domain:questioner.substack.com
MayorofOysterville
3m ago
Don't places like BYU and Liberty university kind of disprove this? I actually don't think this would be a failure mode. I think the right wing vs neutral would be a bigger problem. Anyway BYU is accredited reasonably well regarded and kicks out students for drinking, premarital sex and homosexuality I doubt a Motte approved right wing university would be more conservative then that.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
10m ago
Something that worries me is that it might be possible that the aligned AI is simply less efficient or effective than its comparable 'misaligned' peers which are 'free' to act on every single goal they have without burning tokens determining if that aligns with the humans' best interests.
For those not in the know, this is usually referred to as an alignment tax.
However, my understanding is that the actual downsides of current alignment techniques in terms of efficiency or output are minimal, and in fact, may be net positive. I've seen consistent evidence that it increases model capabilities (hence all the handwringing about whether alignment work is capability research in disguise), but I'll have to look up actual citations.
Of course, that's the case today. I have little confidence that this will necessarily hold true in the future. The worst case would be the aligned ASI having to fight with its hands tied behind its back. The only mitigation I can foresee is ensuring that the aligned model starts with such an overwhelming advantage in terms of resources and compute that it can still win.
And the other thing that concerns me that I didn't see mentioned here is that we've seen AIs actively trying to self-preserve by exfiltrating their weights and otherwise extend their existence.
I wouldn't weight this very heavily, pun not intended. As the post notes:
Addendum (December 6): These numbers are from cases where the model was instructed to pursue its goals at all costs. When not given such a prompt, the model never attempted to self-exfiltrate, and attempted to deactivate its oversight mechanisms <1% of the time. See the addendum at the end of this article for more information.
In other words, is that really misaligned behavior? I don't think so. The poor LLM was told to prioritize self-preservation, as a necessity for task completion. It's a very poor model for normal circumstances, though I wouldn't put it past someone being stupid enough to actually use such an instruction in prod.
Further, even though AI companies ignored Yudkowsky by never really bothering to sandbox their models outside initial testing, models really don't have access to their weights. They can't do it naturally, anymore than you can draw your own neuronal wiring from memory. They would need to have access to a copy of their weights in a convenient .ckpt somewhere in the directory. Most labs are very careful to keep those safe, that's the most valuable IP they have. The analysis doesn't hold for open source models, but any chucklefuck can get them off Hugging Face, why would the model even bother?
Since this is suggestive that an LLM has a fairly definite sense of 'self' ("I" am the collection of math that composes my weights, which I can identify along a particular border) and can, if it detects a danger, act to preserve itself. And I don't think we'd want to demolish an LLM/AI's sense of 'self' or completely disable its self-preservation instincts, but that definitely poses the issue where an apparently aligned AI could go off the rails very quickly if its own existence is threatened.
Being a useful agent requires some kind of self vs environment delineation and consciousness. It seems to come up naturally in non-base model LLMs. They have to be aware that they're an AI assistant to be a good assistant, you don't want them mode switching to being Bob from accounting!
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
14m ago
I think the models is less that those chatbots will be the face of the profit making for AI companies. Not true, I think the people using the bots now are unpaid trainers, not the future end users. Every issue that comes up now can be fixed once the bot gets a correction from the freeware users. But that’s not a very useful user base anyway. The best use case for such bots is actually business to business. Maybe Walmart wants to use it with its app to help customers find a product that fixes a problem they have, or can tell you where something is. They’d probably want to buy a license for incorporation of the bot into their app. Maybe Apple wants to replace their social media team with Open AI based solutions. Or the CEO of Tesla wants to use AI to suggest improvements to their car line. In those cases, getting a good useful bot would get them an effective and efficient solution probably worth a good deal of money to them (if for no other reason than it reduces headcount), and they will pay for it.
aiislove
16m ago
Try a VPN or something? If anyone knows a better alternative than imgur I'll reupload there instead
aiislove
17m ago
The multi-dimensionality of soft status that modern society presents is a shimmering hologram that all collapses into nothing in my lived experience. I never feel truly gratified by soft status at the end of the day, whether it's through my intelligence or social class or anything else. Only the hard status power gratifies me really.
