domain:alakasa.substack.com
urquan
I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness.
5hr ago
tl;dr: if we define virtue in terms of things that men do, men are more virtuous than women
Stellula
5hr ago
Perhaps! And if Christians referred to themselves as “Jews” and intentionally tried to create confusion about their beliefs, I would have a similar criticism of them.
I think that’s a good point btw. Mormons see themselves as something that should replace (or in their framing: fix) Christianity, not as Christians themselves.
In fact, if you follow through with their logic, it’s basically: “we’re Christians, and you’re not.”
faceh
5hr ago
I am kind of in the middle ground between "they are just stupid stochastic parrots, they don't think!" and "obviously they will develop super-intelligent subagents if we just throw more neurons at the problem!", while I suspect that you are a bit more likely to agree with the former.
I think this falls into the "shoggoth wearing a smiley face mask" meme that came about last year.
Its very clear to me that there's something in there that we can consider "intelligent" that is performing "reasoning." (I avoid the terms "cognition" and "consciousness" or "qualia" here).
It takes inputs, performs some kind of calculations and produce an output that is meaningfully derived from the inputs and this means it can do useful 'work' with that info. Inferences, formation of beliefs, and possibly analyzing the truth value of a statement.
But the processes by which it does that DO NOT resemble human intelligence, we've just made it capable of accepting human-legible inputs and expressing its outputs in human legible form too.
So expecting it to think 'efficiently' the way humans do is missing the forest for the trees. Or perhaps the brain for the neurons.
Hell, maybe it never really masters novel-writing before it gets smart enough to kill everyone, but it got good at the set of skills it needed while we were trying to teach it to write novels.
urquan
I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness.
5hr ago
· Edited 3hr ago
Many mothers believe that becoming and being a mother is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to them.
I think you're making the mistake of thinking about bearing, breastfeeding, and raising a child as a "bare biological function" rather than something that is, yes, biological, but also deeply tied in to people's social, emotional, and spiritual sense of who they are -- in other words, to the elements of life that lead to eudaemonia.
"Eating food" is a bare biological function, but it's loaded with social and spiritual meaning -- think about "who sits at what table" in High School, about dinner dates, about feasts and holidays, about Thanksgiving dinner, about gourmonds who learn to savor every bite, and even think about many ancient religions (including Christianity) where "having a meal with the gods" is the fundamental principle of sacrifice.
Sex, too, is a bare biological function, but think about how many ways in which it has emotional meaning for people: not just as a reinforcement of status (which men experience intensely, and thus see sexlessness as utterly wounding to their value as human beings), but as reinforcement of connection, as a means of bonding, as a means of play, as something more than the sum of its parts.
And into this I have to assert: bearing, feeding, and nuturing a child is about more than biology. It is social, emotional, and spiritual. And many -- though certainly not all -- mothers experience it in just this way. Not as a denial of eudaemonia, but as true eudaemonia, flourishing so flourished that it nutures another being's flourishing. Hail, full of grace!
Fathers experience this too, though to a lesser degree. My girlfriend likes to visit old churches to appreciate the architecture, and a common feature of old churches is the church graveyard. What I have often noted to her is that, on almost all of the graves of men, what it reads is not "high-powered lawyer," or "statesman," or "had a bunch of money," but rather: "Husband and FATHER." The greatest legacy of almost every man and every woman, the great evidence of their flourishing to the world, is not what their career looked like or how aggressively they "chased their dreams," but the children they brought into the world, and the way they nurtured them. Your children, not your coworkers, will tend your grave.
I think maybe this is an agreeableness problem -- your argument here is essentially that women are too agreeable and too neurotic. Sure, neuroticism is always a danger, and both men and women with neuroticism struggle a lot. And women are statistically higher in it. But agreeableness is a strength of women, not a weakness: men's great honor is low neuroticism, but women's great honor is high agreeableness.
It can be hard to see on the motte, where disagreeableness is common, but agreeableness is necessary for the maintanence of society. Not only because it is the necessary lens through which to nurture a child, but because it is the necessary lens through which to care for anyone who needs caring for, and to build systems of social harmony that tie people together, that build and maintain social bonds. We could not live in a society were it not for the social bonds maintained by agreeable women.
