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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

this sounds like a right-weighted version of basically the same thing?

I'm hardly an expert on Europe, but I did just read a piece on the topic which makes an argument that this will indeed change little. From Thomas Fazi at UnHerd: "Europe’s insurgent Right won’t change anything"

Depending on where you stand politically, you might view the Right-populist surge in the European Parliament as either a grave threat to democracy, or as a striking victory for it — and a major step forward in “taking back control” from the Brussels oligarchy. But both positions would be wrong. The truth is, despite yesterday’s hysteria, compounded by Macron’s decision to dissolve parliament and call an election, the impact of these elections won’t be as significant as people fear or hope.

Consider the victors: the ECR and ID groups, who made significant gains. Both blocs are made up of various Right-populist parties who are deeply divided on several crucial strategic issues: social and economic matters, European enlargement, China, EU-US relations and, most important, Ukraine. This means that, even if they succeed in pushing the European Commission to the Right, they will struggle to turn their electoral success into political influence; on Europe’s most important challenges, it seems unlikely they will vote as a bloc. But on a more fundamental level, to assume these elections will radically alter the course of the EU’s policymaking agenda, or even threaten democracy itself, implies that the EU is a functioning parliamentary democracy. It is not.

Despite the fanfare that surrounds every European election — each one tediously described as “the most important elections in the history of the European Union” — the reality is that the European Parliament isn’t a parliament in the conventional sense of the word. That would imply the ability to initiate legislation, a power the European Parliament does not wield. This is reserved exclusively for the EU’s “executive” arm, the European Commission — the closest thing to a European “government” — which promises “neither to seek nor to take instructions from any government or from any other institution, body, office or entity”.

…

There’s also another to point to be considered. On the one hand, the fact that the European Parliament, the only democratically elected institution in the EU, exercises some oversight over the Commission’s policies, might be seen as a positive development. In this sense, the bigger presence of the Right-populist parties will certainly have an impact of the legislative process, especially on highly polarising issues such as the European Green Deal and immigration.

But on the other, this doesn’t change the fact that the European Parliament remains politically toothless. The entire legislative process — which takes places through a system of informal tripartite meetings on legislative proposals between representatives of the Parliament, the Commission, the Council — is opaque to say the least. This, as the Italian researchers Lorenzo Del Savio and Matteo Mameli have written, is exacerbated by the fact that European Parliament is “physically, psychologically and linguistically more distant from ordinary people than national ones are”, which in turn makes it more susceptible to the pressure of lobbyists and well-organised vested interests. As a result, even the most well-meaning politicians, once they get to Brussels, tend to get sucked into its bubble.

…

All this means that, while we may expect a change of direction on some issues, these elections are unlikely to solve the pressing economic, political and geopolitical problems afflicting the EU: stagnation, poverty, internal divergences, democratic disenfranchisement and, perhaps most crucially for the continent’s future, the bloc’s aggressive Nato-isation and militarisation in the context of escalating tensions with Russia. In this sense, it’s hardly surprising that around half of Europeans didn’t even bother to vote. Ultimately, the EU was built precisely to resist populist insurgencies such as this one. The sooner populists come to terms with it, the better.

So consider this a data point in favor of "basically the same thing."

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: The Machine Politician Versus the Administrative State

A politician who I think is quite similar to a Tammany Hall-type is Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario. He doesn't have a "machine" perhaps in the same way, as it is not built around a singular place or institution, but rather his close family members: Rob Ford was mayor of Toronto before him, and various other members of his family are following behind him into politics. In Toronto and Ontario they speak of "Ford Nation": a coalition of hangers-on, staffers, relations, magnates, and supporters, and I think it resembles a machine if you squint somewhat.

Ford is not an ideological man, and while he skews toward what you might call typical small-c conservatism that doesn't really encapsulate him. With him as Premier Ontario is embarking on massive expansions of public transit (roughly equivalent to the American federal government's expenditures in this regard) and nuclear power. He's also pushed through new highways through prime agricultural land. He has obvious populist tendencies: availability and price of beer has been a constant messaging point for him, even if it costs the government a billion dollars. He is extremely popular among immigrant groups and has been one of the biggest promoters of the rather absurd state of the international student program. His government is also very scrutinizing and responsive to public opinion: his rule through COVID was essentially through the whim of public opinion polls, seesawing rapidly from no restrictions to incredibly harsh and unconstitutional ones with great abandon. He has also presumably walked back proposed changes that he had promised key donors if they were publicly unpopular, like the Greenbelt land swaps.

