domain:epistle.us
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2hr ago
Diminishing returns != no returns.
Per year, it costs more to send someone to college or uni than it does to send them to school. If they come out of it with additional skills, or even just the credentials to warrant that investment, it's worth it. Even if you need to go into temporary debt for that purpose, as long as it's something less stupid than underwater basket weaving..
Just look at the wage disparities within humans. A company might be willing to pay hundreds or thousands of times more for a leading ML researcher or quant than they would for a janitor. The same applies to willingness-to-pay for every more competent AI models. Could you not afford to pay for AI Einstein if your competitor will?
Training costs are still going up, it isn't all test time compute. I don't know if we're going to have super-intelligence too cheap to meter (as opposed to mere intelligence on par with an average human), but what can we do but hope?
anti_dan
2hr ago
Didnt this exact thing happen to the 'Ok' handsign a while ago. It was hilarious.
anti_dan
2hr ago
Certainly few, if any, people are stealing tomatoes and boxes of cereal.
Actually there is a fix to the shoplifting problem, but it requires quite a bit of strategy, and probably some Republican Food Stamp reform to go through. If all you carry is healthy food and basic necessities like TP, you will have basically zero shoplifting problems. You have to, essentially, lock only your baby formula and razors.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3hr ago
I would endorse something like:
"Intelligence is the general-purpose cognitive ability to build accurate models of the world and then use those models to effectively achieve one's goals."
Or
"Intelligence is a measure of an agent's ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments."
This, of course, requires the assessor to be cognizant of the physical abilities and sensory modalities available to the entity. Einstein with locked-in-syndrome would be just as smart, but unable to express it. If Stephen Hawking had been unlucky enough to be born a few decades earlier, he might have died without being able to achieve nearly as much as he did IRL.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3hr ago
The comment you replied to is filtered.
naraburns
nihil supernum
3hr ago
I see he's banned now lol. But now that I'm here, I'm curious to know if your perspective is the prevailing opinion here.
WhiningCoil is flirting with a permanent ban himself, actually.
"Deport them all" is certainly an opinion some people have here, but as loudly as it is sometimes expressed I would not bet that it is prevailing. It's not uncommon for people to make the libertarian argument for open borders, for example--Bryan Caplan has some cachet in the rationalsphere.
I think your circumstances are not unusual. But there is a potential rejoinder you might want to consider--
My eldest is going to enter the same public high school I went to. The children of the first generation immigrants I went to school with now have their own families and, like me, have stayed in the same county to raise their children. They're indistinguishable from my family in the ways that matter to me.
That's great--my classical liberal heart is warmed--but it would be interesting to know for certain whether you are indistinguishable from their family in the ways that matter to them. If one demographic says "we love everyone, we help everyone equally, this is how we all work together to make the world a better place," but the other demographic responds "thanks for the help, we're going to take everything that is given to us to help our ingroup and, if possible, to become the dominant power, at which point we will then suppress our outgroup." The quote from Frank Herbert's Dune books is--
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.
I am not saying this is how your neighbors think! I hope it is not how they think. But that is the angle and the concern that tends to arise when people make arguments like the one you have made here.
Imagine if the enemy said "doing the hokey pokey is an endorsement of our cause." Or alternatively "doing the hokey pokey is pledging loyalty our cause." Well I would find it a pretty compelling reason to stop doing the hokey pokey.
At some point, this is just you allowing people you describe as your enemy to literally dictate what you can and can't do, which isn't a position of power, strength, or strategy.
If they get that much on your nerves, it's them who has power over you, not you over them. You're not defeating Newspeak by speaking in the old way -- you're creating a contra-Newspeak that's just as controlling, just as silly, and just as petty as what your opponents are doing. The fact that you're saying this is going on even in your own thoughts actually indicates that the Newspeak is working on you, not that you're resisting it. To put it in conflict terms, like you like, the enemy's in your head, which means you've already lost.
All the genuine hokey pokey lovers in the world aren't enough to outnumber the enemy's loyalists, and unfortunately they're all going to be misjudged as being part of the enemy's group just for doing what they love. They'll probably have to post a sign outside their gym that says "we don't endorse the enemy."
Alternatively, they might just continue to do what they love, and keep grilling dancing. Because, just perhaps, they won't mind if someone misjudges them as "part of the enemy's group," because they'd rather live life to the fullest than let ingroup/outgroup dynamics shape every aspect of their life.
