domain:lesswrong.com
Is it a good life if you dedicate your life to video games?
Depends on how good the game is. A posthuman game might well be more complex, dynamic and interesting than our lives.
The most popular games today like fortnite or LoL are closer to the skinner-box, dopamine VR-headset future. They have to be cheap to run so they're not going to be that fantastic.
Whether it's competition, entertainment of others or enjoyment I see greater complexity and resources as an unalloyed good in terms of video-game value. At minimum it should be better than 'sit in an office and do various manipulations of text.'
Some items I'm looking at this week:
Geopolitics
Americas
Trump and Putin to meet in coming days, Kremlin says
Haiti Armed Violence Kills Over 3,100 in 6 Months in 2025
National Weather Service to rehire after deep DOGE cuts – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth
Some items from the Trump administration:
- Excluding illegal immigrants from census?
- Semiconductor tariffs announced, but extent unclear
- 25% tariff on India over Russian oil imports
Europe
300 sick children from Gaza to be evacuated to the UK
Trump's Deadline For The Kremlin Looms But Putin Shows No Sign Of Making Concessions
Middle East
Hezbollah to treat Lebanon's disarmament decision 'as if it does not exist'
Hezbollah warns it will resume firing missiles at Israel if it ramps up operations in Lebanon
Iran
Iran sets up new defence council in wake of war with Israel
This is what Khameini losing power might look like?
Gaza
Jordan, Egypt, UAE deliver more humanitarian supplies to Gaza
Netanyahu says Israel intends to take control of all of Gaza (1:10), in order to, he says, liberate the people of Gaza from Hamas, and pass control over to a civilian government that is not calling for the destruction of Israel.
Israeli military chief opposes Gaza war expansion
Israel Security Cabinet Clears Netanyahu's Plan to Occupy Gaza City
'Occupy entire Gaza or resign': Netanyahu tells IDF chief, reports Israeli media as talks with Hamas stall
Over 1,000 packages airdropped over Gaza in 2 weeks-Xinhua
Indonesia to treat 2,000 injured Gazans on Galang island
China opposes Israel's 'dangerous' plan to occupy Gaza
How much aid has entered Gaza?
It doesn't actually do the math,
-
Higher end: 84 trucks per day * 90 m^3 per standard truck * 1000 liters per m^3 * 8000 kcal per liter (caloric density of oil) / 2.1M Gazans = 28,000 kcal per person per day
-
Lower end: 84 trucks per day * 18 m^3 per van * 75% full (?) * 1000 liters per m^3 * 700 kcal per liter (caloric density of grain) / 2.1M Gazans = 405 kcal per person per day
Can we get better bounds?
Yemen
Asia
Microsoft Used China-Based Engineers to Support Product Recently Hacked by China
Severe outbreak of mosquito-borne chikungunya virus infects 8,000 in China
Bird flu confirmed in six-year-old Cambodian girl
A series of reports witnessing the practice of the "steel arteries" serving the strengthening and prospering of the military in the new era. China integrates its railway system more with military logistics.
China looking into ways to disable the Starlink constellation
Chinese and Russian naval fleets complete maritime exercises, transition to joint sea patrol on August 6
Indonesia's Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki erupts again, spewing giant ash plumes miles away
China (potentially) Faces EU Sanctions over Secret Drone Shipments to Russia's Military
Bangladesh teeters between hope and deadlock a year after Hasina's fall
Mobile Internet blackout across Balochistan amid rising security threats
India/Pakistan
Bangladesh: 121 Killed, Over 5,000 Injured in 471 Political Violence Incidents Since Yunus Took Office
Africa
Sudan: El-Fasher faces famine as supplies cut off, UN says
Sudan accuses UAE of bringing in Colombian mercenaries to support RSF
Sudan military destroyed UAE plane carrying Colombian mercenaries
South-East Nigeria rocked by insecurity, healthcare crisis
Study finds militant Islamists have killed 22,307 in Africa over the last one year, gained significant territory
Islamists have killed over 22,300 in Africa this last year
Pentagon: U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts Have Failed Africans
African armies turn to drones with devastating civilian impact
Rwanda: Ceasefire in Doubt As Rwanda-Backed Rebels Kill Hundreds in Eastern DR Congo
Bio
Antibodies for Strep A
Ghana approves breakthrough malaria drug for babies — but research is 'on ice' amid US funding cuts
How mRNA Vaccine Cuts and Egg Dependency Leave the U.S. Exposed to a Bird Flu Pandemic
Tech and AI
Open Source release of gpt
Trying to steal TSMC trade secrets
Users who bonded with GPT-4o complaining it's going away
Global Economy
Trump tariffs on semiconductors
Misc
Associated Press Runs Sympathetic Story Checking On Hezbollah Terrorists Injured In 'Grim Beeper' Operation
Thank you! I hope to go visit the States this winter itself (friend's wedding), but I'm not entirely sure if the visa stuff will get done in time. I should have been on that, instead of futzing about in London. If I do, I'll try to ensure I do a lap of the country, and make time to shoot the shit (semi-literally) with you.
