty, but I take the John Roberts in Obergefell approach to the issue: in a democracy, such issues should be won by winning hearts and minds, not using judicial power to override the people's will, which "wins" without winning. If your concern over the death penalty is the sacred value of human life, imposing bans on capital punishment by fiat does nothing to create a culture that values life.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
Project 2025 also contains a lot of things that Trump, most Republicans, and virtually all Democrats would disagree with -- I recall there being a lot of debate over a passage in it that called for restrictions on condoms, for instance. It was far more radical than Trump and most Trump supporters, and so tarring him with it was a way to label him extreme. These were fertile areas of attack, which were hard to resist for the Biden/Harris campaign.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
Agreed.
That being said, I think there’s a lot to say for an urban lifestyle — if, as you’ve said, it’s safe, clean, and accessible. My view is that our biggest problem is our country has so many great and historic cities, but we’ve allowed inner-city crime to absolutely gut and destroy them, so any and all who want that kind of life have to fight over the scraps that aren’t totally ruined. We’ve allowed the bad optics of arresting and detaining criminals and gangsters who happen to be black men to absolutely ruin the possibility of city people to live good lives in many places, which is a very sad way in which the Democratic coalition is at odds with itself. And meanwhile Republicans are just living their best lives out in the burbs or the country.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
That’s fair, and good context — my point is mostly about modern-day antisemitism of the kind Jewish people seem to be worried about, where I’ve rarely seen this; I’ve seen a lot of people complain about “New York Jews” but few, if any, who make such complaints and then talk about they should all go to Israel. It seems more like aimless, grumpy complaints, or like sour grapes, like I’ve said, rather than something thought out.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
Any @TIRM's point isn't that we live in the counterfactual world, but that the counterfactual world indicates that the promiscuous sex practices of gay men are the cause of the problem: but for their existence, HIV would not be a major issue, as you've just agreed. Earlier you stated that "Even if one somehow got rid of those things... the deadliest diseases in human history were not caused by either promiscuous sex or drug use", and by agreeing to his counterfactual, you've just denied that very statement.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
4mo ago
· Edited 4mo ago
"SJW" was never used all that much, and was mostly used in online and nerdy discourse. Nerds are much worse at playing the social games of verbal politics, and their strategy of reclaiming the term backfired.
And I think it also has to do with social justice discourse spreading much wider than the original, core movement, and gaining ground among people who weren't familiar with the core activists. These ideas were introduced to them as just decent things decent people are doing, there's no politics here, this is just about being a good person, and when they were questioned they found it confusing and impolite, and white-collar professionals hate nothing more than impolite things. This attitude got back-filled in to the activists themselves, because it was useful, and then became the official line against any accusations of woke politics. Then "woke" became something Republicans in the Senate ask judicial nominees, which just bewildered and offended the elite professional jurists who thought they were above such trivialities.
I also don't think "woke" was ever really used as a descriptor for the movement, it was more of a meme, like "it's hard to be woke in a sleeping society" or something by someone vaguely affiliated with the social justice movement. So for normie liberals who got interested in woke politics, it rather sounded like the opposite-side verison of civil rights groups getting very angry about Pepe the frog memes and calling Pepe a white supremacist symbol, because some people on 4chan used Pepe in racist memes. So everyone on the left side of the fence sees the "woke" descriptor as eminently silly, even though they refuse to give anyone a better one.
What this amounts to is “no one should be allowed to argue in their own defense” which is of course a ridiculous and fanatical restriction to put on someone sharing their own perspective of a rapidly developing situation.
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