I'm going to say to you what I say to the woke left when they similarly respond with fierce intensity to things the right does: living this way sounds absolutely exhausting, and soul-destroying, not life-giving or powerful.
phailyoor
3hr ago
Was thinking of making a higher level post but I'll just reply here:
Imagine if the enemy said "doing the hokey pokey is an endorsement of our cause." Or alternatively "doing the hokey pokey is pledging loyalty our cause." Well I would find it a pretty compelling reason to stop doing the hokey pokey. Even though I might like that dance, and have to sit out for that at the school dance. Refusing to do it is enough of a low cost to me that I'm willing to cede the ground and let them make the hokey pokey an enemy loyalty pledge.
You might say that I should do the hokey pokey anyways to try to reclaim it from the enemy. That might be reasonable depending on the specific factors at the time, but when the overwhelming number of people doing it are loyal enemy servants, that's difficult. All the genuine hokey pokey lovers in the world aren't enough to outnumber the enemy's loyalists, and unfortunately they're all going to be misjudged as being part of the enemy's group just for doing what they love. They'll probably have to post a sign outside their gym that says "we don't endorse the enemy." But unfortunately holding that ground is not a battle that can be easily won.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3hr ago
Now would an Iranian newspaper be able to simply report "The Israeli military unit 'Allah is not real and muhammad was a big dum dum' is committing genocide"? I think not.
I mean, I think they would report that, because it would be a fantastic way to demonstrate that Israelis are infidels and blasphemers.
I also think if you're at the point of comparing yourself to the way Muslims respond to blasphemy, you should be seriously evaluating the emotional intensity you're applying to politics.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3hr ago
I mean, is it so terrible to say these people's names? You can obviously disagree with the way in which the events have been framed and understood, but at some point you're just giving ammunition to your opposition who can make the reasonable claim that you're trying to dehumanize Floyd or Trayvon by not treating them as people worthy of being referenced, even when relevant, and even to criticize them.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
3hr ago
I don't mean to diminish this, since it's thinking sand and that's incredible, but it does seem like they're now making progress by increasing inference costs by OOMs rather than training costs. This is kind of the opposite direction you want to be going for the vision of the future that came from that Ketamine trip with Fischerspooner doing the soundtrack.
FoundViaTwitter
3hr ago
I mean, as I said
Interesting comment...
From my perspective, America has outperformed its economic peers in Europe and Asia over the last forty years despite this supposed "anchor". It's not that I'm completely allergic to your argument, but I do think more evidence is required before, um, deporting everyone you think is genetically incapable of "pursuing generational projects".
I will admit to a bias here. I live in Northern Virginia in a HCOL area where I'm surrounded by immigrants. I grew up here and stayed to raise my family. My eldest is going to enter the same public high school I went to. The children of the first generation immigrants I went to school with now have their own families and, like me, have stayed in the same county to raise their children. They're indistinguishable from my family in the ways that matter to me. The neighborhoods are immaculate and the people are friendly, like they were when I was a kid. The generational project seems to be working pretty well from my perspective! You may have had much more negative experiences with immigrants.
As I said in my first post, I found this forum in a roundabout kind of way through via Alexander Turok's Twitter account. I see he's banned now lol. But now that I'm here, I'm curious to know if your perspective is the prevailing opinion here. That would be fine, of course! I need some ideological diversity in my media diet.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3hr ago
The classic example of people saying nice things about Nazi Germany is the autobahn, right? I think historians still feel free to compliment that.
My understanding is that at least some historians are arguing that the autobahn was started as a project before the Nazi takeover and they just completed an existing good idea.
But really, I think the thing that people secretly feel the Nazis did good with was the drip (as the kids call it), and the aesthetics. Triumph of the Will was one of the most cinematographically influential films ever made. Even when I was in school we watched that film in order to understand how compelling Nazi propaganda was, when I took a class on single-party states.
Star Wars took a lot of influence from Nazi aesthetics when depicting the empire (obviously -- stormtroopers!), and it's a meme in the Star Wars fandom that the empire's aesthetics are way better than the rebellion. I think in a lot of way that's people sublimating the psychological appeal of authoritarian aesthetics into a fictional format, where they can engage in memes that reference the appeal without actually calling for authoritarianism, which was obviously horrific to a great many people.
Communism also has great aesthetics, though limited by... the economic problems of socialism in the USSR. I think that's a feature of authoritarianism; control over cultural output means that culture can be oriented towards state goals, and all the psychological tricks of manipulation, persuasion, and appeal become essential to cement the regime's power. No one will ever create an election billboard more chilling than Mussolini. And look at this mosaic of Kim Il Sung: it shows nice composition, and the color is so cheerful and compelling. And the Great Hall of the People in Beijing just looks cool.
I think that kind of intense symbolism only becomes possible in religion, monarchy, and authoritarianism. Systems of power where the appeal is totalizing.
