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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26384 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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Saw this linked elsewhere, and do we now have a better notion of what was going on inside OpenAI with the attempted ousting of Sam Altman? With Altman re-instated, and a new, Altman-friendly board in place, is this the kind of revision of the mission statement that was worrying the previous board?

I continue to believe the real danger from AI is not the AI itself, but the humans that use it, and "We can make zillions from fat, juicy, military contracts/Whoops, how we were to know that would happen?" seems like one of the failure modes that should concern the AI doomer set.

I don't see it as providing any new information: this was almost so certain as to be predetermined. The MIC is a lucrative and stable system to be integrated into, and the dynamics of capitalism were going to inevitably drive OAI into its arms. Little different from Google pulling out of China for being a totalitarian regime to, five years later, begging Daddy Xi to please let them make money in China.

Safetyists can draw some minimal level of comfort from the fact that OAI priorities will marginally shift from improving capabilities towards AGI to building tools that the MIC desires. More profits, less fundamental/deep research. (And I think that's genuinely good for safetyists: a smarter drone swarm is not going to destroy humanity.)

a smarter drone swarm is not going to destroy humanity

Not if you think the danger lies in the super-intelligent AI getting control of that smarter drone swarm to achieve its end. I don't believe in the super-intelligent AI, I do believe in ordinary dumb humans getting shiner, more destructive toys, and somebody presses the wrong button or is insufficiently clear about what or who the target should be, and then "oops" but it's too late then. 'How were we supposed to know that setting up autonomous killbots might come back to bite us in the ass? Sorry, widow of Mr. President, we never intended it to be our motorcade that got zapped, it was supposed to be the other guys over the border of the country our guy was visiting at the time'.

The future of Open Ai is much like Wolfram Alpha--something overhyped to change the world and initially really cool and useful, but now crap due to to extreme metering of computational power and paywalls. Expect the same here. The need to turn a profit from this will limit the power.

You know, I totally forgot about Wolfram Alpha. I remember it was really cool back several years when I last played around with it, but after I got through the math classes I had it help me with, it just flew out of my mind and was forgotten.

Disagree, GPT may be thoroughly spayed in the political sense but (as of now) this is still not enough to stop a slightly dedicated shitposter attacker, and while it has a long way to go in terms of cognition, what we have is already enough for many use cases. Cooding with it in particular is amazingly convenient, developers I know still have to wrangle it and correct its output but it is very tangibly helpful, and for me as a not-dev, being able to write simple scripts for work in 5-10 minutes of prompting instead of 1-2 hours of googling (especially if I'm a noob at the relevant language) is an absolute blessing. I imagine assorted wordcels feel the same way.

Don't think this is at all true. A lot of usecases are porn, and quite a few involve violence or 'being offensive' or racism, but the vast majority of llm usecases work almost as well as they would without censorship/safety training.

While I'm impressed by the progress that has OpenAi had made, and admit that I underestimated thier methodology, I remain bearish on the underlying technology or reasons I've already gone into at length.

My hope is perhaps the technology is overhyped. Given the apparent change in just a few months about six months ago, I was expecting even bigger changes by now. Here’s hoping there is some kind of difficult technical issue.

I think there's more a staircase of jagged growth than a straight line up at the leading edge. You have leaps from GPT-2 to GPT-3 to GPT-3.5 to GPT-4. The gap between them can be years. GPT-3 was a cool toy but two years later GPT-3.5 changed the world. Even though there's been no qualitative change from GPT-4 last year, they've multiplied the context limit and added visual/internet browsing capabilities.

Why jagged? I reckon it takes time to process their gains understanding-wise, adopt new software improvements, get more training materials and buy new hardware. There's other stuff they do like censoring or optimizing . They're thinking 'do I really want to spend 100 million now and get a better version of GPT-4 or wait a bit longer for when my resources go further, once we've figured out X, Y and Z'. Training the models costs a lot of money and ties down a lot of compute. You wouldn't want to constantly be in training and making small improvments, missing out on making big improvements.

Just because nothing happened for the last few months, it doesn't mean that progress has stopped.

Maybe (though it’s really been more than a few months). We shall see. Perhaps it is merely copium.

The only interesting thing about the accelerationist vs safetyist wars is that for some reason the safetyists actually thought they were still going to matter once big money and the military-industrial complex decided what should be. EA hangers-on writing papers for their pet think tanks are just lucky they're unserious enough people to be sidelined through board wrangling and don't need to be thrown off any bridges.

The ‘safetyist’ guys are in many cases the very same engineers who demanded Altman’s reinstatement so they could get their Microsoft (or other) payout when it comes.

In truth, most people will abandon most principles when presented with a good chance of getting rich. And you can always justify it by telling yourself someone else was going to do it anyway, and at least this way you get paid.

I've definitely believed all along that once the money fountain got within their sights, all the "ha ha ha of course nothing will change/it changes" was the next step.

We solemnly swear we won't ever do anything even the teensiest bit naughty (unless it makes us a LOT of money).

I suppose it was just a bit eye-opening exactly how powerless the people who thought they were in charge really were, but yeah. AI danger is people, and people danger is greed, and "we can make tons of money off government contracts, don't let's be too fussy about which governments even" is always going to beat "AI can be an existential risk and we must be vewwy vewwy quiet when hunting wabbits", no matter how idealistic and "but look at all our high-quality technical papers full of the most jargoniest jargon!" you can pull out.

This is why I always thought the safety-first position— the people with power/money care more about increasing their wealth than in preserving humanity. And AI, if it actually works as promised, is a big, flashing “I win” button right in front of them. The only thing that might cause someone to consider blowing up an AI bank is if it belongs to a rival. The government wants it because it’s important to maintaining geopolitical status. The rich want it because the massive efficiency gains will put money in their pockets.

They've long been called useful idiots whose ideas around safety only really serve to establish and maintain control and do nothing to prevent evil uses.

I think this move vindicated that analysis.

'Evil uses'.

At the moment, LLMs couldn't plot their way out of a paper bag and fail at basic logic.

If we're talking 'evil' using LLMs to combat 'extremism' and 'misinformation' is both widely not seen as 'evil' and the most immediate use. They'll also be used to snoop through people's emails and highlight things cops could use.