It's also very good to be his friend. I don't know if there is necessarily good evidence that he is himself benefitting to any large degree from the state of things, but plenty of people who attend his daughter's wedding for no apparent reason profit. The members of his Cabinet get extra-juicy salaries and pensions, and he has both expanded the number of cabinet positions and adopted a policy of rotating his MPPs through those so that most have gotten a turn on the merry-go-round. This kind of personal largesse is also helped by the Canadian media's silent handshake deal to not report on personal matters: hypothetically if one were to perhaps be Ford's mistress, maybe you'd get a key spot in Cabinet, like, say, Infrastructure Minister or something. Just spitballing.

All this is to say is that it's basically a patronage system. We still have a civil service obviously, but elected jobs and public contracts are increasingly used as treats to be dangled for loyal supporters and donors. And the results aren't all that terrible, really. Yes it's wasteful and corrupt and inefficient and the fiscal burden of this is going to have to be reckoned with somewhere down the line. But Ford markets himself as The Guy Who Gets Things Done, and there's no doubt he gets things done. There's new regional rail and new subway lines and new nuc plants and new public buildings all coming online. This is causing a problem for the Ontario Liberals because they're getting their lunch eaten by him; all they have to offer as an alternative at the moment is that under Liberal rule politicians might be more polite and somewhat less corrupt but also nothing will change.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

Your reasons are somewhat valid but at the end of the day so what? You are a man. Nobody will give you a pity trophy. If there is adversity it’s your job to overcome it.

Theme song: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TafuUDUhYmw?si=C7Ip2zUoyhUbnEkr

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

I don't anticipate evidence for determinism. I think it's the case mainly for theological (and scriptural) reasons, and to a lesser extent some philosophical concerns. I agree that quantum mechanics is evidence against determinism, but not conclusively; there are deterministic interpretations, and there's always the "God decides how it collapses" option.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

So with EPP being the largest faction still, this sounds like a right-weighted version of basically the same thing?

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

Whether that was a truth bomb or just her cynical opinion is probably something to consider. Cynicism (in the couples you mention, in the viewpoint stated about the group) is never, in my experience, attractive long-term. People who complain--about whatever is around them--generally become intolerable, but it's a slow poison.

Apart from that, it's possible to overthink this stuff. I'm a small-picture guy. I never really think about the scheme of things, the larger frame, etc.

Have you met any southern girls? Sorry, women.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

I am saying that you cannot separate one issue from the others.

Ok then that has nothing to do with the origin of the whole argument, which was:

This is not some new thing we just came up with. We already had this conversation as a society and decided the answer was, your kids, your choices, until you are literally about to kill them, then maybe we will stop you. Let's not open that can of worms because that truce is there for a reason.

Like I said there is no such truce at the moment, and according to what you're saying now, one is not even being offered, so I reject this entire line of argument.

But in any case, I said I agree with you there no?

Have you? Like I said you're constantly reframing what I said to make an answer more convenient for you, rather than answering what I already said. I don't see you saying "yes, let us abolish the system where medicine is only available through prescription" you're haggling over details like which drug should be more available to whom - precisely what I said I'm not interested in doing.

As long as you're in favor of there being a system where authority is used as a safeguard for people using medicine, I want that authority to safeguard a segment of the public that is vulnerable, impressionable, and currently neglected.

Then become a doctor or scientist and write papers about it.

My talents were never in academic pursuits, so my time is far better spent financially supporting doctors and scientists who are writing papers about, and critiquing the utter state of transgender care. You may have heard of a certain doctor Hillary Cass recently, and like her there are many others. As far as I can tell anyone whoever bothered doing a systemic review of the state of evidence came to a similar conclusion as she did, including a review commissioned by WPATH itself, which they promptly decided to bury.

Because now we have just circled all the way back to the beginning, where they claim it is scientifically valid (and you say they are wrong) and back around we go.

They can claim what they want, and I can expose their lies. This is my right as a member of the public.

in almost all the instances you are talking about the parents, child and doctor are all agreed.

