domain:web.law.duke.edu
RenOS
Technology giveth, Sociology taketh
4hr ago
Sorry, I should have mentioned: Currently I'm only listening to audiobooks, since it allows me to do household chores, cycle, etc. simultaneously. With small kids + full time work I don't really have time to properly read. The limited spare time I have I unfortunately already waste on substack/theMotte. But it sounds interesting enough that it will go on the list of things to read later.
pigeonburger
4hr ago
That's the problem with actively updated, passively triggered warrant canaries; it's hard to tell if their absence is meaningful or the result of forgetting to update it. They are on more solid legal grounds than passively updated, actively triggered canaries (those that require editing the page to remove the canary to trigger), but at least those latter ones are not accidentally triggered.
Re: the Resurrection, I'm not convinced it was such a radical notion at the time
Paul says the crucified Messiah is the stumbling block and folly, because that bit requires a Messiah claimant to die without fulfilling the prophecies and be raised. If you're reading from a secular POV, you have strong reason to be skeptical of Jesus' prophecies of his own death and resurrection (just as everyone is skeptical of his prophecies about Jerusalem) so you have a yet another Messiah claimant being brutally disproved by being hung on a tree and then followed and seemingly deified by Jews (while every other such movement died out)
it being found empty would have been plenty good enough to start hopeful speculation that he had returned,
The problem is that Paul says that Jesus directly appeared to people like Peter who, unlike the Gospel writer, we believe are probably his contemporaries.
Between that and the reference to the appearance to the 500, it seems like someone had to have had some delusional/bereavement episode that then spread.
But the Christians who make the case - e.g. Habermas - often skip the tomb since it first appears in the Gospels (I think Crossan denies Jesus got a grave at all since criminals weren't supposed to, despite the story having a plausible explanation). They focus on a few "minimal facts" which even critical scholars allegedly agree on.
The half-dozen facts we usually use are these: 1) that Jesus died by crucifixion; 2) that very soon afterwards, his followers had real experiences that they thought were actual appearances of the risen Jesus; 3) that their lives were transformed as a result, even to the point of being willing to die specifically for their faith in the resurrection message; 4) that these things were taught very early, soon after the crucifixion; 5) that James, Jesus’ unbelieving brother, became a Christian due to his own experience that he thought was the resurrected Christ; and 6) that the Christian persecutor Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus) also became a believer after a similar experience.
With those few facts, it is weird. How weird depends on how strong you think the borderlines between paganism and Christianity were. But it seems like at least someone, maybe Peter, had a delusion (or lied)
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4hr ago
unfinished
*ongoing
"Unfinished" has a connotation of "abandoned" that is not warranted here.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
4hr ago
Absolutely! She actually has a section describing some of the arguments she's dealt with, and good Lord it sounds awful:
Imagine every time you started or ended a relationship, you had to establish every social norm from scratch.
Is it OK for partner to have sex with your best friend?
Is it OK to kiss somebody else in front of your partner?
What about them having sex in your bed when you're out of town?
Is it OK to have sex with another person then tell your partner the details?
Is your partner allowed to bring his lover to Christmas with your family? What about your kid’s birthdays?
If your partner’s lover is having a mental health breakdown, is it OK for your partner to go comfort her when it’s your day with him?
The list is endless, and so will your arguments about it.
I especially don't see how you can raise kids in a poly relationship, without having all sorts of humongous issues and problems. With both parents typically needing to work nowadays, having kids is already extremely demanding on a family's time. Add in other relationships on top of that, and it basically seems like a non-starter.
I agree with the net negative on society, for another reason though - polyamory being seen as even slightly social acceptable destabilizes every monogamous relationship. Now monogamous people have endless thoughts and temptations about "oh maybe we should be poly" which fractures and already crumbling marriage rate. It really is just... bad, in my view.
thejdizzler
4hr ago
Polyamory might be able to work for some people, but I think it's gotta be a net negative for society. I think it's simply a question of time. Every additional partner that you have creates a time commitment that you could have spent a). strengthening your relationship with your main partner, b). spending time with friends/building community, c). self-improvement/hobbies. A potential counterargument is that polyamory is just a different form of leisure, and so fucking around on the side is just like watching Netflix. I would respond to this in two ways. Firstly, maybe watching Netflix for 5 hours a day isn't great for society either. Secondly, I'm not sure that polyamory comes from the same pool of time as relaxing and watching Netflix. It's an inherently much more effortful activity, and is probably going to replace much more meaningful activities. Anecdotally, one of my roommates, who never practiced polyamory per see, but always had a "rotation" of girls going (maybe this is the cool chad version of poly, idk), never had time for any other hobbies or interests besides chasing tail, which I think has made him pretty boring and socially isolated.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
5hr ago
It seems lately that within the rationalist / post-rationalist diaspora on twitter and elsewhere, polyamory is starting to come into the crosshairs. I've seen a few 'big' accounts in the tpot space come out against polyamory, but the biggest one has to be the recent post that Kat Woods put on the Slate Star Codex subreddit, Why I think polyamory is net negative for most people who try it.
