domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3d ago
but it never comes up again and has no impact on anything.
Isn't the whole point of the novel that
I'd say that's pretty plot relevant.
In fact, from a realism perspective, it is entirely believable that we might discover clear evidence that the universe is a sim, while simultaneously not being able to do anything about it. I assume the people with the capability to simulate an entire universe would have better sandboxing and intrusion hardening than AWS.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3d ago
There's a reason why the blurb/introduction has the following quote:
Whenever I feel my will to read becoming too strong, I read Watts
(Great book. Up there as an all-time fave.)
hydroacetylene
3d ago
how the Trump administration is increasing apprenticeships. Of course, few illegals do those high-skilled jobs,
Apprentices mostly are doing low-skill construction work that illegals also do until they’ve learnt enough to be useful helping a full tradesman. Trades jobs do require some training and when the norm is that that training is paid then they’re going to be trained by doing useful but low-skill work. Apprentice plumbers do some digging.
TIRM
3d ago
There are late 19th century American military studies recommending intermediate cartridges. They even plainly spell out that higher velocity 6.x mm rounds would be deadlier at all ranges than much heavier slower rounds.
And yet it took almost a century for it to be realized.
falling-star
3d ago
The McVeigh story as understood in the popular consciousness is incomplete at best and outright wrong at worst. I'd recommend anyone wanting to learn more to read Aberration in The Heartland of the Real.
HereAndGone
3d ago
Problem is, yes I would lose weight if you locked me in a camp and beat me with sticks. But to keep the weight off, you'd have to keep me locked up for life, or give me my own personal 'beat me with sticks and knock the food out of my hands' 24/7 person.
Changing habits is hard and willpower won't let me power my way to the new regime. I managed to willpower my way to stop biting my nails after years and years of that, but I can't willpower 'just stop fucking eating, you fat bitch'.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
3d ago
If the chatbot doesn't quite have your 30 years of memories, but can make an impression that would fool anyone else, what's the difference?
It's just that I feel like your arguments prove too much, as the expression goes. If there can be such a thing as "not enough data", then indeed how can you place a cutoff point? There's never all data. You of today don't have all the data on the you of yesterday.
The WSJ reports:
Preliminary findings indicate that switches controlling fuel flow to the jet’s two engines were turned off, leading to an apparent loss of thrust shortly after takeoff, the people said. Pilots use the switches to start the jet’s engines, shut them down, or reset them in certain emergencies.
The switches would normally be on during flight, and it is unclear how or why they were turned off, these people said. The people also said it was unclear whether the move was accidental or intentional, or whether there was an attempt to turn them back on.
This is preliminary and unofficial, so this isn't necessarily the real cause; no small part of the Boeing MAX scandal was because original 'leaks' heavily emphasized pilot error over the technical faults.
But if true, this is staggering. NA255 and other takeoff misconfiguration disasters have happened, and typically reflect a long series of systemic failures in addition to pilot misconduct, but each individual step is recognizable and understandable until it was too late. By contrast, the aircraft here could not have taxi'd, or run up, or gotten down the runway with fuel cut off to both engines; they're designed so that neither one could be hit accidentally. There is no failure that would cause pilots to turn them off mid-takeoff, and not even some bizarre reason to want to try.
Which... does not leave a lot of options, and they're all bad.
EDIT: official preliminary report here:
The aircraft achieved the maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS at about 08:08:42 UTC and immediately thereafter, the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another with a time gap of 01 sec. The Engine N1 and N2 began to decrease from their take-off values as the fuel supply to the engines was cut off...
As per the EAFR, the Engine 1 fuel cutoff switch transitioned from CUTOFF to RUN at about 08:08:52 UTC. The APU Inlet Door began opening at about 08:08:54 UTC, consistent with the APU Auto Start logic. Thereafter at 08:08:56 UTC the Engine 2 fuel cutoff switch also transitions from CUTOFF to RUN.
I don't think there's any plausible solely-electrical or mechanical explanation that would explain these recordings.
HereAndGone
3d ago
a very young child would benefit from being around its family, versus being one of 10 or 20 kids overseen by essentially a cut-rate nurse, I’d think.
Over here, there are government regulations about staff-to-children ratios, and you would need more than one staff member to supervise 10-20 kids, depending on age (unless this was a really cut-rate, under the counter, unlicensed operation):
Sessional pre-school service A pre-school service offering a planned programme to pre-school (Montessori) children for a total of not more than 3.5 hours per session. This services category covers may include pre-schools, playgroups, crèches, Montesorri pre-schools, naíonraí or similar services which generally cater for pre-school children.
