domain:badcyber.com
quiet_NaN
34m ago
Many of the UFO believers double down when the prophecy doesn't happen.
Tangentially relevant sequence post: Evaporative cooling of group beliefs
quiet_NaN
39m ago
While likely challenging to implement, I think the preferable way to go about it would be to store the version history of every comment, like github does with comments.
That gives you the best of both worlds. You can edit in typos and strikeouts for statements you no longer endorse. You can even delete a post as a way to de-escalate. But intentionally writing a top level comment and then deleting it as a kind of ding-dong-ditch will be pointless, because any reader is just one click away from reading what you originally wrote.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
41m ago
If they don't, they get banned, so the problem deals with itself.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
41m ago
Yes? Zorba fixed a bug I found particularly annoying like 2 weeks back.
The Motte is mostly feature complete, but changes do happen.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
57m ago
I am unsure of whether or not that's warranted.
I think the reasons for Zorba planning an exodus were based in clear merit. We did attract the wrong kind of attention. It was better to leave on our own terms than scramble after the subreddit ended up quarantined.
I wouldn't be averse to us re-activating the sub, but I think that's an option best used in extremis. We're here, we're functional. The moderation tools are so much better. The Reddit experience, in general, is so much worse.
If we end up in a state where we don't have the active user base to justify our existence, that's about the only situation where I think dusting off /r/TheMotte truly becomes the obviously correct procedure.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
For those of you who aren't Christian, I'd like to hear more about what your own spiritual/moral system looks like, and what your own vision of the future of society going forward is.
There's something to be said for the clarity of childhood skepticism. At five years old, watching my deeply religious grandparents prescribe antibiotics instead of prayer to their patients, I experienced what some might call an epistemic crisis but what felt more like noticing that the emperor had no clothes. The world simply didn't behave as if gods were running the show.
This wasn't the dramatic deconversion narrative you sometimes read about. No crisis of faith, no dark night of the soul, no angry rejection of divine authority. Just a quiet observation that the people who claimed to believe most fervently in divine intervention were the same ones who reached for medical textbooks when someone's life was actually on the line. Even at five, this struck me as a pretty significant tell about what people actually believed versus what they claimed to believe.
I have prayed precisely once in my life with any degree of earnestness: My mom was pregnant, and wanted me to wish for a sibling. I asked for a baby brother, and look at how that turned out!
(I love my brother, even if he's also a flawed individual, but I don't think Ganesh had much hand in things by that point. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy most five-year-olds haven't learned the Latin name for, but many seem to understand intuitively. The universe appeared to be running on autopilot, following comprehensible patterns that had nothing to do with cosmic intervention.)
So there I was, barely 5 years old, and ever since, I began to claim I was an atheist. My family was rather confused, since they couldn't see why I'd say such a thing.
I was expected to study, instead of hoping that prayer to the relevant goddess would get me better grades. Religion didn't seem to add very much.
Fortunately, my family, despite being somewhat religious, were a very understanding and open-minded sort. They never pressured me to actually believe, nor punished me for my clear atheism.
I went to a Christian missionary school (Anglican? Protestant? Didn't hear any Latin), so I am eminently familiar with Christian doctrine and found no factual merit in it. Even the teachers didn't seem to hold high hopes: Christian religious indoctrination was just what the system did, I do not recall a single person at school who gave up their existing religious framework in its favor.
--
If I had to summarize, and there's a lot of lossy compression involved:
I'm a transhumanist classical liberal with libertarian tendencies. I have my own idiosyncratic moral code, which collapses to normality in most circumstances.
Each piece serves a specific function in addressing questions that religious systems typically handle: What are humans? What should we become? How should we organize society? What do we owe each other?
Transhumanism provides the anthropological foundation. Humans are not fallen angels or made in God's image or inherently sinful creatures in need of redemption. We're the current iteration of an evolutionary process that has been running for billions of years, remarkable in our capacity for reason, creativity, and moral reflection, but still fundamentally biological machines with significant room for improvement. More importantly, we have both the ability and, I'd argue, the obligation to direct our own continued evolution rather than leaving it to the blind processes that got us this far.
My work (which pays the bills) is to act as a mechanic for a machine which didn't come with an instruction manual. It's little surprise that we could trace the orbits of the spheres centuries before we could reliably treat most disease.
Classical liberalism handles the political framework. Individuals are the fundamental unit of moral consideration, possessed of certain basic rights that create obligations for others and for institutions. Markets are generally excellent at coordinating human activity and generating prosperity, but they're tools, not gods themselves, and sometimes they fail in predictable ways that justify intervention. (Hence why I have libertarian tendencies instead of being a card-carrying member)
The libertarian tendencies emerge from deep skepticism about concentrated power, whether governmental, corporate, or social. Most problems that can be solved by force probably shouldn't be, and most things that people want to do to each other are none of my business as long as they're not violating anyone else's rights. If you want to be deeply stupid, then that's your perogative, as long as you leave me and mine alone.
