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Shrike
1hr ago
Also, I think it's very much the case that even with apologetics one still has to take a leap of faith.
Yes, I absolutely think this is correct. Even think about the New Testament – it's very clear that the very Apostles who had Christ appear to them had to have faith that God's promises to them would be fulfilled.
Hey, wait a minute, this is the second post you've made that attacks Japan and praises South Korea and Thailand! I thought it sounded familiar.
It's okay to dislike Japan, but I think you might have a bit of a narrow perspective here. Japan is like, twice as big as South Korea and seems to be doing pretty well for itself, lots of cultural output, okay wages, but an aging populace, an awful work culture, an awful face culture, and horrendous urbanization. South Korea... also has an aging populace, an awful work culture, an awful face culture, and horrendous urbanization, but it takes certain things to the extreme. Feminists have gone crazy over there and there is an absolutely wild gender war. The birth rate is 60% of what Japan's is, which is already pretty low. If you ask me, South Korea is doing a lot worse, regardless of how one might perceive their technology level and with-it-ness. Perhaps they are more open with you because they are more western, more international, and more feminist-inclined to the point where they view westerners as more feminist just because they're western. Japan is known for its racism and its insulated nature.
As for Thailand, I can't say much on it, never been there and I never hear any news from there. However, I have been talking to some Chinese people recently, and one of them went there and seems to think it's pretty dangerous and scary. Here are her words:
他们有枪击案，绑架要赎金，打你抓你去电信诈骗，或者将手脚砍掉卖艺之类的…..今年都有中国的小明星被骗去那里差点回不来。
还有一些是说当女生独自去更衣间或者卫生间的时候，里面其实有一个暗门，直接将你抓走。
但我们当时没有去芭提雅那些比较乱的地方，而且比较多人去就还好
但我们不小心住在了酒吧街，街边一排全是站着的女性和变性人
They have shootings, kidnappings for ransom, and scams where they hit you and take you to a place for telecommunication fraud, or cut off your limbs to make you a street performer... This year, even some minor Chinese celebrities were tricked into going there and almost couldn't come back.
There are also some stories about how when a girl goes to a changing room or a restroom by herself, there's actually a secret door inside and they just take you away.
But we didn't go to places like Pattaya that are more chaotic. Plus, since there were a lot of people there, it was okay.
But we accidentally stayed on a street with a lot of bars. The street was lined with women and transgender people standing along the side.
I think it's interesting that all around the world, upper-class women like to travel. I think China's youth is more liberal than many people think... Well, the ones I talk to, anyway.
Edit: Looks like the case she was talking about might be this one. Perhaps we can draw a comparison between Thailand and Mexico. Thailand is doing well for Southeast Asia, maybe the best, but still a not-so-nice neighboring country. Mexico, similarly, is one of the best Latin American countries. However, it has many faults, obviously.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
No, because “no real domestic economy” means cheap labor supply means more competition for tourist dollars.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Who the hell steals vegetables?
Statistics are predictably elusive, but all I could find indicated that meat, cheese, and infant formula were the most popular stolen foods. Excluding alcohol, that is.
I also object to the idea that vulnerability to theft makes anything cheap, but I recognize that was tongue in cheek.
Tophattingson
1hr ago
Most viable theories that could plausibly be investigated via this method are not theories of everything, but rather more modest ideas. I already have a few modest novel hypotheses of my own that I lack the resources to test, and thus they will remain just that:
- Is pollen more akin to a toxin, where at certain concentrations anyone will be affected, rather than just an allergen. The experience of Japan's hayfever epidemic suggests something like this, but it would take experiments to prove it. I actually fleshed this idea out, if anyone cares to know more.
- Do viral epidemics exhibit chaotic, rather than predictable behaviour, does this explain the failure of covid modelling, and does viral interference explain why countries with wildly divergent responses to covid saw identical results (i.e Sweden and UK both had the same first wave, despite the former doing approximately nothing and the latter turning itself into a totalitarian regime in the name of stopping the spread). Yes, of course I'm going to get one of these in. I also fleshed this idea out.
- Similar to IQ measuring g factor, is there a an athletic equivalent that measures "p factor" - positive correlations among various physical tests beyond those that would be expected just from age. That someone good at one physical activity will generally be good at other seemingly unrelated physical activities.
- Did coastal settlements during the era of subsistence farming have better nutrition due to their reliance on a source of protein for food? Were they healthier? Stronger? Did they have longer life expectancies and fewer famines?
- Historically, how many deaths due to famine/starvation during the era of subsistence farming were actually caused by onerous taxation? There are entire groups in history who seem to have uprooted themselves for the sake of tax evasion, so surely there must have been something that pushed them to do so?
