domain:betonit.substack.com
Hadad
3m ago
To be clear: I want those who are psychotically violent to be indefinitely restrained, and killed if they won't cooperate with the restraint. If for reasons of cost others refuse to let them be indefinitely restrained, I would prefer they be killed than released back into polite society to terrorize everyone else.
Gaashk
4m ago
I read the new ACX Review post about Alpha School (by an anonymous writer, not Scott). It was well written, but a bit of a slog, because it's quite long for an essay, but not as polished as a book. Some thoughts:
- The school in question costs $40,000/year, and the writer sent three children there last year. There were apparently only 10 children in their cohort.
- The big headline for the Alpha School model is that it has only two hours of core academics. I looked at the schedule for my local elementary school, and they have 2.75 hours of core academics. I don't think most people know this. I get the impression the writer, who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars sending three children to this elite private school and wrote a very long essay about it also doesn't know this. Forty-five minutes a day is not nothing, but is not a huge deal or the main thing the school has going for it.
- The other headline is that they progress 2.6 times faster on the state mandated curriculum, so they'll probably finish it all by junior high or so. Sure. Great. It's nice for kids to learn more things sooner.
- They have an incentive structure that appears to cost about $400 per child per year, which they earn mostly for completing their lessons well and on time, and can buy real things that they like, not extremely cheap things that individual teachers can afford to buy themselves, like at many schools. It's not impossible that public schools can adopt this, if they're convinced enough. Medicaid gives mothers points for taking their babies to checkups, which they can use in an online shop to buy books, toys, kitchen items, etc.
- The teachers are well paid ($60,000 - $150,000), not called teachers ("guides"), and have a slightly different schedule structure from public school teachers. In public schools, the art, music, PE, library, and sometimes other teachers are the only specialists, and their schedule is determined entirely by the need to provide a break to the main teachers. There's some office politics around when this "prep" happens, and how the schedules are set up. Apparently at Alpha, all the students work on the digital platform for the first half of the day, and it's not entirely clear what the "guides" are doing during that time -- students ask for individualized help from call center teachers in Brazil -- but given the pay rates, presumably they're doing something. Then they lead clubs and whatnot in the afternoon. That sounds nice, but they're paying them more than the public schools, so I wonder if there's a catch. That's a big part of the question of whether it could scale or not. Could educational assistants do what the Brazilian on call tutors are doing? Could public school teachers do whatever the guides are doing? It's unclear.
- Every public school teacher I've talked to likes the idea of morning academics, afternoon specials. This doesn't work due to the schedules of the specials teachers, and also staggered lunches. Large elementary schools have six lunches a row, and are very inflexible about that. Apparently it works at Alpha both because all the teachers are, to some extent, specials teachers, and they have less than 100 kids, so lunches are not a huge concern.
- I can see why the SSC-sphere is apparently full of well off people with gifted children, but do not personally relate all that strongly. If I were going to send my kids to a school like that, it would be for the better/longer electives and more interesting peer group, more than for the accelerated learning.
Throwaway05
4m ago
To be clear: you want the state to summarily execute between 5-10 percent of the population because of the presence of severe mental illness?
Hadad
5m ago
America is a collection of regional blood-tied communities -- at least, it was. I accept that rootless cosmopolitans have spread about and diluted themselves so fully they're not a people of any tribe or place, but blood is still the most important tie. Those people are just deeply unfortunate and damaged.
Owlify
5m ago
I was talking about raising kids mostly. Although being an equal contributor in a household in marriage is also something teenage girls won't be prepared for. Older mothers are far more sensible and better at raising children than teenagers. This has always been true, even in historical societies, simply because people are more experienced, worldly and have matured more when they are older.
Forty-Bot
6m ago
The main exception I have to this is if there's meta-progression, like in Roguelites, or like Dead Rising.
IMO most roguelites would be better if everything was unlocked from the start and there was no meta-progression. None of this "Wow, looks like you're having a great run but this next area was tuned for people who've unlocked way more stuff so you're probably going to die anyway. Tough luck, I guess you should have died 20 times before having a good run."
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
8m ago
Had a friend who got really into shrooms. It basically ruined his life for a while, and he was only able to recover after he fully quit doing drugs. Went into a sustained severe manic state, spent his entire life savings in short order, lost multiple jobs in quick succession due to erratic behavior, revealed to me detailed plans that if acted upon would have lead to severe social and potentially legal/criminal damage. And the entire time he was subjectively convinced that he had achieved enlightenment and his actions were infallible. It permanently put me off of ever trying shrooms and has made me skeptical of all accounts that portray psychedelics as "harmless".
(Full disclosure, this was confounded by the fact that he was also doing massive quantities of THC at the same time. But then, people present THC as harmless too, so you'd think that harmless thing 1 + harmless thing 2 would be fine...)