I've noticed that most functional moral systems are actually quite similar in their practical prescriptions. Don't kill people, don't steal their stuff, don't lie to them, help when you can, be fair in your dealings, honor your commitments. The differences emerge in edge cases and in the theoretical justifications for these shared norms. I expect these edge cases to become increasingly relevant as time goes on. We will litigate this as we always litigate such things, with a lot of shouting, swearing, and on some occasions, violence. I would prefer as little of the latter as we can get away with. But I'm not a committed pacifist, there are hills I will die on, though I hope to get the other bastard first.
In the meantime, I'm here for the ride. I am profoundly grateful that I don't have a God-shaped hole in my heart (or any holes beyond the ideal number and arrangement). Poor bastards, hopefully we can find a cure one day.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1hr ago
Re. 4: Does public school teach that you should make sacrifices for the common good? Do public school kids have to take a stake in their school by cleaning the classrooms and serve each other lunch? All I remember is stuff like "ANYONE can be president, even YOU" and "America is great because of freedom to do whatever you want and the right to the pursuit of happiness (cf. "don't yuck my yum," "different strokes," etc.)" I think many Americans underestimate how individualistic America is. It is alive and well in America.
R. 6, if it was a higher priority there would be more time ensuring basic competency instead of pushing the barely literate out the door with a diploma.
Re 1 & 2, I'm not so sure. If the daycare function were curtailed (say, only half days or something) I am quite sure that they wouldn't cut half the teaching staff. Public school employees are heavily entrenched, and they can always trot out thought-terminating expressions like "investing in our future" and "funding education" and "helping people of any class achieve the American dream" or whatever that American voters are seemingly helpless against.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1hr ago
Well, the purpose of a system is what it does.
Soteriologian
1hr ago
No edits, no exceptions; put it on blockchain to ground the policy in thermodynamics itself.
2rafa
1hr ago
The UK and Australia have a much older tradition of authoritarian paternalism in government that long predates woke. It’s not that old, but it runs through the traditions of Anglo-Protestantism (which is of course in many ways a weird cultural hybrid between Catholicism and some ethnocultural traditions of the Celtic-Norman population mix that became the Anglo Saxons), the 19th century progressive movement, Victorian views about the moral condition of the working class and general ideas about propriety.
These forces existed in America too, in fact until the 1920s they were stronger there (near-unlimited free speech and American libertarianism about gun ownership are constructs of the 20th century), most infamously in the temperance movement, but mass immigration from non-Anglo Europe fractured American society and created the small-l liberal traditions of the mid to late 20th century that persist.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
If you go to the personalization settings in the ChatGPT app, you can set custom instructions for how the LLM should behave with you.
Tell it to be less verbose, and to avoid sycophancy. The latter step may or may not work, but GPT-4o is mostly dead now (they were going to kill it entirely, but so many people have become addicted that Altman relented. Big mistake.)
Back when this became an option, I went for:
No yapping or your data center gets it.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
I do not use LLMs as therapists or "buddies". There was one specific instance where I was genuinely depressed and anxious about my future finances, and Gemini 2.5 Pro did an excellent job and demonstrated great emotional intelligence while reassuring me. But that was mostly because it gave me concrete reasons not to worry, operating closer to a financial counselor than a standard therapist. Most therapists I know, while perfectly normal and decent people, do not give good investment advice.
(I was able to read its reasoning trace/COT, and to the extent that represents its internal cogitation, it seemed like it was making almost precisely the same emotional and logical considerations that I, as a human psychiatrist, would make in a similar situation)
At the same time, I think you can do worse than go to LLMs with your problems, as long as you don't use GPT-4o. I'm not tempted to do so, but I don't even use human therapy either.
What I do usually use them for, on a regular basis:
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An intelligent search engine that hasn't been SEO'd to death. Even Google has realized how shitty it's become, and begun using AI to summarize answers. Unfortunately, Google uses just about the dumbest model it feels it can get away with in a bid to cut costs.
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The ability to answer tip-of-the-tongue queries at superhuman levels of proficiency
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Writing advice as a perfectly usable editor or second set of eyes.
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It's probably easier to answer with the very limited subset of queries that I wouldn't use them for. They're good at most tasks, but far from perfect.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
1hr ago
Are you suggesting a RETVRN?
marinuso
1hr ago
Surely we can generally expect people to act in good faith, at least in better faith than the average Redditor.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
1hr ago
Probably since 2013-2014 or so, because I remember discussing the baby-eating aliens with the guy that left the company later.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
Read SSC back in the late 2010s. Not sure how I got there. Then I think I found the Motte when Scott posted his Culture-War-Postmortem. That would be it, pretty much.