I do not grant that. The child is too impressionable and ignorant to make an informed decision on the subject, and from personal experience, most parents are intimidated to agree by activist doctors, abusing their authority. This is why I am in favor of taking that authority away from them.

Well you can deal with that by talking to them

Cool, but I'm not worried about myself, or my family. As the saying goes "we live in a society". You just put on a long spiel about how it's completely fine and nothing new for trans advocates to go around changing the culture, including the opinion of judges. This is what I am doing as well, so please do not stand in my way, as you said you won't stand in case of JWs and trans advocates.

What I don't think is ok is pretending this is some brand new thing that we let people's ideologies inform what harmful things they choose for their children and then demand this is the one we stop at. We have already done that for hundreds of years. This isn't anything new.

I agree. From ovariotomies, lobotomies, apotemnophilia, to giving the human growth hormone to short boys / synthetic estrogen to tall girls in order to "normalize" their height, you're right that scandals like this aren't new, but they are pretty rare, and should be treated as the aberration that they are.

Finally I still submit that assuming the doctors are operating in good faith and trying to help not harm, they are less morally wrong than someone who is trying to harm. They may still need to be sanctioned and perhaps even commit a crime, but that is why we separate negligent homicide and manslaughter from first degree homicide, or even first degree homicide from 2nd degree. The intentions of a person have an impact on how moral their actions are perceived to be.

Agree to disagree, I suppose. Especially when it comes to doctors, now that I think about it. They hold a position of trust from the public, so they have an extra duty to make sure their work is done in service of their patients, rather than their sensibilities, or their fanciful ideologies. This is what the WPATH practitioners are in blatant disregard of, they get together at their conferences, and mock the very idea of their approach being wrong, or anyone who brings substantial criticism against them. They refuse debate, and use their political connections to shut down conversations. I don't care if this all comes from "good intentions", the "good intentions" only make the whole thing more horrifying.

The child in question may suffer equal harm, but the level of harm is not the only component of moral judgement for anyone outside of hard consequentialists.

Again, nothing I said relies on consequentialism.

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: The Machine Politician Versus the Administrative State

You seem to be operating from a bizarre definition of fascism

It's one a lot of people I encounter seem to share, though. Set up something like the usual two-axis "political compass," only with different axes: let the left-right axis be the social axis (that has become the most salient of our current culture war), and the vertical axis be the economic axis, with laissez-faire anarcho-capitalism at the bottom extreme end and total communism at the top — the actual space of interest being confined to a much smaller window somewhere in the middle. In the lower left, we have the Libertarian Quadrant: "fiscally conservative but socially liberal." Low taxes, low redistribution, low regulation, but left-wing social politics. Above that, we have the Progressive Quadrant: high taxes, high redistribution, high regulation of markets, and left-wing social politics. (The trend of the past decade has been for the Democratic party electorate to actually move closer to the Libertarian/Progressive border on economic issues as they move left on social issues.) Over on the bottom right, we have the Conservative Quadrant of the GOP establishment — the people who think the best way to promote traditional values is to lower taxes, reduce regulations, unleash the free market, and "shrink government until you can drown it in the bathtub." (I could go on about this group, and how they respond to tensions between market forces and right-wing social values.)

But what about the quadrant above them? People who are socially conservative, but also in favor of wealth redistribution and business regulation? Who want to use the same government powers, particularly over the market, as the Progressives, only for right-wing social ends instead of left-wing ones? (Who those in the Conservative Quadrant would describe as "abandoning their (free-market) principles" and "sinking to the enemy's level" by adopting the enemy's tactics tit-for-tat.)

I've had people in all four quadrants label that corner the Fascist Quadrant.

A number of historical works have pointed out that the tactics used by Mussolini's Fascists and Hitler's Nazis during their rise were developed and used by far-left Communist groups first. Thus, again, "fascism" is when the Right uses the Left's tactics against them. Indeed, in the wake of the Trump convictions, we've been seeing quite a few right-wing commentators arguing that, contra the likes of Asa Hutchinson and Dr. Phil, the GOP needs to stop "taking the high road" and start using the Left's tactics against them in retaliation. And I see plenty of others on the right — when they're not denouncing it as literally Satanic — saying that such proposed actions would constitute fascism.

