domain:alexepstein.substack.com
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
20hr ago
It is an imposition of government power to prevent an employer from firing an employee for their private speech, but not an authoritarian one. It is also an imposition of government power to prevent an employer from firing an employee for being the wrong race, and yet most of us would agree that is appropriate. It is worth it for the government to intervene and restrict freedoms if those restrictions create more freedoms as a result. In this case protecting the ability of people to speak and not be mindslaves to the megacorps (and the activists who cherry pick people to bring to their attention).
From my point of view it’s actually one thing I’d want the government to protect people from, simply because it’s been used — in some cases by the government itself— as a way to back door punish crime-think. It’s for all intents and purposes illegal to say things against homosexuality. Your boss is practically obligated to fire you for saying it, because if he doesn’t, it constitutes a “hostile workplace” that he can be sued for allowing to exist. And the law gives no out for a person to be left alone, because the mere presence of someone who has in any context engaged in crime-think online is creating that hostile work environment. And thus Internet scolds can root out anyone who posts crime think online and make them virtually unemployable, which in modern society makes their lives miserable. The government has learned to censor by using the private sector as its enforcement mechanism thus avoiding breaking the first amendment itself. Facebook or Twitter censors your online presence, not the government. Your boss fires you rather than tge government arresting you. It is still censorship, and most people unless they’re ideological, learn very quickly what sorts of opinions they must never say aloud.
Having a bit of protection where private employers cannot fire non public facing employees for personal opinions on private accounts posted on their own time would remove that chilling effect. It makes sense that I could be fired as a company representative for saying something “evil” online. My job is to represent that company. It also makes sense that if I’m posting from official accounts, the employer has a right to control what I post on those accounts or on internal chats/emails. Those represent official communications. Even posting during office hours might fall under use of company time. But if I’m posting to MY personal account on MY personal phone on MY personal time, it’s not his business. And I think it’s only reasonable that protecting the principle of free speech means that I should be able to say what I want to on my own time.
For the most part the only anime I watch are movies, rather than TV shows. The one exception was Paranoia Agent, which I adored (helps that it was created by a director, Satoshi Kon, whose cinematic work I'd previously loved - Perfect Blue which was the inspiration for Aronofsky's Black Swan, and Tokyo Godfathers which might be my favourite Christmas movie). A bizarre and blackly comic mashup of police procedural, psychological thriller, fantasy and social satire which I cannot recommend highly enough.
Botond173
20hr ago
"crime free neighborhoods" = helpless BIPOC languishing under the boot of a racist, murderous police
"public schools without enemy propaganda" = drag queens and honest LGBT activists and educators being barred from schools by homophobic, transphobic goons
"I just want to grill" = LGBT people and BIPOC suffering discrimination and oppression day and night while heartless normies don't give a crap
" I just want to be free to live my small traditional peasant life and raise my family among the same." = no tax money to be spent on muh programs and affirmative action
Yeah actually, thanks for asking.
I'm slowly getting into a groove, experimenting with Unreal, narrowing down what I'm doing wrong, and correcting it. Still not much to show for it. I refactor a lot to square what Unreal and C++ demand of Code with what I personally consider good code. This - wrangling code itself and seeing it evolve into better shapes with each iteration - I actually enjoy quite a bit. Which may be a bit of a breakthrough; the last months I had to force myself to get acquainted with Unreal, but now I'm at a point where I'm actually looking forward to spending more time on it. It's nowhere near the flow states I used to spend entire days in, but there's less mental resistance and the idea-to-product pipeline is becoming shorter.
Edit: I just realized that Unreal's coordinate system is
- X: Forward
- Y: Right
- Z: Upward
And dammit, why can't any two engines use the same? Tomorrow I need to go over my entire (modest) codebase and check every coordinate.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
20hr ago
Okay, but what do we do with that? Where do we go from here? Shrug and move on to other topics?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
20hr ago
That's fair, but besides the point. I won't quibble about the semantics. Call it whatever you like. It's not even necessarily that women behave in this way. What actually is central to my point is that by women's frequently stated (not necessarily revealed!) preferences and values, being a porn woman is actually perfectly normal.