Hadad
8m ago
I was born here through no choice of my own. But! I've been here for five decades, speak English fluently, have two houses, was raised in the Christian tradition, have paid millions in taxes, have never been to jail, have a white wife and two white children (three including step child) who are irrefutably citizens via my wife.
It's not your fault your parents fucked you over, and you did the best you could. But no, you're illegitimate. I'd be willing to fast-track you through the immigration system, but you'd have to go back first. Once exceptions start being made, they get made for everyone, otherwise.
Let also let me what you feel you've done to earn being an American citizen, btw.
Oh, I was born to two citizen parents. Citizenship is mine by blood.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
9m ago
You know, I am not a puritan and don't really care if porn is available. But are we really supposed to be concerned that homeless people can't access free porn? Like their presence isn't making public libraries and coffee shops unpleasant enough as it is?
sun_the_second
9m ago
"A people" might be. A country is not a people; most countries are too big to be anything but a collection of peoples tied not by blood, but by a language (not always), an army (sometimes not their own) and a flag (usually their own).
A midwestern farmer and a coastal urbanist have no common blood between them. Memes might tie them closer than blood does some tribes. But not blood.
HughCaulk
10m ago
Good post but bruh…
Frankly: I hate all this clinical trial bullshit around psychedelics and mushrooms. They definitely have anti depressive effects, but anyone that does drugs knows that the set/setting of these clinical trials is absolutely awful and retarded. You’re tripping and they just have you watching ig reels and tv?
Take 2 gs of real mushrooms and go for a forest walk and think about life. You’ll actually have some real insights about what’s making you that way. Treating these substances like just another pharma substance isn’t the way.
Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity!
Throwaway05
10m ago
Bipolar + Schizophrenia + Schizoaffective disorder add up to something like 5% of the population. Not all of these people commit violence. Not all of these people end up with an involuntary commitment. Saying "you murdered someone during a manic episode I no longer feel comfortable with you living in the community" is one thing "the severity of your illness is so bad that someone thought you were going to hurt people but you didn't end up doing that, however I'm not sure I feel comfortable with you having guns even if you don't need to be in the hospital 100% of the time is another."
Plenty of people end up transiently psychotic because of things like medical illness, substance use (even caffeine!), sleep deprivation, stress, trauma and so on. Most of these do not go on to kill people. A fraction who do end up with an involuntary commitment are significantly more dangerous and risky.
No, it's actually just correct. Being a citizen of the US is a reward for anyone not entitled to it by blood. We're the best. Everyone knows it.
Just curious, since I don't often receive this kind of candor.
Have I earned it, in your opinion?
I was born here through no choice of my own. But! I've been here for five decades, speak English fluently, have two houses, was raised in the Christian tradition, have paid millions in taxes, have never been to jail, have a white wife and two white children (three including step child) who are irrefutably citizens via my wife.
Also, kindly let me know what you feel you've done to earn being an American citizen.
Hadad
15m ago
The internet has always been open for all.
Well, no, it hasn't.
I get it’s not a right … but having to wait for someone to unlock the deodorant to buy it is annoying as hell.
Yeah, thieves suck.
Hadad
18m ago
"70% chance of further psychosis" is a crazy way to describe a person you think is safe.
Bluntly, yeah, all those people you mentioned I'm cool with indefinitely restraining and/or killing depending on how cooperative they are with restraint. These aren't normal people. Not even the one you call normal. I won't put a price on it, as these costs aren't fixed. The death penalty can be done very cheaply, for instance. We just don't do it that way.
Throwaway05
20m ago
I think a good thought experiment here is to look at traffic tickets.
Do you think cops should have flexibility in giving a ticket or not?
Choosing not to is also abomination of due process, it is inconsistent and potentially abusable and corrupt. It's also flexible and can work out well.
The system works better for most people overall when have some flexibility in the system. Some people are screwed over by that flexibility however in my experience it's usually for good reason (in this case: guy is likely an asshole).
If you want to remove the slack and flexibility in the system you can certainly advocate for that but you'll find it probably isn't what you want in practice.
With respect to this guy specifically, I got the impression that it seemed like he had more involvement with mental health care that he was letting on and was trying to minimize which is not a good sign.
Hadad
21m ago
That is correct, as I no longer value the law as a neutral institution. I am not concerned with cleaving to the law if the law destroys the society I want. And yes, Reagan's amnesty was terrible, and his biggest fuck up as a President. He's awful for it.
GBRK
21m ago
Illegal immigrants (quite rationally) do treat first world citizenship as a prize and lie and cheat their way to getting it.