Yeah, it wasn't very good. Also the weird speech from Jesus about their legal drama with Paramount. I didn't feel offended, but kind of bored and confused, like their characters should go grill pill at Casa Molina or something. There was a funny scene with Randy talking to his digital assistant with his wife looking grumpy next to him. The one where everyone came in from Denver and tried to order cortados from a few years back was pretty funny. Scott's most recent Bay Area House Party post would make a good episode.
It reads as LLM output to me as well -- more importantly failing the everpresent tl;dr criterion.
This is intended to be shared elsewhere, in the near future. Attention spans are fickle, and the use of a conclusionary section is 100% an intentional measure for a dense piece. Don't tell me LLMs have a monopoly on writing conclusions or TLDRs. I have written both before GPT-2 was a twinkle in a twink's Altman's eye.
So while I'm not sure how posting a bunch of screenshots of you chatting with an LLM is supposed to make people think that you didn't generate the post using an LLM, if it's the case that you take so much input from the LLM that your post sets off people's LLM alarms
That's the best evidence I have. As explained somewhere nearby in this thread, this essay began as a reply to EverythingIsFine that quickly ended up becoming so large that I decided to take it elsewhere. By that point, 80% of the work or more was done, I just needed to make sure I was done tidying up citations. You can see me double checking for anything I missed, and it turns out there wasn't much written on the exact metrics of patient satisfaction. I still had those tabs right at hand, and I made sure to show how I was going about this.
I tried to demonstrate that:
-
The bulk of the essay was written my me. LLM usage was used to help me consider areas to rephrase or re-arrange for clarity. In situations where that was warranted, I saw nothing wrong with copying short snippets of their output (which was a remix of my work!).
-
The essay recapsulates things I have personally said on this very forum. I wasn't looking at those comments at the time I was writing this, but anyone can see the exceedingly similar phrasing and argumentation. That is strong evidence that this is my own work. As a matter of fact, half of what I've written in responses to different queries also are things I've said before, in some capacity. There isn't much new under the sun, or on the Motte. We rehash a lot of the same points.
-
There is clear evidence of me writing the essay at a very particular time, and once again, letting EIF that I saw his original reply, and that I was almost done writing a substantial message as a standalone essay. That represents 3+ hours I was writing said essay. This can't be faked without implausible levels of foresight or conspiracy.
Further:
Accusations of use of AI are nigh-unfalsifiable. Someone down below said that people suspected that their essay on Reddit was AI, until that person noticed it was written around 2020. It is rather exhausting to defend against, at best, and I do not even see my actions as objectionable. It's >80% my writing. I fact checked everything, from my own recollections to suggestions from the LLMs I asked for advice, which took over an hour. I write top-level posts where I advocate for more people learning to use LLMs in a productive capacity, and explain how to do it when it comes to writing. I have nothing to hide.
And most importantly of all:
Why do many people object to LLM usage? Why do even I draw a distinction between good usage of chatbots, and bad/value-negative behavior?
It can be a substitute for independent thought. It can be used to gish-gallop and stonewall. It can have hallucinations or outright distortions of truth. It can be boring to read.
I ask you to show any of the above. As far as I'm concerned, there's none.
Some people have developed an innate distaste for any text with even minor signs of AI usage, let alone when the user is admitting he used them in some capacity. This is not entirely irrational, because there's a lot of slop out there and memetic antibodies are inevitable. I think this is an over correction in the opposite direction. I'm annoyed by the fact that I had to waste time dealing with this and defending myself. Because of the implication if nothing else.
maybe you are just working a little to hard on this, and it would be better to simply give us the straight slop?