I have a real-life acquaintance who, about half a year or so ago, made a short argument — I don't remember the precise phrasing, only that it was more succinct and pithy than I can manage — that the average post-Trump Republican voter "wants fascism." To try to lay it out here, first, the average GOP voter has become ever-less wedded to worship of free markets and absolute opposition to redistribution over the course of the 21st century. I remember when people made fun of the old lady at a TEA Party protest with a sign reading "Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare" for the incoherence of that statement when taken at face value. But I also remember someone arguing that it makes sense if you understand it as a person trying to express support for a portion of the welfare state via a political language limited to anti-government Reaganism. There were plenty of socially-conservative people who were unhappy about the role of "too big to fail" firms in the financial crisis and sympathetic to the economic goals of Occupy Wall Street (and according to one left-wing person I knew, the driving away of such people by the "progressive stack" and embrace of all the usual lefty social causes was not a bug but a feature, because any socially conservative person who would agree with OWS's economic positions is a fascist, and better that OWS fail than let fascists into their movement). Economic protectionism and opposition to globalization — left-wing positions back in the late 90s — are now more popular on the right. You see increasing support for anti-trust laws, particularly with the rise of "woke capitalism," DEI, and ESG scores. Even George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" was a step away from the "drown government in the bathtub" position (which is why classmates at Caltech denounced it as fascist). More and more, younger right-wingers are moving toward the sort of things people of my parents' generation used to denounce as "socialism" — and even that set is coming around to the bits like Social Security and Medicare that they're increasingly depending on.

But they're not exactly becoming truly socialist, are they? They don't want a command economy. As my acquaintance put it, they want a government that intervenes enough against Big Business to let the little guy compete, without outright picking winners and losers. They're looking for something in between unfettered capitalism and Soviet communism — a third position, you might say.

Second, when we talk about conserving social traditions, just whose social traditions are we talking about? Basically, the historic majority population of the USA — which is to say, white (more precisely, Western European inside the Hajnal line) and Christian (more precisely, Protestant). At least implicitly.

Next in this vein, I turn to this comment from @FirmWeird from six months ago:

the economy, housing unaffordability (including BlackRock namedrop), the degeneration of The American Woman, the lack of respect from all of society including the command hierarchy,

These are all largely the same thing. From the perspective of the heterosexual male warrior-type, the ability to support and defend a woman/family is extremely important. He's not tying it in to everything, all of those seemingly disparate concepts roll straight back to being able to satisfy the drive for a woman to have kids with.

So our straight working class Trump voter wants policies, both economic and social, that improve his or her ability, and the ability of people like him or her, to find a spouse, settle down, and raise a family in conditions that allow them to pass on their values to the next generation. You might say that this group of people — mostly and implicitly white (or "white-adjacent") — want to secure the continued existence of their group and a future for their children.

Or, to succinctly sum up these two points, they want fascism.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

Coalitions in the EP tend to be a bit more shifting and informal than in "real" parliaments, but the standard coalition is EPP, S&D and (recently) Renew, Macron's group. Greens, Left and the less euroskeptic right have at least some influence, the more euroskeptic right tends to shut itself out of power.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

The usual consensus is that VP picks don't meaningfully alter the likelihood of a given candidate winning the US general election. There are some widely recognised exceptions, like Sarah Palin hurting John McCain's chances in 2008 (although he was facing an uphill battle anyway), and Biden picking Kamala Harris in 2020 to appeal to black voters. But the accepted wisdom is that they don't matter.

With both candidates being so old this time around, are people likelier this time to take therunning mates into account when voting in November? Do there exist a non-negligible number of voters who would vote for Donald Trump to avoid Kamala Harris? Or e.g. people who might be inclined to vote for Trump but dislike his VP pick so much they don't want to risk being saddled with them after a year or two?

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

Any ideas what the probable coalitions look like in the European Parliament? I presume the greens are locked out of power.

Splitting "defensive alliance" into "chaining alliance" and "isolating alliance"

Awkward and forced NATO metaphors aside- you really don't get to argue on theory or practice if you ignore the role of nuclear deterrence in everyone's decisionmaking there-

Obviously my fine distinction has contemporary resonances, but after World War Three reduces Europe and America to radioactive rubble, the run up to World War Four will involve China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia.

...what?

