domain:inv.nadeko.net
TitaniumButterfly
2m ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy simply does not work.
The form envisioned by American's founders might have, except for the fatal problem latent in democracy which leads to a race to the bottom to expand the franchise for more votes. Inevitably this will include people who really have no business getting involved with policy decisions.
Then again our (American) system was explicitly designed for a 'moral and religious people' and Adams openly admits that with those elements removed it all falls apart.
I don't know. We were given something amazing and ruined it. That much is clear. Whether such a thing can ever arise again remains to be seen, but what we have now is not headed in a viable direction.
benmmurphy
4m ago
The banking system is already an investigative part of law enforcement. It would be just another crime to add to the list of crimes they are responsible for investigating. I'm not arguing having the banks perform this role is a good idea but that ship has already sailed.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
5m ago
I did not read the entire discussion in detail and only skimmed it. I guess the other poster at some point admitted his "evidence-based-belief" in materialism is in fact just social consensus vibes? If so then that is a helpful example of "science-belief" as social consensus.
In light of your testimony that your axioms changed, the entire discussion seems even more relevant now, so thank you. I've noticed, and so have others -- in fact IIRC your interlocutor for that discussion pointed this out rudely -- that the Motte has more religious posters than Scott's blog or the original CW Roundup threads ever had. I skimmed your recent post history to double check my gut. This also helps explain why you think Materialism is controversial. My central examples of controversial Science would be recent, like the importance of BLM protesting to health; or would be controversial-according-to-me, like that race is just a social construct or whatever.
Is Noticing Science, Inc.'s political capture the reason why you you're Christian then?
erwgv3g34
8m ago
In increasing order of wordcount:
- Friendship is Optimal: "Hanna, the CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios, just won the contract to write the official My Little Pony MMO. Hanna has built an A.I. Princess Celestia and given her one basic drive: to satisfy everybody's values through friendship and ponies. And Princess Celestia will follow those instructions to the letter...even if you don't want her to." [39k words, complete]
- Luna is a Harsh Mistress: "When Celestia banished Nightmare Moon, she didn't go alone, but with her loyal army. Now they're trapped in an alien environment, with tensions high and the air running out. If they don't work together, their princess will soon be alone after all." [230k words, complete]
- The Moon's Apprentice: "Twilight Sparkle failed her entrance exams for Celestia's school. Worse, she is a danger to both herself and others, resulting in her magic being suppressed. Dreams crushed and now one of the weakest unicorns, a nightmare comes to her." [412k words, complete]
- Message in a Bottle: "Humanity's space exploration ultimately took the form of billions of identical probes, capable of building anything (including astronauts themselves) upon arrival at their destinations. One lands in Equestria. Things go downhill from there." [514k words, complete]
- Changeling Space Program & The Maretian: "The space race is on, and Chrysalis is determined to win it. With an earth pony test pilot and a hive full of brave-but-dim changelings, can she be the first pony on the moon? / Mark Watney is stranded- the only human on Mars. But he's not alone- five astronauts from a magical kingdom are shipwrecked with him." [797k words, complete]
- To the Stars: "Kyubey promised that humanity would reach the stars one day. The Incubator tactfully refrained from saying too much about what they would find there." [948k words, ongoing]
Anything by Greg Egan or Andy Weir.
DataPacRat: S.I., Extracted, "FAQ on LoadBear's Instrument of Precommitment" and Singleton, Friendship is Optimal: X-Risks are Magic
Glowfic: "but hurting people is wrong" (Thellim is from dath ilan, a version of Earth where everyone is Eliezer Yudkowsky, and her world has a ton of innovations that are absent from ours but which do not rely on different physical laws)
aqouta
9m ago
Just asking questions is when someone is pretending to just be interested in a topic asks pointed questions designed to poke holes in some narrative, central example being a holocaust denier trying to make the holocaust seem implausible by "just asking questions" about how many train cars could plausibly carry how many ect ect.
I'd say there are two major distinctions.
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I just don't really think aella is a pedophile. She's not pretending to be interested in how people answer these questions. These are classic examples of "what's worse and why" questions. If someone really wanted to JAQ pedophilia I don't think they'd start with "is one instance of it better or worse than torture murdering grandma?"
