domain:web.law.duke.edu
DradisPing
5hr ago
Why is that less convincing to you than a conspiracy theory?
I don't think it's fair to call it a conspiracy theory.
I see it as more of an important life lesson. If you want people to care about what you want you'd better make yourself useful first.
Sure, there's a lot more to it. But I don't think anyone really wants to hear me recount USSR geopolitical strategies in the Middle East lead to the Palestinian activist networks in the west.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5hr ago
I'm confident we'll 'figure it out' because the drive to reproduce and the forces of natural selection are not going to give in so easily.
Who is "we" in this context, who are going to figure it out? The human species… sure, this (alone, at least) probably won't result in the total extinction of *H. sapiens. Societies capable (and willing) to maintain post-Industrial Revolution tech levels? I'm not so sure. The West? Even less sure.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
5hr ago
Scott talked about beliefs as tribal membership signals. If belief in the rule of law were easy, it would have no value as a signal.
(Why force the beliefs to pay double duty as underpinnings of civilisation and tribal membership signals? Well, if they are also the latter, it actually adds an incentive to profess them even when personally inconvenient.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5hr ago
deeply oppressive traditional cultures more generally- have a lot of supporting social structures which are much harder to generate de novo.
On the one hand, yes, this. It's why the atheist Confucian Xunzi is rather more conservative than many of his contemporaries — social technologies are a fragile inheritance, the accumulated wisdom and social capital of centuries, and are not easily regained (if they can be regained at all) once lost. I, too, find myself frustrated by people who act as if generating such institutions de novo is trivial or easy.
But on the other hand, the second best time to plant a tree and all that. Sure, working to rebuild all those social structures is, again, a multi-generational project requiring a lot of hard work and sacrifice… but what's the alternative?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5hr ago
I just read that whole comment thread, very interesting.
It's been a few years (sad) since I grew anything and I forgot how awful the SEO was in the plant space, holy shit lmao.
The basil article was an infinite rabbit hole of AI basil articles linking to AI basil articles.
I don't think most humans are much better at detecting SEO slop, but that's not a very high bar.
Personally, I find AI search quite useful (both personally and at work) but I mostly use it as a results aggregator. I check the links it finds me, especially at work, my biggest fear is to confidently present something that turns out to be an AI hallucination.
So it's pretty great for that, it's basically like having an intern who Googles things for me, and I pick the results to look at in more detail personally.
DradisPing
5hr ago
I think you'll enjoy John Derbyshire's take: https://www.nationalreview.com/2002/05/why-dont-i-care-about-palestinians-john-derbyshire/
DradisPing
5hr ago
But these politicians like Cruz also say 'god commands us to support Israel'. Why disbelieve them?
People are frequently dishonest about their motivations. Often they don't even understand them.
You'll never hear a politician say "I don't really care enough about X to have an opinion, but I think position Y is what voters want." People don't want that kind of honesty.
"god commands us to support Israel" is rhetorically useful because it ends the conversation.
Modernity for them often means "the consensus of the last couple of decades". Which is how you often get claims that some relatively new understanding or institution is all that stands between people and barbarism. The laws they ignore presumably are from less civilized times.
Makes sense in that light.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5hr ago
"Sounds like someone's grandma" and "so offensive, it'll get you labelled as an misogynist and people will vanish at the speed of light" are not mutually-exclusive categories — far from it.
Terracotta
5hr ago
Yeah, I do understand using the LLM for search or even for a link-enriched overview to cross-check with real resources, as you describe.
I mostly get confused when people Ask ChatGPT, consume the generated content and stop there, which (for a Motte level of understanding "assertions can be wrong," "sources can be mistaken," "context matters," "models sometimes confidently hallucinate") seems like a weird combination of definitely caring and definitely not caring about whatever fact you're researching.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5hr ago
They have to realize the error of their ways and make efforts to fix them.
And if they, "the the dopamine-hacked", collectively don't realize the error of their ways?
quiet_NaN
6hr ago
Yes, post version history also requires a way for mods to make versions invisible to the users.
Besides your example, there are some categories of content which I think the motte server admin has no interest in hosting. Personal information posted accidentally or maliciously. Copyright infringement. Content which is illegal for other reasons in their jurisdiction.
Unlike Wikipedia, we do not have enough Admins/mods that hiding revisions even from them would become a concern, though.
yofuckreddit
6hr ago
My God man, showing up right after open and buying a whole pizza. I literally laughed out loud.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6hr ago
Depends what you mean by censorship, since strictly speaking it's outside their power, as an open source project. Let's just call it the usual drama.
From what I understand Redot was more a result of loads and loads of features and bugfixes they've been sitting on and refusing to merge, the Redot team just used the brouhaha around wokeness as a good moment to fork and promote themselves.
Corvos
6hr ago
I agree completely, especially with
a nightmare of feeling impotent and trapped
This was a big part of Yes, Minister's critique - the Civil Service and 'British Democracy' might be all that stands between us and barbarism, but isn't it convenient that this lines up so neatly with what they wanted to do anyway?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
6hr ago
That may be your opinion, but the ICJ decided otherwise by a vote of 13 to 1.
In its resolution 2066 (XX) of 16 December 1965, adopted a few weeks after the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago, the General Assembly deemed it appropriate to recall the obligation of the United Kingdom, as the administering Power, to respect the territorial integrity of Mauritius. The Court considers that the obligations arising under international law and reflected in the resolutions adopted by the General Assembly during the process of decolonization of Mauritius require the United Kingdom, as the administering Power, to respect the territorial integrity of that country, including the Chagos Archipelago.
