domain:sotonye.substack.com
quiet_NaN
23hr ago
It doesn't take years to learn to wire up a house or install some plumbing. A novice with zero experience and a copy of the code could do it all perfectly, though he'd be a bit slow.
He would be even faster without the code. Of course, nobody likes water damage from failed plumbing or wrongly installed wiring to burn their house down. Getting rid of the corpses of DIY-electricians is also a hassle.
There is a reason why we generally do not hand out driving licences after a student has passed the written test. A lot of knowledge is tacit, stuff which you do not learn from books.
That being said, I agree that a lot of the license regulations are protectionism hiding behind a veneer of safety concerns. For example, learning how to safely deploy standard household electricity (i.e. 230V, 16A) should not be more effort than learning how to drive a car.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
23hr ago
I wonder if anyone interpreted Damsky's paper as a satire and reductio ad absurdum of originalism. I once made a trollish argument that Filipinos, all 115 million of them, are natural-born citizens with the right to immigrate to the United States.
https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,12540
I encourage any aspiring legal mind to dress it up and submit it to some law journal.
Rov_Scam
23hr ago
I guess that explains why straight white males have such low incomes and high unemployment compared to minority populations.
KennethAlmquist
23hr ago
I don’t know how many times the NYT has claimed that actual violent rioting by minorities is the "language of the oppressed," but my guess is zero times.
Tree
23hr ago
Stew Peters, Evan Kigore)
No idea who those people are. Gee, you're awfully well informed about the goings on in the white nat scene. I would think your doctorate in far right media studies would be done by now. Why don't you get a job instead of posting your nazi slop?
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
23hr ago
My position on Jews is simple: whatever Harvard professor Noel Ignatiev meant by his call to “abolish the White race by any means necessary” is what I think must be done with Jews. Jews must be abolished by any means necessary.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
23hr ago
Thanks for your kind words.
I think that you are on to an important aspect with your consideration of the history of nuclear war - this history is also a history of our theory of and intuitions on deterrence, which may not be fully applicable to modern-day situations. Most of our expectations around it evolved in the peculiar setting of two fragile apex powers locked in what felt like an unstable equilibrium in a life-or-death struggle - both the US and the USSR saw themselves as standing atop a slippery slope to complete defeat, as a USA that lost a single direct engagement with the USSR would thereafter just be a strictly weaker, less intimidating USA (and vice versa), and if they were barely stemming the tide of global communism (capitalism) now, how would they fare then? In such a setting, a "not a step back" policy is sensible and credible.
On the other hand, is this true for Ukraine? One can argue that a Ukraine that has lost Crimea, and even Donbass, is in some meaningful sense a leaner and meaner Ukraine - they are rid of the albatross around their neck that were the initially about 50% at least ambivalently pro-Russian population, both by capture and galvanization of those who remain, and backed by a West with a significantly greater sense of urgency and purpose. As 2022~ showed, Ukraine's subjugation is not in fact a monotonic slope but comes with a very significant hump around the 25% mark. What should be the theory of nuclear deterrence for that scenario? I think there is at least circumstantial evidence that it is different - since 199X, aggression towards nuclear-armed countries has not proceeded in line with the Cold War at all, whether it is India/Pakistan or in fact US/Russia.
Could you imagine, in 1980, US-made weapons hitting Russian cities using US targeting and US satellites? I'd say that the reason this is possible is that there is common knowledge that some HIMARS hits on Belgorod do not in fact leave a Russia that is strictly less able to prosecute a conflict against the West in which it is already barely managing. The modern theory of deterrence may look more like identifying the humps that disrupt the slippery slope, and trying to beat your opponent back to one of those humps but no further, versus... trying to push your humps as far up the slope as possible?
quiet_NaN
23hr ago
I would view subsidized farmers like an army: in good times, a waste of money, but in bad times, essential to the sovereignty of the nation. (Of course, both the farmers and the army require petrochemicals to have any effect, but unlike food and trained fighters, you can stockpile petrochemicals just fine, and nations generally do.) Obviously, this does not mean that a breakdown of international trade would not be bad: most high-tech products have globe-spanning supply chains. But there is a difference between "your population no longer has access to their fancy Starbucks coffee, or new iPads or the chips which your car industry would require to continue building cars" and "your population is starving".