Some studies have suggested that, in the general population, people maintain stronger connections with their maternal grandparents than their paternal grandparents. Researchers sometimes argue that this can be attributed to the social bonds maintained by mothers.
I speak from experience here: that rings very true to me. In fact, not only am I closer to my maternal family than my paternal family, but my mother is closer to my paternal family than my father is!
Maintaining social bonds is extremely important; this is how social capital is maintained. Societies where these bonds are not maintained are impoverished by it. As we are, in these days of atomization and rootlessness.
So your lens strikes me as incredibly limited: you're saying that 99% of what's important for the maintanence of society is done by men, while not even fully noting the importance of things that women do. You're asking for what would make women valuable without even acknowledging the value they do have.
While you apologized, the fact that you posted this on mother's day without realizing it was mother's day says quite a lot. Did you not speak to your mother yesterday? Did you spend any time with her? Send her flowers?
Because, for what it's worth, that's what maintaining social bonds looks like. And you devalue it to your own peril.
cjet79
5hr ago
A lot of foreshadowing techniques. It takes me out of the story when I see it, because I'm strongly reminded that it is a story with an end destination in mind by the author.
Certain ways of handling characters. Death for side characters when the author wants them out of a story. Torture or horrible circumstances for a main character as a way to toughen them up or get the reader to feel sorry for them.
Our society continues to function because Reds haven't joined the game yet, and Trump winning the last election is a strong disincentive for them to do so for the time being. But the back-and-forth wrench is obvious and undeniable. The changes to norms are undeniable. Reds will get on the scoreboard eventually; it's a statistical inevitability. When that happens, a large percentage of Reds are going to be running a copy of the current Blue script, and I see no reason to believe Blues in general will accept that or even recognize the irony.
The majority of both sides still seem to believe that the culture war can be won in a way compatible with things generally continuing as they have before, if they just escalate a little harder. at some point, and it is very possible that we are already well past this point, it stops being measured escalation and starts being a runaway uncontrollable chain reaction.
sun_the_second
5hr ago
That's interesting, any examples of what literature elements you don't like?
FtttG
5hr ago
The trans women you've met must pass a hell of a lot better than the ones I've met, or seen photos of.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
5hr ago
For reasons I can only speculate, all I've ever heard about tariffs are that they are stupid when the US does it, and brilliant when other countries (especially China) do them to us to protect their industrial base. While there may be something to the specific circumstances that could support this narrative, it is rarely evident in the reporting. If you've ever been inoculated against Gell-Mann Amnesia, you'd detect a psyop going on here.
I think there's at least two reasons combining here. One is the usual anti-Trump stuff (anything Trump does is bad), and the other is China boosterism (China is the greatest, they will crush the US industrially and their hypersonic missiles will destroy all our carriers and Taiwan will be theirs). Some of which is mere anti-Americanism/anti-Westernism and some of which is straight up enemy action from Chinese agents.
cjet79
5hr ago
I think I'm a little bit broken in my set of preferences for certain art forms. For a long time I've lacked the ability to understand and explain why. Video games have helped, but music might have the best metaphor, even if it doesn't apply to me.
First, imagine that there is an objective ranking for how good a piece of music can be. The ranking stands regardless of individual preferences. More sophisticated listeners who can appreciate music better will have their preferences more in line with this objective ranking.
Second, imagine you have some unique ears, and the sound of string instruments just really bothers you. So you prefer any music without string instruments.
Most of the best music includes some string instruments, so you end up not liking most of the "best" music. The best rating doesn't require string instruments, its just that it makes some things easier in the course of crafting the music. A theoretical best song could be crafted that has no string instruments, it would just be much more difficult. Your tastes end up looking very unsophisticated. You gravitate towards an amateur community of song writers that share your hatred of string instruments, and some of them are just bad at writing any songs with string instruments. They write songs that are relatively bad on the objective ranking, but it removes string instruments at least, so it becomes more tolerable than mainstream stuff for you.