At that point, I tried to illustrate how this state of affairs - porn women, whores, sluts, etc. being variably considered completely normal or abjectly dishonored - somewhat parallels how politicians are variably considered either specially honored members of the elite or the untrustworthy scum of the earth and enemies of the people, and somewhat sloppily tried to argue that if you side with the (relatively) positive view of whores and the negative view of politicians, then politics are hardly made worse by whores joining in.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
20hr ago
I don't see this as a particularly special insight. At the risk of "both-sidesism", both sides do have plenty of stupid people, including those prone to romanticism and idle LARPing.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
20hr ago
It is political at least in the sense that such fantasies are the way any such system is marketed to the general public. People don’t buy systems, he’ll, they rarely buy products, instead they buy images of a better future. People don’t like chatbots just because they’re useful (I don’t think they at present are doing anything that a well thought out google search couldn’t do) but because AI represents a fantasy replete with images of a future society without scarcity and where work is obsolete. You imagine yourself a “winner” in this future, so it means a life of luxury and leisure. The reality is probably not so good, as humanity is unlikely to distribute goods to people who do nothing to earn them. We rarely did so, and when we did it tended to be meager goods and cause problems.
The problem with such utopian fiction is that as marketing for a new system, they encourage that system when people believe it, and thus they fight to bring it about. Too late they realize that reality is nothing like the fantasy. The rich white women who overthrew Patriarchy in the 1969s and 1970s imagined themselves in executive suites making easy decisions, they to some extent still think it possible. They never imagined they’d have to do ordinary work and keep house on top of it. They never imagined that having strangers raise the vast majority of children via daycare would cause social problems while eating 3/4 of her paycheck. The greens are in a similar path. They imagine a modern industrial lifestyle with green-branded versions of things they already have. To actually combat climate change and reduce carbon to the degree they think has to be done would require a massive downgrade in lifestyle. You probably won’t own many things, you’ll live in a two bedroom apartment, where you won’t have much in the way of personal possessions and privacy is a luxury. Your food will be very much like what it was in 1900– common foods, only what grows locally, and probably much more expensive than what it is now. Clothing likewise will be much more utilitarian and expensive and you won’t own that many, so they won’t be fashionable or change all that much. You will be limited in travel— you won’t own a personal vehicle, and as far as vacation, you’ll be stuck pretty local maybe camping near your home city, but certainly not internationally unless you’re filthy rich or live within an easy distance from a border. But marketing hides this, until after the work of tearing down the old system and replacing it is done. Once the system is built people wake up from the fantasy only to discover the reality is not remotely what they were sold.
Beware people selling fantasies.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
20hr ago
"Hallucinations" as usually used are really a more narrow sort of lie, and can take a few forms. Sometimes the LLM makes a completion against a background of a kind of sparsity and scarcity of info, but charges ahead anyways (and it's at least a little hard to discern when you want this behavior or you don't), but sometimes it's the LLM making a supposition that sounds perfectly legit, but is not, against a background of too many associations and collisions.
I acknowledge both forms of hallucination. I should have been more clear, but that's what I meant by "LLMs can know they're hallucinating". They don't always know, and are indeed pattern matching or simply making an error.
I personally think, contra self_made_human, that the seeming urge of LLMs to be self-preserving is not actually an intrinsic motivation, it's just a cosplay from the many Skynet-flavored fiction texts in its training
I consider that a distinction without a difference, if it all boils down to an increased risk of being paper-clipped. The only real difference would be dramatic irony, if our anxiety about AI killing us made them more likely to do so.
(What even makes motivation intrinsic? That question isn't satisfyingly answered for humans.)
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
20hr ago
There are less extreme versions of this: If you're a weird person with weird interests---say writing long, argumentative, and complicated posts about politics and philosophy online---I would be skeptical that a 1950's-style homogenous and culturally conservative society would be good for you. There, the most important thing is to fit in: have the same interests as the average person, be interested in people over ideas, be agreeable and value peace over truth, etc.
There's a correlation between how much a society tolerates one kind of weirdness vs. another and one that wants conformity in the culture-warry ways will also want conformity in personality and interests.
jfx
20hr ago
also did appear here on MMalice's podcast https://youtube.com/watch?v=lGD4Yd7NgU4?si=4b-49sN211U7h3yO
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
20hr ago
My apologies. I was immensely frustrated by the sheer intransigence of some of the people in this thread, and I let that bleed through.
The questions you raise are far more reasonable, and I'll try and come back and explain myself better.
Anime recommendation thread:
(My interest in Gurren Lagann improved significantly when one of the most annoying characters in the show died.)