You might be surprised to hear that I have been doing this for the past 24 hours. Barring @Rov_Scam specifically asking me to resume an experiment we had discussed weeks back, I intentionally refrained from even touching an LLM while using the Motte. This was mostly for the sake of proving to myself that I have no issues doing so, and why would I have issues? LLMs weren't good enough for this kind of work for ages, and I was a regular here well before then.
To a degree, this is also confounded by me being extremely sleep deprived, including at present. I guess doctors are just used to having to operate under such conditions. I also started as annoyed by what I perceive as unfair accusations or, the very least, smearing by association. To be charitable, this might not have been intentional by the people who pointed out that I had made use of LLMs (once again, something I've literally never denied, and have pro-actively declared).
I can do my work/leisure unaided. After the experiment, I am just as firmly of the opinion that 90% self_made_human and 10% a potpourrie of LLMs is better than either one by itself. That is a personal opinion. I have demonstrated effort in the past, I do so now, and I do not think I've made a mistake.
While I'm in favour of people being "allowed" to do more or less anything they want (direct and deliberate harm to others aside), in practice the whole thing feels... not good, in the pit of my stomach -- mostly I don't like the "assisted" part all that much, nor the moral preening that seems to go along with it. Could be that people just don't know how to do this thing correctly yet, but I'm not sure that's all there is too it.
I do not like the idea of killing people. That's usually the opposite of what a doctor seeks to do. I think that in some circumstances, it aligns with the wishes of those involved, and is a kindness. I would prefer everyone sit tight and try to wait it out till we cure most or all disease, including aging itself. That aspiration (which I consider pretty plausible) is of little utility when a 90 year old woman is dying in agony and asking to go out on her own terms. The Bailey, which I am willing to defend, includes far less obvious cases, but that's informed by my firm opinions and professional knowledge, and once again, I would prefer to cure rather than kill. But if cures aren't on the cards, I think society should allow death with dignity, and I would take on that onerous task.
ha, honest mistake
Not a lot, but google image search it and you'll see why.
My mom found out she was allergic to penicillin as a little girl, when she had anaphylaxis. Fortunately she was ok and it hasn’t affected her life much.
But also yeah, antibiotic side effects can be real. It beats pneumonia, but uncontrollable diarrhea and stomach upset isn’t fun. Took me a while before I was back to normal.
it would seem that having standards and enforcing them may actually matter.
I may misremember things, but AFAIK they replaced failed way to teach reading by older boring one that works? (AFAIK the bad one is named "whole word")
Citation needed?
Know your meme.
According to all known laws of physics and aviation there is no way that a bumble bee ought to be able to fly.
[citation needed]
They can ruin the natural balance of the gut microbiome
oh, I forgot that one, thanks!
hepatic enzyme induces or inhibitors
and was not aware at all of that, double thanks!
Overuse or misuse of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic-resistant infections
I tried to cover this with "overuse/misuse reducing their effectiveness"
what's there?
I'm up for it, though I'm concerned that enough of you fuckers the fine Mottizens that are graciously volunteering in this very thread are deeply steeped in the knowledge of Pennsylvania's football teams to prevent me from scooping up later round bargains. Speaking of which, I fully reserve the right to draft a defense in the 9th round or a kicker in the 10th, and in fact to fuck up my entire draft because my other league is a full PPR league with 6 points for QB touchdowns and no kickers.
I linked this blog post in a reply at the bottom of a long comment chain, but it occurs to me that it is probably worth discussing in it's own right.
According to all known laws of physics and aviation there is no way that a bumble bee ought to be able to fly. The bee, of course knows nothing of this and insists on flying anyways.
Wikipedia has an entry dedicated to the phrase “Thank God for Mississippi” because for the last 100 years or so, no matter how bad off your state may be in a particular way, you could typically take solace in the idea that Mississippi had it worse. "Yes, our health outcomes suck..." the the people in Wyoming and Alaska may tell themselves "...but at least we aren't Mississippi".