I wont summarize the whole article, but recommend you go read it. The TL;DR is:
- Most people cannot reduce jealousy much or at all
- It fundamentally causes way more drama because of strong emotions, jealousy, no default norms to fall back to, and there being exponentially more surface area for conflict
- For a small minority of people, it makes them happier, and those are the people who tend to stick with it and write the books on it, creating a distorted view for newcomers.
Also, a rather hilarious quote from the middle:
When your partner starts dating a new person, that person can’t just have drama with your partner. They can have drama with you. And your partner can have drama with their other partner.
It gets complicated fast.
I remember once I had drama caused by my boyfriend’s wife’s boyfriend’s girlfriend’s girlfriend (my meta-meta-meta-metamour)
In general, I think this is a continuation of the vibe shift against social experimentation within the rationalist communities, trying to push them back a bit more towards 'normal' social standards. It has been happening for quite a while, and I'm not surprised it continues to happen. My basic view is that while the experimentation and willingness to shrug off societal norms led to a lot of fascinating and good new ideas within rationalist groups, unfortunately, as always happens with these sorts of things, issues arose that reminded people why these ideas were fringe in the first place.
For those not steeped in rationalist lore, there have been many 'cult-like' groups that have hurt people arising in the rationalist and especially EA space. Some of the early and notable ones were Ziz, the whole Leverage fiasco, and then of course later on you have the highest profile issue with SBF. But these are just the most notable and even news worthy. On top of these there are dozens, probably hundreds, of smaller scale dramas that have played out in day to day life, similar to what Kat talked about above.
I actually think her point about drama scaling with more surface area in polyamory to be quite salient here. In general one of the purposes of societal norms and rules is to make sure everyone knows how they and others are supposed to act, so that arguments over constraints and less annoying and difficult. When you throw out major parts of societal norms, things get complicated very quickly.
Of course the whole polyamory issue ties into the broader culture war in many ways - notably the push back we've seen against wokeism, and the radical left more generally. I think overall the appetite people have for radically changing social norms has shrunk dramatically over the last few years. Sadly, I am not sure that necessarily means we'll go back to a healthy, stable balance. Looking at the people on the conservative side, the loudest champions of a traditional moral order seem to be grifters, or at least hypocrites where they say one thing, and do another in their personal lives.
That being said, I am hopeful that the uneasy alliance between the new conservative, Trumpian movement and traditional Christians is finally fracturing. To bring in another CW point, Trump recently posted an AI generated image of himself as the Pope. This understandably pissed off a lot of Christians, and led to them ending their support for Trump's antics. (I happen to be one of them.)
To which his response is, basically, "why can't you take a joke?"
Anyway, I am curious to see where all these social norms shake out, especially with regards to relationships and dating.
thejdizzler
5hr ago
I think for me when I level the accusations of LARPing, it's a synonym for accusing people of being unserious about the thing they are trying to practice/accomplish. It's not enough to pretend, you have to pretend effectively. You see this equally with rad-trad catholics or fundamentalists who conveniently forget that Jesus said that it's easier for a camel to thread the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven (how convenient that my new religion that is supposed to save me from the problems of modernity doesn't require me to give up the material trappings of that same system), and with leftists in favor of degrowth that don't seem to see that actually being serious about that ideology requires you to stop buying everything on amazon and doing gross things like composting your own poop. I would never accuse the Dominicans at my parish of larping, nor would I accuse the hippies who live off grid of doing so. It's the people that stridently profess a certain ideology without taking its tenets seriously that makes me think "LARP".
Tanista
5hr ago
In a post Sunday night on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he has authorized the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to slap a 100% tariff “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote, complaining that other countries “are offering all sorts of incentives to draw” filmmakers and studios away from the U.S. “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
The White House said Monday that it was figuring out how to comply with the president’s wishes.
“Although no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made, the Administration is exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to safeguard our country’s national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again,” said spokesperson Kush Desai.
First of all: how is this an emergency? I don't follow the logic.
It's quite clear that Hollywood studios search for tax incentives both within and outside the US. That's nothing new. It is supposed to be getting worse. California is supposed to be suffering from this competition due to COL and alternatives., including in animation:
And the decision was emblematic of a trend that’s been accelerating over the last decade or so, according to data laid out in the study. Between 2010 and 2023, California’s share of the highest-grossing animated films dropped from 67 to 27 percent. Between 2019 and 2024 animation employment dropped by nearly five percent in California while other jurisdictions saw major upticks (more than 18 percent in New York, nearly 72 percent in British Columbia and nearly 13 percent in Ontario).