Was any of that a use case OpenAI mission statement prohibited?

Image recognition seems good enough now though that killer drones that don't need an uplink and guidance to their own targets so they're immune to jamming are going to be fielded fairly soon. (<5 years).

But is OpenAI best at that?

I deliberately remained axiologically agnostic because what you think the machine should be restricted to do or not to isn't relevant to the fact that putting it behind a locked door and giving the key to the State and Corporations is never ever going to work.

They would have had a better chance putting it all in the hands of a single man. Organizations are structurally unable to stay mission focused. And only naive academics could believe otherwise to this day.

But is OpenAI best at that?

AFAIK they're not even in the conversation.

OpenAI bragging about its safety statement and mission statement which were going to make it the most ethicallest ever research company, don't be worried but just trust us guys. And now this.

I hate being proved correct about being cynical, I would have loved to be pleasantly surprised by "Huh, they actually do mean all the bumpf about safety and they won't cave in to the money fountain", but this is a fallen world after all.

Texas Border Flareup... Again

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23A607/295564/20240112012220571_23a607%20DHS%20v%20TX%20supplement.pdf

Border Patrol’s normal access to the border through entry points in the federal border barrier is likewise blocked by the Texas National Guard installing its own gates and placing armed personnel in those locations to control entry. See id. at 4a. And the Texas National Guard has likewise blocked Border Patrol from using an access road through the pre- existing state border barrier by stationing a military Humvee there.

Texas has seized a public park in Eagle Pass to take control of a 2.5 mile stretch of the border(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-blocks-federal-border-agents-processing-migrants-eagle-pass-shelby-park/). This is a bigger deal than it seems; the only boat launch and main surveillance point for miles is located there, effectively preventing border patrol from operating over a relatively wider frontage.

Context

The State of Texas has long been adding concertina wire to the border to prevent crossings, and has been accusing the federal government of cutting it to allow migrants to cross. Recently Texas won an injunction in court blocking the federal government from doing this, and the federal government has of course appealed, but the injunction includes an exception for if cutting the wire is necessary to assist migrants experiencing a medical emergency.

So Texas seized the main surveillance point and boat launch(in this sector) for the border patrol to prevent them seeing migrants experiencing a medical emergency. For the record, I don't trust the federal government with this "medical emergency" exception either, but this is flatly illegal in, well, pretty much every way you approach it.

https://news4sanantonio.com/news/trouble-shooters/texas-blocks-border-patrol-from-entering-key-area-for-illegal-crossings

Of course the border patrol union is siding with Abbott, which would make it awkward for fedgov if they cared. Although Abbott's justification has nothing to do with the border patrol union's:

Texas has the legal authority to control ingress and egress into any geographic location in the state of Texas, and that authority is being asserted with regard to that park in Eagle Pass

And anecdotally his fundraising emails are talking a lot more about state sovereignty than normal. It led to a twitter breakdown by Gina Hinojosa(head of the Texas democrats) accusing him of being a secessionist, and the admittedly low chance of Gina Hinojosa of all people meming Texas independence into the political mainstream through the power of negative partisanship is kind of hilarious.

But back to the topic at hand; it's unclear what Abbott's actual game is; he's an accomplished constitutional lawyer(literally; that's how he became governor) and knows he's going to lose at court. He's also never been the reckless type and so it's unlikely he did this without thinking it through. Angling for a Trump cabinet seat, maybe? It also surprises me that he did this now; primaries are coming up in March, and Abbott endorsed a relatively wide array of candidates to try to shift the house in a more partisan republican direction; taking a political risk like this one is unlike him.

But back to the topic at hand; it's unclear what Abbott's actual game is; he's an accomplished constitutional lawyer(literally; that's how he became governor) and knows he's going to lose at court. He's also never been the reckless type and so it's unlikely he did this without thinking it through. Angling for a Trump cabinet seat, maybe? It also surprises me that he did this now; primaries are coming up in March, and Abbott endorsed a relatively wide array of candidates to try to shift the house in a more partisan republican direction; taking a political risk like this one is unlike him.

His problem was that he had to be seen as doing something. His credibility was low with the right.

He's been off side with the base regarding some recent legal issues. Alex Jones was getting railroaded by a far left judge in Austin and Abbott didn't even make a token comment about due process. A bunch of Bushies were upset about Ken Paxton beating George P Bush and teamed up with the Dems to impeach him in a process that abused the rules. After Paxton won Abbott sent out a press release congratulating him on winning a fair trail instead of admitting the problems with the process.

So Abbott needs to shore up his credibility with the right.

Picking a fight over the border is attractive for a number of reasons.

  • Biden's border policies are extremely unpopular, to the point that his administration wants to avoid delineating them. Forcing Garland to take them to court likely means forcing the Biden admin
  • Under Trump the legal left took the position that States had a number of rights to defy federal immigration law and enforcement. This puts them in a position where they need to oppose their own legal briefs from five years ago.
  • Any legal fight will take years and keep illegal immigration in the news for that time. If Biden tries to do something extreme it more of an opportunity for Abbott.

I'd agree that it's political. The political situation is either A) You know the Feds will stop you, so you be a good boy and do nothing. Your meek compliance gets you zero enthusiasm from the right, and whispers start that you're an open-borders sympathizer, or B) You do something like this, stick to it as long as possible, make the Feds physically stop you. It'll help for a little while with the actual situation, and being seen to try to do something is good for his political support. Forcing the Feds to actually physically stop it and showing video of them doing that will help his political situation, making the case that he's on their side and is a fighter, and it's the Feds' fault that it isn't working.

Except Abbott is almost assured to get slapped down very fast. He’s literally a top constitutional lawyer; he knows he’s going to lose at court and his options will be ‘back down’(much more likely) and look weak or ‘nullify federal law directly’ which he doesn’t have enough troops to do.

If you start from the position that this is a probing action, it doesn't really matter if it gets slapped down.

How long will it take to have a case like this run through the system? Who’s bringing the lawsuits? The optics are very much in Abbot’s favor here. He is going to be sued by the federal government for checks notes protecting the border when the federal government decided not to. And keep in mind that Abbot’s position is extremely popular among conservatives.

