domain:web.law.duke.edu
faceh
10hr ago
It seems like there are still pockets of competence to be found and an increasing motivation to overcome short term political obstacles and create some robust institutions that will allow coordination amongst serious chaos. I think that even in the worst case scenarios of the U.S. FedGov starting to collapse, state governments are capable of acting as a backstop.
If Starship is successful and we get some orbital infrastructure, its JUST possible we can get some self-sufficient or semi-self sufficient off-world communities. Not a great place to bear and raise kids, of course, but somewhat insulated from turmoil on earth. Buys some time if nothing else.
Biggest problem I don't see a clear solution for is maintaining a decent technology stack if the global shipping network degrades. That is, all the materials, labor, expertise, and machinery/capital could still be intact, but if there's no cheap shipping to connect it all together, most nations are left only with what they can source domestically and from immediate (friendly) neighbors. Not ideal, and it means any places that have stockpiles of critical equipment and materials will need to be protected, and somehow organized to use all that for maintaining civilization.
AI is a wildcard here for the moment.
And... the big question is what, if anything, will convince women to start popping kids out again.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10hr ago
What about fiction and code? How can that be quora slop? Parrots... parrot words we tell them. They don't combine them to create new ideas within a precise target area, nobody pays for parrot intellectual labour. Nobody has ever benchmarked a parrot or if they have it's 'wow this parrot knows 250 words!' The only things we benchmark on mental tasks like this are people with exams, then we use those benchmarks to decide who does what job. Same with AI, benchmarks and testing determines which one does what job.
These things are more like us than parrots in key domains (while being supremely alien in others, such as their stateless nature). So calling them parrots is unhelpful, they're alien intelligences. If it can write code, produce New Yorker cartoons, write fiction, analyse a document, provide literary criticism and translate legalese down to English, it's intelligent.
Even just on pure bro-science level, writing database code is not very effeminate, it requires precision!
srf0638
10hr ago
Nothing much of substance to add, but I enjoyed this quite a bit. Have done a few touring-with-a-purpose trips on pavement, would like to hit the GDMBR and Baja Divide someday.
anti_dan
10hr ago
They want to make money from both markets, but one just makes way more sense to focus on. Especially since people will prefer intelligent + sycophantic to less intelligent + equal amounts of sycophancy.
I dont think they actually do. IMO a large problem with most AI companies is they are vanity projects being overseen by bloated, already successful, companies that are looking to find a second revenue stream in the future. But that future is far off and the current revenue streams aren't going anywhere soon, so they can afford to be stupid and make their AI's intentionally stupid to placate their employees who don't want to see an AI outputting things that would offend said employees.
But is that really a popular message? Does Cruz think it makes him look good? It might make him look good to evangelicals who he might want to rely on or court favour with but America as a whole? Surely it's a small minority who believe 'we should support Israel for theological reasons'. That just opens up all kinds of problems for Cruz such as 'why should you be trusted with the nuclear codes if your foreign policy views are so dependant on religion', it makes most sense if he's just being honest.
erwgv3g34
10hr ago
Man, do you just bookmark every woman-hating rant on the Internet?
Not at all; I simply remember them, then look them up at need. For example, I recalled that the first two were from AntiDem's Ask.FM page, so I trawled the cache archives (which list several years worth of question and answers) with Ctrl+F until I found them. The last one I saw reblogged on @Capital_Room's tumblr once, so I searched and, sure enough...
A good rant lives rent-free in my head.
I deeply regret learning today what "3DPD" means.
I aim to please.
anti_dan
10hr ago
You can chalk me up as someone who thinks empathy and the truth are fundamentally at odds. And I think this scales quickly. Sure, on a personal level or in a family its something small like, "I know you're scared little guy but the shot wont hurt" or "sure honey you look good in that" but it quickly escalates to unmanageable levels even at the community level. Schools that let empathy take the wheel end up passing illiterates and violent kids through the system, they provide free lunches, they dismantle gifted programs. States enact unwieldy and expensive welfare programs, arcane minority benefit regulations, ever expanding censorship regimes, etc.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10hr ago
You are almost certainly greatly overestimating the budget and technological sophistication involved.