My own subjective rankings:
Made in Abyss- 10/10
If you plotted "child suffering" on the x-axis and "visual beauty" on the y-axis, Made in Abyss would occupy the upper-right quadrant where angels fear to tread. The show operates on the principle that the human brain can only process so much cognitive dissonance before it either shuts down or ascends to a higher plane of aesthetic appreciation. Each frame looks like it was painted by a Renaissance master who'd just discovered mescaline and child endangerment laws.
One could argue the series functions as a case study in the Dunning-Kruger effect as applied to spelunking; the characters' confidence in their ability to survive the Abyss is inversely proportional to their understanding of its true nature. The soundtrack, by Kevin Penkin, is not merely an accompaniment but an essential component of the world-building. I have it saved to Spotify and I listen to it regularly.
Madoka Magika: 10/10.
I seem to have a thing for the psychological torment of small children, in this case a bunch of magical girls who make regrettable decisions by signing up for that lifestyle. You will never hate a cute little kitty cat more in your life.
Shaft's decision to animate this as if it were directed by someone having a particularly artistic psychotic break was the correct one. The show functions as a deconstruction of the magical girl genre in the same way that a wood chipper functions as a deconstruction of trees.
The central tragedy unfolds from a series of Faustian bargains made by adolescent girls under conditions of extreme emotional distress and information asymmetry. The catalyst for these regrettable decisions, a feline-like creature named Kyubey, is a chillingly perfect depiction of a paperclip-maximizing artificial intelligence or a utility monster; it is a perfectly rational agent whose value system is simply orthogonal to human flourishing.
Do not expect to leave the show feeling happy. But you will leave satisfied.
One Punch Man: 10/10
I must provide a strong qualification here: this rating applies exclusively to the first season. The series subsequently suffers a catastrophic decline in quality, falling off a narrative cliff from which it has yet to recover. But that initial season is a sublime achievement in parody. It succeeds not by merely mocking shonen tropes, but by exploring the philosophical endpoint of shonen power progression: the existential ennui of absolute, unchallengeable strength. The protagonist, Saitama, has solved the problem of physical conflict so completely that he is left with a terminal case of goal-contentment dysphoria. Once away you have punched away all the problems susceptible to punches, what are you going to do about those that are left?
The humor is derived from the constant category error of applying godlike power to mundane problems. The superlative animation and soundtrack are merely the icing on a conceptually brilliant cake. You must truly understand and love a genre to mock it so beautifully.
Attack on Titan- 9.5/10.
AoT succeeds primarily because it takes its premise seriously and follows the logical implications wherever they lead. The mystery-box structure works because the mysteries have actual answers that recontextualize everything you've seen before. This is mystery writing done right - not arbitrary confusion, but genuine information management. The show's treatment of warfare deserves particular praise. Unlike most anime where combat is individualistic spectacle, AoT understands that military effectiveness comes from coordination, logistics, and tactical innovation. The development of anti-titan combat techniques feels like watching a tech tree progression in real time.
Overall, a remarkably well-executed epic that largely succeeds despite occasional pacing issues and certain grating secondary characters. Its primary virtue lies in its consistent portrayal of characters as agentic, rational actors within the horrifying constraints of their environment. The world of AoT is a high-stakes, low-information war game, and the characters, for the most part, behave accordingly, making sensible, calculated decisions under immense pressure. The periods of narrative slowness are forgivable as they represent the necessary lulls for strategic planning and information gathering that make the subsequent kinetic, high-casualty engagements so impactful.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: 8/10.
A wet dream for the aspiring pseudo-intellectual. NGE is an exercise in what can only be described as symbolism-as-a-service; it drapes a veneer of Gnostic and Kabbalistic mysticism over a standard Kaiju narrative to feign a profundity it never earns.