The courts tend to hold the right to the intersection of leftist and rightist strictures, whereas they hold the left to no standard at all. In this case the courts will rule Abbott is wrong on the grounds of Federal authority overriding his.

It will also take months or years for something like this to get to the courts. Courts tend to work slowly, and it can always be appealed to a higher court until ScOTUS. Then the feds simply have an order telling Abbot to stop, but if he doesn’t he’s had years to dig into positions that allow him to control the situation. And that’s assuming that the feds will risk the optics of trying to forcefully remove the TNG, which almost certainly will get violent.

No, the courts can move fast with preliminary injunctions when they want. And they want far more often when it benefits the left than the right.

Texas is in the fifth circuit, which I believe is more right-leaning?

It doesn’t matter when it’s this blatant.

Yeah, you're probably right.

I guess I mostly just meant that the one-sidedness probably applies less there.

It doesn't matter that much. BOTH left- and right-leaning courts at the appeals and higher level tend to favor the left over the right, though the left more so than the right.

The only question the right needs to be asking is this:

What will it take (institutionally, legally, even diplomatically) to effect mass deportation of 10m + illegals? They need to be rounded up, processed and removed without successful injunction or legal challenges for this to occur. This is the only viable deterrent and the only viable way to ‘close’ the border. If you don’t deport, everything else is worthless. Large transit camps, mandatory nationwide enhanced e-verify with prison sentences for employer noncompliance (all the way up and down the chain of command), roadblocks in all major cities to root out illegal migrants with immediate deportation if unable to prove citizenship and - most importantly of all - an end to birthright citizenship to kill the incentive.

Trump spent a long time saying it should happen. But even he didn’t dare even propose the mechanism by which it would happen, and if there’s any reason (above all else) for pessimism on this issue, it’s that.

I doubt you could implement this in a way that has any non-zero chance of a false positive.

Liberal democracies will accept occasionally jailing the innocent, but they will not accept deporting a citizen.

According to the Government Accountability Office ICE has been accidentally doing this for years already: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-487

Sure; but that’s under decades old law.

A new initiative would necessarily attract blame for that.

US police kill citizens semi-randomly all the time, yet the US still has police. In practice people are fine with false positives and trade-offs. There are those who died of COVID vaccine injuries, yet that didn't stop the rollout.

US police kill citizens semi-randomly all the time

No they don’t, unjustified homicides by police are extremely rare.

I don't know how often American police shoot an unarmed person who wasn't resisting arrest or anything like that - plausibly, an event meeting that description could happen once a week or once a month. In a nation of 330 million people, that's completely meaningless, of course. But if something happens once a week, it's true in the colloquial sense that it happens "all the time".

I was thinking of Justine Diamond, or police breaking into this weirdo's car and shooting him: https://www.cpr.org/2022/09/13/clear-creek-county-deputies-shooting/

They also get the wrong house from time to time in these no-knock raids as mentioned below. I don't know how one defines 'all the time' vs 'extremely rare' in these national-level statistics but it's definitely a 'non-zero chance' and either way supports my broader point.

My head hurts after reading that link. And I frankly almost want to side with the cops, that dude sounds incredibly irritating, and the best solution seems to be to walk away and ignore him, but they're not allowed to do that.

If cops have discretion to shoot him dead, surely they have the discretion to walk away.

“Can you ask Clear Creek what their plan is? If there is no crime and he’s not suicidal or homicidal or a great danger, then there’s no reason to contact him,” a CSP sergeant says over the radio. “Is there a medical issue we’re not aware of?”

“No,” a patrol trooper responded back.

But the increasing number of officers on the scene remained there, engaged for almost an hour and 20 minutes, attempting to get Glass to come out of the car. At one point, a deputy climbed on to the hood of the car and shined a flashlight into his eyes and remained there, eventually drawing his gun and pointing down into the car at Glass.

Extremely rare but SWAT teams do occasionally raid the wrong house.

As the saying goes, the optimal amount of a bad outcome is not zero.

So if you were in Abbot's position what would you do in response to the illegal migration crisis promoted by the Biden regime?

And anecdotally his fundraising emails are talking a lot more about state sovereignty than normal. It led to a twitter breakdown by Gina Hinojosa(head of the Texas democrats) accusing him of being a secessionist, and the admittedly low chance of Gina Hinojosa of all people meming Texas independence into the political mainstream through the power of negative partisanship is kind of hilarious.

If the federal goverment supports illegal migration then that legitimizes greater authority for the states. Unlike seccession, this is compatible with federalism provided the federal goverment are run by people who actually oppose mass illegal migration, as is their duty to do so. If not, there is still not seccession and if anything, Texas would be making the rest of their country a favor. But there is an evolution into greater exercise of power of the states and less sovereignty of the Federal goverment. Or it could be about the dominant ideology of those in control of it. If their agenda is like the current Biden administration, the states actually behaving more like the primary goverment would be the natural, reasonable evolution. A case of the mandate of heaven passing to those willing to behave in accordance to their duty towards their people. Of course this implies a duty to impeach Biden, and his officials who are following the criminal conduct in favor of mass illegal migration.

The way the law is seen should evolve in response to the circumstances. If the federal goverment is run by extremists who are willing to trample over rights and impose their way then (even more than the past) more state sovereignty should be something that conservatives support. Then this ideological evolution should affect both trying to exercise power in terms of executives and in terms of conservatives in the supreme court.

I’d like to see you elaborate on Biden’s “promotion” of the crisis. I tend to agree with @hydroacetylene that the economic incentives are going to dominate; are the Feds not enforcing that? They’re still detaining and deporting significant numbers.

His administration has been using lawfare to stop any attempt by states to stop illegal immigration. (This suit, against the buoys, against the new Texas immigration law, etc.)

There were less than 8 million Hispanics in 1966 and only 4% of the population

Wow, Biden really got started early, huh?

So if you were in Abbot's position what would you do in response to the illegal migration crisis promoted by the Biden regime?