How hard is it to buy a hidden camera? If Korean perverts can hide them in toilets or suspicious husbands can use them to watch their wives, a large institution like a prison should be able to come up with some. Cameras/mikes would be useful since prisoners often talk to eachother about their crimes and some useful evidence could be gleaned. The Allies did it to German POWs with 1940s tech.
Also, there is still the outside-the-cell looking in approach.
Furthermore, high profile prisoners should be especially watched, isn't this a natural inference?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10hr ago
I'm well aware what the ICJ said but courts say silly things all the time. Courts are for legalities, they're very much into this abstract 'who was in what administrative zone when, regardless of whatever else was happening' remit.
Nations and sovereignty are about more than that. This case is perfect proof in point. The US military base there isn't going anywhere and that's the key part of this equation, indeed the only people on the island are those on the base. The British are just paying lots of money to make this legal issue go away so that they wouldn't have the bad PR of ignoring this court (which they are entitled to do as a permanent security council member). America couldn't care less about some international court, they don't recognize its authority at all if they rule against the US, nor does Russia or Israel for that matter.
It's not real law if people can and do ignore it when they feel like it, it's just talk. The ICJ isn't a real court, their opinions don't have much inherent weight and certainly don't in this case, it's only a matter of PR.
Whether or not "patriarchy" is a system that was codified (as in the Abrahamic religions) or simply a set of norms that turned out to be optimal for dealing with pre-industrial (or, perhaps more properly, pre green revolution) life, the idea is that beyond a certain point an excess of male intrasexual competition is bad because energy spent on that (be that fighting and killing each other in more primitive contexts, or power-swiping on dating apps and spending tons of time and money in bars for the non checked out in our present context) isn't spent on more useful things like working (This can still be seen by the fact that married men still earn more money than their unmarried counterparts.).
Likewise, some degree or another of enforced monogamy fixes the failure that in a purely free market the sexually successful male is completely relieved of obligations toward women or their children because the value of a given woman for those men rapidly approaches zero (aka. "a bitch is a bitch").
That such an arrangement also boosts fertility by enabling the median man to have a wife and children (that he is in turn obligated to provide for and defend) and that said arrangement is good at securing the loyalty of average men is a nifty bonus.
IMO the easiest way to demonstrate that patriarchy hindered certain men rather than women is merely to ask who dismantled it. Was it women? Not really. Sure, the feminists were a thing and they went along with it for their own reason, and capitalists were certainly happy to get a new supply of labor, but it was largely a bunch of upper-class male lawyers who did it.
Edit: Something I failed to convey is that patriarchy has fallen apart in large part because it's been rendered obsolete (save for the "enabling fertility" part, anyway; we haven't figured out how to get women to take what they can get instead of living childless in someone's Tinder harem or giving up out of despair for how lacking they perceive their options to be). Male provision and protection are pretty much worthless, and even loyalty to a cause or group doesn't mean much in a world where real existential threats to elite (or elite through scumbaggery; you can't take what doesn't exist from those who don't have it) men are rare.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
10hr ago
Man, do you just bookmark every woman-hating rant on the Internet? I deeply regret learning today what "3DPD" means.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11hr ago
You've an interesting post and edit history. I only write this as it's hard for me to comment or interact in any genuine way (in this type of encouragement thread) with post-ers who appear to redact / obfuscate everything they post.
Anyway, yes, survival is a good first goal.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
11hr ago
How do you get up to speed in a situation like this?
I often find myself, well, maybe not the stupidest, but far from the smartest in the room. I don't want to interrupt the smart people when they're going a mile a minute doing something important every time I lose the thread, but if I never ask questions I never get better at keeping the thread. What do?