In my experiance shitting on the South Eastern US as an embarassing, degenerate, cultural backwater, is not only tolerated in blue and grey tribe spaces but venerated and encouraged. Of course the south sucks, that's where Mississippi is. If you are from that region and you are persuing a degree at a school like Stanford or Cal-Tech you quickly learn to hide your accent and claim to be from somewhere else if you want to be taken seriously and graded honestly by your professors.
I present this as context for...
The "Missisippi Miracle"
In 2002 the second Bush administration signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law. Educational standards and reform had been had been a big part of his 2000 campaign platform, his wife Laura being a grade-school teacher, and one of the provisions of this act was a a mandate that "Public" (that is tax-payer-funded) schools would participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) originally established by the Johnson administration in 1964. As a result we now have standarized test data for almost every state and municpiple school district in the country going back over two decades.
For those outside the US, US school system is typically broken into 3 4 year long blocks. Kindergarten/Elementry School, Middle/Secondary School, and then High School. Specific names and implimentations vary from state to state but as a general rule the idea is that a child will enter the public school system at the age of 5 or 6 and graduate at the age of 18. The NAEP tests students for reading and mathematical proficiency at grades 4 and 8, IE upon entering and exiting Secondary/Middle School.
In 2003 Missisippi 4th graders where ranked near to last in the nation for reading comprehension, with an unadjusted average of 203. Only DC and Puerto Rico ranked lower. As of 2024 thier score is 219, representing a lttle over a standard deviation of improvement and placing them just shy of the top 10. This on it's own would represent admirable progress, but where things start to become unhinged is when you look at the "adjusted" figures. NAEP and various outside NGOs apply various adgustments to the raw scores in an attempt to control for things like demographics, socio-economic status, and spending per-student. When these "adjustments" are applied, Mississippi schools are not just performing better than they were 20 years ago, they are performing better than any other state school sytem in the nation. This is the alleged "Miracle".
Now a number of liberal commentators ranging from Friedliche DeBoer (of the South African Boers perhaps?) and Kevin Drum to Steve Sailer and the LA Times have all tried to debunk the so-called "Mississippi Miracle". The arguments generally fall into three broad categories. The first is that the mainstream media, academia, and establishment politicians are all prejudiced against liberal coastal blue-coded states like New York, Massachusetts, California, and Oregon, in favor of southern states like Mississippi. I find this claim laughable on it's face for reasons stated in the opening of this post. The second is the significantly more defensible claim that the NEAP's "adjusted" scores do not accurately reflect ground level truth. I believe that this is a fair critique, but the people making this critique often explicitly refuse to acknowledge that the unadjusted scores also saw an marked improvement (casts side-eye at Sailer and DeBoer) and that even when comparing like to like, the average Black student in Mississippi reads at a level about 1.5 grade levels higher than the average Black student in democratic strongholds like Illinois or Wisconsin.
Finally there is the claim that Mississippi is effectively "gaming the system". In 2013 the Mississippi State Legislature enacted the Literacy Based Promotion Act (LBPA) which required kids to pass a reading test to be promoted from elementary to middle school or else be held back or forced to repeat a year. The argument as it is, is that 4th graders in Mississippi are actually 5th or 6th graders by any other state's reckoning. If that were true one would expect to see a substantial age difference in the class cohorts, however that is not what we see, the average age of a 4th grader in Mississippi is only 0.01 years (or just under 4 days) above the national average.
To all appearances, and against the most ardent protestations of our resident Boer it would seem that having standards and enforcing them may actually matter.
How is this possible
I have a cynical answer that I expect to get me in trouble with the moderators, because I am about to take a stand in defense of Bulverism. Ad Hominem may be a formal fallacy, but in the real world it provides real value. Whether or not someone has an ulterior agenda is absolutely something you should be thinking about when you are trying to decide whether or not you are going to believe them.
I expect to be accused of "lacking charity" but the words are going to be theirs not mine. At some point all the experts in the blue and gray tribes seem to have decided that teaching kids to read was too much trouble and that not teaching them to read would be just as effective at promoting literacy as not doing so because demographics matter more than basic competency or engagement. Why would they do that even as they admitted that “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,”. The answer is in the following line "And we hated it."
By claiming that standards matter i am effectively take taking a shit on the foundational beliefs of Steve Sailer, Friedliche DeBoer, and a number of users here including at least one moderator.