Expand e-verify and crack down on non-citizen employment(most of these people are economic migrants who only come for higher wages), continue doing what he's already doing at the border, invoke the interstate compact with Mexican states again to break up caravans before they arrive at the border. Crack down on sanctuary cities(of which Texas has plenty).

So if you were in Abbot's position what would you do in response to the illegal migration crisis promoted by the Biden regime?

Keep going with the buses? That seems to have worked in New York City, which is now less "send me your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" and more "stick 'em in tent cities before we can boot them out" (I don't see AOC turning up to cry in front of photographers before any NYC migrant centres, unlike her little jaunt to Tornillo).

"The federal government insists we accommodate your entry? We're complying, we're accommodating you every step of the way to move deeper and deeper into this country you wish to live free and unafraid in, up to the big urban centres which are crying out for your contribution to vibrancy, economic development, and the rich tapestry of all human endeavours!"

It’s not a good solution. These people’s children will still be US citizens from birth, even if they stay in New York and California they will still vote and their vote will count in the house and for the presidency. They will still take welfare and other resources from contributing taxpayers. The disproportionately high amounts of crime they and their descendants commit will still affect you and your own family. Deporting them to New York achieves nothing.

It’s not a good solution. These people’s children will still be US citizens from birth, even if they stay in New York and California they will still vote and their vote will count in the house and for the presidency.

So what? Assuming they vote Democrat (and you know what they say about assumptions) They'll be voting in New York and California isn't going to change the electoral calculus all that much.

ETA:

Deporting them to New York achieves nothing.

This is obviously incorrect on multiple fronts. Aside from assisting those who are seeking sanctuary being the morally correct course of action from a good Christian perspective, it helps Abbott politally by being seen to take his his constituents concerns seriously and it helps the Democrats by giving them what they want.

Deporting them to New York achieves nothing.

Deporting them to New York means the average New Yorker who didn't give a damn when it was a bunch of rednecks down West and South of them dealing with this crap now sees it on their doorstep, and goes to put pressure on their congresscritter about it. Like I said, AOC is very conspicuously not crying in front of the migrant tent city in Brooklyn, whereas she had no problem flying down to Texas to do a photo-op about it. And Mayor Adams is having no problems doing Bad Evil Wicked Things like evicting poor homeless refugees once their time in official shelters is up.

Congresscritters then put pressure on government, which sees it can start cracking down at least some without being pilloried for it, as congresscritters will report back to their constituents that they are indeed Doing Something.

But back to the topic at hand; it's unclear what Abbott's actual game is; he's an accomplished constitutional lawyer(literally; that's how he became governor) and knows he's going to lose at court. He's also never been the reckless type and so it's unlikely he did this without thinking it through. Angling for a Trump cabinet seat, maybe? It also surprises me that he did this now; primaries are coming up in March, and Abbott endorsed a relatively wide array of candidates to try to shift the house in a more partisan republican direction; taking a political risk like this one is unlike him.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is the Leviathan-shaped hole.

Abbott strikes me as a savvy guy, and I think he might be trying to position himself as a Ceaser to Trump's Gracchus. I think that he thinks that the Plebs (IE the general public) and the Legions (IE the rank-and-file Cops, National Guard, Border Patrol, etc...) might side with him rather than the Senate, and he's now testing the waters with what is essentially a probing action. The CBP Union taking his side reinforces this impression.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is the Leviathan-shaped hole.

this is gibberish what does this even mean?

It's a reference to the book Leviathan by philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes claimed that people are inherently selfish and capable of violence. The natural state of man is a "war of all against all," or an anarchic realm of banditry and feuds. Enlightened self-interest leads to the formation of governments, but when those governments act in ways that make people think they would be better of with anarchy, it weakens the power of the state and encourages civil war and criminality.

Hlynka believes (as I understand it) that this is more or less the most important text of political philosophy in Western civilization and that it is underappreciated in the modern world. This is the best source I can find of him explaining his views on the matter.

I have, and I continue to maintain that "the Left" and "the Right" are best understood as a religious schism within the Enlightenment with disciples of Rousseau on one side and the disciples of Hobbes on the other. Both accepted Locke's theory of the social contract (or at least the broad strokes thereof) but each had vastly different ideas about the relationship of the individual to said contract. The American Revolution skewed one way, the French the other.

@HlynkaCG if I've misrepresented your opinions.

No, you pretty much covered it.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it "the most important text of political philosophy in Western civilization" but I would easily place it in the top 10, and I do believe that the liberal/post-modernist domination of academia has resulted in it being severely underappreciated and often misunderstood in [current year].

Rousseau died long after Hobbes died lmao and I always have hated his posts and even with your explanation I still don't understand what he's saying. If Hobbes was alive and writing today he'd probably call him a leftist from what I've seen from him. One time he told me slavery in the South was inspired by Rousseau and that Southern planters and slave owners were leftists. Just a bizarre view of the world.

The opposition with Rousseau is in the conception of the state of nature which is fundamental to the liberal ideological grounding of all post 1789 politics.

Rousseau believes that humans are naturally good and that people must give away their natural rights in exchange for civil rights to a government that will promote the General Will: a return to the state of nature through the abolition of all social noms, as they are inherently evil.

Hobbes believes that humans are naturally evil and that people must lease their natural rights to a legitimate sovereign so that he may defend them and prevent the War of All Against All. The goal of good government is to avoid tyranny, which is the violation of natural law by anyone because it returns it's victims to the natural state and makes chaos and rebellion legitimate.

These two tendencies are well represented in the French revolution and hereafter in every Liberal project.

Hynkla doesn't have weird views at all, he's merely got the views held by most people who have been in direct contact with violence, your cops, soldiers, etc. People who know that society is rife with violent deviants who would victimize everyone if not for the organized monopoly on force. And he's constantly advocating for the maintenance of order as the core of right wing politics.

I happen to disagree as a perennial traditionalist and reject the idea of a state of nature altogether at this point, but no it's not a weird position. And it makes perfect sense here: there is chaos and lawlessness at the border and anyone who restores order is legitimate regardless of means because legitimacy requires the enforcement of order first.

I'd say that's a reasonably accurate summary of my position.

