cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
6hr ago
While I am far from 100% certain that Covid was a lab leak, I take the possibility seriously. I share your frustration with GOF research, there is no way in hell that the potential benefits are proportional to the risks.
Just to reiterate those proportions: 7.1 million confirmed deaths, estimated 19-36 million deaths. Make the math easy and call it 10 million deaths. If you think there is a 1% chance it was lab leak then that is 100k deaths caused by lab leak.
My mother is a PhD microbiologist. She hasn't actively worked in the field in decades. Last time she did lab work it was for Monsanto's agriculture/husbandry products. I've argued with her about GoF research. She got upset with Rand Paul when he was grilling Fauci about GoF research. I felt at the time it was more of a circle the wagons type reaction, aka she saw a Scientist getting attacked by a politician and blue tribe brain had her reflexively defending the scientist. Never-mind the facts that Fauci is more of an administrator, and Rand Paul was an MD for longer than Fauci did anything resembling lab work.
In separate conversations I removed the names and political events and she agreed on the danger of these medical experiments. She even added additional reasons to be scared. Her descriptions of labs she worked in were not what you'd hope for with people handling potentially dangerous biological samples. But even agreeing on the danger of the experiments she didn't think they should be banned. Her objection is that "Gain of Function" research is way too broad of a term and could ban far more useful research. For example, messing around with Yeast so that it can ferment an additional fruit or vegetable for alcohol consumption could be considered "gain of function" research.
I respond back 'well then just ban working with the deadly pathogens'. She hits back that E. coli can be very dangerous but is used in a bunch of research simply because its ease of use.
It goes on: Ok, how about just banning GoF related to transmissibility or virulence. Well apparently that might ban vaccine research for existing viruses.
You end up in a situation where the people best suited to recognize and stop the dangerous forms of microbiological research are the same people that want to conduct it in the first place. Which is where we were 2019.
I generally think that its ok to trust scientists and that they can self regulate with their dangerous toys, and that was my viewpoint for biological research back then. Now I'm in alignment with everyone here, fuck this research, it needs to end and we can't trust you with these dangerous toys. Scientists, you had your chance to self regulate. Sorry if we are wrong about the cause, but we can't trust you to investigate yourself, and even a 1% chance of lab leak means you killed 100k people. I still can't convince my mom though.
cjet79
19hr ago
We do care about the quality, but I view them ultimately as tools. And for me a tool that doesn't provide utility is a bad tool.
But that's not the only view on tools, some guys turn them into collectors items, some treat them like status symbols, and some treat them as end goals where they want the best tool for the job but are rarely caught doing the job.
You'd know best how he might have felt about tools. But I'll repeat the sentiment above. Id feel worse if my tools caused stress and uncertainty over any possible course of action my wife might take.
cjet79
1d ago
Lot of research has been done on this. There is a whole study in economics called "Public Choice" which studies these sorts of things. You are correct to notice that this is strange and doesn't make sense compared to other markets and products.
The main explanation is "first past the fence voting". Any system with a majority wins and takes all is one where only two parties tend to persist. One to win and one to chase the other. The chasing party will occasionally catch up and overtake the winning party. In European parliamentary democracies they often have representative voting, so as a party you only need to get a small portion of the vote to be part of the government.
What is also relevant is something called the "median voter theory". Since the US has first past the fence voting, the winning candidate will always appeal to the median voter. This tends to moderate candidates. As someone who is not a republican or democrat (im a libertarian), my perception of the two main parties is that they are mostly the same and tend to govern mostly the same. More wars, more government spending, more government intervention, rollbacks on government spending are minimal and ineffective. They tend to perenially disagree on issues that split the american people down the middle, but politicians on either side have little benefit to resolving those disputes.
cjet79
1d ago
I would think the data on it is more important than the machine itself. I have a decent gaming rig that I keep up to date. But if it crapped out and I was gone I wouldn't want my wife stressing about getting it working again. I'd possibly want it to go to a friend who might be able to get some use out of it after swapping out the hard drives.
cjet79
3d ago
The purpose of a bar is to provide a space where people can put their shit down for a while.
I Like this definition, and it reminds me a lot of the saddest of bar patrons that you tend to see at any place that is cheap or has deals. The sad drunk that is carrying way too much shit in life. They'll deflate and sink into the bar as the weight leaves their body, but they just can't muster the strength to get up from the bar, pick their shit back up and leave.