Mississippi accepts your hate and Volleys it back. Ideocracy may be coming for America, but its coming for you, the blue tribe, not for MAGA country. We will teach our children Shakespeare Kipling and Twain, and you will not, and in 20 years we will see who has come out on top.
Do you think or feel your emotions? It’s obvious a both/and situation.
That question in particular wasn't related to any "MBTI dichotomies" (although I suspect it might be correlated). It was just a way to get people to start thinking about the diversity of emotional experience.
And for what it's worth, a number of people in the reddit thread said they experienced them as thoughts only.
If you mainly feel with your thoughts you probably have alexithymia, a surprisingly common condition
That's the thing though, I don't think I have "emotional blindness". I've never felt unable to identify what emotion I was feeling; I do it easily and often! I'm practically trauma dumping in my group chat on a regular basis about every subjective impression, positive and negative. I just... don't get bodily sensations with them. Except for, as previously mentioned, anxiety.
(Although, since learning about this stuff, I may have suddenly become consciously aware of bodily sensations associated with other emotions on a couple of occasions, and... I'm not really into it. I think I'd rather nip this in the bud before it gets too far. I have quite enough on my hands to deal with as it is, best not to go throwing all new ingredients into the mix.)
So what happens when a Fi gets programmed with highly neurotic/anxious software? Are they discernible to other people as any different from an Fe?
Good question! Under the schema I've presented, they could end up as behaviorally identical, yes. But I don't see that as much of a problem. The point isn't really to talk about behavior (nor is the point even to "sell" you on any particular theoretical view), but rather the point is to talk about the underlying phenomenological experience / thought pattern behind the behavior (which is what Jung's thought is really all about in the first place; the "personality type" stuff, based as it is on behavioral stereotypes, is just a ruse for the normies). Two people can exhibit identical behavior for very different internal reasons.
I believe I've shared this anecdote on TheMotte before, and it's one of the anecdotes I reflected on when introspecting on my own "herd animal" nature. When I was young and naive in the early 10s and I first discovered wokeism, I was immediately taken in by the "vibes". It just felt really good, y'know? I wanted to be a part of a group, I wanted to base my identity on a group, I saw that these people were enjoying themselves and I wanted to be part of that so I could enjoy myself too. But relatively quickly, my rationality kicked in and I realized that their actions violated principles of fairness and impartiality that I held to be important, which made me not want to be woke anymore.
So the movement was from sentiment (based on what I perceived to be the sentiments of others), to dispassionate analysis. And due to typical-minding, I assumed that this was essentially a universal human experience; of course everyone makes vibes-based decisions to determine their identity, and if anyone says they don't, they're probably lying because they're ashamed to admit it. But now all this stuff has got me thinking, well, maybe it's not a universal human experience. Maybe there are (neurotypical) people who don't weigh the vibe in the room, don't care about the vibe in the room, maybe they don't even perceive the vibe in the room because they've deemed it not even worth their time to assess it (obviously in the case of someone with say Asperger's, it would be different because their ability to pick up on emotional and social cues is actually compromised). In their case, they might make the opposite movement, from dispassionate analysis to sentiment: first a dispassionate "well, everyone seems to think woke is right, and they probably have good reasons, so I'll believe it too", but then their own internal "alarm bells" start going off indicating that it doesn't fit their own personal identity. And they could do all this without ever consulting the overall "vibe" of the collective. So we could have two individuals who exhibit identical behavior via very different processes.
Of course the point being, there is no way to observe these underlying processes behaviorally, you just have to introspect on yourself or ask others to introspect on themselves and report back.
That was going to be done regardless of blacks voting. Segregation had overwhelming majorities with or without black franchise when it began.
The guy who loads up on tight ends
I am in this post and I don't like it.
Absolutely recommend Meteora.
Do you think or feel your emotions? It’s obvious a both/and situation. Why dichotomous it?
MBTI
Oh, that’s why
If you mainly feel with your thoughts you probably have alexithymia, a surprisingly common condition
A generalized weakening or strengthening of the anxiety response in different individuals is probably part of the explanation, but it's not an entirely satisfactory theory on its own, as one individual may be highly neurotic about one thing but not neurotic at all about others.