Something like this has happened to me in regards to reading and literature. There are common story elements like certain foreshadowing techniques and certain character development tricks that really grate on me. And there are story settings that I dislike, mostly modern and non-magical settings are boring to me.
I've ended up in a weird spot, like the stringed instrument hater. I can only really enjoy the other authors that also hate stringed instruments, or the amateurs that can't even write stringed instruments into their music. I am probably reading stories and literature that is "objectively" worse on some cosmic literature scale, and I'm well aware that it makes my tastes look unsophisticated and "bad" to the elites of the literature world. But I can't stop and won't stop, because I have some subjective preferences that entirely override the importance of the objective scale.
PokerPirate
5hr ago
I like meta behind the "unions are evil" example: It is the only example luxury belief that is right coded, and it's also the only belief that has a number of posters explaining why it's not actually a luxury belief but a "true fact about the world".
If the idea of luxury beliefs really has explanatory value as a model of the world, I would expect all political ideologies to have them in some capacity. So I would like to see more examples of these right-coded luxury beliefs.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
5hr ago
I meant it in the figurative sense (a man turned transwoman does not present as traditionally masculine anymore), not in the sense of actual amputation.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
5hr ago
If anyone has an example of "this is how I use it for work/at home and it really saves me time and mental energy", I'd be glad to hear.
I don't, but I have a related observation. Because there are differently capable LLMs available, we have not a "one screen two movies" a situation but reverse, "nominally same movie in two screens". One screen is 4k ultraHD and other is camcorded VHS tape. In this thread and other forums, savvy people truly test this shit, constantly trying out which is the current state of the art, and enthusiastically adopt it, and report amazing results. I almost believe it is that good. Meanwhile, at work, my coworkers are not savvy at all yet enthusiastically adopt the default-tier ChatGPT. Which is shit. I call it ShitGPT.
I have watched how "senior" engineer who used to bit perhaps above his skill level but quite okay starting do quite stupid stuff, like in live code review call call copypasting ChatGPT outputs without looking at it, including the time when ShitGPT decided it wants to write the answer in C# instead of C++. Another engineer caused a week of mayhem because he uncritically trusted ChatGPT "summarization" of library documentation, except halfway the ShitGPT had stopped summarizing documentation and switched to hallucinating, causing the most curious bugs.
WhiningCoil
5hr ago
Does anybody have any ideas on what I missed?
The tariff's hurt China too. For reasons I can only speculate, all I've ever heard about tariffs are that they are stupid when the US does it, and brilliant when other countries (especially China) do them to us to protect their industrial base. While there may be something to the specific circumstances that could support this narrative, it is rarely evident in the reporting. If you've ever been inoculated against Gell-Mann Amnesia, you'd detect a psyop going on here.
China has basically stopped even reporting financial figures, not even the fraudulent ones you need to read between the lines of. There is effectively no reliable information about how the tariff's are impacting China's economy. But rumors are coming out that it's manufacturing sector in panicking, with factories sitting idle and orders drying up. Even if reshoring is years away, companies literally cannot afford to order from China while the tariff's are in place. I was watching some of Gamer's Nexus's coverage of the tariffs, and companies were saying that with the tariff's they would lose $100+ selling a $100 PC case for example. So all they can do is shut down production and hope a solution presents itself. They haven't sold through their US stock (yet), but they sure as shit have cancelled their orders no matter what the penalty they have to pay.
newcomputerwhodis
5hr ago
Yes, it is already happening, and it was even before AI. Entertainment media can be provided bespoke - that's exactly what artists working on commission do. For a whole lot of people and purposes, the quality/price curve is or very soon will be in AI's favor. I have a couple hours of music about wizards drift racing and I am eager for the moment I can poke at an AI for a bit and receive custom made retro game bubblegum tailored to my exact whims.
Voyager
5hr ago
I'm a man, I would consider myself having high libido, and still I have noticed more than once that a female acquaintance becomes more sexually attractive as I get to know her better as a person. And from what I've heard, men in general are attracted to women they love.