Unfortunately, Hobbes's advice to the governed is to bow down and kiss the feet of the sovereign, obey without complaint almost no matter how horrible they are, because whatever they are is better than being in that state of nature, the war of all against all. Unless, that is, you think you can defeat the current sovereign and do better.

Hynkla doesn't have weird views at all, he's merely got the views held by most people who have been in direct contact with violence, your cops, soldiers, etc. People who know that society is rife with violent deviants who would victimize everyone if not for the organized monopoly on force.

It's certainly a convenient philosophy for those who embody the whip hand; it justifies anything they might do.

You're leaving out the big hole that famously makes Leviathan the "Rebel's catechism".

The sovereign must be obeyed absolutely insofar as he is not a tyrant. Is he to declare war onto you you have free reign to blow him and all his agents up.

Hobbes does not believe in limited government, but he does believe in natural law as a limiting principle of all possible action. God himself damns tyrants.

It is not just untrue to say that Hobbes justifies all sovereign action. It is actually the opposite of what he says and he got exiled and censored out of it so I'd like you to take that back.

That said yes, if you can't do better you shouldn't destroy all of society out of spite. I don't think that's an unreasonable moral standard. I oppose communism on those very grounds after all.

You're leaving out the big hole that famously makes Leviathan the "Rebel's catechism".

I mentioned it. "Unless, that is, you think you can defeat the current sovereign and do better."

God himself damns tyrants.

He may, but His damnation does those under the tyrant no good.

That said yes, if you can't do better you shouldn't destroy all of society out of spite.

Or do anything but obey. For an American, that means that if you're not ready, able, and willing to take on the entire United States Government and personally replace it with something better of your own devising, suck it up buttercup.

"Seeing that from the virtue of the Covenant whereby each Subject is tied to the other to perform absolute and universal obedience to the City, that is to say, to the Sovereign power, whether that be one man or Council, there is an obligation derived to observe each one of the civil Laws, so that that Covenant contains in it self all the Laws at once; it is manifest that the subject who shall renounce the general Covenant of obedience, doth at once renounce all the Lawes. Which trespass is so much worse than any other one sin, by how much to sin always, is worse than to sin once. And this is that sin which is called TREASON; and it is a word or deed whereby the Citizen, or Subject, declares that he will no longer obey that man or Court to whom the supreme power of the City is entrusted."

It is actually the opposite of what he says and he got exiled and censored out of it so I'd like you to take that back.

He spent time in exile because he supported the wrong sovereign.

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Abbott gives me the same general impression, but doing this over the summer makes it politically much easier to eke out a victory if things don’t go his way. He has a 10,000 man army camped on the border but that won’t save his rear, politically(although it might get him out of an arrest) and losing at the Supreme Court and then calling the bluff is, well, a pretty big gamble to pull from someone who’s never been a craps player before- he prefers to count cards at blackjack- and also only has like 30,000 reliable troops even if you count operation lone star entirely separate from the Texas military department(which it assuredly is not).

How do you figure?

Greg Abbott doesn't take a shit without a detailed plan, and not just because of the wheelchair, this isn't a Trump stunt- but he's still literally using force of arms to prevent federal officials from carrying out a core federal function, with no evidence that any of the troops refused orders to carry it out. But given that he has somewhat less than 30,000 troops under his command the plan is almost certainly not "start a civil war".

If your user-name and flair are any indication I get the impression that you might not grasp the difference between de'jure and de'facto.

On a very tangential note, I saw the Twitterati point and laugh at that upcoming movie about an American Civil War that somehow has California and Texas on the same side. Ignore the fact that that happened in my novel, but it was more that they both happened to oppose the Federal Government (well, you'd resent them a bit if they nuked every data center around to contain an AGI getting uppity, and Texas is surprisingly popular for those, not to mention glassing SF).

As such, if these secessionary sentiments ever become something more than posturing, at least I can get points for prescience.

Only people who have never seriously considered the idea could mock the possibility of an alliance between the two states with the strongest national identities against USG in a CW scenario.

They do so because it doesn't neatly follow from their political intuitions. And ignore that in an open conflict ideological loyalty is even more tenuous than normal.

Any look at Syria shows alliances of circumstance are routine. And any look at the middle east more broadly should complete this understanding with the practical reality that ideology is one of the last predictors of political loyalties if you stand to lose something more significant than your pride.

Texas and California can be friends like the IRA and the PLO.

Agreed, I recently tried to understand the current Tigray War in Ethiopia and it is such a clusterfuck that some factions are allied to each other but at the same time they are also allied to enemies of their allies which makes them enemies in ways that can easily make your eyes water. All in the midst of ethnic, religious, tribal, and of course personal allegiances shifting constantly. Not to even talk about regional and international spillover.

Both the IRA and PLO were left-wing militias.

Or consider Lebanon, where every ethnic/religious militia has at one time or another aligned both with and against every other militia.

Well, they're perfectionists in Lebanon. The leader of the HRC doesn't walk around with an internal monolog that asks "boy, I've never fought a battle with the NRA, let's check that off the list." Maybe he should. I hear the ACLU used to think that way, and possibly still does.

Makes sense for a genuine civil liberties organization, because every political faction wants to violate someone's civil rights some of the time and so the civil rights will do well to practice its independence by calling everyone out on their misbehaviour. So I would expect FIRE to do it in the modern age more than the ACLU.

When it comes to identity, I think it is Texas big gap then runner up. Not sure if that runner up is California or Florida.

Alaska for the runner-up, surely.

Also Hawaii, there is a pretty substantial Hawaiian Nationalist movement.

Ethnic Hawaiians? Or who?

Yeah. I get the impression it's sort of a "dog chasing car" movement--most of their support would evaporate were it a real possibility.

I think Alaska might have as strong an identity as Texas. The real weirdness in that civil war movie map is that Oklahoma isn't part of Texas.

East coast guy who knew — tangentially — one person from Alaska so defer to your knowledge

Indeed, that was the logic I was using. After the fictional Civil War, they remained two independent states (well, they don't have a contiguous land border), so I consider "allies of convenience" an apt label.

Adversity makes for strange bed fellows, especially when there's someone more powerful who you both hate.