Adult to Child ratio
0-1 year 1:3
1 — 2.5 years 1:5
2.5— 6 years 1:11
Part-Time Day Care service A pre-school service offering a care service for children for a total of not more than 3.5 hours and less than 5 hours per day. This may include a sessional pre-school service for a child not attending the full day care service but instead a half day service. The service must provide the same physical environment, including rest, play and facilities, as for full day care. This service category may include pre-schools, playgroups, crèches, Montesorri pre-schools, naíonraí or similar services which cater for pre-school children.
Adult to Child ratio
0-1 year 1:3
1-2 years 1:5
2-3 years 1:6
3-6 years 1:8
(While within a sessional class - 2.5— 6 years 1:11)
Full Day Care service A pre-school service offers a structured day care service for pre-school children for more than 5 hours per day. This may include a sessional pre-school service for children as part of that day. This category includes day nurseries and crèches.
Adult to Child ratio
0-1 year 1:3
1-2 years 1:5
2-3 years 1:6
3-6 years 1:8
(While within a sessional class - 2.5— 6 years 1:11)
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3d ago
So why are Indian tourists, from a country where pickpockets are routinely beaten, not beating these pickpockets on the metro, where they are surrounded by other Indians, who (presumably) routinely beat pickpockets? Why is this dog not barking?
I never claimed that. I presume that they do, in fact, raise hell should they catch the culprit in the act. Unfortunately for tourists, they tend to be found in crowded places, some of which might be called tourist traps, where it's harder to notice, or figure out who the culprit was, while the latter has an easier time vanishing into the crowd.
To be clear, I'm not talking about online Indians, I'm talking about actual Indians I've met IRL, with who I've talked about life in India
Did you specifically ask them about the topic? It rarely comes up unprompted.
When Ashwin was arrested by the police in New Friends Colony, the seeds of doubt were sown in his mind.
This doesn't say anything about whether or not it was a victim who caught him, whether he was roughed up during the process, or after by the police. I've never claimed that standard means of law enforcement don't exist in India.
Pongalh
3d ago
"mass of helpless unemployed drug addicts..."
Do you think DeRemer sees MAGA voters as a mass of white unemployed drug addicts?
You do seem to nail it on the sewing bras etc...
TIRM
3d ago
I had an Indian coworker once comment that shoplifters in India would be beaten. Rather unlike the American response of letting them do it.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
3d ago
Recently @RandomRanger accused me of strawmanning the Right:
Turok was being banned for being overtly aggressive and obnoxiously creating imaginary narratives like "The "Woke Rightist" looks at his race, sees a mostly imaginary mass of helpless unemployed drug addicts and demands tariffs so that they can rise to the lofty heights of sewing bras, picking fruit, hauling equipment, and digging ditches in the rain."
That's not what the 'woke right' thinks and he surely knows it. He need only check the MAGA rhetoric from Trump about good factory jobs, or the rhetoric from the right about the need to mechanize dull fruitpicking jobs and raise productivity. Why, they say, should millions of people be brought into the country if AI is going to destroy everyone's jobs? Or the need to have American wealth kept in America rather than sent off in remittances. Or them hating H1Bs as cost-cutting that interferes with developing talent. Or them not seeing the country as purely an economic zone but having responsibility to native citizens. It's an insanely uncharitable and aggressive butchering of other people's ideology.
Did I strawman the Right? Let's ask Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the United States secretary of labor:
FOX: I think American citizens are willing to do the jobs that illegal immigrants are willing to do.
LORI CHAVEZ-DeREMER: Americans are willing to do the job. What we have to give them is the opportunity to have those jobs.
DeRemer refers to "Americans," the online racialist Right is talks about whites, but in both cases the vision is the same, uplifting the ingroup means getting them the opportunity to do the jobs currently done by the guy standing in the Home Depot parking lot. Is there any wonder high-income whites are moving away from the Republican Party? Working-class whites, too, don't want their sons working casual labor, which is why in the video DeRemer goes on to talk about how Americans will be given opportunity through being "skilled, upskilled, re-skilled" and how the Trump administration is increasing apprenticeships. Of course, few illegals do those high-skilled jobs, so upskilling Americans won't replace many illegals, but it's not like the Fox News host is going to point out the apparent contradiction.