Perhaps "romantic/personal attraction enhances sexual attraction" is somewhat universal for humans, and a lower baseline libido just makes the effect more pronounced.
To be fair, this is basically how it went between Jews and early Christians.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5hr ago
Funny, Junger is next up on my list!
phailyoor
5hr ago
How much are you willing to wager on this claim? What are examples of a baseline of mid-budget Hollywood?
Stellula
5hr ago
It’s a motte and Bailey (the namesake of this website).
Motte: were Christians just like the ones you’ve heard of or maybe grew up as.
Bailey: we believe Christianity is actually incomplete until a man named Joseph Smith completed it in the 1830s.
So you’re right, “secretive” or “hiding” aren’t perfect words to describe Mormonism, a better word would be deceptive or dishonest (I don’t think that Mormonism would have many converts if they were more honest about their beliefs, and apparently neither do they, which is why teach their missionaries “milk before meat”, or more in the parlance of this website: motte before Bailey.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
5hr ago
There was the thing where a democratic campaign volunteer attempted to murder as many of the republican congressmen as he could, the FBI covered up the clear political motive, and it was common for years afterward to hear Progressives mock the victims and wish the would-be assassin had done a better job.
James Hodgkinson?
There was the time the Antifa guy murdered a trump supporter in cold blood, on video, his antifa buddies publicly celebrated the murder on video, prestige media responded by glazing him, and local progressives shrugged and said it was the trump supporter's fault for engaging in political speech in a blue enclave.
Michael Reinoehl?
Then there's the family members, friends, and acquaintances who've opined to me that it'd probably be for the best if Trump or Elon or Vance were just murdered.
Yeah, I've gotten that too and I don't even live in the 'States.
I'll note that all of these except Butler are progressive murder culture, not reactionary murder culture which is the point most relevant to your argument. Certainly, it's hard to keep that kind of thing fully one-sided indefinitely, though.
phailyoor
5hr ago
This feels like MOSTLY a solved problem with ChatGPT's o3 image generation capability.
My understanding is that o3 image gen is identical to the regular chatgpt image gen (famed for the ghiblification wave). Both cases call out to gpt-image-1 which to be fair is much better than dalle and stable diffusion and the like at following prompts.
https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/gpt-image-1 https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/o3
Unless we ARE very, very close to the plateau of what can be achieved with the current paradigm.
This is actually a very defensible position
cjet79
5hr ago
My full original comment:
I am willing and happy to read AI generated stories.
I haven't tried too hard to generate my own. But if one of the stories I was following on Royal road turned out to be an AI story I wouldn't be unhappy except that most of them have a release schedule that is clearly within human abilities, and I'd want more. Once they got revealed I'd expect them to stop sandbagging it.
My limited attempts to get AI to generate interesting stories have kinda sucked. In one instance it took my writing and declared it too adult and I legitimately wasn't sure what the hell it was talking about. Those were early chatgpt days though.
I still have this unverified sense that AI can produce pop, but not jazz. Meaning average mass appealing stuff, but weird individuality is harder for it to generate.
Re-reading my first sentence as standalone I guess it could be interpreted one of two ways:
- I am willing and happy to read AI generated stories, as they are now.
- I am willing and happy to read AI generated stories, if I could not tell the difference between them and human written stories I already enjoy.
I meant it in the second sense. I definitely think the AI stories right now are a lot of hot garbage, for all the reasons you've mentioned.
Here's volume V, you can do a search yourself and there is no reference at all to approximately 3 millions Jews being murdered inside shower rooms.
The mainstream theory is that there are no bodies at the extermination camps like Treblinka because they were all unburied over the course of 120 days and cremated on open-air pyres, despite no documentary or physical evidence for that claim, and despite no contemporary reports of a such an operation.
Why don't you ask Grok if it is possible that 800,000 corpses were exhumed at Treblinka and cremated on open-air pyres over the course of ~120 days? This is what the mainstream claims- this is "The Holocaust." It's completely impossible. Even OpenAI's model now admits this story is not feasible. But this is the Holocaust narrative.
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