domain:forecasting.substack.com
zeke5123a
2hr ago
Ha! I told my kids that if they were good, Santa would give them a present. If they were bad, a lump of coal. And if they were really bad, Krampus would pick them up, put them in his sack, and carry them of.
They laughed and responded: you’re joking right?
I played around for a few minutes like it was real but ultimately told them that Krampus isn’t real. They had a fun time with it. And it showed they understood play and could figure out some things were absurd. Notably however they didn’t seem to question Santa haha
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2hr ago
Thank you. That's a very kind thing to say. For what it's worth, I am far happier debating you, as a sincere and charitable interlocutor, than I am with many others I strongly disagree with.
Edawayac_Tosscount
3hr ago
What struck me about this case wasn't the male ennui angle, but rather that the subject of the story had horrid opsec. Calling 911? Querying ChatGPT? Keeping his phone on him at all? Retaining the lighter he (probably) used? (source: https://apnews.com/article/california-wildfires-palisades-los-angeles-deb1c78c1d83d233cf3b540644814ea2)
If this man had practiced even rudimentary opsec he could have become a serial firestarter.
If you asked me before this news article "could you commit an act of terror?" my off-the-cuff answer would be to scoff and say "yes - once." The news is full of mass shootings, stabbings, vehicular violence, not so widespread as to materially impact me but memetically virulent enough that I realize it's colored my impression of nihilistic terrorism as inherently incriminating - try anonymously mass-shooting and you won't stay anonymous for long. Yet here's a case where the inherency I'd presumed disintegrates, and now I'm left wondering how much harm could be done by a lone man with a grudge against the world and no interest in taking credit for it: if all you care about is maximum damage then there must be a subset of terrorist strategies that'd indirectly cause mass death without inherently presenting yourself as a target of investigation.
WandererintheWilderness
3hr ago
I actually talk to immigrants, including illegal ones, every day. Legal immigrants think ICE is snatching anyone, legal/illegal/citizen who happens to be brown and black-bagging them to never be seen again. I have had multiple strangers tell me they believed this.
That is exactly my point. This is the widespread belief. I agree it's obviously not actually happening, but it is so widespread that I don't think that fact can be attributed to "bad faith lies" alone - at least, not in the sense of lies perpetrated by enemies of ICE and which ICE is fighting back against with any real vigor. I think the prevalence of that paranoia proves that ICE is very bad at optics. Either they are deliberately encouraging this kind of paranoia, or at the absolute minimum, they are inordinately terrible at fighting back against the smears. Which brings me to my next point -
Then please justify that claim.
They have not made any PR efforts to counteract that impression. (To my knowledge! I would be happy to be corrected! But if they have, why do they never come up in these threads?) If what we're looking at is the result of an unwanted smear campaign, then where's the counter-propaganda? Where are the ICE spokesmen releasing prominent public statements to the tune of "we have nothing against legal immigrants and we will do everything in our power to make sure they are safe, we take the risk of a raid affecting the innocent very very seriously, you have nothing to worry about", to camera, in so many words? It's one thing to be accused of being evil by your enemies' propaganda. It's another to let that propaganda spread indefinitely without supplying your own side of the story. At that point, I can't help but think that you like the story your enemies are telling about you. Particularly when half of your own supporters will cheerfully say that yes, you are creating a climate of fear and that's a good thing because [galaxy brain reasoning about incentivizing self-deportation].
FtttG
3hr ago
When I came to realize all supernaturalism is a lie, and the only way one with intellect and curiosity can believe it is to intentionally blind themselves, I became very angry with everyone who should have known better (or DID know better) and lied to me.
If the Witnesses were sincere in their faith, they weren't lying to him. They were flagrantly, wilfully ignorant, but not technically lying.
Rov_Scam
3hr ago
They're slower than most traffic because they always do the speed limit and don't roll stop signs. They also tend to reroute to avoid more difficult left turns, though this isn't as much of an issue as it was a few years ago. I'm not saying these are necessarily bad things (there are good reasons for strictly adhering to the law), but it's still going to be somewhat slower than a human driver.
Throwaway05
3hr ago
Or even massage artists as compared to chiros as compared to orthopedic surgeons.
Hold up now. The primary role of an orthopedic surgeon is to provide medical and surgical management for orthopedic issues. A chiropractor is a physical therapist with less training, delusions of grandeur, and a notable fatality rate (dissections).
Everything that a chiropractor can do that is actual medicine is better served by a PT or PM&R doctor, and a lot of what they do is placebo bullshit at best, actively dangerous frighteningly often.
quiet_NaN
3hr ago
14yo perpetrators
Adult perpetrators get adult punishments. That society is abdicating its duty to train its young men and women and delaying -> denying them a significant chunk of the prime of their life does not change this basic biological fact.
Are you arguing that 14yo's are adults, and society should treat them as such in legal matters?