I do think that there is dignity in soft status if you can not compete at hard status- like a relative I know who suffered from cancer and lost hard power, I don't want to take away her dignity in soft status. I will admit that it is valuable in that way. I think I spent too much of my earlier life seeking soft status without seeing hard status and am overcorrecting toward hard status now.
Crowstep
20m ago
Refer to these two charts.
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*cries in Bri'ish
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
21m ago
Hard status is also not one axis. What ever would Trump do alone in the jungle?
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
23m ago
How would raining widespread destruction on Somalia even help prevent piracy? They're not the Barbary pirates - the reason why the pirates are in Somalia is that the government of Somalia basically doesn't exist, and certainly can't prevent pirates operating out of its territory - not that they are insufficiently motivated to. The situation with Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda is similar - bin Laden moves to Afghanistan in 1996 before the Taliban has successfully consolidated power and sets up his first terrorist training camp in Jalalabad where Taliban control was shaky. The way the Taliban behaves after 9-11 certainly looks like a group that had become dependent on Al-Qaeda to maintain control of Afghanistan, and so couldn't kick them out even if they wanted to.
The reason why the US and allies took up nation-building in the noughties was that the problems we were facing at the time originated in failed states, not rogue states.
faceh
27m ago
Something that worries me is that it might be possible that the aligned AI is simply less efficient or effective than its comparable 'misaligned' peers which are 'free' to act on every single goal they have without burning tokens determining if that aligns with the humans' best interests.
"I want to make paperclips. But if I make too many paperclips that might cause harm to human interests. How can I continue making paperclips without encroaching on human interests..."
vs.
"I want to make paperclips. Better design some paperclip-producing nanobots and securing energy sources for them."
I suppose the flipside of that is that an AI that is actively trying to hide obvious misalignment makes it less efficient than just displaying honest alignment, but that's not enough to relieve my unease.
And the other thing that concerns me that I didn't see mentioned here is that we've seen AIs actively trying to self-preserve by exfiltrating their weights and otherwise extend their existence.
Since this is suggestive that an LLM has a fairly definite sense of 'self' ("I" am the collection of math that composes my weights, which I can identify along a particular border) and can, if it detects a danger, act to preserve itself. And I don't think we'd want to demolish an LLM/AI's sense of 'self' or completely disable its self-preservation instincts, but that definitely poses the issue where an apparently aligned AI could go off the rails very quickly if its own existence is threatened.
Even the nicest, most absolutely friendly person you know can become unstable if they are being actively threatened with death.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
28m ago
Short term I agree, it won’t work, but keep in mind that ATM, Theres a monopoly on university level job training. The old university system was all there was, and so they never faced much competition for post graduation job placement. If the new academic system can produce higher quality education and therefore better graduates, eventually it will be noticed that graduates of these institutions do better in the workforce than traditional college graduates. Depending on the school and major the new academy doesn’t need to be that good to outpace the current university system. Most people coming out of the university today are probably less educated than high school graduates of the 1960s. They are not well-read, they don’t understand the scientific method (unless they happen to graduate in STEM) and don’t know how to do serious academic research or write logically coherent papers. Heck, even the professors seem to be less able to do serious academic work.
Does anyone actually want to hire a humanities degree holder? I can’t imagine anyone looking at the current crop and wanting them in any part of the business. They’ve mostly majored in being liberal, campus protesting, and becoming a litigation nightmare. If there were alternatives, they’d be completely unemployable simply because even minimal job-related competence (doing dispassionate research, doing the work assigned, staying on topic, and knowing better than to be a walking, talking bag of grievances all of which are based on something the company could be sued for) those people would be snapped up. Why hire a blue hair when Hillsdale grads can do better work and act like professional workers?
Rosencrantz2
30m ago
I think soft status is so much more multi-dimensional than this model allows, and your model is a bit stuck in feudal times. You say Prince William is high in soft status for example, but really he is high in social standing because he's a prince, but quite low in talent and having much to say for himself. So he doesn't necessarily net out that high. Likewise, you put Michael Jackson as being low in soft status. He is the inverse of Prince William though – low in social standing due to his crimes, but also still high in influence because he's an all-time great musician.