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I disagree with you about the value of education. I will grant that at least half of education is pure credentialism. Go to university, pay your dues, get a paper you require to get a good job, learn whatever you require to do the job from the internet.
I have an advanced degree in STEM. A lot of the stuff which makes me a non-zero value employee I picked up on the side, sure. And sure, everything I learned I could have learned from books (for free from libgen) or educational videos. But I can also tell you that I would not have done so. Without the structure and the tests of traditional educational institutions, it is very doubtful that 22-year old me would have woken up at 9:00 one Thursday and started watching a video on the Gram–Schmidt process at 10:00.
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The thing is, a lot of ‘traditional’ jobs are bullshit now. [...] Doctors: Attending to hypochondriacs and prolonging old people’s suffering.
Despite being someone who tends to avoid interacting with the medical system where possible (a hyperchondriac, if you will), I vehemently disagree. Most physicians do not actually like to pander to hypochondriacs. I am very pro-MAID, but I do not think that most of what doctors do can be fairly described as "prolonging old people’s suffering". Most people do not seek euthanasia at age 50. I generally support trusting people to determine if their life is worth living for themselves.
I think every jobs includes some bullshit components, and physicians are certainly not exempt. Often, doctor's offices are run as a business (and a weirdly over-regulated business at that), and you will see them peddling additional preventive healthcare to patients which is not covered by insurance. Or they will have to spend a lot of their time dealing with health insurance companies. Obviously, most dentistry should be a skilled trade, there is no need to require a lengthy university education to handle a drill. I think that The Elephant in the Brain is making a good case that a lot of the the costs of the medical system are actually due to signaling. But at the end of the day, there is a pretty substantial non-bullshit core.
ABigGuy4U
23hr ago
This is a devastating tactical victory for the Israelis
...Israel claims. While flooding every diplomatic channel with desperate pleas to the United States to join the war, closing the borders and airports so their citizens can’t leave, and passing laws to make it illegal to film ballistic missile impacts.
I don’t mean to bag on Israel in particular here, but this is a wartime situation with all the propaganda that implies. Iran has already imposed wartime censorship and shut down the internet, so the only confirmation we’re getting for any strikes on Iran is from the Israeli military spokespeople. Meanwhile there have been dozens of ballistic missile impacts against high value target locations in Tel Aviv, and the missile defense systems seem to have dropped from a 96% intercept rate to a 50% intercept rate, to a 10% intercept rate. But don’t worry, like Russia in late February of 2022, Iran is just two weeks away from running out of missiles.
WhiningCoil
23hr ago
Last fall, he took a seminar taught by a federal judge on “originalism,” the legal theory favored by many conservatives that seeks to interpret the Constitution based on its meaning when it was adopted.
Otherwise known as it's meaning.
Like, is this guy not worried at all about his future employment prospects?
He's a straight white male. What employment prospects? Every day I see a new headline about a massive fortune 500 company, academy or other bedrock institution nakedly discriminating against straight white males. And I've seen first hand even if you find a company that hires straight white males, guess what? You can't get contracts because you aren't "diverse" enough.
No_one
1d ago
So it's a show that selects for lolcows and then allows them to humiliate themselves by their unwise actions?
No_one
1d ago
Okay, it might be noting, but here's some keywords you can look up.
