domain:betonit.substack.com
From the outside, the purpose of the modern legal profession (but especially of legal “thinkers”) appears to be ignoring simple, boring, innocuous truths.
To use the example of the Fifth Amendment, America operated for 177 years without Miranda rights, and this was not considered a Fifth Amendment violation. This implies, to me, a simple, boring truth that our Fifth Amendment jurisprudence is unnecessarily overcomplicated.
Your Fourth Amendment concerns are probably suffering from being somewhere in the same ballpark. Forced on you by overcomplicated jurisprudence.
erwgv3g34
6hr ago
Don't forget 2 Thessalonians 3:10 ("He who will not work, let them also not eat").
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
6hr ago
Having a conversation about an exercise like this seems like it would be an incredible insightful exercise in say an interview though. You get to have this meta conversation about freedom and rights and ethics and really gauge the values or lack of values in your candidate.
PokerPirate
6hr ago
Where do you get the idea that these theologies deny the resurrection of Christ? La Misa Popular Salvadoreña is basically the anthem of liberation theology. It's a series of 11 songs for celebrating a post-Vatican II non-Latin mass. Here is the song they sing during communion where they explicitly acknowledge the passion and resurrection of Christ: https://youtube.com/watch?v=R8yJWvDNJWU&list=PLhCyWH9pFDuYFB8VLeObzJEABIhHlW27u&index=8.
And yes, I know that "AI" is still a misnomer, I understand that LLMs are just token predictors, and I think people who believe that any neural net is close to actually "thinking" or becoming self-aware, or that really, what are we but pattern-matching echolaliac organisms? are drinking kool-aid
But you then go on to talk about how its helpful to you, how it can do art and coding and stuff. Doesn't that mean it's thinking? What is thinking if not intellectual labour that produces some kind of useful output?
See the cartoons here: https://x.com/emollick/status/1920700991298572682
How are these not proper newspaper-tier cartoons? It's not just pattern-matching, see the Cthulhu ones. How does that not require some kind of thought? If thought isn't required to make them, then so much the worse for thought. They're more amusing than many actual New Yorker cartoons.
It cannot build a fully functional application (beyond the simplest) by itself, though.
What model are you talking about? When you say ChatGPT, that could be GPT4omini. It could be GPT4o. It could be o3-mini, o1-pro, o4-mini-high, GPT4.5 (RIP). OpenAI does a very good job at confusing people here but there are major differences between 'slop for free' and 'serious compute for the subscribers'.
With a lot of finnagling and wrangling, I can make Sonnet 3.7 produce a fully functional application with a database, logging, UI (admittedly not a fantastic UI), user authentication... It's not exactly simple, maybe 8000 lines of code, some quite long and complex functions. I'm nontechnical. It does need my human wisdom and feedback but nonetheless, it's writing all the code. And while the code isn't perfect, it is fully functional.
I detect a fair bit of warranted snobbishness from those initiated in the tech world about AI. Yes, there are a bunch of idiots making simple apps on localhost:5000 and not even knowing what that means or why their bros can't click the link. Yet there is also unwarranted snobbishness. There are people making real projects with AI alone and earning revenue. See levelsio on twitter, he was making money with his multiplayer plane game thing. It's not a AAA game but it shows that this isn't just a toy.
See also this one-shot coding challenge from gemini, this isn't exactly simple stuff: https://x.com/elder_plinius/status/1922126885783281755
It has no way to embed themes and metaphors that echo throughout a book, it has no thematic consistency (often not even tonal consistency)
I observed Sonnet 3.6 inserting themes in a story unprompted, it was a noticeable difference from 3.5. Not amazing themes but themes consistently and consciously referenced nonetheless.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
Is ‘don’t kill the baby’ not obviously a dramatic shorthand for ‘don’t let procedure get in the way of the reason it’s instituted’?
Shrike
6hr ago
Seems more parsimonious to believe that humans as a general rule actually have few-to-no moral qualms about mass murder as long as it fits into what you might call a mammalian herd strategy.
This is not saying that humans have no moral instincts simply because moral taboos are sometimes violated but rather than the moral taboos about mass murder apply only weakly if at all to group enemies.