As in- what world war with contemporary resonance reduces Europe and America to radioactive rubble, but not China? Is this supposed to be a Russia-only conflict? If not, who is the coalition to make it a world war? If Russia and China are in WW3 together, why do three nuclear armed powers not also nuke China when they are being reduced to radioactive rubble?

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

I appreciate the effortpost and math.

But the divorce rate is only half the battle. High income earners with college degrees may not get divorced at a high rate, but how many of the marriages are anywhere near healthy? In my own extended family, we have zero divorces but a bakers dozen incidents of infidelity that I only learned about at the family reunions after I could start drinking with the older cousins. In my own PMC circle, I've had both male and female acquaintances confide that they're only staying married for the kids and once they're out of college a divorce is guaranteed.

Again, I don't hold any fantasy notions about finding an easy marriage. I understand they take work and evolve over time. I've actually written about this on the Motte, but if I can't find a partner who I really believe has a similar concept of commitment (let alone level) - I'm reticent to risk it.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

We are currently in a situation where trans activists are persuading people to their belief system (using a lot of underhanded tactics that my side is not, by the way) and regulating in their favor, and my side is doing the same. Curiously you only complain about me, and never the trans activists, but ok. Anyway, I'm offering that we both stop - a truce. You say that's not a truce because... there's another active war on a completely different issue I have nothing to do with?

I am saying that you cannot separate one issue from the others. I agree it would probably be better if we could, but that is not the reality of the situation. Alliances and coalitions have formed, and so beliefs are correlated, we can't simply trade one thing for another. We frame it as a culture war not a culture debate for a reason. Your side whether you like it or not includes people who are trying to do the very thing you want the trans community to stop doing to you, to others. If you want me (or some fictional me, who would care enough, and have enough time to do so) to go to bat against my side, you would need to go against yours. And what would actually happen is we would both end up being expelled from our sides for being traitors. And then we wouldn't have even a tiny amount of influence. We are judged not just by our own positions but also by the positions of those we are allied with. I don't think anyone is in a position to offer a truce at all. All that happens is that an equilibrium is reached where the people roughly settle on what they find acceptable. And to be clear I expect on the trans issue that will be somewhere short of where we are now. It just isn't anything that can be negotiated, it's emergent from people's reaction to the situation.

I wish you'd address my arguments the way I actually present them, rather than constantly changing them to your liking. If anything we were talking about giving testosterone to aging me, when I'm starting to run short on it. And I just told you you're far more likely to find a doctor that will prescribe it to a little girl, than to an aging man.

But that wouldn't be a one to one correlation. But in any case, I said I agree with you there no? Aging men should be able to access testosterone more easily. Your answer appears to be to make it harder for someone else, I would say let's make it easier for you and boys in general as an extension. If you want it to be easy to get these kind of interventions why aren't you arguing that instead of trying to make it more difficult for the other group, that doesn't actually include you? Isn't that the crabs in the bucket mentality often decried here? I can't get it easily, so these other people should not?

Because if we have a system where authorities are deciding who is allowed to use which medicine for what ailment, I want these authorities to prevent usage of very potent medicine in a way that is not scientifically valid, against an ailment that doesn't even have a proper definition, and cannot be reliably detected beyond a self-report.

Then become a doctor or scientist and write papers about it. Because now we have just circled all the way back to the beginning, where they claim it is scientifically valid (and you say they are wrong) and back around we go.

Try to set aside whether you think they are scientifically right or wrong, and just look at what they are allowing, in almost all the instances you are talking about the parents, child and doctor are all agreed. So what's the big deal? Why should your judgement of what is harmful override theirs? Some chance one of your kids decides they are trans? Well you can deal with that by talking to them, and forbidding them treatment and assuming your spouse agrees, it is extremely unlikely they will ever be able to get treatment until they are an adult. They might be able to go to court and emancipate themselves early or perhaps get a court appointed guardian, but if your kid is willing to do all that to get treatment then that in and of itself is probably a pretty good indicator of actual intent. We can control a lot about our children but we cannot control everything. I'm pretty satisfied with "it is up to the parents except in unusual situations where a court gets to decide" I don't think that is going to break anything that allowing parents to decide on healthcare or when to withdraw healthcare does. There will be some cases where a court mandates healthcare is withdrawn over the parents wishes, or mandated over the parents wishes, but they will be few and far between and essentially a rounding error. Very sad for the families involved but you can't rearrange your entire system for rounding errors.