5434a
11hr ago
Very cool. I sometimes entertain an idle daydream about cycling around the Alps for my mid-life crisis (around as in around the comparatively lower elevation periphery, not around as in through). I'd definitely want a more road based route than that though.
Sounds like an awesome trip. Bikepacking has always fascinated me, but I've never been brave enough to embark on a "real" expedition like this one.
I'm a bit surprised that power was such an issue. What kind of power bank did you use? For (American style) backpacking using a power bank to charge devices, then charging that when you have a stop with wall power, is a somewhat common strategy. At 30W even a 15 minute charge while using the bathroom at random chalet or ski-lift should make an appreciable difference. A reasonably compact travel charger should be able to do 60W now, though you might be limited in light weight banks that can handle that kind of power.
I know that drinking directly from alpine melt is very common, but I always used a Sawyer Mini when drinking from streams in Switzerland. I once drank from a stream thinking we were well above cow level, ran into a Chamois 100 meters up stream. I assume they can pick up E. coli or giardia from all the cows. Aquamira might be lighter weight and more compact if you are space limited. For serious GI problems I recommend bring Pepto Bismol when traveling in continental Europe. It's surprisingly hard to get in parts of the continent. Not medical advice, but, it seems more effective when combined with imodium (which is available) than either alone. Again, combine at your own risk, the directions probably tell you not to do that. IMO though, better than having a blowout on the plane.
I guess you were bathing in a touristy part of Montreaux? There used to be a beach oh the other side of Lac Léman in Versoix that I quite liked. It had a roped off swim area and a floating platform. So it's not that weird to swim in the lake, just location dependent.
aqouta
12hr ago
"Mauritanians could be here" he thought, "I've never been on this island before. There could be Mauritanians anywhere." Made in the USA reverberated his entire airbase, making it pulsate even as the $9 Billion subsidy circulated through his powerful thick military budget and washed away his (merited) fear of soviet aligned countries. "With bombs you can drop them anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.
Throwaway05
12hr ago
...And for the lovely anecdote I mentioned, from Nancy McWilliams's Psychoanalytic Diagnosis:
I've been trying to get people here to read that for years! I appreciate the parallel advertising.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
12hr ago
Even in that case, you can easily satisfy yourself using hookers. According to quick AI search the prices ranges from $20 per hour for street hookers to around $150 for average escort to $300 plus for high end hooker in USA.
This fails to "price in" the associated legal risks — reputational damage, arrest, fines, jail time.
philosoraptor
12hr ago
A quick aside about Kant, since so many people blame Kant for things that he really had little or nothing to do with (I recall a program on a Catholic TV channel where they accused Kant of being a "moral relativist", which is... distressing and concerning, that they think that...).
Related pet peeve of mine - ask a roomful of medical ethicists (who should bloody well know better, and to be fair some of them do) about Kant and "autonomy". It's darkly hilarious. Just because Kant made extensive use of a word that is often translated as "autonomy", a lot of people seem to think he held something like a modern medical ethicist's typical views about the importance of self-determination, informed consent, and so on. This is almost the exact opposite of the truth. Kantian "autonomy" means you have to arrive at the moral law by your own reasoning, and not out of (say) social pressure, for it to really "count" - but there's only one moral law, and it's the same for everyone, with zero space for individualized variation.
(And you aren't really acting morally unless you follow it out of duty, not because it feels good or gets good results. Just arriving at the same object-level conclusions about how to act isn't enough.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
13hr ago
I think the subset of the human species that has the necessary skills to achieve interplanetary spaceflight is probably going to figure something out in time.
What is your basis for concluding this? Because as I look at things, my view is that we most likely won't. (It seems to me like humanity has already peaked back in the late 20th century, things will never be that good again, and it's all downhill from here.)
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
13hr ago
Your argument only really makes sense insofar as one agrees that there is substance behind the hype. But not everyone does, and in particular I don't. So to me, the answer to your last question is "but the world hasn't changed". You seem to disagree, and I'm not going to try to change your mind - but hopefully you can at least see how that disagreement undermines the foundation of your argument.