Even if I were to accept that description of illegal immigrants as being accurate, it still fails to describe the children of illegal immigrants. Babies are not rewarded by citizenship, they are entitled to it.
hydroacetylene
22m ago
There have been plenty of societies with an average female age of marriage 16 or under. Our society isn’t one of them, and the median teenaged girl probably is not ready to be married off, but it’s not implausible that some might be. Very, very few where guys married under 20, or even 25. Far more implausible for a teenage boy to be ready for marriage, especially considering the man needs to pay the bills.
Hadad
22m ago
Blood is not water, nor is it magical. It's deeply physical. A people are tied by it.
GBRK
23m ago
It's crazy to criticize magic soil when apparently you believe in magic water. Having a particular genetic sequence or ancestral tree doesn't establish responsibilities and liberties any better than touching a particular patch of soil soil. Actually, it is explicitly, legally worse at transmitting those things.
Rov_Scam
26m ago
Fistful of Dollars is the weakest entry in the trilogy, and Red Harvest is an overrated novel that I quit reading as soon as I figured out where it was going. I haven't seen Yojimbo, but I have no interest in watching it if it's just another "guy plays two gangs off of one another for personal reasons with a big showdown at the end* film. I mean, seriously, you don't need to be a clairvoyant to see how obvious these plotlines are and how at a certain point you're just waiting for the whole thing to play out.
HereAndGone
30m ago
And if she had originally felt that lying was a minor offense made as much for Henry's sake as for hers, it wouldn't be at all shocking if she refused to come clean so that he could look justified in betraying her.
Or, on the other hand, if she wasn't lying, neither would it be shocking if she refused to lie just to make it convenient for Henry to dump her for his long-term mistress. Henry (and those he had charged with getting this done) had little scruples about bending the truth; there was a lot of ground to be cleared before the second marriage could take place, and it wasn't all down to an inconvenient wife.
Anne Boleyn had at one time attempted to contract a marriage with Henry Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland, and they were secretly betrothed. This didn't suit either of their families, or Cardinal Wolsey, so whatever arrangement they had was broken up and Percy was married off to another woman. When the king's marriage with Anne was to go forward, Percy was pressured to claim there had been nothing between them. Then later on, when it was incumbent to get rid of her, he was pressured to admit there had been a pre-contract before them. This was treated as legally akin to marriage, so she was allegedly not free to marry Henry.
Did the men accused of being Anne's lovers lie or tell the truth when they denied this? Was Anne lying in her letter to Henry denying that she had ever committed adultery? We are really in "he said/she said" territory now.
As well as Anne's past romantic/sexual history, there was the problem that Henry had taken Anne's elder sister, Mary, as a mistress before he met Anne. If Catherine was guilty of having consummated a sexual relationship with Henry's brother, thus making their marriage illicit, then the boot was on the other foot here as well: a sexual relationship between Henry and Mary would have created a pseudo-kinship making Anne his sister-in-law, as it were, and thus rendering his marriage with her equally sinful, incestuous, and invalid as Catherine's marriage with Henry was claimed to be.
So in the tangled matter of Henry's marriages, we can't know what was the truth, as apart from "what was the 'truth' the king wanted declared at the time?"
This is why I tend to believe Catherine. She was put under oath, and I don't think she would have been prepared to commit perjury just to get back at Anne. Nowadays we think of perjury as a technical legal offence and indeed trivial (unless you're caught out), but people used to believe that swearing false oaths would indeed damn you to Hell. So there wouldn't have been the attitude that "lying was a minor offense made as much for Henry's sake as for hers". Catherine could have admitted a consummated marriage with Arthur, claimed that she had relied on the papal dispensation and the advice of her elders that the marriage with Henry was permissible, and made things easier for her. Henry had had mistresses during their marriage and she had accepted that, because that was the way of things. (Something Henry later allegedly reproached Anne about, when she was said to have confronted him about taking a replacement mistress, that greater ladies than her - a reference to Queen Catherine - had had to accept this). It would have made things easier and more secure for both her and her daughter, Mary (and Henry was not above being spiteful to his own child, with alleged threats later of executing her if she continued to be obstinate about accepting Anne as queen), as it went for Anne of Cleves who was more complaisant or better able to play the game, agreeing to all Henry's demands and being well treated in return when he wanted to get rid of her.
We'll never know the exact truth, without getting a time machine to go back and see if Catherine remained a virgin after her first marriage. All we can do is judge the characters of those involved as to how they strike us, and Henry strikes me as a liar - or at least someone able to persuade himself that he was acting from the purest motives and not just out of personal whim, and that all those opposed to him were in fact not alone wrong but wicked and evil.
You accepted violation of the law to allow illegal immigrants in. On what grounds do you appeal to the law now?
I believe I've also been pretty clear that I do not consider the law a valid entity, but welcome my opponents sacrificing their values to uphold it when they are willing to do so.
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