username
1yr ago
Perhaps in reality none of the aforementioned actions are wrong. It's not wrong to spy on someone in the locker room, and so it's not wrong to use 'x-ray glasses' to see through their clothes, or use an AI to edit a picture to do functionally the same thing.
This matches my intuition. For someone to just generate deepfakes they just keep to themselves? I've got no problem with that. For someone to distribute those deepfakes around, possibly (but not necessarily) passing them off as real has the potential for harm.
In the case of spying, I think punishment is valid even if it isn't technically wrong because spying will usually lead to information being used in harmful ways, like revealing facts or blackmail. Even if spying is done without those intentions, sometimes secrets are just too good to keep, it's playing with fire. Deepfakes don't have that same problem.
username
1yr ago
I think that does make sense, at least in a vacuum, but going to college will probably also make you more likely to "trust the experts" on a number of topics, including OP's examples of rejecting HBD and supporting outdoor masks
username
1yr ago
The concern isn't that tiktok is spreading pro-CCP or even anti-western propoganda. The concern is that it is addictive and stealing our youth's attention. Yes, other social media do this too, but tiktok is particularly good at stealing attention and time.
The chinese aspect comes into play when you realize that tiktok in china is a different app. If China thinks this attention-stealing is bad, they're going to fix their app rather than the international version. Also, tiktok allows them to China on international users (this isn't the article's point, but it is the main concern you hear about in mainstream media)
username
1yr ago
I've come across HBD a few times in these CW threads since themotte moved off reddit, and dozens of times before that. As far as a I know this is basically the only place you can openly discuss it.
This HN discussion is similar to what you'd read here, but shifted to the left. Here HBD is basically supposed "true" and those who disagree are in the minority. We don't argue particularly better or worse than the HN comments. Often, it's just some top-level complaint about the blank-slate view and others who agree.
username
1yr ago
Many comments are pointing out the variance between people, but considering frequent bathing is a pretty recent trend, I would think we'd get used to lower frequency bathing if we really tried (or were forced to).
Is anyone aware of evidence for some kind of feedback loop between bathing and oil/sweat/odor production? I know of many anecdotes of people who went from washing their hair everyday to much lower frequencies, they all say they got used to it and their hair doesn't get gross anymore (or as quickly). Personally I used to shower everyday and used to feel pretty disgusting starting around the 16th hour, but now I wash every 2 days and I feel fine until around the 40th hour. It could be psychological rather than physiological, but my hair really does look less oily for longer since I cut my bathing frequency. My guess is that it's a combination of psychology and physiological feedback loops (e.g. decreased sebum production).
username
1yr ago
Spending plans have been too long for anyone to read for a long time, it's kind of how they're designed.
I'm unfamiliar with the USA government, but in Canada, "spending bills" are all massive and they take weeks/months to put together. The vote is more of a rarely exercised opportunity to veto rather than actually propose changes. Although no one should technically see the full bill before it gets presented to congress, the management board of the government coordinate it with the central politicians for a long time before that.
username
1yr ago
I found a rationalist group in my area and they're fun to talk to. People are all over the political spectrum so people rarely strongly signal their controversial opinions, discussions are usually around less inflammatory topics like economics and philosophy. You can crawl old meetup posts on ACX and look for something local, or find communities on social media.
More generally, you can meet people organically in hobby space. If the hobby leans young or female, expect it to lean left. If it's more blue-collar and male, expect it to lean right. In both cases, people should generally be less extreme and more centrist than groups who met through explicit tribal filters.
username
1yr ago
I don't personally object to hunting, but because you said "I don't know what it is", I'll take a crack at it: Hunting isn't about the food, it's about the sport. It's not crazy to think there's something deontologically wrong with killing creatures for fun.
username
1yr ago
If factory farming is unnatural, is 19th century farming also unnatural? Where do you draw the line? Seems to me you could argue all food, being a product of agriculture, is unnatural, which kind of makes the label pointless.
At the very least, lab-grown meat is a big deviation from the status-quo. I'm not sure it would even count as raw/unprocessed food.
username
1yr ago
Thanks for explaining, that does makes sense and is pretty convincing. People who consume the barely legal type porn are definitely marginal ephebophiles, if not full-blown ones.
There's definitely variation among people's taste, though. In my view, someone could have a "youthful" fetish the same way they have a mature/milf or an asian fetish. I suppose whether these are "fetishes" or not is a terminological debate, but I certainly did not have your view pinned down until you explained it.
username
1yr ago
The truss case is a bit unusual: The inflation hit very quickly and her policies were a very apparent cause.
The average case is a lot muddier. Prices are sticky and it takes a while for inflation to get noticed. Most nations saw a steady inflation increase since 2020. Many of those nations, like the USA, have new leaders since the inflation started. It's probably the case that some leaders picked known inflationary policies before elections to get more votes (e.g. student forgiveness before the mid-terms), knowing the resulting inflation would be delayed and its cause nebulous.
username
1yr ago
Interestingly: this argument actually makes me less anti-trans.
This is my view as well. I'm often accused of being conservative but there's something beautifully utopian about people just being who they want to be. It's a little messy today, but if technology were absolutely perfect and low-cost, who wouldn't try switching genders for a couple hours?
username
1yr ago
I'm not woke, but I do think "Race is a social construct" has some merit. It's a terminological disagreement rather than a scientific one.