No_one
1d ago
the absolute risk is not so high that you need to run away screaming
You suggest this ED is some sort of lizardman finding and if you examined the health database you'd find 1.5% 15-42 male are getting ED that lasts 5 years even even if they don't use finasteride?
aiislove
1d ago
moral outlook
Actually I find this to be the most universal piece of the puzzle beyond any more objective measurements. For example half the world drives on the right and half the world drives on the left, but the moral fundamentals beneath which side of the road you personally decide to drive on are universal regardless. You choose depending on whether you want to safely reach your destination or create chaos and accidents around you. The moral goals and is-ought problem leads to the same or similar results whether you choose to drive on the right in america or the left in the uk. That is a simple example for illustration's sake but I believe that most problems follow this pattern as well. Treating people kindly and with love and trust is always the solution to any is-ought problem in any culture I've been to because it absolves yourself of the guilt of having acted unkindly or unlovingly and if someone interprets it incorrectly it is not because your underlying intentions were wrong. Maybe this is too much of a consequentialist view that collapses morality into the mind of the actor too far but again we arrive at the uniqueness of the self's actions apart from any others, which would potentially be overcome in an artificial universal consolidated worldview.
Other than that I agree with everything you said and relate to your experiences as well. I agree that we each individually have an inability to fully describe the capital-T Truth but a general AI with infinite knowledge and sources of data interpreted outside the frame of an individual would either be a step toward a new integrated model of understanding or perhaps just the false appearance of such.
Crowstep
1d ago
Who are 'the pro-vaccine people', every government and health authority in the developed world? The supermajority of people on the planet who willingly got a vaccine? Humanity is not in a manichean struggle between pro- and anti-vax. Vaccines are just a (very) useful medical technology that unfortunately got tied up with the toxic partisanship and negative polarisation of American politics.
In the less angry parts of the world, we just got our jabs and got on with life once the virus went away because of them.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
If you separate the pro-vaccine people from the prestige of their institutions -- the ones which were doing the censoring -- for what reason is there to give them any credibility?
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
Prior to the last week, I would have assumed Iran was a hard target and thus somewhat untouchable (smaller strikes/assassinations being the limit of messing with them). It's surprising how hard they've been slapped.
This has long been an error in the Iranian model. Iran simultaneously has been persuing a near-breakout strategy, but also an asymmetric proxy war strategy, betting that the former would deter retaliation against the later.
Nuclear deterrence really doesn't work that way, for the same reason that Ukraine didn't refuse to fight Russia because of nukes, and that fears that supporting Ukraine with material to fight back would lead to WW3 were non-credible. Nukes don't really deter retaliation in principle, only the form. So your point here-
But also in some ways, they are still. No one is going to be launching a ground invasion, and the regime is not looking hot right now, but still has power.
-is absolutely correct. But also nukes weren't needed for it. Iran is a mountain fortress, and the US didn't have the stomach for the much 'easier' Iraq occupation. A conquer/displace/occupy threat was not, and still is not, going to happen, even though nukes are the solution to that level of intervention, and even though said nukes aren't present.
It blows me away that despite a close connection to Russia, and increasingly China, they had such terrible IADS. If you can't get invaded, the only way your adversary, who has one of the world's best Airforce's, can cause you serious issues is by air striking you into pieces.
They Tried (TM). It's not that Iran's IADS was terrible- they had a number of modern systems. It's just that any system can be taken apart, and Israel has done a lot of prep work.
They must have thought their missiles and proxys were a deterrent, which they were at one point. But man it kills me. In PvP video games, if things are going well/fine, you should always be asking yourself "how do I lose" and it doesn't seem like the gang in Iran did that at all.
It wasn't just the missiles and proxies, but specifically Syria. If Assad hadn't fallen, this wouldn't be happening today, because Assad wasn't just a proxy/ally, but kept the airspace closed. When Assad fell, the Israeli's bombed the old regime (technically new regime's) air defense systems, which has opened up the air corridor they're using now.
At a larger level, Iran's strategy over-estimated Assad's resilience, missing the scholerosis of how the regime military was becoming more brittle rather than more firm when the Syria civil war went long. In turn, neglecting the defense, Iran over-leveraged the offense. Whether you believe they were directly involved/aware of Hamas' October attack or not, and IIRC there were elements of the IRGC/proxy network that claimed they did, Iran via Hezbollah tried to play it to the hilt in what was probably an attempt at a broader intifada.