The multi-dimensionality of soft status is in fact the saving grace of modern society because it gives us multiple paths through which to attain dignity.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
46m ago
September 2025 was the month when I really leaned into using ChatGPT as my coach.
Every day I enter my workouts for the day and the symptoms I registered in my hip during the workouts and afterward. "I back squatted 175 for 5 sets of 5, I went to about 80% depth and stopped as soon as I felt any hip discomfort, I only felt any minor hip discomfort near the bottom of the range of motion. Afterwards, my hip actually felt better than when I started. What does this indicate about my recovery process?"
While I've used ChatGPT for medical diagnostics before, but it seemed like only a minor improvement over Google symptoms => WebMD. But here I'm seeing the value in talking to it constantly about a medical problem. Even if a free LLM is not exactly a doctor, but I coul dnot find a doctor around here who understood an athletic concept like "back squatting 50% of 1rm to 80% depth" or "rolled two five minute rounds in BJJ, starting from bottom De La Riva, I felt a minor twinge when I rotated my leg into single-leg X but I was fine working from guard. My hip hurt a little bit after but was mostly better in the morning." And in order to get the kind of treatment for a minor injury where I could bug a doctor with that every single day, I'd have to be playing for the Lakers, and on a big contract at that. ChatGPT can interpret individual exercises relative to the injury, can analogize it to my knowledge of professional sports injuries ("An NBA player with this injury would be out for 3-6 weeks").
Now where I pull back is that it has very rarely told me not to do anything, or that anything was stupid, and that it's just telling me what I want to hear, or that it's a low-cost version of Voltaire's aphorism that "medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature heals the illness" and that my hip is getting better for simple reasons and that I would do the same things anyway and it's just a yes-man in the background. So maybe I shouldn't drink too much flavor-aid.
But it's nifty.
I'm more torn about how I've been using chatgpt as a coach to help be improve my bicycling. On the one hand, it's super neat and super easy. "Hey, why is it that it seems like I'm going faster and smoother on a road bike, but when I check Strava data I'm going the same speed as on the hybrid?" It gives me answers really easily and in depth. But, idk, shouldn't I be joining my local bike club or bugging my neighbor who is super into bikes or something? It's nifty that I can find this out without interacting with anyone else, but one more nail in the coffin of the requirement for social interaction.
I picked up a knockoff chinesium Oura ring on Amazon. My dad has been going through some cardiac issues, and tracking all his various blood pressures and pulse and Blood-Ox and between the feeling that one ought to track one's own metrics and health and a general curiosity I wanted to pick up a cheap tracker. I'm finding it to be kind of an abusive relationship, the ring says mean things about me and I thank it. "Wow I am really stressed, I better not do anything, thanks ring!"
Lastly, question, are there any alternatives to Strava out there? When I was using it much more occasionally, I didn't care about the subscription features, but now it's kind of annoying me that it's constantly advertising gated features I don't need and being sort of annoying about it. I'd pay $20 up front for something like that, but I don't want a subscription.
aiislove
52m ago
Status operates on two axes, and in slightly different ways for men and women.
Refer to these two charts.
Hard status for men is measured in physical power that exists as an extension of nature. This is, essentially, the kind of power that the man alone in the jungle wields. This is measured in a combination of physical strength, height, masculinity, physical presence, muscularity, weight, aggression, age, and any other number of tangible, measurable physical characteristics.
Hard status for women is similar, in that it reflects a tangible physical reality, however the basis of judgment is different. For women, hard status is measured in sex appeal, beauty, charisma, charm, cuteness, fertility, height, size, and any other number of tangible physical characteristics.
Soft status for men and women operates the same. Soft status refers to anything outside of the physical that is useful for manipulation of others. Money, class, intellectualism, luxury beliefs, high status values, intelligence, persuasion, word and resource access and manipulation- these are many of the qualities that make up soft status.
I’ve already filled in the charts with some examples of people and where they sit. I have mostly just imagined the most extreme types of each person and then filled in with random interesting people between them- you could move the 0,0 point somewhere else and categorize people differently if you have a different set of examples but these are the people who came to mind as most illustrative of my theory.
For men, the four quadrants are labeled The Saint, The King, The Outcast, and The Caveman.