Since the movie hasn't actually come out, God knows what the geopolitics there are, though I'm inclined to think that they picked those two particular states because of how absurd they think an alliance would be, explicitly presenting them as a unified entity, so as to avoid accusations of inflaming tensions (not that it did).

I'll admit I haven't seriously considered the idea, but I can't come up with something the USG can do that will alienate both CA and TX and 17 more states, but not the rest of the states.

It looks from that map like the federal government tried to take unilateral control of water allocation and decided to prioritize big cities in deserts(Pheonix, Santa Fe, Las Vegas), driving a wedge between Texas/California on the one hand and the states in between on the other and alienating the south(which is extremely rainy) with some kind of infrastructure project to transport water northwards. The bigger question is how the northwest stuck together when it jumped; it doesn't make any sense how the red and blue states there weren't at each others' throats instantly.

Oh, my goodness, you have got to read Cadillac Desert, a book about water that is one of my all-time classics. I wish I were more motivated to do good, solid, effort posts, because a review of that book could really work...

Large unilateral extension of federal domain? Later states have a lot more of it than early ones.

Texas has very little federal land. California has a lot, but so do the neighboring loyalists.

You're not wrong and yet I feel like that if shit were to hit the fan tomorrow it would be the coastal cities vs the Mormons, the Episcopalians, and the Texans.

vs the Mormons, the Episcopalians, and the Texans.

Do you mean something else?

Yah I was thinking of the Presbyterians, I always get those two flipped in my head for some reason.

Still a wealthy nursing home de jure committed to political liberalism, unless you mean the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, who are one of the smaller confessional protestant groups IIRC. They're loud on the internet but I don't think any more common than IRL tradcaths.

Do you mean the confessional Lutherans, who are indeed numerous and concentrated enough to be potentially relevant? Or are you generally referring to conservative protestants- who are extremely relevant politically right now, but the vast majority of whom are evangelical(that is, not Presbyterian- more likely to be Baptist or Pentecostal)?

Episcopalians? The denomination that couldn't turn liberal fast enough and thus provoked some vicious lawsuits over parishes trying to leave? First women clergy, first trans likewise, first gay/lesbian bishops, first female primate, first first first - of course, they've never been dominant numerically and they've been leaking numbers like a sieve, but they boast of having the richest parish in the nation, of being the National Cathedral (even though you guys don't have a state church) and, under the First Female Ever, a rather desperate claim to being a mini-communion of their own - they're so international, you see, with "108 dioceses and three mission areas in 22 countries or territories" which totally makes them the equivalent of the Anglicans or the Romans!

Since the end of the tenure of the First Female Ever and her replacement by a cis, straight, male (though he is African-American), they've quietened down a lot on all that, but still - the Episcopalians versus the coastal cities? Noo Yawk is a coastal city, is it not, and that's where they're headquartered and where all their historical associations are, and you think they'd throw that over to row in with a buncha flyover rednecks?

Blaim my general ignorance of protestant denominations, I'm always getting the Congregationalists, the Episcopalians, and the Presbyterians, flipped around in my head.

Don't worry, it's very confusing for everybody. But it did make us sit up and open our eyes when you put in the Piskies as lining up with Texas. California, I could see, if California was squaring up to the federal government over something; as good liberal footsoldiers TEC would have statements of support and flags and protests and blessings for the rebels before you could blink.

All three of those are liberal Protestant groups with membership that couldn’t get older if they tried.

The largest segment of conservative Protestantism are evangelicals(mostly Baptist with a large pentecostal minority), with confessional Lutherans and continuing anglicans vying for a very distant second and groups like churches of Christ and orthodox Presbyterians being practically tiny. The supermajority of socially conservative Christians and Christian adjacent believers in the US are evangelical, catholic, or restorationist(mostly mormon). Non-evangelical conservative Protestantism and Orthodoxy(to the point where sociological surveys usually don’t bother distinguishing mass attending orthodox from Catholics) are rounding errors nationally although some of them are concentrated enough to be regionally important.

sociological surveys usually don’t bother distinguishing mass attending orthodox from Catholics

Well, I wouldn't either, if the orthodox in question are attending the sacrifice of the mass and not the divine liturgy! (this is tongue in cheek)

Maybe it's just my local area, but conservative Presbyterians seem bigger than Lutherans or the continuing Anglicans. Though I do get the sense they're much older than even the Lutherans or Anglicans, who seem to have at least a few younger members and families.

I think Presbyterians just have a hard time distinguishing themselves from the Reformed Baptists, especially given their generally low/moderate sacramental theology. My sense is that conservative Christians who get themselves interested in some Calvin just stay where they are and see their Calvinism as a theological spin on their existing denominational affiliation (heck, around here even the continuing Anglicans are calvinists, much to my chagrin). I actually think Calvinism is kind of the evangelical Protestant version of being a trad -- male, intellectual, a little stuck up. And I say this as someone who was really attracted to Calvinism before I realized I had to find a place where the eucharistic theology was unapologetically realist and baptism was regeneration ipso facto -- so you can infer from that what you will about me.

Why Episcopalians?

The behavior of the federal government here is bizarre.

In the US, how many people are open-borders advocates? 5% 10%? And yet, the people who pull the strings in the federal government seem to be okay with defacto open borders. Let's be honest. Most of the people who are processed, shipped to another state, and given a court date years in the future will be here for good.

There appear to be two paths to US citizenship. A legal route, which is nearly impossible for most people, and an illegal route which gets easier and easier.

Recently a school in Brooklyn was shut down (for one day) to house illegal migrants. Source, with bonus inaccurate fact check:

https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-house-migrants-school-shut-down-673190116310

New York and other cities are howling about migrants being bussed into their communities, but so far seem reluctant to change their sanctuary city policies. Why? Just to stick it to Trump? To me it seems only fair that migrants be housed in the communities that explicitly claim to want them.

This has to be the number issue for every Republican candidate in 2024. It seems that the European migrant problems have made it to America. The situation seems to be getting out of control.

There appear to be two paths to US citizenship. A legal route, which is nearly impossible for most people, and an illegal route which gets easier and easier.