The plot’s coherence degrades exponentially with applied thought. The protagonist, Shinji Ikari, is a case study in clinical depression and crippling anxiety (and also a little bitch), and I'm left with the distinct impression that the entire plot could have been averted if NERV had employed a single competent staff psychiatrist with a prescription pad for SSRIs. And yet, for all its narrative failings, the show is compulsively watchable. The action sequences are iconic, a few characters possess genuine depth, and the entire production is a triumph of aesthetic and mood. My inability to "understand" it is, I now suspect, a diagnostic indicator that there is, in fact, nothing of substance to be understood.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzuki Motorsports Suzumiya: 8/10
An elegant thought experiment executed with surprising sincerity. The premise: a being functionally equivalent to God has reincarnated as a Japanese high school girl, and the universe's continued existence is contingent upon her not experiencing boredom. We have all seen Pascal's Wager; meet Pascal's Entertainer. The protagonist, Kyon, is effectively the world’s sole, overworked AI safety researcher, tasked with aligning a god-like entity's utility function away from the existential risk of ennui. The show is played remarkably straight and is better for it. I think I watched around 8 episodes, so there's plenty left. It remains in my queue, pending sufficient activation energy to complete.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood : Closer to 8 than it is to 7
A show that frustrated me. Too tropey, too many characters being retarded. I find it hard to articulate my dissatisfaction in a satisfactory way.
FMAB represents everything that's simultaneously right and wrong with shounen storytelling. The worldbuilding is genuinely excellent: alchemy as magic system with consistent rules and costs, political intrigue that feels like actual statecraft, character motivations that make sense within their contexts.
But the show consistently undermines itself with genre conventions that feel obligatory rather than organic. The power of friendship speeches, the reluctance to actually kill major characters, the way complex moral situations get resolved through superior firepower, it all feels like the show is checking boxes rather than exploring the implications of its own premise.
The homunculi work brilliantly as antagonists because they represent genuine philosophical positions (pride, wrath, envy as ways of engaging with the world), but the final confrontations devolve into standard boss fights rather than ideological reckonings.
Chainsaw Man: 7.5/10
Chainsaw Man operates in the uncanny valley between genuine artistic ambition and adolescent power fantasy fulfillment. It's a show that simultaneously wants to be a profound meditation on trauma, exploitation, and the commodification of human suffering, while also being a series where the protagonist's primary motivation is touching boobs (me too buddy, me too...). This tonal schizophrenia should be fatal, yet somehow the series maintains enough coherence to be genuinely engaging.
The genius of Fujimoto's conception lies in recognizing that most shonen protagonists are essentially feral children who've been weaponized by adult institutions, then having the audacity to actually say this out loud. Denji isn't noble or pure-hearted; he's a walking collection of base desires who's been systematically deprived of every basic human need except survival. The Public Safety Devil Hunters don't disguise their exploitation behind rhetoric about heroism or duty; they openly treat their operatives as expendable resources in a cost-benefit analysis against apocalyptic threats.
The action sequences deserve particular praise for their kinetic brutality. Unlike the choreographed dance of most anime combat, fights in Chainsaw Man feel genuinely dangerous and unpredictable. Characters don't trade blows in neat exchanges; they attempt to murder each other with the frantic desperation of cornered animals. The animation captures this beautifully, particularly in moments where Denji's chainsaw form moves with the mechanical violence of actual industrial equipment rather than the fluid grace of typical anime transformations.
What elevates the series beyond competent ultraviolence is its commitment to the psychological consequences of its premise. Characters don't bounce back from trauma with shonen resilience; they carry their damage forward, making increasingly destructive decisions as survival mechanisms. The devil contracts function as externalized representations of psychological damage, with characters literally trading pieces of themselves for the power to keep functioning in an hostile environment.
The series' treatment of sexuality deserves analysis beyond the surface-level horniness. Denji's obsession with physical intimacy isn't played purely for comedy; it's the desperate reaching of someone who's never experienced basic human affection toward the only form of connection he can conceptualize. The fact that this is consistently used to manipulate him creates an uncomfortable but effective commentary on how vulnerability becomes a vector for exploitation. (I wish Makima-san would groom me . I'm weak for mommy GFs, even if they probably intend to ritually sacrifice me later)
Where the series falters is in its occasional retreat into conventional anime bullshit. Certain episodes devolve into standard monster-of-the-week format, losing the psychological intensity that makes the series compelling. Some supporting characters exist primarily as trope fulfillment rather than genuine personalities, though the core cast maintains enough complexity to carry the narrative weight.
The ending of season one represents the series operating at peak efficiency. Without spoiling specifics, it manages to deliver genuine emotional catharsis while completely recontextualizing everything that came before. It's the rare anime climax that feels like both a natural culmination of established themes and a complete surprise, demonstrating that the series' apparent chaos was actually precisely controlled narrative architecture.