Someone who has one white parent and one black parent is often considered black, despite the genetic make-up being 50/50. National demographics on race also largely come from self-reported data in surveys, which have a famously growing list of races you can pick from.
As for intelligence differences between races, I think most people are simply ignorant rather than cognitively dissonant. It's not obvious to everyone that racial groups have different mean IQs, it's not something you learn from mainstream sources. Even once this fact is known, it's not crazy to think achievement disparities can be explained by culture and social institutions. We would all be a lot less economically productive if we moved to Haiti. Oppression isn't even a necessary factor.
username
1yr ago
That's correct, but if these women are birthing at least one child according to my scheme, that child would eventually have an IQ higher than the host nation average (because clients would be upper/middle class). Many of these women would get multiple contracts or contracts for twins, so I would think it would actually raise the mean IQ of the host nation.
username
1yr ago
Elite culture and universal culture have a lot of overlap, perhaps they're even the same thing, but it's certainly more concentrated and adopted within elite circles. In a typical company, employees express this culture proportionally to their rank. The elite culture gives you status, and you have to signal you're part of the in-group.
My model of Scott's universal culture is a natural common-denominator. Elite culture is more forced and over-the-top, due to the status it gives its members. Perhaps elite culture is downstream from universal culture.
Baristas and mic-girls might express the same attitudes on some social issues like gender and the environment, but different views on economic issues.
username
1yr ago
I think the SEO explanation is the most relevant, in addition to google's incentives to fix it being rather weak. They have monopoly status and "you are the product, not the customer". That said, I'm not sure there's any easy ways for google to fix this issue. Even if it were easy from a technical point-of-view (which isn't obvious, I'd expect more competition if this were the case), anyone who wants to change the way they prioritize search results has to deal with a lot of stakeholders and special interests.
A little off topic but I find searching reddit through google (add "site:reddit.com" to your google query) will give me the best results. Reddit has a terrible search feature but its content is still relatively low-spam.
username
1yr ago
They probably want the ability to hit targets with higher confidence. Shooting multiple missiles is an easy way to do that.
Still, I wonder why China ramped up nukes more recently, decades after the soviets and USA have abandoned the same strategy. Also, why is it such a secret? Of course you'd want to keep the details secret, but wouldn't you at least want your enemies to know you have a large nuclear arsenal?
username
1yr ago
There are a lot of relationships in biology that generally hold across species but not within a species. For instance, mammal size is associated with longer lifespan across species, but intra-species it doesn't hold and can even be the opposite, e.g. in dogs.
username
1yr ago
OP was talking about democrats boosting non-trump candidates. Presumably, democrats are picking candidates they like better than trump. That's not sabotage, that's just expressing your preference.
If democrats were purposefully selecting weak candidates they don't prefer nor think can win an election, I would agree it's sabotage, that it leads to weaker nominees and that it's not good for the country.
username
1yr ago
It seems to me this problem has only gotten worse since we started cracking down on paedophilia and grooming. Admittedly, paedophilia is much more reported than it was before, but it's not at all clear to me that cracking down on grooming behaviour is going to make it easier for youth to get mentorship, if anything I'd expect it less mentorship. Your strategy may optimize for least harm, but OP was looking for more mentorship.
Yes, I mentioned that not doing lockdowns when everyone else is doing one would still result in many of the similar consequences.
That said, Swedes' private behaviour is also partially responsible for some of these consequences. Even without lockdowns, many Swedes stayed home, didn't go to restaurants, moved into a bigger house to comfortably WFH. The Swedish government also had distributed relief transfer payments. All of this contributes to inflation.
username
1yr ago
Ahh yes, performance agreements. My experience with these is that people don't commit to targets they can't already meet. After all, these objectives are mostly self-imposed, and the exercise is more of a formality. That said, I'm sure it's sometimes the case some execs have to work hard to meet their diversity targets. Thanks for sharing.
username
1yr ago
It's not that simple. Tax cuts increase inflation without directly printing more money. Raises are a big component of inflation. If everyone got a 5% raise do you think prices would remain the same?
username
1yr ago
I believe racial groups have different mean IQs and that some of these differences could be partially explained by genetics. I guess that puts me in the HBD camp.
If HBD weren't real, I don't think I'd expect any major differences between countries. Asia and Africa would still be held back by poor institutions. The fact that the middle-IQ group dominated both the lower and higher IQ groups leads me to believe group IQ differences didn't have a high first-order impact on history. I think the biggest differences would be within countries. I'd expect to see more black and fewer jewish scientists, engineers, CEOs, etc. Racism would still exist on a similar scale. We'd worry less about economic disparities, but still worry about representational disparities. American "guilt" towards blacks would more closely resemble european guilt towards jews.
There's another aspect of HBD which proposes that, although men and women have the same mean IQs, men have higher variance than women. Whether that's true or not, I think the counterfactual would be of higher consequence.
I worked in a central government agency and sometimes dabbled in AI policy. When race is blinded, sometimes the computer will still disproportionately target certain races because of correlated factors.
As long as the algorithm is detecting actual errors, it's okay for it to disproportionately impact certain races (although it will still make the news and people will complain). What's more controversial is when the computer is copying existing human behaviour. If human behaviour can be truly racist (e.g. in an irrational way), the computer can inherit that irrationality, even if blinded.
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