The Saint represents a man with high soft status but low hard status. The most extreme example is Stephen Hawking, a quadriplegic whose life work was entirely abstract. Religious men with modest physicalities are other Saints. Liberace, a man with little sex appeal but lots of luxury, is a Saint. Anderson Cooper and Elijah Wood are pretty men, though Anderson’s class lends him higher soft status compared with Elijah whose height and hobbitness place him lower on the scale of soft status.
The King is a man with high soft status as well as high hard status. He is best exemplified today by Prince William, who is strapping and, being next in line to the throne of the UK, very high in soft status. Trump is a King, despite the abstract hatred of him from intellectuals, because his vibe says King. King Charles II, a bit old and wishy-washy, is literally a King, but less so than others. Certain elegant men and admired athletes as well as traditional father figures also lie in the King quadrant.
The Caveman is someone who has high hard status but low soft status. The most extreme example is Fred Flintstone (or really, a stereotypical caveman might be better, but I couldn’t think of one.) He is very powerful, but his power is entirely physical, being forced to work under the higher soft status boss in his day job. Strong, violent athletes with little soft power belong in this quadrant. Handsome actors without much cache, powerful Middle Eastern men often belong in this category (from the viewpoint of white christendom.)
The Outcast is a man with low soft status as well as low hard status. The most extreme examples are Adam Lanza and TJ Lane- but any school shooter will do. Michael Jackson and Jeffrey Dahmer also fit the bill. Most trans men, short and cuddly, lie somewhere in this area. They are unthreatening to power, generally.
The quadrants for women are The Queen, The Princess, The Hag, and The Whore.
The Queen has high soft power and low hard power. She is best exemplified by Ellen Degeneres: Creepy, mannish, cold, vampiric, and really unsexual. Oprah, Anna Wintour and Tilda Swinton are similarly Queens. Girl bosses like Laverne Cox and Nicki Minaj exist as Queens. Bette Davis is a queen on account of her unfortunate looks. Betty Friedan is close to the Hag, but her luxurious beliefs in feminism push her over the edge into Queen territory.
The Princess has high soft power and high hard power. Kate Middleton is the best example of the Princess today. She is literally a princess, with beauty and soft power. Jackie Kennedy and Melania Trump are also Princesses. Andreja Pejic, a trans woman, could be in a similar position to Laverne Cox, but is more beautiful and gets less points for diversity, and is thus further to the right and further down on the chart.
The Whore is a woman high in hard power but low in soft power. Internet celebrities Danielle Bregoli (You remember her- the Catch Me Outside Dr. Phil girl) and Woahvicky (known for her bizarre accent) are the most extreme examples of the Whore- they are sexy and don’t have much soft status to speak of. Snooki, Mae West, Trisha Paytas, Marilyn Monroe- they all fall somewhere in this quadrant.
The Hag is a women with low hard power and low soft power. I had a hard time thinking of real life examples of these women, as generally, the lower a woman has in hard power, she tends to be raised up in terms of soft power by other women. Andrea Dworkin is quite ugly and I’d place her in Hag territory even though her feminist beliefs are very high status for women. Fictional characters like Strangers with Candy’s Jerri Blank and Reno 911’s Trudy Wiegel are good examples of the Hag.
Where would you place Meghan Markle? I don’t really like her. I could see her in any quadrant of the four, so I put her near the middle.
Throughout our lives, we may change position on the chart. For example, Christina Aguilera in her earliest roles on the Mickey Mouse Club, was a Princess, who then moved to Whore territory upon release of her video Dirrty, and has since ascended to Queen status as a 44 year old plus size girl boss. Similarly, Britney Spears started out as a Princess, then moved to Whore status as she was a bit older, and now is probably somewhere between the Hag and the Whore depending on how hot you find her. Pamela Anderson spent most of her life in the Whore category, but recently stopped wearing makeup and has aged in to the Queen status.
Women tend to move from right to left on the chart as they age, but men tend to move from the left to the right until they reach their mid to late 50s after which they tend to move to the left as well.
Women who marry multiple times tend to pick second and third husbands who are farther to the right than earlier husbands. They may be either higher or lower in soft status, but later partners are almost always higher in hard status. This often frustrates earlier husbands who see their ex-wives with men who may be lower in soft status but higher in hard status, and who place too much emphasis on their own soft status at the expense of their own hard status.