Just food for thought.
phailyoor
3hr ago
What's in a name fundamentally? I can certainly talk about the football player named George Floyd as much as I want without "saying his name." So there's certainly more to it than just saying the words that match up to someone's name.
To say someone's name, it requires saying the words that match up with that person's name, as well as context that disambiguates the reference to a particular person. I would also argue that using a derogatory nickname for someone doesn't count, even if that nickname contains the words that match that person's name. The reason being is that those words aren't enough to refer to that person, and the denunciation itself makes it possible to understand what person is being talked about.
It's important that it's a derogatory denunciation, rather than an objective fact, as saying the words in someone's name, along with objective but negative facts about that person, can still carry an implied acknowledgement of that person.
So it's in fact important to use the derogatory phrasing, even over saying "[word], who died from fentanyl ..." because that's simply staging an objective fact, not necessarily denouncing.
Society has certainly decided that bleeping out the fuck word makes the work less obscene. See all those songs that are bleeped out.
I also didn't say the word that you may expect in that censor bar in my head when I typed it out. I just meta-determined that placing those censor bars would be a way to refer to that phrase without saying it directly.
Dean
Flairless
3hr ago
'There is now way Trump will get away with [latest thing] this time!'
Not going to lie, mate, you are kind of all over the place on this. You say that this suit 'just put things into overdrive,' but your conclusion is really just jamming a lot of different concept that could be these [things].
In paragraph one, it was the survival (preferably end) of Trump's political career. In paragraph two it... could just as well apply to a thing you characterize as would have been a non-scandal if only Trump waited a weekend? Or maybe the Murdoch trap. You kind of veer from one into the other. By paragraph three, it's the terrible prospects of a disposition of a guy who (repeatedly) had (multiple) hostile prosecutions and investigations leak unflattering things for decades. Come paragraph four, it's how bad the optics will be for a guy who won his first presidential election after an audiotape of 'grab them by the pussy,' followed by a technically-not-treason conspiracy, and, well, way too many bad optics to list.
So when you throw in things like this-
But Trump is impulsive, and wasn't going to wait until Monday to file, wasn't going to give himself a chance to cool down. Get it out Friday. Now he has opened himself up to a world of hurt that he couldn't imagine beforehand.
Dude. Dude.
This is a guy who has been variously accused of rape, infidelity, insurrection, and racism in various courts for the better part of a decade. He was the target of a historically unprecedented fraud prosecution in which the largest fraud fine in New York history was leveled against him despite the victim testifying on his behalf. So many novel legal theories have been used against him that entire aspects of constitutional law have been developed to manage it. There have been multiple government conspiracies that we know about that aimed to hurt him in court.
I am going to go on a slight limb here and suggest that maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump has a better idea of the world of hurt that comes with court cases than you do.
WhiningCoil
3hr ago
I mean, as I said
Depends on your diagnosis of the problem. If you believe, as I increasingly do, that most of our societal ills with corruption and collapse of state capacity revolve around the mass importation of high time preference demographics incapable at a genetic level of pursuing generational projects, deporting them is not only a solution, but the only solution. Because with that anchor tied to your feet, no state project, be it reinvigorating capitalism, monopoly busting or state run grocery stores can possibly succeed. If the labor market is flooded with lazy scammers who shameless loot the till, it's not going to matter if the grocery store is a coop, state run, unionized or anything.
I can nearly promise you, with that much state money being dumped into the project and with that little food on shelves, there is a "community organizer" driving around in a brand new BMW involved somewhere.
That's where I am as well.
Maybe I'm too cynical here, but to me the WSJ story doesn't seem to add anything that we didn't know before. Trump and Epstein were friends, and Trump says creepy things about young women and sex. We knew that! "Trump engages in sexual misconduct" just isn't a story that I can see going anywhere - Trump supporters have already rationalised that away, and people who would oppose him over it already oppose him.
Unless there is genuinely rock-solid proof of child sex abuse - and I would be shocked if there is - then this just doesn't change anything. Trump is a pervert in the way we already knew he was a pervert. The needle does not move.
OliveTapenade
4hr ago
What is your understanding of 'intelligence'?
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
4hr ago
If the Iranians can't use certain turns of phrase I consider it a weakness born out of irrationality. If they think it's a trick to make them say it they might be correct; more the fools them that they are open to any harm from taking the trick on the chest.
I will never ever say "███████ l█v█s m█tt█r"
Bleeping it out doesn't make you say it any less than bleeping out one letter from the word "fuck" makes it any less obscene.
DiscourseMagnus
4hr ago
I think the MAGA base genuinely cares about
I have a pretty hard time believing anyone with any real power cares about
No contradiction spotted.