- Can ideas from linguistics and semiotics about the development of language and symbols also be applied to cuisine. Why are certain patterns, like dumplings, widespread, whereas others, like rotten fish, are not, even in societies that would have access to the relevant foods. Are there cuisine isolates where the desired properties of food in terms of taste or texture are outright different, rather than trying to achieve the same result but with different access to food?
- Relative to other periods in human history, contemporary western societies are unusually elderly and unusually obese. Is some of the modern prevalence of pornography caused by the relative scarcity of ideal-age ideal-weight partners in general society to admire/ogle (even when clothed), which porn instead provides in abundance and then takes to 11?
GeneralElephant
2hr ago
The best example was once the TCS contractors I was working with claimed they couldn’t proceed because I hadn’t defined what I meant by “the button should log the user out of the application” in regards to “logging off” meant DESPITE THE LOGOFF FUNCTIONALITY ALREADY EXISTING.
07mk
2hr ago
The way models are influenced by the prompts are very model-specific, and so the easiest way to formulate your prompts to be effective would be to start by copying an existing example and going from there. I personally use anime-based models, which are almost all (all?) trained on Danbooru data sets with underscores removed from the Danbooru tags, which means that Danbooru-specific tags (e.g. 1girl, looking at viewer, 3d, cowboy shot) or Danbooru-common artist names or organizations (e.g. takeuchi takashi, cle masahiro, a1 pictures, kyoto animation - you can mix & match and put different weights, so e.g. "(takeuchi takashi:0.3), (kyoto animation:0.6) will produce a style that looks roughly 2x as inspired by Kyoto Animation's house style as it was inspired by the VN illustrator Takeuchi Takashi) give very predictable and reliable outputs, at least by standards of diffusion models. I've heard that this feature of anime-based models is such a strength that some people opt to use them to make the initial generation, followed by using IMG2IMG with different models and/or ControlNet to turn it into a photorealistic-ish or other style image. Dunno how common that is, though. But also, if you want specific poses or framing or whatever, using ControlNet with a separate input image that you manually create or pick out from somewhere is much more effective.
Parameters can be a real crapshoot and luck of the draw IME, or maybe I'm just poorly informed and lazy. Most anime-based models use Clip Skip = 2 (has to do with skipping the final layer of the neural net or something, which is how the very first useful anime-based models were trained), and you also have to choose the sampler, the CFG, and the number of steps.
As a rule of thumb, 20 steps is a good starting point; steps scale run time linearly, and usually above 20 you get returns that diminished to almost nothing (though usually not totally nothing - it can be good to inpaint over parts with 30+ steps sometimes).
CFG has something to do with how much denoising happens at each step, and lower values tend to make images look blobby and ill-formed, while higher values tend to make them look embossed, harsh, with a look that people have described as "deep fried" or "overcooked." I find values from 4-20 tend to be good, but it's also highly model-dependent and also dependent on what you want to get.
I don't think the sampler matters much, but this, too, is model-dependent. Samplers with "A" at the end of the name are "ancestral," which means they add noise with each step, such that the pictures will never converge on a single image no matter how many steps you take. There are also some samplers that require half as many steps as the others (but each step takes 2x as long), but I forget their naming scheme.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
US produce is harvested underripe to give it maximum shelf life.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
America’s recent rise in blue collar wages is not driven by government fiat or by unions, the other usual culprit. It’s pure market economics- mostly the response to high inflation.
If you do not value liberty, perhaps. If you do value liberty, the phrase "effective governance" sets off alarm bells. Having a government that is more effective at directing the activities of its people is not an uncontroversially good thing. This is a difference in terminal values, not a matter of "better" or "worse" according to any values shared between you and most Americans.
Well if I look at the Democracy Perception Index 2020, which measures the public perception of a country's governance. 52% of respondents think France is democratic. 73% think China is democratic. They may not value your personal conception of liberty, but that doesn’t mean they don’t value liberty. To quote Alasdair MacIntyre’s “Whose Justice, Which Rationality?,” so too is the case with your Liberty. Maybe they’re brainwashed fools who don’t understand the true concept of liberty, but I’m doubtful.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If those Asian countries have all that human and social capital, why is the US the wealthiest and it isn't even close? If Asia has some other ineffable superiority, why do US anti-immigration people have to beat off that Asian human capital with a stick to keep it from relocating to the US?
Because as I said earlier if GDP and wealth is your sole barometer for measuring the success of a society, then your conclusion is built directly into your assumptions: the US is the wealthiest country in the world. I don’t buy that framing of the argument however. You and I aren’t having the same conversation.