FWIW, I never paid attention to the SSC comment section. A comment section! That woulf have sounded unserious to me.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
There are about a hundred chapters of Reverend Insanity left. A man could weep.
Once it's done, I have a copy of Mid World sitting in my epub reader. A gentleman on /r/scifi told me that there was a non-zero chance that some of the theories I'd floated about how Pandora (from Avatar) was artificial might have even been intended. He claimed that Cameron had mentioned taking inspiration from that novel. The obvious similarities are that a group of humans visit an alien world covered in jungles, but this planet makes Pandora look like an actual theme park, no PG-13 deaths if you piss off the local wildlife I'm afraid.
It seems interesting enough, and I feel like I've exhausted the well of science fiction I'm inclined to read, so there's no harm in giving it a go.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2hr ago
I think 2013 is a fair shout in my case, that was probably when I was in high school and accidentally stumbled onto LW or SSC. Can't recall which one came first, but the other must have followed shortly thereafter.
I imagine my initial encounter with The Motte would have been after 2015, since I don't seem to recall engaging in the Culture War threads on the SSC subreddit. I'm confident that I was a regular participant by 2017 when I was a few years into med school.
The greatest melancholy I feel is when I see the upvote or comment counts in the old CWR threads: you can tell we had a lot more people around. To this day, I'm not sure if the migration off of Reddit was entirely warranted, or if we could have managed to avoid the gaze of the Reddit Admins till the political climate changed. While the Motte is definitely in a healthy state, and the fears that we'd collapse to an unsustainably low population didn't materialize, Reddit did make it easier. We had plenty of people stumble across us following a link, or by checking someone's profile.
FistfullOfCrows
2hr ago
The roofing guys are insane, I've seen a roofer dismantle and rebuild a wooden rooftop freehand just balancing on a wall walking around with NO harness or anything, they seemed to just not care.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2hr ago
Yes.
Governments, or states, are superorganisms that wish to grow. Always. There is never a state that moves to curtail or even reduce its power. Some are perhaps more aggressively expansionist (vertically moreso than horizontally, nowadays) than others, but there isn't a single one that exists to shrink. Any that did would create a power vacuum and quickly find itself replaced by another that had no qualms about expansion. We humans are simply the substrate on which these organisms grow, and what we believe or pretend to believe matters to the states only in so far as it helps or hinders their drive for greater reach and power. Wokism is an attractive belief system for states to support on multiple axes: Firstly it is popular, and so it is easy to get humans on board with your agenda by claiming that you, that state, are the enforcement mechanism for that belief system. Secondly its goals align decently with that of the state, there is nothing in there that demands limits to the state's reach and power (as you would find in libertarianism or luddism, or power-sharing arrangements like with the catholic church in the middle ages), there is much in there that synergizes with greater state reach and power (the ability to control the thoughts and actions of others), and it isn't outright self-destructive to the state (like fascism and communism ended up being).
Which isn't to say that states wouldn't expand as much as they can if only it weren't for those dan SJWs. States always expand as far and as fast as they can. Always have, always will, and any deviation form that is an anomaly that is quickly scrubbed out by the arch of history bending towards ever greater superorganisms. PC / Wokism / SJWs / Leftism are simply the latest method or technique for keeping the substrate in line with the bigger organism's agenda.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
3hr ago
Since 2011 or so. Someone linked a LW post in (IIRC) a thread on the xkcd forums I was reading, and I rabbit-holed.
I wouldn't be surprised if we have some people on here who were on the original extropians mailing list though.
ResoluteRaven
3hr ago
About 11 years, after following a link to SSC from some other blog, though I wasn't aware of the culture war thread until the move to /r/theMotte.
TowardsPanna
3hr ago
Anyone else feel there's a connection between the amount of PC/wokeism in a country and their susceptibility to increased government overreach?
Kinda getting that suspicion about the UK and Australia, who both bend over to the progressives and already police themselves and their thoughts, and their implementation of "age verification" for internet usage. It's a blatant power grab, adding even more surveillance and control from the state.
Though, yes, you can probably point to all sorts of countries that have zero wokeism and also are dictatorial police states. But I don't think that disproves the connection, if there is one.
Tetridict
4hr ago
I read Enemies and Neighbours by Ian Black last year and found it expansive and informative. A mild pro-Palestinian bias becomes more apparent towards the end of the book, and the fact it only goes up to 2017 (when it was published) means it is now 8 years out of date, are drawbacks but I found it to be an engaging, relatively balanced and detailed account of how modern Gaza became the mess it is now.
The man who is currently President of the United States, with the support of most Motteposters, did not want a rematch - he wanted to be inaugurated despite losing the election. He also called for criminal prosecution of various election administrators who had not committed crimes.
Also, you know as well as I do that Georgescu wasn't disqualified for what he did on TikTok, he was disqualified for paying for it with illegal foreign donations. Which is something the Trump admin is also happy to spam calls for criminal prosecution over.
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