I am given to understand the situation is more an abuse of the asylum system. Somebody comes in, gets caught, and requests asylum, with a halfway-plausible story. It gets provisionally accepted, but the backlog for formal evaluation is like a decade long, so they get to stay in the US until that happens. Even if the formal hearing results in them getting booted out immediately, they still had a decade in the country, and can do it all again the next day.

And in turn, it is promoted by pro-immigration NGOs that coach every immigrant to plead the threshold claim necessary to get an asylum decision.

A similar thing would happen in the criminal justice system if every offender demanded a trial by jury. They don't, because sentences are high enough that they'll take a plea, but there is no such incentive in immigration courts.

[ Amusingly enough, a trial by jury is unquestionably a defendant's right under the BOR and goes back centuries, but the asylum debacle was created whole cloth by Congress in the last 70 years. ]

In the US, how many people are open-borders advocates?

There aren't many open borders advocates, but there are lots of left-leaning people who are advocates of not looking like racists or Republicans. And lots of other more left-leaning people willing to throw those accusations at anyone who wants to crack down on illegal immigration.

In the US, how many people are open-borders advocates?

To take a term already used in this thread de facto vs de jour. Vast majority would not say that they are for "open-borders" but opinion change when there's any kind of filmable enforcement action. "I'm not for open borders but don't do that." Similar to cutting spending, many maybe most want to "cut" federal spending then you give them a list of programs to cut or expand and people in effect want more spending.

The US government arent - for the most part - open border advocates. They just don’t care enough to be closed border advocates. One sees this pattern all across the West with the center-right. Nominally many are in favor of immigration restrictionism, but when it comes to it it’s just too hard to implement, there are too many legal challenges, they have other priorities.

If you want to end mass immigration (and only one Western country - Denmark - is really trying to) from the third world you need to make it the central pillar of your government. Every resource must be devoted to it. All your parliamentarians must be ideologically committed to it. You must stack the judiciary. You must devote yourself to it utterly. You need a combination of public, political and institutional support, exactly what the anti-abortion movement did in the US over decades.

Biden doesn’t need to be pro-mass-immigration for it to happen. He just needs to not be deeply ideologically committed to anti-immigration policy. Anything less than Zemmour-level devotion to nativism and inertia keeps the gates open.

The behavior of the federal government here is bizarre.

How so?

In the US, how many people are open-borders advocates? 5% 10%? And yet, the people who pull the strings in the federal government seem to be okay with defacto open borders.

What do these two points have to do with each other? If "the people who pull the strings in the federal government" are okay with something, what does it matter how much the powerless peasant masses disagree?

Why? Just to stick it to Trump?

They want to replace and degrade whites and white men in particular. There's an elite consensus that this is the way to go.

Economically - diversity quotas, govt contracts favouring non-white companies, hostile workplace environment lawsuits and affirmative action. We see various leaked information showing how white men were disfavoured in RAF hiring, how the USAF plans to make its staff more representative of America, how 20% of HR workers admit they've done it, IIRC.

Socially - see https://twitter.com/StupidWhiteAds for a huge list of examples in advertising. I can't think of any modern ads that sneer at blacks, with the exception of that Chinese ad where a young woman put her black suitor in the washing machine until he turned Chinese. There's also historical revision to prioritize the black-slavery/civil rights narrative in US history. I know enough about historiography to know that you can present and choose different facts to produce hugely different narratives, even before you start lying outright. There's also the whole concept of white privilege.

Physically - see mass immigration, both legal and illegal is the most obvious case. I suppose one could also argue that progressive taxation takes from whites and Asians, gives to blacks and browns, artificially lowering the fertility of productive groups and raising that of less productive groups.

Categorically - see the developing practice of capitalizing 'Black' and 'Brown' while decapitalizing 'white'. Delta Airlines sent a memo specifying this just the other day. The old rule was that ethnicities, regions and states like Caucasian, European or French were capitalized while colours weren't. The new rule clearly singles out whites as not being a real group with a shared identity. See also Ignatiev's theoretical work on undermining whiteness as an identity.

Alternately, observe how traditionally white countries like England are being recategorized as 'nations of immigrants', how the BBC works hard to find and fabricate diversity in history. A Doctor Who episode set in the Victorian era showed 1/3 of London being black/brown with the Doctor remarking that 'history was a whitewash'.

It's easily within the US's capabilities to prevent illegal immigration. This isn't the Russian or Chinese army on the other side of the world (which the US plans to defeat). It's unarmed, disorganized, poorly funded people right next to the US, in a hemisphere the US dominates, hoping to enter and work a job without being imprisoned or deported. Illegal immigration is a political choice for any rich, strong power.

It's hard to deny that a lot of this is true. I've noticed that a large number of ads seem to fall into the "white man is disrespected by woman/minority" category. The Hanes ads where Charlie Sheen tried to be friends with Michael Jordan but was rejected seem to be patient zero. Although obviously the sitcom trope of "husband is stupid oaf / wife is smart" goes back to at least the Simpsons if not further.

I honestly don't understand how these commercials could possibly sell product, so I assume they are just pushing the agendas of the ad execs.

I honestly don't understand how these commercials could possibly sell product, so I assume they are just pushing the agendas of the ad execs.

"product?"

It's easily within the US's capabilities to prevent illegal immigration. This isn't the Russian or Chinese army on the other side of the world (which the US plans to defeat). It's unarmed, disorganized, poorly funded people right next to the US, in a hemisphere the US dominates, hoping to enter and work a job without being imprisoned or deported. Illegal immigration is a political choice for any rich, strong power.

While the US becoming minority-White might be an added bonus for plenty of establishment democrats with a lot of sway over US immigration policy, the federal government doesn't have the state capacity to deport 10 million people and it won't for the foreseeable future. Nor does it have the state capacity to consistently enforce labor laws for natives, who are better tracked. There's also no good replacement for illegal labor in the US economy; absent migrants working below market wages in jobs no-one else not on probation is willing to take food prices would skyrocket and absent illegals working 12 hour days construction would get even slower and more difficult. This is politically untenable so no one wants to do it.

Now the US can do a lot to slow the tide(like cracking down on sanctuary cities), but it's not just that we can't deport 11 million people, it's that we don't really know how to run a society without them. They do a lot of important jobs Americans refuse to and that's a travesty, but no one knows how to fix it.