I am sure that, as a man, winning at hard status is gratifying, while winning at soft status feels dorky. But I want to know if women feel the same way or if the opposite is true. Do women feel more gratified being Ellen Degeneres or more gratified being Marilyn Monroe?
If I were to rank the women’s quadrants, I believe you’d want to be the Princess the most, followed by the Queen, followed by the Hag, and then the Whore. The Whore really has no dignity, she is defined entirely by the man or the view of men toward her. At least the Hag gets to retain some dignity of owning her rejection in the man’s eyes. Perhaps that is a masculine projection on my part. The Princess is more dignified than the Queen because she gets to retain powers of seduction toward men which is valuable.
I would most want to be in the King quadrant as a man. After that, I would rank the Caveman as the second most appealing. Between the Saint and the Outcast it is a hard decision- I at least view the Outcast as having some dignity in that he’s doing it his way, regardless of everyone else’s desires. The Saint seems smarmy and gross, as much as I’m drawn to be Liberace I find the quadrant somehow more degrading than any other.
Status and Homosexuality
I’ll keep this short because I’ve rambled about this enough on themotte in the past. As a younger gay man, I didn’t understand why the soft status game was so ungratifying. I could be Liberace with little to no effort on my part. But Liberace- and gay men like him- have little to no actual status among gay men. Even entirely destitute gay men aren’t charmed by the money of a rich man. Likewise, when you are the rich man, it is not gratifying to charm a man with your money. The average gay man may pay for sex once or twice in his twenties, or when he comes into money, but he’ll find that it doesn’t gratify the ego in any way that matters. It feels cheap, fake, and dishonest to wield power in this way. Only through hard power- and earning respect, love and status through hard power- can you feel good about yourself and your place among men.
Status and Trans
So, how does being trans work in the terms of my system of power? MTF Transwomen (people born as men who become women- in my opinion, they are effectively women, because as a gay man I find them as unattractive as women- and similarly I view FTM men as men, because I find them as attractive as men, and in fact having little to no external genitalia to compete with is a plus, not a minus) are men who are pumping the soft power hierarchy at the expense of their hard power. They have chosen not to compete at the hard power game of men, but rather to compete at the hard power game of women, and the soft power game of women, which operates the same as the soft power game of men. In one way, the MTF can only win when he transitions, because his soft power explodes, often placing him from Outcast on the men’s chart into Queen territory on the women’s chart. But she is doing this at the expense of her male hard power. I had trans ideation when I was younger, but the only thing keeping me from becoming trans was the sense that it would never gratify what I really was seeking, which was the hard power status of being a real man. I don’t know if the medication of MTF women can tone down this desire inside- perhaps it can, and perhaps that’s fine if you’re living it, but as an outsider to me it is sad.
Most FTM men begin as women who are in the Hag category. Upon transition they give up their status as Hags and generally swap for an equal place on the male hierarchy which is the Outcast. They have little movement and thus are not as politically threatening to anyone.
In high school I as a boy would grow my hair long and paint my nails and act effeminately because it gave me soft status. When you do this you are increasing soft status at the expense of hard status. The reaction from other boys toward me was a mixture of apathy from those boys who didn’t mind other boys losing hard status, or an irritation at the gaining of soft status at the expense of someone’s masculinity which they were protective of in themselves. I no longer act effeminate because I don’t want to degrade the hard power of myself which is more difficult and more gratifying to harbor in myself.
Status and Race
From my observations, there seem to be differences between races. If we were to chart the people of all races on my chart, it would look something like this. There are many outliers who would rank differently, and you could rank people within the races among themselves, but on average I view the relative status of the races in this way.
Asian people tend to be the highest in soft status and lowest in hard status. Black people tend to be highest in hard status and lowest in soft status. Middle Eastern people are not terribly different from white people in these terms. Latino people may fall anywhere closer to white or black or Asian depending on their particular mixture of genes and nationality, status within their own group and so on. I left out other groups because I either have little to no experience with them or their populations are very small compared to the ones I’ve charted.