OliveTapenade
4hr ago
The classic example of people saying nice things about Nazi Germany is the autobahn, right? I think historians still feel free to compliment that.
I suppose I think the consensus around Nazi Germany has moved in the direction that they did make some right calls and pick some low-hanging fruit, but also that a lot of their strengths were either inherited (e.g. the military system) or illusory and exaggerated (e.g. taking credit for the German economic revival). Nazism as a system wasn't uniquely brilliant.
The way TOS frames it is as something like a deal with the devil. You get efficiency, power, a rapid rise to power, social solidarity, etc., and all you have to do is be evil. That's not what was going on with Hitler's Germany.
Imagine someone who not only unironically uses the term human capital, and unambiguously considers themselves as higher human capital, but who also conspicuously talks about how the Republican Party has really gone downhill since it started catering to the tastes of those lower human capital.
iprayiam3's characterization of Turok can apply to Hanania in general- someone who is generally upset that their intelligence and self-evident superiority aren't met with the deference and leadership they feel is their due. You can talk about Hanania, the social critic, but what that misses is Hanania, the would-be luminary / public intellectual / movement leader. Critics are common, but it takes a special sort of Influencer who is Intelligent enough to deserve to be listened to.
In mechanical terms, Hanania is/was a journalist who gained noticed in the 2000s by writing for far-right publications (that he has since disavowed). But from those publications he made connections with the sort of people who read them and more mainstream right-leaning media to sometimes write for those, and in turn use those as a further spring board. Hanania is a sharp enough wit that he can stand out by poking midwits, and enjoys it for both its own sake and the adulation it brings from those happy to see the victims pricked.
IIRC, part of what made Hanania stand out / get excommunicated from the respectable media (besides his not-quite-secret further right entry point) was that his schitk of being an angry libertarian also made him one of the earlier public critics/opponents to what we now call DEI. Hanania was always something of a shock-jock writer, picking arguments to provoke, and mocking woke / social justice / DEI efforts was something where he was ahead of the crowd. That boosted his credentials in some circles, especially those more interested in racial-IQ science, in the 'only Diogenes is wise enough to tell it like it is' sense. However, intellectual humility is not exactly something Hanania gets accused of having too much of, and he (or at least his support group) would probably tend to fixate more on Diogenes' acerbic wit and less on the joke.
This comes to the political pretensions... not really ever, but the closest in the the early-mid-2010s, pre-Trump. Trump rose because there was a power vacuum of voter base trust in the Republican establishment. That vacuume was because the Republican base disagreed with the Democrats on a lot and wanted someone who would fight. Hanania was also someone who disagreed with the Democrats on the lot and wanted to fight. This is a now decade-old vibe, but there was a vibe that Republicans were looking for something different than the stale old Bush-era republicans. (Memorably, the Republican Party elite had been taking the lesson via post-Romney autopsy that the change they needed was to become more like the Democrats. This, uh, didn't work out for that wing of the party.)
The fact that the Republican base went with someone like Trump, rather than someone like more Hanania-adjacent, is somewhere between 'something that will never be forgiven' and 'It's not like I wanted to be popular with you' and 'I knew you were all idiots anyway.'
I don't know / recall if Hanania ever made an overt play for Republican Party influence, but he's been bitter about it in ways that are more akin to a spurned would-be-lover than an outsider. Hananaia has written about how conservative republicans are worse (in some ways) than democrats, about how Trump has a stranglehold on the party, about how the party has become the low human capital party (since Trump), etc. etc. The sort of thing that gives the impression that Hanania sure would think it was a good thing if the Republican party was replaced with people who met Hanania's standards, which of course includes agreeing with Hanania, and would naturally elevating Hanania-like people like Hanania into policy power. (But, of course, he'd never be so low-brow as to directly appeal to his own greatness.)
Despite that, Hananaians occasionally make scratches, or at least associations, with political relevance. Hanania was allegedly / accused of contributing to the Project 2025 republican wishlist / template that the Trump administration cribbed from for early policy priorities. At the same time (loosely / more recently), Hanania did a media tour publicly professing regret for ever voting for Trump (which, of course, was due to Hanania being insufficiently Hanania and taking his reasoning further). Hanania thus tries to shape Trumpian politics, while also keeping as far distance as he can. If Trump zigs, he will zag, and comment at length at how bad zigging is.
Hananaia acts, in other words, loosely like a would-be government-in-exile hoping that, should the hated regime fall, people will naturally look to them for guidance. However, this is undercut a bit by how the would-be government is led by a hated aristocrat who openly loathes the peasants, and hardly loved in return. Still, he's useful enough to enough people that he continues to exist.
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