The Court concludes that, as a result of the Chagos Archipelago’s unlawful detachment and its incorporation into a new colony, known as the BIOT, the process of decolonization of Mauritius was not lawfully completed when Mauritius acceded to independence in 1968.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
7hr ago
It's just that they think this is necessary to uphold modern civilisation.
I've seen no indication that this is the case. They're happy to violate the law when it suits them. If they're not violating this one, it's because they don't want to, not because they're held back by beliefs about what upholds modern civilization.
Astranagant
7hr ago
Pretty sure the dude arguing Mauritius' side of the case was a mate of his, as well.
Dean
Flairless
7hr ago
Of course, being aware of being in a dream is itself lucid dreaming. Which is fine, but when you start then trying to use that awareness to deliberately twist the dream in your preferred direction, it reaches the metaphor's awkward transition of dreaming being an individual person's thing to, well, something other people have a stake in.
Socially controversial social engineering that tries to leverage lucid-dreaming-like 'I know this is a dream, but others must still behave like a dream while I change their dream around them*' has some of the same experiences/connotations/implications of being stuck in a dream you don't control, but when then keeps changing for the worse. I.E., a nightmare of feeling impotent and trapped.
Corvos
7hr ago
At the end of the day 'The Law' is just a big pantomime that people believe in, like fiat currency.
But it's an important pantomime that they're willing to go to huge lengths to protect. A couple of Terry Pratchett quotes on justice and finance:
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
and
“But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever - provided, naturally, that you don't go and look. This is known as finance.”
Our current rulers are aware that everything is built on a foundation of dreams. It's just that they think this is necessary to uphold modern civilisation. That's why they're so invested in making sure everyone keeps up the pretence - they really do think it's best for everyone. Which is not necessarily to say they're right about that.
ControlsFreak
8hr ago
Is there any indication that jumping to a paid, but publicly-available model is a significant improvement for math? I'm probably not going to spend the time right now to create my own bespoke setup.
Do any of the folks you've read talk about how they do their prompting? Like, can I just plop significant amounts of LaTeX straight from one of my papers into it for problem setup? Is there a better way of going about it?
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
8hr ago
At the end of the day 'The Law' is just a big pantomime that people believe in, like fiat currency. The theatre is enhanced with strange robes, wigs and funny words.
At the Nation State level, it is something to be used or discarded depending on how expedient it is. As part of the UN Security Council with veto powers, they can pretty much tell anyone to go pound sand over territoriality issues (assuming sanctions aren't in the wind).
This whole thing is a problem of their own making and seems to be a 'decolonisation' vanity project funded by the taxpayers.
shakenvac
9hr ago
Starmer is fully lawyer-brained. he is not mentally capable of ignoring a court.
I intellectually understand the possible seduction value of treating women as narcissists/children. I broke into sexual success years ago through PUA, so I'm not unfamiliar with those concepts. However, my actual experience with the women who wanted to be with me longer than a one night-stand has not been that of being with narcissists/children. The women I've had long-ish relationships with have mostly been smart and decent people. Not without their problems, of course, and some of them were no paragons of mental stability, but neither am I, and they were decent... very far from this nightmare image of women as treacherous harpies. I'm actually probably more often the one who screwed up those relationships by being narcissistic/childlike myself, and/or by wanting to spread my wild oats. At least, it's 50/50. The women I've gotten to know, as opposed to one-night stands, I mean, they were often weird, but in the same way that I'm weird... neurotic, well I'm neurotic too... not totally rational, sure, but not any more so than I am irrational. I've also had some cool female friends. And as far as just sexual level stuff goes, I'm no Don Juan, it's not like I have hot girls beating down my door, but I've been with some really attractive women.
You say: "Treat them like narcissist/children" and it works... I mean... how do you go back? How do you compartmentalize that back away?"
I just don't think of it in those terms. Treating them like narcissists/children bores me, it's not arousing or stimulating for me in any way. Even if it works, it's not my thing, it's something that I don't enjoy and doesn't turn me on. I've had enough sex by now, and have satisfied my old painful teenage virgin frustration enough, that now I'm at a point where I'm not willing to do X Y and Z like a chore in order to get to sex or romance. I'm into having fun. I personally enjoy a very minimalist type of seduction, so for me fun in that regard is about just trying to use eye contact and other kinds of body language mainly. But not all guys are into that, I'm all for every guy just doing whatever kind of flirting he enjoys the most. What I enjoy most likely doesn't maximize my success but whatever, as long as I get laid every now and then with attractive women I don't care. I fall in love with every woman I see more than a few times. Not in a simp way, I don't lie or compromise or pretend or put them above myself. And I've never had a woman who I was with for a while actually disrespect me or screw me over in any way that wasn't justified by my actions, so that's never been an issue. I fall in love partly in a painful way, because I tend to get attached. But also in an expansive way, I genuinely become interested in who they are as people. I dunno, I'm still in touch with a couple of my former lovers. It's nice. They're people. Different people than men, sure. But interesting people... I don't even think about things in terms of cock carousel or whatever. If a chick wants to fuck 40 guys in a year I'm like, cool, go for it. I don't want a girl I'm seeing to fuck other guys but if I'm not seeing her then my genuine reaction is like "awesome, hope you have fun fucking".
Except I've seen plenty of people argue that these are completely mutually exclusive — a "commitment to end one's own life" being itself proof positive of an unsound mind. I once had a therapist argue, in all seriousness, that the 47 Rōnin must have been clinically depressed — along with every other samurai who ever committed seppuku — because suicidal intent always means depression, without exception.
This can be used to turn your proposal to a clear Catch-22: you can kill yourself via "legalized but regulated" suicide so long as you're of sound mind… but the fact you're seeking to do so proves you aren't — the only people allowed to kill themselves, then, are those who don't want to.
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