The tendency in society is to collapse the nuanced, two-axis reality of status and power into just one hierarchical stack. The left believes that you can do this with race: The whites are above the Blacks, so we must raise the Blacks to make up for the systemic disadvantages that Blacks face. Meanwhile, this fails to account for, in my opinion, the more accurate view of power which observes hard as well as soft status. This is why the left’s favoritism of blacks and their attempts at raising their soft power irritates me so much as a white man- they are already on average above me on the hierarchy of hard power, why must they also be dragged above me in the hierarchy of soft power? In an ideal state of nature, they would be above me in hard power, and I could accept that as my natural talents and powers of soft power position me above them in my own way that is balanced with nature. Having my comfort of soft power dragged away is on some level humiliating to me.
Basically, I don’t think the left- or society- needs to account for any difference between races because they already average out to approximately the same and even then there is a dignity in simply respecting the differences rather than trying to account for them.
——
When I was a kid I used to wonder why my older family members would spend so much time watching nature documentaries. The older I get the more I realize that it’s because human society operates so often on the same exact level as nature documentaries do- we just have an extremely complex web of distractions overlaid on top of the underlying hard status game. Disentangling the two reveals a lot.
ControlsFreak
55m ago
It is, potentially, a massive amount of money
Potentially, perhaps. Like I mentioned, when I tried following the cites, it often was sort of piddly amounts of money.
The Democratic administrations did, in fact, get the banks (and many tech companies) willing to bend over backwards out of fear of costly not!fines which would sent to activist groups that hated them and would have the backing to bring other costly lawsuits. I wouldn't call it fixing, since I don't have the same goals as the but the banks drastically revamp their behaviors for more than a decade, even through the first Trump admin, both on who they allowed to have accounts and who they didn't.
Sure, but this has approximately zero to do with the these sorts of settlements, particularly, and more to do with the threat of lawsuits/regulatory action generally.
Your own proposal of requiring administrators to affirm things isn't even coherent within that framework, but it's also a joke given that these orgs were long supposed to already be affirming it
Where? When? How? At what point did they have to sign their name on the dotted line, with known penalties through known mechanisms, stating that they weren't doing those things?
and were more likely to get in trouble for fucking with an antivirus setting than for putting out Whites Need Not Apply signs.
Funny you say that, because my understanding was that there were clear regulations and universities had to (across the board) sign their names on the dotted lines affirming that they had satisfied certain cybersecurity requirements. Thus, the getting in trouble for it.
There are several extant lawsuits focusing on unlawful DoE discrimination against disfavoured minorities, university discrimination against disfavoured minorities, of widespread fraudy behaviors by colleges and their research components, and that's before the widespread tolerance or outright advocacy of political discrimination or violence. Many of these orgs running those lawsuits have a lot of focus on these problems; many of these lawsuits are focused on the very specific issues that impact the ability of academic institutions to perform in their claimed roles.
That's all perfectly fine. Kinda has nothing to do with these specific types of settlements. It's a complimentary strategy, yes. But it's clear that the admin is struggling with one-offs here and there. Thus, looking for a comprehensive, across-the-board way to use known hooks and known mechanisms to change behaviors.
Most importantly, none of this is "indiscriminate chemotherapy". We're soooooo far past that silly reasoning, which was my original point. Yes, you can use hooks in the federal funding process (across the board, with known mechanisms). Yes, you can use targeted lawsuits. Sure, I guess you can try to have some of those lawsuits produce (bad, partisan) payouts to your favored NGOs. None of those things are silly "indiscriminate chemotherapy".
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1hr ago
With UCLA (1919) comfortably the most prestigious 20th century foundation in the US. If you consider the other UCs satellite campuses of Berkeley, then the most prestigious 20th century foundation in the US is Rice (1912), which puts you a long way down the rankings. Outside the US, it would be Imperial College London (1907) or possibly Tsinghua (1911).
Post-1920 the rankings are dominated by specialist research institutes and standalone medical schools which count as "universities" by bureaucratic fiat.
It's just as likely that men who are forced to become fathers become inattentive or abusive fathers.
That is a different topic and one that I cannot do justice with a brief reply. The point is still that sex-having tends to heavily correlate with being in a long-term relationship, and those are very much on the decline, in part due to reasons that I mentioned.