So they should also be old enough to buy smokes, weed and vodka, own guns, drive cars, have full control over their finances, shoot porn, vote, enlist, gamble in Vegas, make medical decisions without their parent's consent (think transgender surgeries), supply and use sperm banks, hold political office, perform for Epstein?
From a physiological perspective, 14yo's are not adults. the median 14yo guy fighting the median 18yo guy will be a lot more one-sided than 18yo-vs-22yo. Still, that is not very relevant to the legal aspects: we generally do not bestow rights based on how good you are at beating people up.
As far as mental development is concerned, 14 is still in the throes of puberty. Some people will, for better or worse, be as wise at age 14 as they will ever be. Personally, I was not prone to life-ruining bad decisions (except for avoiding bad decisions), but I was not certainly stupid about lot of things. Still, I think that plenty of 14yo's would be prone to making life-ruining bad decisions if we let them, which is why we limit the decisions they can take.
Of course, the 18th birthday cutoff point is completely arbitrary. an 18yo will still be more prone to bad decisions than a 25yo, but we can hardly deny people the benefits of adulthood until then. Still, the worst youthful bad decision tendencies will be over by age 18. Personally, I would support the Terra Ignota majority exams. If you are some wunderkind who can convince society at age 10 that you should be allowed to drive a car and own a gun, then by all means let society also punish you for your crimes as an adult.
FtttG
3hr ago
Is there a word for this process?
Per Quillette, The Boy Who Inflated the Concept of 'Wolf'.
The duties remain, but the actual structure that supported and encouraged performance of those duties have atrophied.
Guys don't have an innate urge to uphold their society or even their neighborhood. Their drive is not to just accept a crappy status quo simply because its "normal."
Especially when there's clearly a class of male who is accruing all the benefits and status and women, and enduring much less of a sacrifice. I can't think of any stable, highly civilized society that survived long with such an imbalance.
Saying "men have a duty" rings utterly hollow. They need "buy-in." Stakes, if you will.
I'm not even criticizing the point that being the male protector is a thankless role. That is part of the game, sure. I'm criticizing your implication that men will just cast aside their own interests to become a protector, unless they identify something they need to protect.
A society that values them, or a genetic legacy that will survive them. Or, AT LEAST, the promise that they'll earn their way into a blissful afterlife. Valhalla works as a reward for a society that wants men to go forth and pillage and die in battle, and even that society promises rewards to their men.
The promise of Western Society was that the men would drop everything to repel invaders or catch and kill a criminal or rescue people from a natural disaster.
And then, when the crisis passed, they could return to their farm, with a wife and kids they were relatively sure were their own, and would otherwise have significant leeway to run their own affairs. If they survived the crisis.
That promise has been eroded and replaced with nothing, the duties have no real attachment to any underlying purpose whatsoever, and the previously stableish equilibrium has been wrecked by unpunished defectors.
How can you not expect rebellion at that point?
"What's the penalty for failing to carry out my expected male duties?"
"Get screeched at by harpies for having toxic masculinity, rejected by any moderately attractive woman, and the spoils of your efforts captured by foreigners and sociopathic male rivals."
"OH. Whats the reward for carrying out my expected male duties?"
"Get screeched at by harpies for having toxic masculinity, rejected by any moderately attractive woman, and the spoils of your efforts captured by foreigners and sociopathic male rivals."
"Well then."
They ain't going to fight for a civilization that doesn't at least pretend to work in their favor.
I was about to ask how, exactly, destroying a Greek diner's exterior could possibly hope to advance the interests of the Palestinian cause.
... but then it occurred to me that "pointlessly destructive behaviour which could not possibly hope to advance the interests of the Palestinian cause even in principle" actually describes a great deal of pro-Palestine activism, and activism for a number of other omnicause issues. So, yeah, good point.
07mk
3hr ago
This reminds me of a scene in one of the later seasons of Game of Thrones, where Tyrion, a dwarf with a scar across his face, is wanted for escaping after patricide, and some men are caught bringing the head of another dwarf that they marked with a scar. When Cersei (the queen and Tyrion's sister) notes this, the guards are about to send the men to the dungeons, but Cersei stops them, telling them that she doesn't want to discourage people from finding and bringing in the real one.
So it seems that Greece-associated things being damaged is a worthy cost to pay for maximizing the number of Israel-related things being damaged. Or, perhaps, "The optimal number of Greek things destroyed in the process of destroying Israeli things is not zero."
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3hr ago
It's been a long time since I looked at a price theory textbook, so yes, I got the axes wrong -- it's where the supply curve is vertical, not flat. But other than convention I believe I described it accurately.
I do not know if this is actually the case for the shitty jobs in question. However, it has happened in software and related fields on a number of occasions. It is not absurd.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3hr ago
The enemies -- at least, the specific enemies troops are being sent in against -- are not radical left Democrats, it's the people they're letting in and career criminals (as he says elsewhere). Trump is not sending in the military to arrest the Mayor of Chicago the way Kennedy's troops threatened to do to Wallace. Trump did not call the people of Chicago "domestic enemies".