I'd also add a category of bar: The Sports Bar. A kind of raucous ambiance where men loudly cheer or curse as their team succeeds or fails. It exudes an unapologetic male energy that feels missing in most areas of life. The men aren't looking for partners or hookups, most of them are paired up and just taking a break from the lady to hang out with the lads. It can also be a very enjoyable place after exercising or participating in some rec-league level sport. Copious amounts of light beer, and greasy meaty foods to imitate the sensation of refueling. But also to wind down from the exertion of the sport.
cjet79
5d ago
I asked you only a month ago to stop with the low effort posts. You are doing this at the top level too.
I said I'd do a month long ban last time, and I'm not going back on that threat. 30 day ban.
cjet79
6d ago
That is interesting, I'd never heard the Victorian and Edwardian take on this. I arrived at basically the same conclusion as them. I am very much an introvert. I am comfortable and happy just sitting in my basement playing video games or reading books all alone. I realized many years ago that friendship is important for mental health, and I've tried to never neglect it.
cjet79
6d ago
Personally I've experienced the opposite. It's easy to make friends, stay in touch with them, and find activities to do with them.
I'm a parent of 3 and I only work part time remotely, so at least two of the factors listed apply to me.
I'm friends with a bunch of the neighborhood dads. We will have get togethers during the nice weather where the kids all just run around someone's house and backyard.
I've made some friends on TheMotte who are fun to talk with and play video games with.
I've made some friends on some of the games I play online.
I still have many friends from my time in college, I will have a few hour long phone chats with one of them. Another I get lunch with every other month. A few others I see regularly at underwater hockey. I'll have all the underwater hockey players over to my place for a get together on occasion.
My wife and I have about 15 cousins each, some of them live close enough to hangout but they are also in the process of getting married so we have averaged about two weddings a year while married.
I'm going to see Hail Mary with a friend and former roommate when it comes out. When I texted him I realized we hadn't texted or hung out in over a year. I haven't been avoiding him or anything I'm just literally too busy to hangout with all the friends I have.
I like having friends though. I enjoy hanging out with people and having deep or interesting or just funny conversations. My mother is a major contrast with me. She has a few friends that she might speak with a few times in a decade. One couple that might be considered friends with her and my dad, but that couple puts in all or most of the effort to get together. And otherwise she just has her adult children (3, including me) that she hangs out with. She doesn't like having lots of friends. She easily gets a form of social anxiety that makes her dread going out.
With everyone I know this is the same general pattern. They either have a 100-200 friends they can't possibly hangout with, but they try anyways. Or they have like 1-5 friends that they are barely trying to maintain. Both groups of people seem to be getting exactly what they want.
I think the main limiting factor on modern friendship is how many friends someone wants to have. And thus I don't think it's much of a problem at all.
cjet79
7d ago
I'm realizing while reading this list that I never liked traditional action movies. It's the big spectacle that I enjoy. Sci fi and fantasy movies with massive battles. Or large explosions in modern settings.
Marvel movies have been a boon for me. I unironically enjoyed the Transformers movies. I have fun watching Michael Bay films. Star wars original trilogy was my favorite as a kid. And I loved the huge starship battles in episode 1.
cjet79
9d ago
I feel like the US has lost plenty of times and been fine. Korea had an unsatisfactory stalemate (that still haunts us). Vietnam was a clear loss and retreat. Iraq and Afghanistan were immediate victories followed by long drawn out slogs that no one feels we "won" at.
The 1990 Gulf war was a victory of sorts, but that seems to have happened because we didn't get involved in regime change in Iraq at that time. Otherwise you have to go back to WWII for a clear victory.
Your specific phrase "overthrowing the regime" is kind of a strange victory condition. We have arguably already done that in Iran. Bunch of their leaders dead on day one. There might be a technical continuance of governance, but there is already going to be a different set of people in charge in Iran. And historically our attempts at regime change in the middle east have gone poorly. It's why no one wants us committed to a ground war.
cjet79
11d ago
I really honestly thought that the Murderbot series was making fun of leftists and that the show was too. I guess it was kind of a reverse Poe's Law situation where I read sincere views that seemed ridiculous to me as a satire of those views.
The universe is definitely built on leftish tropes.
This is just more and more hilarious as I think back on the murderbot novels I read (a total of 5 of them i think).