However, I probably should back up a bit here - I've been using "mass murder" very much in the context of group warfare which is very different from mass murder in a serial killer sense, but the latter is much closer to the actual meaning of the word "murder." If your position is that Genghis Khan doesn't count as a mass murderer but Hitler does, my position is at least closer to yours than I conceived.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
IME Hispanic men are eager to practice their English with a bilingual man who can help when they come up short- they recognize the value of speaking English when you live in the U.S. and understand that practice makes perfect. Women still tend to be better at English.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6hr ago
This could be partly because they are more likely to use their foreign language with more people, more often, which is well known to increase language learning speed. Seriously, as someone who does speak another language, it's always a little difficult not to laugh at people who claim they are trying super hard to learn, but when pressed, admit that 95% of this effort is simply Duolingo, and that they actively avoid using it IRL unless on specifically on vacation.
WandererintheWilderness
7hr ago
Having a moral instinct ≠ being reliably bound by it at all times. Indeed, the most common manifestation of the moral instinct is feeling guilty after doing something that one knew, deep down, to be wrong. (Case in point, I think a majority of mass murderers in human history had a conscience, it was just drowned out by other concerns and they did the wrong thing anyway.)
Pynewacket
7hr ago
Most refugees are poor, because countries with armed conflicts and political persecution are largely dysfunctional and poor. Afrikaners are very much an exception to this.
yes, but that doesn't mean that being poor is a requeriment to be a refugee, again, where are you getting your definition on this?
Definitely not just people of your same ethnicity.
I would assume the love your neighbor bit refers to if not same etnicity, at least the near group.
Wealthy people fleeing persecution can take care of themselves, the money is largely useful for the poor (and persecuted yes).
I don't think money will save you from a government that wants you death or destitute.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make with your last verse.
just to show that not everything is passive resistance with Christianity.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
7hr ago
I'm going to go against the grain and say rather than the Pratchett novels, where I've read two but felt they were kind of uneven and mostly just imitations, just go straight to the original delight: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the original trilogy. The quotes are literally next-level.
Shrike
7hr ago
humans' moral instincts (telling them that mass murder is wrong)
This is not a human moral instinct. Humans are quite comfortable with mass murder. That's why we've done it repeatedly (that, and it's a very good strategy).
(I suppose we can argue about whether or not something is a "human moral instinct" if it's not shared by all humans. And it is true that some humans are uncomfortable with mass murder. But the fact remains that mass murder is a very typical human behavior.)
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7hr ago
But rumors are coming out that it's manufacturing sector in panicking, with factories sitting idle and orders drying up.
There have been rumours like this for the last 10 years at least. Remember Evergrande?
Obviously the tariffs hurt the Chinese economy but it's the biggest manufacturer in the world, the biggest trading nation in the world and the biggest economy in the world in terms of production as opposed to accounting tricks. Energy in the US is more expensive than China - higher US GDP! Burger King has been selling burgers at US $1.37 in China, there's a massive price war in just about everything. Lower China GDP! When you use appropriate metrics for economic size, China surpassed the US a long time ago.
Thus I'm sceptical of the China-collapse narrative. Big things are tough and hard to break. COVID hit China pretty hard but they tanked it and moved on without any inflation. Tariffs aren't going to do more economic damage than COVID.
By the time demographic shrinking really kicks in, they'll have a gigantic, automated industrial base and still enjoy a huge pool of STEM talent. Nothing short of losing WW3 is going to stop China.
So of course there will be factories that are hard hit and go out of business. But China is not short of factories, they have huge capacity. During the Great Depression the US was in a very poor state but they were still the biggest economy on the planet. Likewise with China, except they're not in a Great Depression.
Shrike
7hr ago
I'd just add that the New Testament is actually very skeptical of wealth (there's a strong connection made at points between the wealthy and the oppressors) and the church is condemned for showing partiality to those who are wealthy. So it's interesting because it's not really proto-communist-egalitarian-paradise but neither does it succumb to a sort of "will-to-power" fantasy where strength or power are to be privileged. Really what's elevated is moral goodness and wisdom.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
7hr ago
You mean you don't want flame retardants for children's sleep clothes? You think you can just clothe your child in loose fitting, non-retarded cotton? What if your child falls asleep while smoking and the cigarette lights their jammies and they just get fucking immolated? Has that thought crossed your mind?
swift
7hr ago
That's true, the Church is a hierarchy and has leaders and followers. However, Christianity is very explicitly egalitarian about moral worth: every human being is equally morally worthy, because we all have an immortal soul and were made in the image of God.