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Hypotheticals aren't really the same structure as JAQing off. JAQ offs don't really give you open ended questions. They have a narrative that they want to drive down without variance. They aren't interested in your moral reasoning, they want to use pointed questions to force your to answer one way or the other. They're doing a kind of dishonest persuasion rather than trying to find understanding.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
10m ago
Because the average voter is intensely stupid about these types of things. On the left you have fools cheering for images of burning Waymos and waving the Mexican Flag in US cities. On the right, the average Republican is at the level of Catturd, and they evaluate things based on what they see on Tiktok and Fox News. If they don't see armored goons manhandling immigrants then they think it's not happening at all. Trying to explain things like "employment incentives" to them will go in one ear and out the other.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
11m ago
And as you grow older and realize that Science actually has a lot of flaws and lies quite a bit, you lose confidence/faith in their answers.
I think I understand now, thanks for saying it with more words.
This reminds me of the back and forth between Robin Hanson and Scott on the effectiveness of medicine. I tried tracing the conversation but it involves links to so many papers and blog posts that I couldn't find the exact quote in a timely manner. But Hanson said (or Scott had speculated) that the real reason people go to doctors isn't because medicine is effective, but because doctors are the local culturally-respected authorities about health.
I think that's right because ancient peoples and uncontacted tribes today obviously go to their local culturally-respected authorities, too. And if our local culturally-respected authorities do happen to be effective (let's assume), that fact doesn't necessarily correlate with the true reason we go to them.
(I wrote this before I saw the other reply to me, so I feel good that I am understanding the discussion)
There is a kind of liberal sneer that groups QAnon, a rejection of the liberal political order, and science-denial as a Trumpian mind-virus. If science-believing really is just social signaling, would you say that cluster really is correlated, and we will be seeing more of that? (Ignoring the value-judgement of the sneering)
faceh
12m ago
There's a decent argument that this adds friction for actual citizens as well that is generally a deadweight loss that you'd prefer to avoid. Banks being on the hook if they allow illegals to maintain accounts means they get VERY aggressive about verifying identities.
And the authoritarian concern that these systems can be very easily modified to target any other group.
It does indeed require a police-state lite to ensure you get them all.
From a pure technology standpoint, though, it should really be pretty cheap to enforce this in most places that aren't actively resisting.
SSCReader
12m ago
Deportations can be done easily and cheaply without any government involvement.
I'll note most of your examples will require government involvement though. Just on organizations. Someone will need to make sure the banks are following the law and checking fake green cards or whatever. Someone will have to police the liquor stores to make sure they are in fact checking passport stamps. The IRS will have to have to have more staff to investigate fraudulent payments and so on and so forth.
You're just shifting the government involvement from directly deporting them to monitoring all the organizations which will make their life more difficult, but whose incentives often run to not bothering unless they have some risk of getting caught and punished.
It's potentially workable, but only with government involvement.
Gaashk
15m ago
Because if half the country wants them here, and can leverage the courts to ensure free education and healthcare, then they will. The US system allows cultural trench warfare, the current term of art appears to be "No Kings."
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
18m ago
At a bare minimum, they can use it as a wedge issue, as with abortion or gun control.
That would make vastly more sense coming from the right, where we've repeatedly seen conservative elites push back on certain kinds of immigration enforcement while also avoiding comprehensive immigration reform. YMMV if this is because they want it as a wedge or because it would it would implicate them and hurt their economic interests.
Like, who are the Dems wedging with immigration?
If there was minimal illegal immigration to speak of, what would be their case for increasing it.
That would depend a great deal on the counterfactual. A scenario where there's minimal illegal immigration because there's de facto open borders, not much. Illegal immigration is not a first preference for immigration advocates (hence, for example, efforts to route immigrants through the asylum system). In "death penalty for illegal entry" scenario, you're back to the humanitarian appeal. Not that either of those scenarios are likely, but I hope it illustrates the point.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
19m ago
It's not that I think there couldn't be self-serving motives, but I don't think the actual reality of American politics actually support any of them. All in all, I just don't think there's a very good reason to believe that opposition to mass deportations or other restrictive immigration policies is a cynical ploy as opposed to a fundamental values difference.
I have no idea why @Fruck is accusing me of being dishonest, other than that they have totally misread my argument.
That said, to claim it absolutely does not or could not happen, and cannot be an intentional policy, is to ignore history.