That strategy fell flat, in a series of events that led to here. Because the West Bank did not rise up as well, the war was focused on Gaza specifically. Because it was focused on Gaza specifically, Hezbollah was used to open a northern front via the artillery campaign. Because Hezbollah was was using so many munitions for the artillery campaign, Iran was dependent on Syria to keep the flow.
But when Israel thwacked Hezbollah via the pager campaign and follow on fighting, Hezbollah was throne into disarray. Because Hezbollah was thrown into disarray, Iran was unable to rush forces to the Syrian capital to stop the rebel offensive. Because the rebel offensive could not be stopped, the logistic chain to resupply Hezbollah was broken. And the air corridor over Syria was opened. And so on and so on and so on.
That being said. It's not hard to imagine a world in which Israel's air campaign culminates eventually as they run low on munitions and a deal of some flavor is worked out. Then Iran spends the next 5 years rebuilding and furiously fortifying. Maybe they get some tips on anti-espionage purges from the Chinese. And then in 2030 were right back to two weeks ago status quo but this time Iran has hardened everything.
This is a devastating tactical victory for the Israelis, the strategic outcomes remain to be seen...
Pretty much. There are things that could result this in being a bigger strategic and not just tactical victory, but they more or less hinge on the Iranians agreeing to some sort of international seizure of their more highly enriched Uranium, and I'm not sure I see that coming.
But increasingly, the only roles which are prestigious in modernity are those of white collar undefined-what-the-value-add-here-is jobs
I'm curious which jobs you're thinking of, and why the value add is unclear? Although it's also worth making the distinction between the difficulty measuring an individuals level of value add (very hard depending on the job) and the value add from the job position(s) overall, which I actually think is always incredibly clear, and the person saying "this doesn't add value" just doesn't like the job for ideological or other belief reasons.
I've worked 4 white collar jobs now. 2 of which I absolutely did not generate enough economic benefit to offset my salary. Although both of those I was an intern/fresh grad, so I was hired less to do work and more in the hope I stuck around until I was more experienced, and did work later.
The first was in an operational risk function at a bank. This specific department seemed to largely exist due to government compliance reasons, as we didn't do very much. But governments and societies have a preference for better regulated banks, so that's a value-add. In a 0 regulation environment, I think they'd get trimmed, but I also think it's rational for banks to have some level of internal risk monitoring regardless. The principal-agent problem combined with massive sums of money means that humans with power will do incredibly dumb shit which can put the bank as a whole at risk (see: bearings bank). And this bank in question had some pretty good fuck ups that resulted in government consequences in recent history, their prior lack of risk management wasn't a working business strategy.
The second was in the tax function of a large corporation. We were overstaffed half the year, but this was on purpose. Clearly whoever was in charge prefered is to be overstaffed during the year, so we'd be correctly staffed during the crunch of tax season. I always wondered why we didnt just have a skeleton crew for day to day tax stuff, and then have consultants come in for the tax filings. I assume it was probably cheaper to pay a few extra medium-tier accountant salaries than to pay for a massive tax engagement every year.
At both jobs, we can quibble about the cost/benefit of the scope/size of the department, but the value add was clear imo, I just articulated it. it doesn't strike me that either department was incredibly sub-optimal (I'd assume they'd get cut if so). You can hand-wave this away I guess as "these are zombie companies limping along due to a decade of free money" but both are massive successful corporations/household names in North America that anyone here would recognize.
Turniper
1d ago
I'm really glad we got an update to this. I was invested.
And uh... Yeah, that sounds like a cult. Always amazed the millions of documentaries we get about these seems to have made approximately zero dent in their ability to pop up.
aiislove
1d ago
I agree with you with regards to just LLMs, but I was imagining more of a general AI in the future which would be fed infinite streams of data in every language and place on earth that would lead to some singularity or consolidation of worldviews and perspectives impossible to individual humans.
aiislove
1d ago
Of course which reinforces my strongly held belief in linguistic determinism. Languages reflect reality only to the extent that they can describe it and their description of reality is likewise shaped/reinforced by the language it's parsed in.