Incidentally is immigration something I’m supposed to be impressed with here? Even most Afghans aren’t clamoring to come to the US and of those that are and desperately want to attach themselves to jet turbines and escape, I say let them. People immigrate all the time. So what? I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of any country the US is actively bombing, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that people are trying to escape. They don’t envy American Liberty. They envy American wealth. And unless you can explain to me how the latter is causally explained by the former, I’m not going to buy that argument. I’d argue you can as much about the terminal as well as instrumental values of your liberty, because you don’t place the same value on alternative conceptions of liberty. And the reason for this is because it doesn’t produce outcomes that are agreeable to you.
Also don’t know what your link has to do with my argument.
GeneralElephant
2hr ago
As any hiring manager knows nowadays, the job pool is mostly incompetents, liars, lazies, addicts, or otherwise unwanted because of a serious flaw.
OK why would you believe the international labor pool is different than this description? Again the argument relies on the idea there is some difference between domestic and foreign labor pools otherwise there’s no point of bringing foreign workers.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2hr ago
Reminds me of this definitive encapsulation of Finnish cinema.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
The economics of air travel are not immediately obvious. It’s not just distance/duration. Route availability and the density of the endpoints are even more important because airplanes and their infrastructure are so expensive. I wouldn’t think this is a particular Thai advantage.
Though it is funny to see bitching about airline prices followed by a complaint that it’s too cheap. And you’re not even worried that it’s a bubble or something—no, you’re scared of visa jumpers? That’s less credible than the traditional complaints about tourists. I feel confident that the US-UK routes are not a significant contribution to either country’s illegal immigrants.
Your story makes me think of the stereotypical “gap year” amongst privileged college students. Only in that case, any insights about America’s bizarre economy are far more likely to grant an affinity for socialism. It’s enough to make me wonder how your policy prescription looks.
NunoSempere
2hr ago
Thanks :)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
Sounds like most of what people complain about in the modern western world today.
Inaccurately.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
Also, you did approximately nothing all winter.
Still had to take care of the animals. Keep the fires going. Make any necessary repairs. Do all the household tasks.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
2hr ago
Yes, actually that was a point I wanted to make and forgot about. The cost of labor is so high in rich countries that the quality of life for the middle class and the rich are degraded
This is my hope for an AI scenario: the downward pressure on labor cost should make services all around so much better. Of course, this really would only be good overall if the deflationary effects made up for it in total purchasing power.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
China has a more effective governance system
If you do not value liberty, perhaps. If you do value liberty, the phrase "effective governance" sets off alarm bells. Having a government that is more effective at directing the activities of its people is not an uncontroversially good thing. This is a difference in terminal values, not a matter of "better" or "worse" according to any values shared between you and most Americans.
Japan has a better transportation system.
If you don't mind tsukin jigoku (commuter hell). I for one do not want to be pressed into commuter paste in order to get to work.
Many European countries have a better healthcare system.
A less expensive one, certainly. But the existence of medical tourism from Europe to the US suggests it's not better on all criteria.
If all you're talking about is material wealth the US is the richest country in the world. Calling that a product of individual liberty leaves a massive hole in the argument that I haven't seen filled by anyone. The article I posted earlier for instance lends credence and empirical evidence to the argument many intellectuals in Southeast Asia made, namely that a social system which adopts a collectivist attitude such as 'Asian Values', dramatically increases the overall amount of human and social capital in society. I don't see how a similar argument could be made for 'Individual Liberty' in western societies.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If those Asian countries have all that human and social capital, why is the US the wealthiest and it isn't even close? If Asia has some other ineffable superiority, why do US anti-immigration people have to beat off that Asian human capital with a stick to keep it from relocating to the US?
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
2hr ago
I'll take a look, thank you!
TheDemonRazgriz
2hr ago
disparaging euphemism
Fun fact, the little-used word for this is a “dysphemism”
Sounds like most of what people complain about in the modern western world today.
If you mean people didn’t have modern concepts of leisure and recreation that’s true. The world they also had to concern themselves with was a lot smaller.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
Based.
Also, you did approximately nothing all winter.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3hr ago
The guy I quoted, Ross Arlen Tiekne, Yoshi Matsumoto, David Armstrong, just to name a few off the top of my head.
True, but the GDP Abu Dhabi, which makes up more of the UAE's economy than Dubai, is still predominantly based on oil exports. Whether Dubai's wealth is sustainable or not without Abu Dhabi's economic engine is still in question.
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