I'm not saying that the incident rate is literally zero, but I am saying that it is not high enough to be political relevant or be a serious motive for immigration advocates. As a self-interested motive it lacks substantial payoff (and would be risky to boot).
I don't think the historical point has much relevance. It strikes me that when you're talking about mid-century American politics, there's a lot more general bad behavior when it comes to election integrity. I don't really know enough about Texan politics in the 40s and 50s to fact-check you, but it doesn't strike me as especially distinct other forms of election manipulation that were common then and are far less common now.
most of them do expect anyone who comes and settles here illegally to eventually be legalized
I don't think this is true. Hopes might be high, but expectations for a general amnesty are generally pretty low. I think there is an expectation that 2nd gen children of illegal immigrants will lean left, but - again - I don't think it constitutes a significant motivating factor for pro-immigration advocates. Pushing a controversial position now in the expectation that it's going to pay off for different people in a generation is a level of long-term planning that I do not buy from people who will throw allies out of the tent for 75% agreement.
There's a feedback loop were pro-immigration/anti-immigration parties (reasonably) expect that immigrants will vote for/against them. That doesn't tell you much about their reasons for being pro/anti in the first place. (Ironically, both views appear to be at least partially incorrect.)
The xenophobes are already not going to vote Democrat
Margins matter. Indeed, in the current political environment they matter quite a lot. Diehard nativists are not going to vote for the Dems no matter what (both because they won't trust them on immigration and because hardcore nativist is strongly correlated with other conservative beliefs), but the typical anti-immigrant voter isn't nearly that committed.
I agree that there's a significant body of immigration advocates who think any immigration skeptic is a write-off. Probably more than there are people pushing for moderating on immigration on the basis of marginal electoral gains, but I think that points away from cynical motives and towards ideological ones. It's taking on board the added risk of losing an election (and thus all your other issues of concern) because you prefer to avoid compromising on this particular issue when you could safely move right.
Interestingly, in May 2025, the same article notes that average hourly wages rose by 0.4%, reaching $36.24, as companies competed for a smaller pool of workers.
Something I've never been clear on is how this dynamic is controversial. Obviously if labor is scarce wages will go up, eating away at the 'income inequality' boogeyman.
But try to argue that flooding the country with cheap labor will (besides making housing much more expensive) drive down wages and people smirk and tell you that's the "lump of labor" fallacy.
I don't think it is though. Yes, having more people around also generates some economic demand, but surely this is in the same sense that broken windows will generate economic demand? Unless those people are actually providing more value than they cost -- and here we must consider healthcare, education, wear and tear on infrastructure, social friction, decline in cohesion, crime, and so on -- doesn't the argument come down to "Well we have more mouths to feed so that generates economic activity"? And isn't that rather the broken window fallacy?
What is going on here?
Gaashk
22m ago
I'm not sure what the rules are for truck drivers in America, but it was pretty visibly the more established white truck drivers who were hanging out in the right lane, and the new immigrant truck drivers who were passing. If there are laws punishing new drivers who are acting the same as old responsible drivers, then, sure, those are bad laws.
Also, a lot of this could be resolved by increasing stupid 70mph speed limit (113km/h) on highways to 80 or 85 as in Europe, so you can catch up if you are inconvenienced for 30 seconds behind a truck or other vehicle.
This suggests lack of familiarity with American interstates in multiple ways.
- Yes, of course the other drivers can go 80 - 85 most of the time, the cops do not enforce 70 - 75 at all. That is largely why they are upset when they are cut off by a vehicle going 75.
- Cath up? To whom? It isn't exactly about getting home 10 minutes sooner. It's mostly about not being sandwiched between large trucks.
- It's probably 5 minutes inconvenience per vehicle, spread out over a two to eight hour drive, so maybe an hour or two of being in irritating and unsafe conditions over the course of a day of driving.
The alternative is to fly, but in the American West not only is it expensive for a full car's worth of people, you still have to rent a car at the destination, and even rent car seats.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
25m ago
It increases the fear of violence level of the rest of society.
How so? If I’m not planning on participating in a protest, why would my “fear of violence” be increased by the knowledge that protestors may suffer negative consequences for protesting? Their circumstances do not appear to mirror my circumstances in any important way, so why should I draw any conclusions about what’s likely to happen to me based on what happens to them?
It devalues nearby property by increasing the crime rate.
including taking court and police time away from other crimes.