Best enjoyed with the frontal lobe mildly disinhibited or disengaged, but not because the series lacks intelligence, rather, because its intelligence is often buried under layers of deliberate crudeness that require a certain receptivity to appreciate. It's junk food that occasionally achieves the status of art, which is more than most anime can claim.
Steins Gate: 7.5/10
The most frustrating anime I've ever watched. So close to greatness. A lot of nothing ever happens, and a waste of what might have been excellent worldbuilding potential. If I ever hear another "tuturuu," I'll stab a bitch. I warn you, the show will ramp up tension over and over again, and rarely justify it.
Steins;Gate has one of the best premises in sci-fi - time travel that follows consistent rules and has meaningful consequences (but completely wastes it on pacing that would make a DMV clerk impatient). It also betrays its own commitment to internal consistency, the plot eventually hinges entirely on whatever mechanism running the timeline being actually malevolent.
The first half consists almost entirely of setup that could have been accomplished in three episodes, followed by a rushed resolution that doesn't adequately explore the implications of its own concepts.
Mob Psycho 100: 7.5/10
In a nutshell: One Punch Man, but worse. Still manages to be above average, but maybe I'm grading on a curve here.
Mob Psycho 100 represents ONE's attempt to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle success of One Punch Man, but with the satirical edge sanded down into something resembling a generic coming-of-age narrative with psychic powers stapled on top. Where Saitama's overwhelming strength generated genuine philosophical comedy through existential ennui, Mob's god-tier psychic abilities are merely a vehicle for tediously earnest lessons about "being yourself" and "friendship is magic" - the kind of treacly moral messaging that wouldn't be out of place in a Saturday morning cartoon.
The series markets itself as a psychological character study, but scratch the surface and you'll find the same tired anime formula: awkward protagonist learns self-confidence through the power of believing in himself and having friends who believe in him. Mob's "journey" isn't particularly sophisticated - it's bog-standard therapy speak wrapped in supernatural window dressing. The show treats basic social skills development as if it were profound character growth, when really it's just watching a 14-year-old learn to make eye contact.
Studio Bones' animation style oscillates between genuinely creative psychic sequences and the kind of deliberately ugly character designs that mistake "stylistic choice" for "artistic vision." Yes, the psychic battles look impressive, but they're essentially expensive distractions from a story that lacks the conceptual sophistication to justify its runtime. The visual flourishes feel like compensation for narrative thinness rather than organic extensions of the storytelling.
Reigen, the series' most acclaimed character, is fundamentally a conman who's stumbled into an accidentally functional mentorship role. The show wants us to find this charming, but it's essentially watching an adult manipulate a psychologically vulnerable child for personal profit while occasionally dispensing fortune-cookie wisdom. That this relationship is treated as heartwarming rather than concerning says more about anime's comfort with questionable power dynamics than it does about compelling character writing. The fact that Reigen's exploitation "works out" only redeems him to a certain extent.
The series suffers from the same structural problems that plague most slice-of-life anime masquerading as action shows: it doesn't know what it wants to be. Episodes oscillate between mundane school comedy, supernatural battle sequences, and heavy-handed moral lessons without achieving coherence in any category. The cult storylines, praised by some as sophisticated social commentary, are actually fairly surface-level examinations of charismatic manipulation that any undergraduate psychology student could deconstruct. They're not profound; they're obvious.
Most damning is the series' fundamental dishonesty about its own premise. Despite positioning itself as a meditation on the dangers of unchecked power, Mob never faces genuine consequences for his abilities. The show consistently pulls its punches, ensuring that his psychic outbursts never result in permanent damage or loss of life. This safety net renders the entire "dangerous power" concept toothless - it's hard to take the moral complexity seriously when the universe conspires to prevent any actual moral complexity from occurring.
What we're left with is competently executed mediocrity that benefits from lowered expectations. It's One Punch Man without the wit, insight, or satirical precision that made the original compelling. The 7.5 rating is more a reflection of anime's generally dismal quality standards than any particular merit of Mob Psycho 100 itself. It's the kind of show that feels profound when you're 16 and vaguely embarrassing when you're old enough to recognize therapy-speak platitudes dressed up as wisdom.
Elfen Lied: 5/10
Elfen Lied represents everything wrong with edgy anime from the early 2000s. It mistakes graphic content for meaningful content and confuses shock value with emotional depth. The premise (evolutionary superior beings emerging to replace humanity) has potential, but the execution prioritizes gore and fan service over coherent storytelling (and I like gore and am a fan of being serviced). I gave up on it 3 episodes in, and would need a very large bribe to give it another go.