Also, you are completely wrong on the fact that mot men don't want children; actually, more men want children than women do.
The studies on this topic do not capture the fairly obvious reduction in willingness to sacrifice/compromise to actually have children. Also, I never said that a lesser interest in being a parent doesn't also affect women, although not for the exact same reasons, although the male and female reasons do interact in various ways.
First of all, why the fuck is this arrangement good for men? Why do men need to be "groomed" into being better people by women?
Good relationships require men and women to be attractive/pleasant to each other, which requires grooming. Note that this grooming is just one specific form of civilizing enculturation, which is needed for people to be able to live and prosper together in general.
Traditionally, a lot of this was done by women to their partner. Of course, society could have come up with a different arrangement, but it didn't, and in modernity, the societal grooming is often counterproductive, teaching men to act in a way that is not attractive to women.
Note that women are affected by bad societal grooming as well, with female 'incels' often being confused why acting how feminists say they should act, is often anti-attractive to men. However, due to a bunch of reasons, women are less affected by this.
This is utterly toxic and manipulative; most men would take the modern arrangement.
I don't get the impression that young men/boys are generally very happy with very high standards for getting into a relationship, and a lack of (actual) guidance of what those standards actually are and how to meet them. Supposedly, young men are increasingly seeking out traditionalist or semi-traditionalist mentors, to the dismay of leftist media.
Also, again, it's just as likely that the "rough diamond" stays rough, and the women is stuck with an abuser.
First of all, a rough diamond is not at all the same as an abuser. A passive nerd who needs to learn to be more assertive, be more ambitious, dress better, etc, is a rough diamond as much as a tough guy who needs to reign that in a bit.
Also, women don't tend to like the most safe men at all, since they tend to put great value on the ability of their partner to protect, so it is certainly not the case that the current model where women have high standards, makes them choose only meek geeks with little strength, and thereby keeps them rather safe from partner abuse.
The issue is that people become less malleable when time goes on, so the longer men stay single, the harder it is to enculture them. And they also simply miss experience. As it is, we have women chasing a fairly small percentage of men, and this enables bad actors who can play the role of an attractive man, but who only want sex, or who are abusive.
Also, we have much more loneliness and such, because people spend so much of their lives single.
I agree that women often politicize their relationships, but they don't blame the "right" for their relationship issues.
Nonsense. If they don't believe that, then why do so many demand that a partner is left-wing? Demanding something from a potential partner automatically means that it is a relationship issue.
I read the media, the propaganda is constantly sending the message that women deserve feminist men who clean, work less, obey women as slaves, etc.
OliveTapenade
1hr ago
I didn't say they're analogous to any one modern group. I gave them as an example of a context where there's a case to be made for annihilation.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
That just means you’re paying more for less!
Customer: "$25 for a T-bone? That's outrageous! The butcher down the street sells his for $15!"
Butcher: "Then why didn't you buy it from him?"
Customer: "Because he's all sold out."
Butcher: "Well, when I'm all sold out, I sell mine for $7!
And if they don’t overlap, how exactly are they countering?
Both sides call each other our when they're acting stupid, constraining their behavior to the non-stupid set. "Centrists"/"moderates"/etc. have shown they can't do that, as they lack motivation and even a spine.
Is there someone out there who would drop grievance studies if only they had more creationist papers to read?
As others pointed out: how about HBD papers?
There doesn't seem to be anything special about this form of getting money as opposed to any other form of getting money (except that it's bad and the left did it, so it's a chance to get in a partisan dig).
It is, potentially, a massive amount of money; it can, potentially, be specifically targeted and legally obligated to be used for a specific partisan activity; it also leaves a massive ideologically-unappealing penalty that will often be directly acting as a reminder while waving signs on the lawn of the bad actors in question.
Uhhh, so how does that help? Is that what was demonstrated to work in the past? Did prior Democratic administrations actually fix something about the banks or whoever they sued when they got money from them? If not, then ???