Not if the police agree to do only a cursory investigation, informed by the assumption “Eh, whatever happens to these people happens, no need to look too deeply into it.” In that scenario, no arrest would be made and no court resources would need to be expended.
magicalkittycat
34m ago
This is the really intractable portion, because killing protestors is probably net pretty good when done by private individuals. Protesting, even the "peaceful" kind is still highly antisocial, at best being a massive waste of time and resources. But usually also significantly interrupting business and people's lives
Killing people also disrupts a lot of lives too, including taking court and police time away from other crimes. It disrupts the employers of both, the family members and friends of both, etc. It increases the fear of violence level of the rest of society. It devalues nearby property by increasing the crime rate.
Murder doesn't just hurt the murder victim.
Eupraxia
Shut up and quantify
39m ago
Considering that a common point from apologetics is that Christians tend to have healthier communities and better lives than their atheistic peers, that seems pretty categorically false.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
47m ago
Do you truly have no feeling that one's own whims can enslave oneself or is this truly just a semantic disagreement where you're unwilling to concede any moral limitation is required to be free because you see freedom as the absence of limitations?
If the latter, I enjoin you to reconsider because ultimately these words exist to describe reality, and the Rousseauan state of nature where the removal of some chains doesn't create new and more terrible ones is, as we have painfully learned, completely fictitious.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
48m ago
The mystery is part of the point my friend. We cannot understand the nature of God, and we are not meant to.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
49m ago
What part of it would be normal come-and-go movement related to seasonality, working on temporary and short-term project jobs etc though? I'd expect both regular and illegal migration to demonstrate such patterns to some degree.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
50m ago
Great write up overall. In terms of the last bit, definitely agree about pulling away from a strictly material belief system. It’s something you need a community for, and it does exist but can be hard to find.
erwgv3g34
52m ago
Arianism makes a lot more sense than Trinitarianism, though; it is the radical notion that God and Jesus share the exact same relationship that every other father and son do, instead of some not-even-wrong word salad about substances that is so incomprehensible even its adherents admit it's a mystery. If I was convinced that something like Christianity was true but was not really clear on the details, I would become an Arian, like Isaac Newton, or perhaps a Mormon.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
53m ago
In general yes, and with the Saudis in particular I actually think they are long overdue for a drubbing on very similar grounds to Israel. (Since Saudi Arabia is not even remotely democratic, though, I think the moral case that its civilians deserve it is far weaker!) That being said, I think of the obligation to be a "good citizen" among the nations to only really come into full force after a certain threshold of national capability is surpassed - tasers and rubber bullets are appropriate for antisocial adults running wild, not antisocial children throwing a temper tantrum, with the latter being more appropriately subjected to gentler and more patronising modes of reeducation. If some random minnow on the order of Syria is impotently mouthing off against its neighbours, what they need is a stern talking-to and maybe a review if at some point it looks like they might be acquiring the capacity to making good on those threats.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
53m ago
I was more interested in why someone would change their axioms based on seeing the politically-compromised Science-as-Institution
One observes that things scrupulously labeled "Materialistic, evidence-based belief" turn out to be generated and maintained entirely by social consensus effects, and once one has seen the pattern, one can recognize it elsewhere. "Things labeled materialistic, evidence-based belief are what they say on the tin" is an axiom, and once you have a lot of strong evidence that this axiom is wrong by observing the politicially-compromised Science-as-institution, it's pretty easy to discard it and everything that depends on it, including consensus-narrative-style "materialism". then you're free to notice things like Determinism-of-the-gaps and "Materialism precludes free will = evidence of free will is evidence against Materialism", and a whole bunch of very carefully crafted and highly-rigorous arguments abruptly reverse polarity.
...This is a subject I dearly love to discuss, but I am in fact trying to answer your question. Observing the political compromise of Science-as-institution directly led to me changing axioms, and adopting a set that seem much stronger to me against Materialism itself, because the large majority of Materialist elements seem to me to obviously depend heavily on similar political compromise for their weight.
Hmm, I had watched Higurashi, which I enjoyed very much, but then never got around to Umineko, which at that time seemed to me like just more of the same, but as a "normal" murder mystery. Seems I misjudged things. Would recommend the manga or do you have another option? I probably won't play on the PC for some time, though maybe the fanported android version.
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