Shrike
7hr ago
Is not the doctrinal communist ideal -- the universal fraternity of man, sacrifice for those who are in need, "the last shall be first" -- ultimately just an expression of universal Christian love?
Interestingly from what I can tell the "proto-Christian-communism" was within the Christian community - and it came with rules.
Besides Acts 2 (where the holding of "all things in common" was within the church) see for instance Galatians 6:10 ("...let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.") and 1st Timothy 5, which gives these instructions for granting charity to windows: "Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work."
So while Christianity definitely has an idea of the "universal fraternity of man" within Scripture the brotherhood of believers is privileged. That's not to say that charitable works to nonbelievers are forbidden, but it's not the communist ideal of the Universal Brotherhood of Man (...or perhaps it is similar, in the sense that the Communist Universal Brotherhood of Man was in practice often restricted to, well, Communists.)
swift
7hr ago
The faucet was closed. The program is no longer feasible to run.
They are protesting the faucet being closed, by doing the only thing that they can do to hurt this administration: talk about it, and refuse to provide services the admin actually wants.
swift
7hr ago
a refugee is someone in danger in their home country, not someone that is poor, isn't he? where are you taking this conflation of refugee with poor from?
Most refugees are poor, because countries with armed conflicts and political persecution are largely dysfunctional and poor. Afrikaners are very much an exception to this.
Isn't that referring to your neighbors and people like you?. Yes, people like you, like every other human is like you. Humans are all created in the image of God and are all thus equally morally worthy.
Definitely not just people of your same ethnicity.
And that tidbit about "resources allocated for the poor" should be "to the persecuted". I think, your whole line of argumentation falls apart when we take that into consideration.
Wealthy people fleeing persecution can take care of themselves, the money is largely useful for the poor (and persecuted yes).
I don't understand the point you're trying to make with your last verse.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
7hr ago
I don’t know enough Aristotelian (I assume) philosophy to speak fittingly in terms of essences, properties, and qualities
No background in Aristotle needed. The word "quality" is just being used in its ordinary sense. Intelligence is a quality. Beauty is a quality. Nothing fancy going on.
But I can point out that in Christian belief all men possess the image of God, which gives them value in itself
Sure. But then, all people would be the same in that regard. Love has to single out a particular person (or a particular thing) in contradistinction to others.
In my own view, universal love is at worst incoherent, and at best it's a particularly tepid form of love. There is no love unless you can draw a distinction between those who are loved and those who are unloved; and so universal properties shared by all people cannot be the basis of love.
It's more specific than that, surely? "The reason it's instituted" is a term that admits of a lot of interpretation. Why do searches require warrants? To protect people's privacy? To protect people full stop? To reduce the scope of arbitrary government action? To prevent tyranny? Almost any policy can be interpreted to have multiple reasons for its existence, and then each of those reasons can be defined narrowly, or so broadly as to enable almost anything.
I take "don't kill the baby" to be shorthand for "human life overrides all other concerns".
Put like that it's a principle that I see coming up in all sorts of other contexts. You probably heard it when learning to drive, for instance - you may break any road rule if it is necessary to do so to preserve human life. Most organisations have, whether implicit or explicit, an exception like that. Heck, religions have exceptions like that, where both Jewish and Islamic law may be violated if human life is at risk.
That said this doesn't resolve the issue in the scenario, which I interpret as a probabilistic one. It's possible that the man with the basket is just an innocent fisherman. The policeman and lawyer are making a judgement call, and one for which no explicit rule can be laid down. "Always search people who might be guilty" makes a mockery of the law; "never search people who might be guilty" means more drowned babies than we're probably comfortable with. They both need to show a practical wisdom, weighing the trade-off carefully and making a risky decision.
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