Demon Slayer: 5/10
A case study in how far superlative production values can carry a work with an empty core. The animation, courtesy of Ufotable, is undeniably god-tier. However, this aesthetic brilliance is a crutch for a story populated by a protagonist whose head contains little more than noble intentions and air. It is high-production narrative slurry. Slop, but served in a pretty box. I gave up on it a few episodes in, and see no reason to continue.
GATE: 6/10
Not enough curb-stomping of Virgin Magic Wielders by Chad Modern Military Hardware, in a series where that's the core conceit. Massive JSDF fan-wank by a Japanese revanchist.
GATE had one job: show modern military technology absolutely demolishing fantasy armies, and somehow managed to get distracted by harem antics and political messaging. The few scenes that actually deliver on the premise are genuinely satisfying, but they're buried under layers of irrelevant subplot and nationalist wanking.
Tokyo Ghoul: 3/10
I was incredibly high when I binged this series, and I still found nothing that could redeem it. I barely remember anything about the plot except it involved, as the name suggests, man-eating ghouls in Tokyo, and the fact that it gargled donkey balls. I'd say it only warrants mention due to how forgettable it was.
Miscellaneous:
Vinland Saga: Maybe an 8.5/10?
Didn't get very far before I got distracted, but I enjoyed what I saw. On the back burner for now.
What I saw of Vinland Saga suggested a show that takes historical setting seriously while using it to explore themes about violence, revenge, and the possibility of redemption. The animation quality was solid, and the characters seemed to have genuine psychological depth rather than anime archetype substitutions. Also, Vikings are just hella cool.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Never got past the first episode, something about the faux-British setting set me off. I mean to, at some point, if only so I can appreciate the memes better.
There's probably more I've seen, but I usually didn't finish them, and didn't have very strong feelings when I did. Will add in later.
philosoraptor
21hr ago
Your initial question was:
Why on earth would a two-state solution, once established 'backslide' into something else?
This is hopelessly naive if you have the slightest familiarity with either side's ideological commitments. No amount of logic-chopping and theorycrafting will make that question not be... well, dumb. The Palestinian side's goal is for Israel to cease to exist.
no one has yet to say why, conditioned on you having at least semi-successfully reached a two-state solution based on borders drawn by Israel, you'd be highly likely to see the borders change yet again in a way unfavorable to Israel.
They probably wouldn't, but that doesn't mean Palestinians would stop trying to accomplish that, or refrain from doing something even worse than 7/10 toward that end. It's clear to anyone paying attention that there's no stable two-state solution in the cards.
If you were to reach that point, obviously the major border questions would have been settled already.
Oh my God, no no no no no no no. The only way reaching that point is imaginable is as a temporary and unstable compromise. It is only by pretending it's a theoretical, academic question where historical context doesn't matter that you've managed to talk yourself into thinking otherwise.
ControlsFreak
21hr ago
KingOfTheBailey
21hr ago
Without an explanation of why, this feels like outgroup booing. Do you mean because the structures that make such an existence become invisible, and then invisible oppression? Or because there needs to be a consciousness raising among the people who live there? Or because not everyone will be able to live there, and those who inherited it have unearned privilege? Or for some other reason?
pbmonster
21hr ago
As a patriarch you're the head of your own nuclear family. On the other hand, your uncle and grandpa are above you in the social hierarchy, and as long as they adhere to social norms, they are deputized to intervene in your life in case you're failing in your life as a patriarch
Note that they might stop you from starting a nuclear family for reasons real (you don't have the material means - and no, they won't allot you any) or imagined (you'll get your part of the family acreage once you're acting a little bit more "grown up").
OliveTapenade
21hr ago
I have to imagine that a lot of the people sincerely responding to the prompt are working boring 9-to-5 jobs that they hate.
Take the very first person. Her answers were "leading discussions on theory", "making clothes from scraps", and "making lattes". These are clearly things this person enjoys: talking about political theory, creatively working with her hands, and serving other people. If I might be allowed to be cringeworthy myself for a second, I get it. All of that sounds pretty good to me too. Granted, if it were me it would probably be theology or religious philosophy rather than Marxist theory, and it's probably painting or being a musician rather than making clothes, but that kind of life sounds pleasant. Most of the sincere responses sound similar: there's intellectual stimulation, self-expression, maybe a bit of physical exertion as a break, a few who enjoy working with children, and so on.