One of the aspects of the setting is that the leftist little utopia planet gets to exist mostly because a larger capitalist/corportist system allows it to exist, and indirectly supports its existence. It has the same vibes as a small town deciding to be a little communist commune inside America. The town can survive with a totally anemic economy, because the rest of America is producing food and consumer products at such dirt cheap prices. The town only needs to export and trade a little to keep afloat.
The leftist planet utopia in the novels is in a very similar situation. They can't do anything complex without help from the corporate system. They want to explore a planet for a possible colonization effort. But they can't produce the spaceships to get there. They can't produce the surveying and survival equipment they need on the planet. And they can't produce the security they need while on the planet (they are so naive they aren't even aware enough to realize they need security). They are helpless kids being given expensive toys.
They are left alone on their planet not because they are strong enough to deter aggression, but because they are so poor and backwards that they have nothing worth stealing.
You went over some of the relationship stuff that happens in the novel. It has what I feel is an accurate level of interpersonal drama among sexually fluid and diverse crew (aka a lot of drama). And the main narrator of the story, the murderbot, sees all this drama as pointless and stupid, especially in the face of life-or-death stakes.
To me its a story about some incompetent leftists that are overly focused on pointless and stupid interpersonal drama that get saved by a hyper-competent corporate slave (and then in later novels its an ex-slave). If this is what passes for leftist literature, then maybe I need to go back through some of the stuff I've dismissed. Or maybe the lesson is that as long as the author says the correct things in interviews they can absolutely trash leftists with impunity (are we sure the author isn't a closeted pro-capitalist?).
cjet79
12d ago
Interesting.
The graph does imply that up to four previous partners is fine. That seems like a safe number to me too.
I didn't realize I'd be in the manwhore category, depending on what counts as previous partners I've had between 5 (just counting long term girlfriends) and a few dozen (counting anything).
I'm very satisfied with my wife. I think I would have been far less satisfied with any of my previous girlfriends (which is why I broke up with them). I did learn things from those relationships that have definitely made me a better husband. I'm not sure I would have been able to woo my now wife, keep her as a girlfriend, take the leap to propose to her, or stay monogamous and in love during marriage. There are specific lessons I learned from previous relationships to help me through each of those stages.
Maybe other people learn faster than me, or know not to make certain mistakes in the first place. I was an idiot that required some learning.
It was absolutely a time and resource hog, but I don't really know what else would be worth spending my time and resources on. My free time would have been eaten up with playing video games, watching comedy, and arguing with people online. And those things are fun, but not fulfilling.
cjet79
12d ago
The market solution in this case is just "wait out the conflict". Ships sitting in port isn't free but it's a lot cheaper than insuring against a full loss or calling in protection for the ship.
It's unclear to me how long Iran will be willing and able to sling missiles and drones at its neighbors. I would think that the "wait it out solution" implies an expectation by the market in a short conflict.
cjet79
13d ago
But you've forgotten the most persuasive reason to do space colonization, which is to move all gain of function research offworld and to a place we can easily glass without harming any civilians.
I like this reason. But it will become moot when the next super virus starts on the space station wet market, because a vendor was selling space raised pangolin meat.
cjet79
13d ago
Ya my effort goes down as the thread gets deeper. I try and make my points at the higher level.
I don't know what MIC stands for
cjet79
13d ago
Microwave cooking for one review this was posted over on /r/slatestarcodex. fun quick read
cjet79
14d ago
It's not clear that mammals can even reproduce in low gravity environments
China just recently sent a mouse to a space station, returned the mouse and the mouse has had three healthy litters. So the radiation is at least survivable. But I agree that we don't know for sure.
Keeping an astronaut on the ISS costs about $1M/astronaut per day.
I'm curious how you got this number. When I search for the costs I found reports that private astronaut life support and food supplies can cost about about $35k per day.
The cost of a NASA astronaut on board the ISS might be much higher from a government accounting perspective, because each astronaut is generally supported by a team of people on the ground monitoring and directing them. Its like difference between the cost of an individual owning and operating a car vs the cost of having a Nascar team, where the driver is only a small portion of the overall cost.