Men are stronger than women, and upper body strength has been found to have a very strong correlation with anxiety/depression rates. Make of that what you will
I joke with love <3
I'm going to need a citation there. I've also seen that claim but I believe that to be a modern projection/cope rather than an actual scholarly argument. 1785 dictionary says:
To RE'GULATE. v.a. [regula, Lat.]
-
To adjust by rule or method. Nature, in the production of things, always designs them to partake of certain, regulated, established essences, which are to be the models of all things to be produced: this, in that crude sense, would need some better explication. Locke.
-
To direct. Regulate the patient in his manner of living. Wiseman. Ev’n goddesses are women; and no wife Has pow’r to regulate her husband’s life. Dryden.
I agree to an extent: part of the concern with the Articles of Confederation was that they had discovered early flaws with the national army (originally it was a pure volunteer state by state basis kind of thing IIRC), and so wanted it to be stronger but not so strong that it could crush legitimate internal dissent. It's also true that at least a good chunk of the arms were assumed to be (or even encouraged to be as some states even incentivized such) produced on an individual basis. It's also true that there was often a distinction made between an organized militia that was directed, drilled, and with some kind of chain of command and unorganized militias that were more like mobs, so it's not as if the concept is all wrong.
Despite all of that being true, I want to emphasize that last bit there. The intention was never that random groups should spontaneously rise up formed from ad-hoc combinations of gun-toting individuals! The intention was that localized governance was sufficiently democratic that they could decide to take collective action and associate with ad-hoc combinations of other cities and states to overthrow an overbearing national (or international) government. The distinction is quite crucial there! While I allow some nuance as to how states decide to implement this, the state was in charge at the end of the day of regulating its militias. Drilling and organizing and making them effective yes, but also deciding the proper shape, leadership, and call to action! While an individual owning firearms is useful it's still a bit incidental, because the goal the 2nd Amendment clearly states is merely that militias are capable of protecting liberty from tyranny.
In that context, a state can be somewhat strict in its regulation if the core purpose is accomplished. The test is all about core purpose, but some people have substituted an individual right-test in its place. This is subtly wrong. A state could probably choose to implement its core militia duty via individual gun-rights, but is not compelled to do so. A more modern-left state may well decide to be more discerning provided they meet the end goal. In practice, these might end up appearing similar, but they don't have to be!
Shay's Rebellion actually illustrates this, taking place in the Confederation period. Informal and ad-hoc groups of farmers and former soldiers banded together to revolt. They were not official local militias! In fact they raised themselves up in parallel to actual state legal authority, in defiance of such. Remember that that is where a lot of the power lay - the revolutionary Congress was formed from state delegations, in almost all cases with official representation!! That's where their legitimacy came from! Many people today fail to notice that, it wasn't an "extra-legal" effort, the original Revolution proceeded directly from local democracy. This was very front of mind for Constitutional drafting and party of why Washington himself and many others opposed Shay's rebellion (to be fair Jefferson was more sympathetic but he was always a little more radical in his ideas on the topic). They were an individualized mob, not a democratic effort against tyranny. The amendment was crafted in part this way to distinguish that stuff like Shay's rebellion was not the proper method of resistance (and also because at the end of the day the issue was about the policies of debt structure, not a core liberty, which farmers had failed to get implemented by official legitimate democratic means).
So the history of the matter rejects the modern framing by gun-rights advocates that it's a purely individual right. The history suggests that local democracy is important, that local democracy should be empowered, and that gun ownership is helpful to those aims. It's not saying that individualized gun ownership is a cornerstone by itself, supreme to everything else! Merely that a local repository of legitimate resistance is a duty of states to maintain.
FWIW, I changed from experiencing emotions as intense thoughts to bodily sensations and I feel my appreciation for emotions has gotten much deeper.
It's a little strange to read a polemic against X, Y, and Z without links to the writings of X, Y, and Z that we are supposed to think are wrong. Well, it's not that weird in general, but it's weird for this forum.
This post is a kind of anti-Bulverism where you wish that we assume you are right and fill in the argument (and the supporting evidence) post-hoc. Are you really shitting on the foundational beliefs of the above named? Would they be surprised to know this?
Also, the German name is 'Friedrich'.
More options
Context Copy link