However, Hollywood gets the majority of the profit of VFX dominated films and maintains strong market share worldwide, especially at the higher budget ranges. The stories are still American-made.
The problem for film seems to be the confluence of increasing competition, COVID killing the habit and studios cannibalizing their own product. Would it really help to force all of these companies to produce and film stuff in the US, especially with AI looming? Seems like the problem of Indian VFX firms may solve itself.
I am seeing some takes on the more left-wing side that this is essentially Trump promising to break something in order to get another set of companies, and a perceived left-wing industry at that, to try to curry favor with him (he seems to be high on his ability to cause shocks merely by speaking). Though one wonders why he would. If this is a partisan thing the decay of California as the nexus for film and tv would be a win better than almost anything he could extract from them for the conservative movement.
WandererintheWilderness
5hr ago
Oh, I wasn't assuming the Gospels were the direct writings of the Disciples, but someone at some point needs to have originated the miracle claims; either they were later liars, or they were contemporary crazies.
Re: the Resurrection, I'm not convinced it was such a radical notion at the time, since the Gospels themselves allude to contemporary speculation that Jesus might have been a resurrected John the Baptist - and/or that John himself may have been a resurrected Isaiah.
And then there's the thing where Mark's account ends at the mourning-women finding his tomb empty and having a brief, ambiguous encounter with a man clad in white (who is, TMU, generally interpreted by believers as an angel, not even the actual risen Christ himself). There are many plausible non-supernatural reasons for Jesus's body to have been removed from Joseph of Arimathea's crypt a few days after he was placed there; it being found empty would have been plenty good enough to start hopeful speculation that he had returned, especially if Jesus himself had in fact alluded to a future resurrection prior to his death. From there, scattered eyewitness reports of risen-Jesus-sightings are no different from people claiming to have run into a middle-aged Elvis Presley.
If you want to invest, there are options for fancy ones I don’t know much about, but for me the kindle paperwhite is easily hits the perfect portability price and convenience factor combination. Also press and hold brings up the dictionary on a word, just confirmed. Recommend to buy a nice leather case for it - some also have grips on the back side you can even fasten them sorta to your hand! Adds to the feel though some might like the original size and thinness. Brightness and color temperature settings are good as well. And apparently the new version is a bit more responsive too
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5hr ago
If you aren’t yet burned out on time loop, although it’s unfinished and the first loop takes like 20 chapters to happen, The Years of Apocalypse is also very good and in some ways better! Might be up your alley given those criticisms.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5hr ago
I would copy the cash to investment ratio of Buffet. So not a full retreat but liquidate some.
sun_the_second
6hr ago
Pissing in a can in the back of the car feels more gross to me than people pissing on roadsides.
Tanista
6hr ago
Grant that crazy attracts crazy, and whoever originated the more fantastical miracle stories may have likewise just been psychotic at the time, or something.
Or you ignore the traditional narrative that the Disciples wrote the Gospels in which case you don't need a hoax, or delusion. It's just later believers believing what they're told or extrapolating from what the Hebrew Bible says the Messiah will do, an old tactic and not a sign of being insane or mendacious.
Except for the original resurrection claim of course. Strangely, the Disciples may be better candidates for delusion than Jesus. It's possible that Jesus really did think he'd bring about the end of Roman rule in some political sense with God's help like many other unfortunate Jews of the time. But at least some of the Disciples clearly believed that he was resurrected , which is noted by Paul to be very odd by the beliefs of the time, and were willing to be martyred despite having a front-row seat to the mother of all disconfirming events.
I've actually seen this used as a modern version of the Lewis argument by secular Christians who can't appeal to miracle claims: the Disciples had first-hand knowledge and were devout Jews. It's insane for them to go with the divinity of a crucified criminal. Unless...
Roadway peeing is fine but does incrementally degrade the commons.
Also, it's unnecessary. If you have four kids, you're in an SUV or a minivan, so get a folding potty seat like a Potette and have the kids use it right in the back seat of the car. Potty gets lined, trash-can-style, with a plastic shopping bag (double up for security) plus an absorbent puppy pad or leftover diaper in the bottom of the bag, tie up the bag for easy discarding when everybody's done, and it's surprisingly tidy. Advantages are that it allows toilet paper use and works with #2 as well as #1.
fyi for when you're on foot, they also make pee pals for girls!