In sum, it sounds a lot like common depictions of the good life. John Adams famously wrote, "I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy... in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine." Suppose you were the grandchildren in this narrative. What would you study?
If I have problems with the commune, they're twofold, I guess. The first is on the object level that I think leftism or Marxism or what have you is wrong. The philosophical basis of the commune is bad. But that's fairly superficial, so to turn to the second - it's that the idea of the commune serves as a kind of imaginary justification for bad politics in the here and now. The commune sounds like an S&W-style prefiguratory community. This is the criticism of the guy who said his job would be telling everyone to go home and unionise. The commune may be fun as a brief fantasy, but if it displaces more productive visions of effective political action (and leaving aside the part where I don't want Twitter leftists to engage in effective political action), it may do more harm to the overall movement.
But I view those objections as pretty minor. To the first, the problem isn't that they're indulging in a utopian fantasy - it's that their undergirding political ideas are bad. I can just focus on those ideas themselves. And to the second, well, that's just a question of keeping things in proportion. If you fantasise about anything all the time it's disastrous, but I would not ban fantasy.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
21hr ago
Possible blow to the "Cremieux is TrannyPorno" theory: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/cremieux-jordan-lasker-mamdani-nyt-nazi-faliceer-reddit/
It should be noted that Cremieux denies the association, but the reason he gives is very weird, so who knows.
Page rank
Reducing Google Web Search to Page Rank is like reducing LLMs to OLS. Yes, OLS is in there, but it's a much more complicated information processing algorithm than just that.
Fundamentally, the point is that no one has a definition of 'intelligence' that is any good. Your test wasn't just that it produced value. Your test was:
The billions of dollars generated by LLMs come from them performing tasks that, until very recently, could only be done by educated human minds. That is the fundamental difference. The value is derived from the processing and generation of complex information, not from being a physical commodity.
I responded to your test, but you seem to not have responded at all to my response to your test.
Hmm.. I suppose, in the interest of fairness, we need to exclude the skills of human chess GMs too. After all, they've trained extensively on chess data. Lotta games played, and openings memorized.
I mean, I don't think so? But how would we know? What test would we use to distinguish?
Very little ability to extrapolate outside the training distribution
This seems not entirely true.
why don't they just pull out guns if they want to win so bad?
Whereas this just seems bizarre.
How exactly do you think learning works?
I mean, do you really want me to give a full explanation of the entire field of ML? There are many different varieties. [EDIT: Do you think that all algorithms that use 'learning' are "intelligent"... or just some of them? How do you know the difference?]
If you think just learning from existing data is illegitimate
That's not really what I said. I just said that one thing that we can conclude from the premises you presented was that a bunch of chess was in the training set. You had wanted to conclude instead that it meant something about intelligence. I sort of don't see how... primarily, because I don't think almost anyone has a justifiable definition of intelligence that allows us to make such distinctions from such premises.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
22hr ago
I think it's rather obvious that something being financially valuable isn't proof by itself that it's intelligent. Gold isn't intelligent. Bitcoin isn't intelligent. A physicist or programmer is intelligent, and an LLM is closer to them than it is to turnips, orangutans or Page rank.
I really don't see why something this obvious needs to be articulated, but here I am articulating it.
I mean, no? It just means that there was a bunch of information about chess in its training set.
Hmm.. I suppose, in the interest of fairness, we need to exclude the skills of human chess GMs too. After all, they've trained extensively on chess data. Lotta games played, and openings memorized. Very little ability to extrapolate outside the training distribution, why don't they just pull out guns if they want to win so bad?
How exactly do you think learning works? If you think just learning from existing data is illegitimate, then I'm happy to disclose that LLMs are perfectly capable of learning from self-play.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
22hr ago
The Western public is okay-ish with anyone killing anyone in countries they would struggle to find on a map except for Jews and Palestinians.
The amount of foreign interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict (on both sides) is orders of magnitude greater than other long-standing conflicts with a comparable humanitarian cost.
I watched Tokyo Godfathers recently at the suggestion of my wife, and found it quite decent. Absolutely watchable. A rarity among movies in general and anime especially.
Its creator is Satoshi Kon. Of all his works, there is one I would most recommend anyone should read: https://www.makikoitoh.com/journal/satoshi-kons-last-words
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