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
3hr ago
see all the hubbub about their (supposed?) lack of respect for due process.
AFAICT, thus hubbub is just bad faith lies. We had a month-long national meltdown over a single missed piece of paperwork that had no material effect on the outcome. When progressives say "due process" what they mean is "continue the process until we win".
I think if you're a legal immigrant, or indeed a birthright citizen who looks superficially foreign, you aren't currently going to have absolute confidence that ICE will leave you alone - or even let you go with an apology, if they should get you by mistake.
No, I actually talk to immigrants, including illegal ones, every day. Legal immigrants think ICE is snatching anyone, legal/illegal/citizen who happens to be brown and black-bagging them to never be seen again. I have had multiple strangers tell me they believed this. This is not an even slightly justifiable belief, but it is the natural result of the relentless propoganda being pushed by progressives.
To an even greater extent, if you are an illegal immigrant, I don't think you're going to be confident that ICE will guarantee you all the protections and legal counsel that you're entitled to.
And for the last time, this is not a justified belief. All data I can find says ICE error/failure rates are lower than almost every other government agency. Maybe instead of relentlessly hammering how understandable it is that innocent people are believing these lies, you could try correcting the lies.
I get the vibe that these are, if not objectively justified fears, then at least fears that ICE are happy to encourage, presumably because they feel like it enhances their intimidation factor.
Then please justify that claim.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
3hr ago
Re: unfathomable idiocy
It demonstrates willingness to fuck shit up for Palestine, even if it makes no sense whatsoever. It's signalling her tribal affiliation and commitment.
I think this is stupid but I get it, I suppose.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
3hr ago
"Collins" is an Irish name that fought in the Revolutionary War.
RenOS
something is wrong
4hr ago
My primary issue is that I have yet to see a left-leaning person espouse a position in favor of immigration restrictions that actually work, in any country. The mention of e-verify by left-leaning posters is a good example here; Going specifically after the working illegals is the stupidest option possible, and would result in not only still having the illegals in the country, but now they can't earn anything except through crime or charity. You can't imagine an approach better optimized to cause a surge in crime and welfare abuse, and I'm 100% sure that the left would have made fun of the right if they actually had done it that way around. This is pretty much the situation in germany right now, btw. I mostly consider myself in the center, and all I want is a working border enforcement and the deportation of immigrants who aren't working after several years of being here. But no matter what the right tries, the left will even make a mockery of it and blatantly work around it (like "help navigating how to get access to the german welfare system" by telling people who are currently in poland how to get past german checkpoints) and if not successful, they will complain until the right stops whatever it is that is actually working. I can see how, to a genuine right-winger, this will translate into "If the left complains, that means we are doing something right; the harder, the better". I'm still sufficiently worried about right-wing dysfunction to really be in favour, but the ICE situation seems like the logical endpoint of this game.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
4hr ago
At what ages does one normally outgrow Santa belief in America?
18, in my case.
I figured that if God is real, then reality is intrinsically magical anyway, and I may as well keep believing in Santa too.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4hr ago
America went to the moon and back before we opened the immigration floodgates
And I'm learning Chinese, says Wernher von Braun.
As well as the Project Paperclip scientists, George Mueller grew up in a German-speaking household so he wasn't exactly a "heritage American". The ancestors of Aldrin (grandson of Swedish immigrants) and Collins (long-established Irish-American family) wouldn't have been let in if the nativists of their day had won their political battles.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
4hr ago
Excellent post.
Just wanted you to know that in spite of (or because of*) our stringent disagreements on certain issues, you remain one of my favorite posters here and you're one of the posters who continues to make TheMotte worthwhile, so I really appreciate what you do.
(* Ilforte once told me that my "value system deserves oblivion", and I still cherish that as the nicest compliment I've ever received on the internet. You don't want an interlocutor who's just going through the motions of nitpicking this or that argument. You want an interlocutor who opposes you on a deep spiritual level. That's where the good stuff is.)
HMK2
4hr ago
https://old.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F8s58fo0kjrtf1.jpeg
The manager/franchisee of a Lush store in Chicago put this sign up. AFAIK the entire Chicago subreddit agrees with this sentiment.
No way man, I think it's a great practice. You institute a society-wide gaslighting conspiracy toward children that involves nothing but generous rewards, but which is so fantastical that they're bound to figure it out eventually, and then you let nature take its course. Everyone learns that sometimes everyone else is just bullshitting, even if they really do mean well.
I wish we put this much effort into teaching everyone other equally important lessons.
Plus there's the part where you realize the conspiracy and then get to join in on it. I mean that feeling as a kid is the closest thing to being invited to join the Illuminati that any of us are likely to get. You've gained sufficient wisdom that the adults require your collaboration.
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