To try and close this down as we don't seem to be getting anywhere. I think it is absolutely ok to think trans ideology is harmful, I think it is perfectly ok to vote or take other actions downstream of that. What I don't think is ok is pretending this is some brand new thing that we let people's ideologies inform what harmful things they choose for their children and then demand this is the one we stop at. We have already done that for hundreds of years. This isn't anything new.

Finally I still submit that assuming the doctors are operating in good faith and trying to help not harm, they are less morally wrong than someone who is trying to harm. They may still need to be sanctioned and perhaps even commit a crime, but that is why we separate negligent homicide and manslaughter from first degree homicide, or even first degree homicide from 2nd degree. The intentions of a person have an impact on how moral their actions are perceived to be.

They may still be harming people! They may still need to be stopped! But I don't think you have come anywhere near persuading me that a trans advocate doctor who truly believes transitioning some 14yo boy will be best for them, is just as bad as some doctor who believes it will be bad but does it anyway for the lulz or because they are a sadist, or whatever. The child in question may suffer equal harm, but the level of harm is not the only component of moral judgement for anyone outside of hard consequentialists.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

I'd love if you could elaborate on that sentence, I'm curious.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

Probably about the same. The biggest current category of receng immigrants being the Ukrainians might have moderated it a bit.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

Right, but your last paragraph says there is no difference between the two candidates except one is a convicted felon. So I’m pointing out that that line of thinking is not correct.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

Well, I didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, and the candidates I did vote for didn't receive any electoral votes, so I can't say that my vote contributed to said consequence.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

Has the right wing rhetoric gotten more dramatic or stayed the same? I've noticed how Farage in the UK with his Reform party has been talking about deportations and net zero immigration. Something no one would say a few years ago. A lot of that is huff and puff on the campaign trail, but its still a very clear tonal shift.

Moderations, Bans, and the State of the Motte - Let's have a Discussion

Sure did.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

I've decided that Lacanian psychoanalysis will be my next intellectual venture, so right now I am reading Sigmund Freud by Pamela Thurschwell, and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis by Bruce Fink.

The Freud book is to familiarize myself with some of the foundational concepts of psychoanalysis. It seems like a pretty straightforward historical account of Freud's life and an overview of his ideas.

The Fink book has been really fascinating so far. I am coming at this as someone who has no experience with psychoanalysis or therapy in general, and the book provides a lot of insight on the actual theraputic techniques of psychoanalysis, rather than the philosophical ideas behind it. I started inteoducing myself to Lacan by listening to some podcasts on basic concepts, but they still felt like they were avoiding the heart of everything. This book is grounding, which is refreshing.

Dueling Lines: Will AGI Arrive Before Demographic-Induced Deglobalization?

That being said...people don't genuinely expect ASI to be omnipotent, right?

From reading (almost) the entire sequences on Lesswrong back in the day, its less 'omnipotent' but more 'as far above humans as humans are above ants.' There are hard limits on 'intelligence' if we simply look at stuff like the Landauer limit, but the conceit sees to be that once we have an AGI that is capable of recursive self-improvement, it'll go FOOM and start iterating asymptotically close to those limits, and it will start reaching out into the local arm of the galaxy to meet its energy needs.

It's not like it would be too hard to imagine, if the stories about John Von Neumann are accurate, then maximum human intelligence is already quite powerful on its own, and there's no reason to think that human brains are the most efficient design possible. If we can 'merely' simulate 500 Von Neumanns and put them to the task of improving our AI systems, we'd expect they'd make 'rapid' progress, no?

Put a different way, I expect that the hard/soft science divide will continue to exist the same way that I can still beat AlphaZero at chess if you put me up a queen in the endgame.

Its a good analogy, but imagine if AlphaZero, whose sole goal was 'win at chess,' was given the ability to act, beyond the chessboard. Maybe it offers you untold riches if you just resign or sacrificed the queen. Maybe it threatens you or your family with retribution. Maybe it acquires a gun and shoots you.

I do worry that humans are too focused on the 'chessboard' when a true superintelligence would be focused on a much, much larger space of possible moves.