On the other hand I'm imagining a general AI that could be fed infinite realtime data from infinite cameras, microphones and news sources from all over the world, it would inevitably start to bleed its understanding outside of the frame of one context and synthesize all of its input feeds into some universalist perspective that would be outside the realm of understanding of any one person who brings their own specific context to any information (as universalist as they may attempt to be or imagine themselves to be.)
It's pretty fallacious to split the entire species into 'the pro-vaccine side' and 'the anti-vaccine side' and conclude that because some people or organisations were censoring information (as if this is a new thing for organisations to do) then you can ignore all studies and evidence (and your own lying eyes) about whether the covid vaccines worked.
Germany censors people who think the Holocaust didn't happen. That doesn't mean the Holocaust deniers are right.
Paul Graham says to keep your identity small, and this is a perfect example why. You're wilfully putting yourself at risk for a disease because your political partisanship won't allow you to accept a medical technology that your political opponents might like.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
But society has far more unmet demand for electrical linemen than it does for another hotshot lawyer or Mackinsey consultant(I don't actually know what the latter does, except that it is pointless, well paid occupation for Ivy league grads).
The respective wages indicate that the market disagrees with you, there. As markets are how Western societies assigns scarce goods (such as labor), and generally are thought to do a non-terrible job of it, this requires further explanation.
I mean, there were certainly lucrative occupations in the past which did not correspond to fulfilling a need for society. An uncontroversial example might be a bank robber. Even the craziest economist will not look at the average income of bank robbers and conclude that given their effective hourly rate, there is a great demand for bank robbers in society.
People with different politics will widely disagree on which professions are in the same parasitic class as the bank robber. An argument could be made for meth cooks, developers of free-to-play Skinner box mobile games, people who make advertisements for tobacco products, ransomware gangs.
Another model would liken your ivy league lawyers and McKinsey consultants to the feather train of a peacock: a weird attractor state where the underlying forces (of evolution or the market) end up spending a lot of surplus resources just for signaling that they had surplus resources to spend. More uncontroversially, this is true for luxury brands like Porsche or Rolex: nobody buys a Rolex because they want to know what time it is.
A related concept is what Yudkowsky calls Inadequate Equilibria. Games (in the game theory sense) can be set up so that the stable outcome will be far away from the Pareto frontier, so that if participants could only coordinate better, everyone could get higher utility. As an example, consider the security dilemma: The states of the world spend trillions on their military-industrial complexes to prevent being invaded and better invade others, but as that is a zero-sum game, they will on average not get anything for that. In theory, the members of the United Nations might coordinate to forgo developing and building new weapon systems and spend the resources on endeavors which are not zero sum, like education (to the degree that it enables people to do more things instead of just competing for finite jobs), human necessities, entertainment, research or the like.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
Unions exist solely for extracting rent in the form of above market wages
Do you feel this way about historical unions that were fighting for weekends, 8 hour work days, and basic safety precautions? Or just the modern ones that do seem to have devolved into straight rent seeking (police and teachers most obviously, with a honorable mention to east coast dockworkers).
guilds and trades apprenticeships restrict supply to drive up wages through regulatory capture
The elevator repair mechanic guild in Ontario is one of the most egregious rent seeking institutions of our time and I wish we could burn them down. Unfortunately they're very tied into the suburban-developer-complex who in turn have very deep pockets and ties to the Italian mob.
Well fortunately thanks to Ukraine/Russia, India/Pakistan and Iran/Israel we now have an excellent iterative stress-test of just how far you can push a nuclear power before they push that big red button. Yeeting quadcopter drones into a leg of the nuclear triad? Check. “Accidentally” blowing up the other side’s nuclear weapons with a conventional strike? Check. Chucking ballistic missiles with a 4,000 lb warhead into the densely populated high rise downtown area of the capitol city? Check. And of course the control group for the study, China/USA, where nothing ever happens, but it’s always looming.
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