Ioper
6hr ago
Here it's more uncanny valley stuff imo. The correct words are used but it comes off as a status insecure under/working class person studying up before going to the best restaurant in town, trying to impress their boss/date/family with words they learned an hour ago. Its barely a step up from ordering "your most expensive wine".
This is of course fine when that is what's literally happening in the story but it rarely if ever is.
RenOS
Technology giveth, Sociology taketh
7hr ago
Still trying to separate the chaff from the wheat in LitRPG and adjacent, I finished Mother of Learning and started The Wandering Inn. Mother of Learning was great, not quite high literature but among the best, most consistent world-building I have ever seen in fantasy so far. I was mildly annoyed by some parts of the story and it's kind of obvious that the author struggles to write anything but aspergers with different preferences, but that's something I just accept as a given at this point for good fantasy/SF.
The Wandering Inn, on the other hand, is trash, at least to my preferences. It's defenders are correct that there is nothing quite like it, so if you like that kind of thing it is probably unreplaceable. But it is best described as "juvenile progressive Soap Opera in Medieval Fantasy", which doesn't really appeal to me much. The world and the characters don't really seem to follow consistent rules except for whatever random thing the author wants to contrive to happen next for the purpose of drama or to make some point.
And one specific thing was especially grating and repeated itself over and over: First, I notice that the MC behaves stupidly. This is fine, if lampshaded properly. Even other characters in-story explicitly mention that yes, this is stupid. Then I go look up online discussions of the event in question and even the defenders of the MC basically just say yeah, this is stupid, what did you expect of a teenage girl teleported into medieval fantasy? So I read further, and ... the MC turns out basically right. And again, and again. It's frustrating.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7hr ago
You're correct, but so am I.
You can, but effectively no one does.
There are levels to this. There are Mennonite churches that welcome outsiders for worship. If you join one, buy a farm, and earnestly pursue integration for years I'm saying they'll probably accept you. Going deeper into even more traditional communities will require years more of credibility, which is why I'd suggest starting with the "lighter" communities within the plain folk and working your way deeper: it's easier to imagine a tech bro becoming a Mennonite and it's easy to imagine a Mennonite joining an Amish community.
Don't get me wrong this is a ten to fifteen year family project.
sun_the_second
7hr ago
"DeepSeek, translate this to the 56th level of not looking like AIslop."
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
8hr ago
Way back in the GPT 3.5 days, I used ChatGPT to translate my plain text of a character's dialogue to Jamaican patois.
I was a bit embarrassed when, about a year later, an actual Jamaican reader read my novel and left a comment exclaiming how surprised he was regarding the authenticity of the Jamaican slang used. Far too rare on the internet, and almost never so well, he told me, and asked if I asked a Jamaican speaker. I told him that I'd done my "research", which was half-true. Well, I guess it worked as intended.
RenOS
Technology giveth, Sociology taketh
8hr ago
kids are the ultimate karma - no matter what pissed off others about you, you will get to experience it all day, everyday, in a mini-mirror.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
8hr ago
I primarily use Gemini, but in my experience it's endemic to all LLMs (except maybe Claude, but I hardly use that these days). It's not as glaring as em-dashes, but I still notice.
Praying Altman releases that fine-tuned model designed for creative writing someday. The demand is clearly there.
quiet_NaN
8hr ago
One common criticism of Pascal's Wager is that, even if you buy the argument, it only serves to persuade you that you should believe God exists, and there's a clear gap between thinking "I should believe God exists" and thinking "God exists." I mention it, because Pascal himself addressed this point shortly after introducing the Wager. And his answer is LARPing. Once you're convinced you should believe in God, then start acting as if He exists. "LARP" as a person who believes in God. If you do it thoroughly enough for long enough, Pascal argues, you'll start to actually believe it.
If there is a counter-pole to the rationality project, then this is it. Where rationalists talk endlessly about biases and how they distort our perceptions, and how we are shaped by evolution to lie to ourselves so that we can better lie to others, and how we can trick our faulty wetware into creating a half-way accurate map of the territory, on the other shoulder you have a little horned Pascal whispering: "or you could just embrace your nature and reject the notion of truth. Pretend to believe what is convenient for you to believe, and the mask will become the face soon enough."
I flatly don't believe in polyamory being real as I have typically heard it articulated. I don't believe that people who share the sort of bond that happily married people share can ever exist among people that aren't monogamous. They're not monogamous couples with extras bolted on, they're people that are failing to form successful pair-bonds concocting unstable edifices based on their desire for promiscuity and unwillingness to engage in genuine commitment to another person. I really hope there won't ever actually be a push to normalize this behavior with some social obligation to pretend that I believe polygamists have relationships that are as respectable as actual marriages.
More options
Context Copy link