They do a lot of important jobs Americans refuse to (construction, food)

Back in the 1950s and 1960s the US could construct things quickly and simply, Eisenhower built the national highway system even as he expelled a million illegal immigrants. If food prices rise, they could try subsidizing or mechanizing labour-intensive work. There are non-trivial expenses in health/education spending on illegal immigrants, that money could be redirected to subsidies. Illegal immigrants undercut domestic workers, it would logically raise employment and wages amongst the working class.

Nobody had this helpless attitude for the other major problems the US faced. When the Arabs launched an oil embargo and plunged the developed world into a recession, the US didn't give up on supporting Israel. They rationed petrol, they launched fuel-efficiency programs, they looked into nuclear energy and renewables.

The US state apparatus is way larger today and has all kinds of fancy AI/surveillance tools, it's well within their abilities to launch Operation Wetback 2.0.

Back in the 50s and 60s Americans were young and thin and quite a bit less rich.

They certainly don't seem to feel rich today, what with the common complaints about rent and healthcare and being unable to support a family on a single income anymore.

Perhaps single income only felt rich before because men were effectively earning their wife's share in the market and their wife felt rich as long as her husband was, resulting in some kind of positive-sum richness feeling?

Most Americans can, in fact, support a family on a single income. Yes, a 50’s size family.

They don’t do it because of lifestyle constraints- every adult has a car and everyone in the house has a room and multiple sets of nice clothes and we eat at restaurants a lot and at home we don’t have beanie weenies is not how the fifties single earner families lived.

You can confiscate the wealth of illegal aliens to fund sending them back. You can implement work ID laws that incentivize migrants to take a ticket back to the US. You can trawl social media etc to find the communities comprised of mostly illegal migrants. You can fine businesses who use illegal labor.

Food prices would only increase as a proportion of income for the already wealthy; the lower class will now find significantly more demand for their labor and can pick and choose which businesses to work for to maximize their quality of life. (We saw this happen with the peasants after the black plague in Europe; fewer peasants = more demand for their labor = a natural wealth redistribution from the wealthy to the poor). They would make more money than the price of food increases. The eradication of remittance payments means more funds in US economy. Would be enormously beneficial for the lower and middle class and really only hurt the very wealthy white collar workers who are far removed from the economic competition of lower/middle class.

You can confiscate the wealth of illegal aliens to fund sending them back.

That would be astoundingly cruel and inhumane.

Who's going to pick fruit and work in slaughterhouses, hmm? I suppose you can use prison labor, but it's not like there's a bottomless well of that either and it's not well-distributed or trustworthy enough.

The poor can go back to eating rice and beans, I guess. But there isn't a scenario where meat and fruits and vegetables prices rise lower than the wages of the american poor and working class. That's assuming the wages of nativeborn workers go up very much at all; illegals mostly work in different industries(eg fruit picking) than the native poor.

If the US government could control immigration, they could let in people who would credibly fill the roles that most need filling, if the polity wills it. And not let in, say, pregnant women who want citizenship with publicly funded healthcare and schooling for their baby, unless the polity actually wants that.

But, yes, the first part is still very difficult under current circumstances.

The pregnant women are more sympathetic than the workers, so the people who would be let in are reversed from how you've described it.

Possibly so, there’s nothing to say even a more functional democracy than ours currently is needs to optimize entirely for economics.

Who does that in Japan? Who does it in Iceland (well they don’t have fruit, but slaughter houses apply)? Millions would be happy to do these jobs once the pay rises, just like you have dudes doing underwater welding. And the pay will rise in the absence of a pseudo slave labor class.

there isn't a scenario where meat and fruits and vegetables prices rise lower than the wages of the american poor and working class [rises]

Sure there is. All of the increase in payment to “food companies” due to the rise in food prices is going to the lower class employee base (who need the money more), yet this increase in payment is paid for by everyone (lower-to-highest classes), meaning you necessarily see a transfer of wealth from upper to lower class; and on top of this, the increased cost of food for the wealthy makes prices more salient, leading to more cost-saving consumer practices which winds up enforcing more competition among food-related businesses.

It's not slave labor when someone voluntarily sells their time at a rate you don't like. It's not even pseudo slave labor.

not even pseudo slave labor

It’s not slave labor, and it’s also not “not genuine” slave labor? That’s what pseudo means. The simplified point is that, just like slave labor is great for the wealthy employers but bad for the non-slave wage competitor, so is it bad when you import a class of people who are practically economic serfs within a given industry: no hope of ever obtaining a better position because of the language barrier / citizenship barrier / possibly no degree at all even in Mexico/Honduras/etc.

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Who does that in Japan?

Fruit and meat are very expensive in Japan per google. Citrus(the largest crop there that needs to be picked by hand) production per this source(https://calfreshfruit.com/2022/02/22/challenges-for-the-japanese-citrus-market/) is declining in part due to a labor shortage. Japan is a major importer of every category of foodstuff IIRC because the terrain's not suitable for mass agriculture, so I suppose agriculture works differently there. Oh, and Japan has southeast Asian guest workers harvesting crops(https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Agriculture/Japanese-farms-turn-to-foreign-workers-as-rural-population-ages).

Who does it in Iceland (well they don’t have fruit, but slaughter houses apply)?

This reddit thread(https://old.reddit.com/r/Iceland/comments/chin8z/what_is_animal_agriculture_like_in_iceland/) claims that there aren't enough slaughterhouses but I would take that with a grain of salt.

According to the Iceland review(I don't read Icelandic so this is probably the best source I can find easily-https://www.icelandreview.com/economy/without-foreign-workers-slaughterhouses-face-staffing-shortages/), foreigners.

It seriously looks like the native lower-classes of wealthy countries cannot be convinced to do these kinds of jobs absent compulsion(slaughterhouses in the US are well known for using parolees who will be imprisoned if they don't work), and there will be a shortage if foreign labor isn't available. I would rather have Hondurans do it than Indonesians, personally.

I'm not excluding that some automation improvements can reduce labor but I think all of the low hanging fruit has probably already been picked, considering getting labor is so difficult.