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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

I assume prep billboards are funded by grants to ‘raise awareness’ and ‘destigmatize’ and have little or nothing to do with the people who view them.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

We’ve got a base there, so we’re renting the islands back again from their ‘rightful owners’. Nothing will actually change, Mauritius will just have lots of our tax money now.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

Which is exactly the issue: many men do want relationships to form through the same process as friendship. Something organic where both people naturally recognize the value of the other person.

Let me rephrase.

What I learned in that phase is that -- like you say -- attraction is something that you need to cross as the "first hurdle."

But my argument would be that men do the same to women: it's just that men are more visual than women, and it's not at all hard to create a vague spark of attraction in a man. I don't think I'm saying anything you don't already know -- if I read your post right, that's what you're arguing.

That said, I absolutely have had relationships form through the same process as friendship. It's just that the friendship began with us both having at least a mild attraction for the other. The friendship served as a soft courtship. But I absolutely believe that every time this was the case, a relationship could have started much sooner. But I liked how it went down; like you, I take no pleasure in the initial stages of dating.

Sometimes this happened because I was in a relationship at the time, but drew the attention of someone else (this has happened exactly once, let me not exaggerate), sometimes it happened because I wasn't sure of whether I felt like dating, sometimes it happened because I was literally an oblivious idiot and I didn't know what I'd done and I spent 4 months of high school thinking my crush didn't like me when she wanted me to grab her and kiss her.

But, on that note: I also 'won' the attraction by being, in some way, performative and high status.

Birds build nests to attract lady birds (insert LBJ joke here), fish build a wonderful habitat to attract lady fish, peacocks look like a color television advertisement to attract lady peacocks (or just put extended editions of The Office on the platform)... it just is the case that, in most sexually dimorphic species, males attract females by demonstrating high status in some way. I don't have any complaints about the reality of it; it is what it is, and none of woman born controls it or chose it. However people would like it to happen, that's how it happens.

But for me, it absolutely happened organically.

I would argue strongly that I'm less attractive than you -- I don't care if I set my height to 6'7", I wouldn't get the kind of attention you're describing on dating apps. That said, short men have a really rough time, and it sucks that you've struggled because of a baseball statistic. While I have maybe once or twice been asked out by a man, I strongly doubt that gay men would consider me a catch. I can't confirm that -- I'm from the bible belt, gay men don't exactly ask out strangers on the street.

But I have a secret weapon.

I love public speaking. I absolutely love it. And when I'm in a meeting, or discussion, about something I find interesting, I can command attention.

Now, be careful what you take from that. I am the world's worst smalltalker. I hate calling people on the phone. I will avoid talking to shopkeepers if I can. I feel anxious just thinking about introducing myself to a new person. Sometimes I'm so lost in thought that I don't hear what people are saying to me, and I'll just respond with whatever I think will move the conversation along. My friends and I once played a party game where we had to imitate a randomly-picked member of our friend group, and someone imitated me by sitting, silently, with his hands clasped in his lap. That's me. When I'm not speaking, you might confuse me for a piece of furniture.

But if you say, "hey, urquan, create a presentation on the economic problems of socialism in the USSR", boy am I already excited. I'm already thinking about all the strange memes and fun analogies I can use to explain Stalin's effort to rapidly industrialize. And I'm thinking about how I might be able to make people chuckle, and remember the presentation despite the dry concept.

When I held an officer position in a club in college, I used that to springboard a few fun lectures on relevant topics I felt like sharing. I don't think most of the other members loved it, but I don't care. I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it.

And do you know when I met my girlfriend? She came to one of these lectures. She came up afterwards, started talking to me, and wouldn't let me out of her sight until she got my number. This is by far the most interested in me a human being has ever been -- male or female. And her own recollection of the event, she told me later, is, "I saw you, and I knew I had to have you in my life." How's that for crossing the attraction barrier!