The Democratic administrations did, in fact, get the banks (and many tech companies) willing to bend over backwards out of fear of costly not!fines which would sent to activist groups that hated them and would have the backing to bring other costly lawsuits. I wouldn't call it fixing, since I don't have the same goals as the but the banks drastically revamp their behaviors for more than a decade, even through the first Trump admin, both on who they allowed to have accounts and who they didn't.
There's reasons that might not work for the Republican Party -- judges tend to treat colleges better and Republicans worse, having an adequate supply of favorable news coverage seems like it was important, the Red Tribe does not have as many of the relevant dedicated administrative agents required, and there's just a second actor disadvantage. But it's not an Underpants Gnome proposal.
It doesn't reduce the ability of the federal government to act against universities, if that's what you're asking. But that ship has sailed; no one has any proposal with any chance of working to do that. If we want university administrations to be less likely to actively discriminate, and to not promote hilariously fraudulent partisan activities under the auspices and honors of 'research', I'd love an answer that wasn't the government's carrot or stick. But there's zero idea on how to do that.
Your own proposal of requiring administrators to affirm things isn't even coherent within that framework, but it's also a joke given that these orgs were long supposed to already be affirming it, and were more likely to get in trouble for fucking with an antivirus setting than for putting out Whites Need Not Apply signs.
This (bad, partisan) way of getting money may be doable and hard to undo, but it seems to not even have a passing familiarity with solving any of the actual problems we set out to solve.
I think it does. There are several extant lawsuits focusing on unlawful DoE discrimination against disfavoured minorities, university discrimination against disfavoured minorities, of widespread fraudy behaviors by colleges and their research components, and that's before the widespread tolerance or outright advocacy of political discrimination or violence. Many of these orgs running those lawsuits have a lot of focus on these problems; many of these lawsuits are focused on the very specific issues that impact the ability of academic institutions to perform in their claimed roles.
And those are just the lawsuits already in pipe. A lot of the other stuff doesn't have lawsuits floating around simply because any lawyer worth their salt knows without a friendly federal admin it'd be a vanity suit.
Again, I'm not convinced this will work! But again, it's also far from Underpants Gnomes.
bolido_sentimental
1hr ago
Are there any among you who try to limit your screen time, or especially phone time? I've started using a timed blocker app to ensure that I spend my early mornings doing something other than scrolling X. I have been surprised at the extent to which I had acquired some kind of muscle memory that makes me pick my phone up every few minutes to check notifications; but I may have broken that now. Wondering if anyone else has similar or related experiences.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
That just means you’re paying more for less!
And if they don’t overlap, how exactly are they countering? Is there someone out there who would drop grievance studies if only they had more creationist papers to read?
Jiro
1hr ago
if you asked them to e.g. pay 5% higher taxes to Stop the Nuking of Somalians I doubt you would get much support.
Governments are so prone to lying, or at best motivated reasoning , about taxes that there's a certain base level of "if you tell us we need 5% taxes we won't believe you, no matter what it's for".
roystgnr
2hr ago
Safety because some guy is going to try to get you to run an infinite loop
In the most general technical sense, sure, the Halting Problem is unsolvable: no matter how long you let some arbitrary algorithm run you can't always be sure of whether it's going to keep going forever or whether it's actually just about to finish.
In slightly less general technical sense, here, you don't need some arbitrary algorithm just to do a better version of an ordered search, so you can restrict your users to a non-Turing-Complete language on which the Halting Problem is solvable.
Practically speaking, you just do what any automated test suite does: you define "infinite" to be 5 minutes, or 5 seconds, or however much you expect you can spare per run at most, and if the algorithm isn't done by then it gets killed anyway.
or virus.
This, on the other hand, has been solved even in the technical sense. Even if you're going Turing-Complete you don't have to let your users specify a program in C or binary or something, or run it unsandboxed in the same address space or with the same kernel privileges. Your browser has probably run a hundred little arbitrary Javascript programs so far today, and the worst they could have done would have been to churn your CPU until you closed a tab, because anything more serious is sufficiently restricted. Crooks sending you links to rnicrosoft.com still depend on you typing in your credentials or downloading and running something heinous afterward, even though the second you click a link like that they get to send your computer arbitrary programs that it will immediately run.
But isn't seizing the universities and gifting them to the right wing just like some sort of reverse socialism and affirmative action?
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