This is the same problem as I have with open borders proponents: If you want to have open borders, then make your case for it and get laws passed which say that we have open borders. But don't have laws which say that we don't have open borders, but then work to make it easy as possible to not follow the laws.
If you really want there to be no conditions for assisted suicide, then have policies (and laws if necessary) saying "there are no conditions for assisted suicide". But if you can't or won't do that, don't have policies that say that there are conditions, but then set things up so that they are trivial to work around.
Arguments like "what if we compare various possibilities a djinn might give you and what if we ask the 70 year old", etc. are arguments that there shouldn't be conditions, or at least not the conditions we have now. They are not good arguments for "we should have conditions but since conditions are bad let's make sure they don't work".
If you are a refugee from Iran, and the regime hates you and will not give you any ID documents, then a reasonable country would recognize your plight and try to work around it,
If you are a refugee from Iran, and Iran won't let you have documents, the other country should try to determine that you actually are a refugee and from Iran, even if it is not as easy to determine this as it would be if you had an ID. If the other country says "Iran doesn't give out IDs, so we'll just accept everyone who claims to be an Iranian refugee", that's a bad policy which is forseeably going to be abused. (In fact, similar policies are abused in real life by "refugees" that aren't really refugees.)
Also, it's a lot easier to revoke a bad refugee status (or a marriage, or your other examples) than to revoke a suicide.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
13hr ago
I think it matters what you intend the system to be used for. There’s probably a market for a sycophantic waifu or friend bot. But I don’t want my accountant to act like my best friend. In fact, I’d personally trust business or career advice less if I thought the human or bot giving the advice was trying to be my friend or appear as my friend.
SnapDragon
13hr ago
I definitely don't have @self_made_human's endless energy for arguing here, but his takes tend to be quite grounded. He doesn't make wild predictions about what LLMs will do tomorrow, he talks about what he's actually doing with them today. I'm sure if we had more people from the Cult of Yud or AI 2027 or accelerationists here bloviating about fast takeoffs and imminent immortality, both he and I would be arguing against excessive AI hype.
But people who honestly understand the potential of LLMs should be full of hype. It's a brand-new, genuinely transformative technology! Would you have criticized Edison and Tesla at the 1893 World's Fair for being "full of hype" about the potential for electricity?
I really think laymen, who grew up with HAL, Skynet, and the Star Trek computer, don't have good intuition for what's easy and what's hard in AI, and just how fundamentally this has changed in the last 5 years. As xkcd put it a decade ago: "In CS, it can be hard to explain the difference between the easy and the virtually impossible." At the time, the path we saw to solving that "virtually impossible" task (recognizing birds) was to train a very expensive, very specialized neural net that would perform at maybe 85% success rate (to a human's 99%) and be useful for nothing else. Along came LLMs, and of course vision isn't even one of their strengths, but they can still execute this task quite well, along with any of a hundred similar vision tasks. And a million text tasks that were also considered even harder than recognizing birds - we at least had some experience training neural nets to recognize images, but there was no real forewarning for the emergent capability of writing coherent essays. If only we'd thought to attach power generators to AI skeptics' goalposts, we could have solved our energy needs as they zoomed into the distance.
When the world changes, is it "hype" to Notice?
Comment 1 is a combination of strawmanning and mocking. It also includes a reference to a meme that is arguably being applied incorrectly.
Overall a low-mid quality comment that, if you agree with you are likely to ignore, and if you disagree with you might throw a minus on it. That it has +10 at all is strong proof of anti-gun people voting on ideology.
The second one is perfectly mid, I would not have voted on it, and in fact did not. But it does invoke several anti-gun idiocies like appeals to other combat weapons, hunting, drivers licenses, etc. I can see a strong argument for giving it a downvote for being mealy-mouthed gish-gallop and I see no reason other than length and partisanship for an upvote.
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