One thing that worries me is that a superintelligence might be much better at foreseeing third or fourth order effects of given actions, which would allow it to make plans that will eventually result in outcomes it desires but without alerting humans to the outcome because it is only in the interaction of these various effects that its intended goal comes about.

So, even if I'm putting my foot in my mouth and the definitive breakthrough in aging research will be published tomorrow, anyone telling you that a drug is less than 10 years out is almost certainly wrong.

Certainly, I'm more focused on the 'escape velocity' argument, where an advance that gets us another ten years of healthy life on average makes it that much more likely that we'll be alive for the next advance that gives us 20 cumulative additional years of life, which makes it more likely we'll be around when the REALLY good stuff is discovered. I haven't seen any 'straight lines' of progress on extending lifespan that suggest this is inevitable, though, whereas I CAN see these with AI and demographics, as stated.

An interesting tactic I could see working is trying to expand dogs' lives, because NOBODY will object to this project, and if it works it should, in theory, get a lot of funding and produce insights that are in fact useful for human lifespan. So perhaps we see immortal dogs before immortal mice?

I am not surprised there'd be a grifter problem, because it is really easy to 'wow' people with scientific-sounding gobbledygook, sell them on promises of life extension via [miracle substance], and get rich all while knowing they won't know they've been had until literal decades later when they are still aging as usual. I also somewhat hate that cosmetic surgery and other tech (like hair dye) is effective enough that someone can absolutely make the claim that they're aging slower than 'natural' but in reality they just cover up the visible effects of aging.

Finally, on this point:

Things that seemed inevitable can reverse themselves fairly easily, and I'd agree with /u/2rafa that we haven't seriously tried to reverse the trend.

This is a bit different because the while we can't necessarily know the upper limit on the earth's carrying capacity for humans... we sure as hell know that its possible to for the human population go to zero. Its safe to say that population growth will reverse because eventually we hit a limit. But I don't see any inbuilt reason why population decline need reverse anytime soon.

And Zeihan's strong argument is that even if we start pumping out kids today, it'll be 20 or so years before this new baby boom can even begin to be productive, so we're still in for a period of strain during that time where we lose productive members of society to retirement and death, and are spending tons of money on raising the next generation, meaning the actual productive generations have to provide support for both their parents and their own kids and may not be able to invest in other productive uses of capital. Which would imply a period of stagnation at least.

That is, we can't instantly replace a declining population of working-age adults merely by having more kids now since kids take time to grow and become productive. So a lot of the suck is already 'baked in' at this point, where a reversal in the trend doesn't prevent the actual problem from arising.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

That's probably a large reason.

In Finland, the Finns Party crashed, getting one of their worst results in well over a decade. Probably the main reasons are:

  • They're in a government that's doing (by Finnish scale) hard austerity and anti-union policies, which their supporters don't like, and anti-migrant measures, which their supporters do like - but getting the center-right to cosign those only makes it easier for their educated wealthier voters who have voted the Finns to cut immigration but consider them too redneck and embarrassing to return back to the center-right.

  • They ran a very underwhelming campaign concentrating on things like the new EU regulation mandating bottlecaps that stick to the bottle after opening - mildly annoying and might cause dribbling when using some packs, but hardly the sort of an issue that would get the masses really moving and made them look piddling. In general, since EU membership is more popular than ever, they're in a bind - moving to the centre pisses of the remaining hardcore Euroskeptic base while doing the sort of "EU is pretty lame, Finland has no influence" spiel just evidently makes their supporters think there's no point in voting and stay home.

The Finnish Left got a huge surprise result, but this is probably mostly due to the vast personal popularity of the party leader who was running as the main candidate, and partly probably a protest vote against the government.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

Just as a reminder, the 2016 election had a very real consequence. Donald Trump was able to install 3 conservative justices on the Supreme Court, which in turn allowed them to overturn Roe V Wade. Abortion is now illegal in about a dozen states and de facto illegal in about ten more.

Whether you think this is a big deal is your call. But I can assure you it is a huge deal for lower middle-class and poor women living in those states. So this is a reminder that elections do have consequences, even if both parties/candidates suck.

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

There are also the numerous recent scandals...

But yes, I agree motivation pays a very important role in the results of the EU elections given the low turnout. Which I feel is an underdiscussed part of these elections.