I do hope we colonize space, but it does seem absolutely daunting and with minimal reward right now. Any potential payoff is maybe centuries away from when you start trying. This is just one of those projects where I'm less bothered when I see money being "wasted" on it.
cjet79
14d ago
The advice of planning to have multiple partners strikes me as directionally correct for most men. I made some mistakes with girlfriends and women in my formative years. Those mistakes have not followed me cuz things ended with those women. I also had to learn some things about women that just can't be taught. Or at least I was too dumb to be taught those things. The degree of female emotional attachment that comes with sex was hard for me to understand. I definitely hurt some people before I figured that out.
Planning to be a man-whore and rack up a body count seems like taking it too far. Sometimes the red pillers feel like a cargo cult for relationships. They seem to understand the pre-requisites, but have weird beliefs about why those things are pre-requisites.
cjet79
14d ago
Doesn't serve the needs of the generals that want a hot war for promotions. Or the deep state actors that pleasure themselves playing puppet master.
If the people capable of pulling strings and getting America dragged into a hot war, the corporate money makers seem least in control. They are happy to benefit and will make sure the wealth gets shared around, but it's not them alone causing this.
cjet79
14d ago
I'm not seeing much discussion of what would have been a dominant explanation two decades ago: the military industrial complex.
There are companies, deep state actors, and military generals that are more than happy to start a hot war with Iran anyone even if the strategic consequences for the US are negative.
They want to test their latest toys and inventions. And while Ukraine gave them opportunities to test close range weapons (close by modern standards). Iran lets them test long range attacks and defense.
Of course this explanation for getting into the war sounds even worse than "we are Israel's bitch". Trump is usually willing to get up there on the podium and try to sell his policies, even if they are unpopular. I think most politicians would try to justify what is happening even if they didn't have control, because criticizing what is happening proves you don't have control of it. Trump is possibly just throwing a subordinate at this unpleasant job rather than doing it himself.
For the military industrial complex people that could drag the US into this war, making the civilian arm of the government that they don't get along with look bad is just a double win.
cjet79
14d ago
I think there are generally two types of bullying.
The psychopath / thug. They pick on weak targets and torment them for laughs, or because their social in-group has made cruelty into a status boosting activity.
And social jockeying. Where people are in a competitive social environment, and one way to get on top is to put your rivals down beneath you.
I think the useful type of bullying is the social jockeying. Since the bully is often amplifying and signal boosting the social mistakes of the bullied person.
Hollywood loves to portray the psychopath style bullies, and such bullies are the least sympathetic figures, so they just attach whatever characteristics that they want to denigrate to the bully. I have asked around before and not everyone had the psychopath/thug at their school, but enough did that I don't think it's just a fake invention of Hollywood.
cjet79
17d ago
Cooking
Looking for some delicious meals to make for family. But upgrading easy meals seems to have more bang for the buck than making hard meals. For example: fish tacos.
Caesar salad kit from the grocery store. Frozen fish sticks. Tortillas. Combine them and they make acceptable fish tacos. My girls won't eat those fish tacos, but they will eat fish sticks with their chosen sauce, and Caesar salad.
Anyone have any similar food hacks?
cjet79
17d ago
Depends on how identifiable you are. Most likely scenario is that your are identifiable and nothing can allow you to take the money and run.
In the unlikely case that you are unidentifiable you take some gold and run. If you get caught quickly you plead that you were threatened to take the gold to a second location. If you do not get caught immediately, take the gold, learn some gold smithing online, craft some crappy gold jewelry and pawn it off over time.
Better money making scenario is that you sue the bank for damages for your hostage situation. They will maybe settle with you for more than you could steal.
cjet79
18d ago
I've heard "cocktail" colloquially mean 'a heavy alcoholic drink that you sip'. But I mostly agree with your definition. I'd just say I'm having a drink if it's basically straight liquor.
What's interesting to me is your colloquial definition of alcoholic. I'm unsure how much of an alcoholic someone is if they only have one drink a night and just leave it at that. I'd be putting myself on the back of I just stuck to one drink every night.
Me, both my parents, and quite a few of my friends would all be "alcoholics" to you I think.
To me the measure of an alcoholic is how quickly drinking alcohol destroys their life. For some people that is just a single night, they are an alcoholic. For most people it's over thirty to fifty years due to cumulative health and liver damage, I don't think those people are alcoholics. I think the line is somewhere around 5 years.
I don't think that is true at all. Some of the most likely crossover diseases are from livestock. And tracking livestock diseases would not fall under the umbrella of GoF research.
Assessing a livestock disease seems as safe as having livestock in the first place, so there is no added risk.
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