I'm not Terrance Tao. I'm Rain Man. I have some special abilities that can be quite attractive, to Miss Right, but it's not something I do with intention or structure. It's something that's only mildly under my control. And I have a lot of deficits -- I don't think anyone should be envying my social charm!

There was a motte post a long time ago that replied to people talking about social competition among women; you know, sorority girls, mean girls, female bullying in school, all that kind of stuff. And I loved the comment and have tried to find it many times, without success. It went something like this: "The women I've generally been friends with or dated have been rejects from that culture of competition. And I've seen the scars that competition has made on them."

I thought that was very wise. The women I've dated have universally not been "sorority girl" types. They're not the hot girls out there doing hot girl summer. They've just been average, kind of quirky, intelligent, and warm people. I can't say a bad thing about them. I feel like I found the crown of France in the gutter. "A good wife who can find?"

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

Can someone explain to me the chain of events that led to the UK paying to get rid of the chagos islands like it’s a tree trunk or something? I understand Starmer wants to be rid of them for reasons that are stupid but why is he paying to do so.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

I'm not a fan of the downvote brigade, and I didn't and wouldn't consider any of those downvote worthy, but I don't think they're particularly good comments, either.

(maybe excluding Corvos' last one? It's still an argument-by-definition, but at least it's trying to engage, where aldomilyar's ipse dixiting and wanderer's just kinda making counterfactual claims on pure vibes.)

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

I mean, you're not alone but neither are the people who argue against you. That is hardly a compelling argument either way. Pointing to the credentials of those who argue with you is a better argument (though... "being a billionaire" is not a valid credential here), but still not decisive. Appeal to authority is a fallacy for a reason, after all. Moreover, though I'm not well versed in the state of the debate raging across the CS field, so I don't have tabs on who is of what position, I have no doubt whatsoever that there are equally-credentialed people who take the opposite side from you. It is, after all, an ongoing debate and not a settled matter.

Also, frankly I agree with @SkoomaDentist that you are uncritical of LLMs. I've never seen you argue anything except full on hype about their capabilities. Perhaps I've missed something (I'm only human after all, and I don't see every post), but your arguments are very consistent in claiming that (contra your interlocutors) they can reason, they can perform a variety of tasks well, that hallucinations are not really a problem, etc. Perhaps this is not what you meant, and I'm not trying to misrepresent you so I apologize if so. But it's how your posts on AI come off, at least to me.

Somewhat off-topic: the great irony to me of your recent "this place is full of terrible takes about LLMs" arguments (in this thread and others) is that I think almost everyone would agree with it. They just wouldn't agree who, exactly, has the terrible takes. I think that it thus qualifies as a scissor statement, but I'm not sure.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

Fair points, but verification is usually way cheaper than generation. If one actual human PhD can monitor a dozen AI agents, it is plausible that the value prop makes sense.

In a lot of tasks, including AI research and coding, you can also automate the verification process. Does the code compile and pass all tests? Does the new proposed optimizer beat Adam or Muon on a toy run?

There is probably perfectly adequate shareholder value in getting a billion lonely midwits to pay $10/month rising to $inf/month in the way of all silicon valley service models, and keeping them hooked with the LLM equivalent of tokenized language loot boxes. I'd wager its even the more significant hill to climb for shareholder value.

That might be true today (and tomorrow, or next year), but the companies are betting hard on their models being capable of doing much more, and hence getting paying customers willing to shell out more. The true goal is recursive self-improvement, and the belief that this has far more dollars associated with it than even capturing all the money on earth today. Of course, they need market share and ongoing revenue to justify the investments to get there, which is why you can buy in relatively cheap. Competition also keeps them mostly honest, OAI would probably be charging a great deal more or gatekeeping their best if Google or Anthropic weren't around.

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

A lot of the heavily downvoted comments in that thread are not rhetorically spicy. Must I? Fine..

I think the most likely explanation is that our readership is doing opinion war when it comes to an issue they really care about, and that's bad. I picture Motte-Jesus storming this temple, flipping tables screaming "Stop turning my Father's house into an echo chamber!"