Given that I've given an example from a cabinet-level Trump administration official, (not "nutpicked" from some rando on Twitter) I expect that @RandomRanger will withdraw his claim that I "obnoxiously created imaginary narratives" in the interests of truth and courtesy.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
3d ago
In the wider internet, I think I'm quite unusual in being open-minded about the benefits of such extrajudicial punishment, compared to the kind of Indians you would pay attention to online.
To be clear, I'm not talking about online Indians, I'm talking about actual Indians I've met IRL, with who I've talked about life in India.
India is a poor country! Western tourists are probably not taking public transport except for the sake of it. That is not nearly as true for Indian tourists, in India.
So why are Indian tourists, from a country where pickpockets are routinely beaten, not beating these pickpockets on the metro, where they are surrounded by other Indians, who (presumably) routinely beat pickpockets? Why is this dog not barking?
Further, there's obvious selection-bias at play: Vice didn't choose to interview an ex pickpocket, did they?
They did, he's no longer a pickpocket.
ControlsFreak
3d ago
So, in this sentence, what is the "problem" that is in need of a solution? Is it, like, "the problem of trying to decide what to tell people"? Or what?
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3d ago
You claim it is, but again, I have met many Indians and I have never heard any of them claim that thieves are guaranteed an ass-whooping on the spot.
That is not a claim I've made. I've said such an outcome was "guaranteed", merely that the risk is high enough to be a real deterrent for would-be criminals.
We don't have that many Indians on The Motte, so I don't see how it makes a difference. In the wider internet, I think I'm quite unusual in being open-minded about the benefits of such extrajudicial punishment, compared to the kind of Indians you would pay attention to online.
It's not a video, it's an article. The guy mostly picks pockets of people on public transit, which tourists are usually wealthy enough to avoid and has a critical mass of witnesses and people who would be available for administering an impromptu beating
India is a poor country! Western tourists are probably not taking public transport except for the sake of it. That is not nearly as true for Indian tourists, in India.
Further, there's obvious selection-bias at play: Vice didn't choose to interview an ex pickpocket, did they? If someone is still up to their shenanigans, then they're either skilled or lucky. An ideal pickpocket doesn't want to be caught, if they did, they'd be a bandit.
I can't even imagine what it means to be "too dumb to care" about being beaten to a pulp. It is possible that he's lying, but why would he lie about this? Why would he continue to be a pickpocket if he's getting beaten every day by mobs of Indians? More importantly, how could he continue to do anything but lie in a hospital?
Criminals aren't particularly known for their keen ability to do fine risk-benefit calculations. If they did, they'd probably be more likely to look for a job. That doesn't mean that they're immune to incentives.
As I've made clear, I never claimed that pickpocketing is guaranteed to lead to a beating. If literally every pickpocket was caught right away and beaten, then I think the number of pickpockets out there would be, if not literally zero, within spitting distance. Mostly because of kleptomaniacs I suppose.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
3d ago
HereAndGone
3d ago
You get families like that, and they're not confined to Russia. They're trash, dysfunctional, and the kids have little chance to grow up not to be dysfunctional trash themselves given how they're raised, unless someone intervenes at a very young age and takes them out of that environment.
They'll probably still have a ton of problems, but at least they're not being raised like feral dogs.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
3d ago
I know, which is why I've resisted the blandishments of doctors trying to sell this to me. I know I'd be one of the patients who didn't stick to the stringent lifestyle changes you have to make along with the surgery, and I'd be one of the ones who over-eat to the extent of bursting the sleeve.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18586571/
Those high in dietary adherence had lost 4.5% more weight at postoperative week 92 than those low in dietary adherence.
In other words, it doesn't really matter if you're a good boy/girl and listen to your doctors after you've had most of your stomach removed. Of course, bariatric surgery isn't a truly permanent solution, weight tends to come back after several years, but it was a good option before Ozempic made it somewhat obsolete.
HereAndGone
3d ago
There is a difference between "crying because hungry/wet/scared" and "crying because I started and don't know how to stop" and if you're around kids for any length of time you'll pick up on the difference. That being said, I'd hate to be a kid raised under the "at six months ignore the crying" regime because yikes. A small baby is not trying to manipulate its parents, it has few other ways to communicate except through crying.
Kids today, or at least middle class kids upwards, are a lot more isolated. "The newborn is in a crib in the nursery and we monitor via babycam"? The hell? Babies were sharing the bed or at the foot of the bed in a cradle in lower class families, so they were never far away from human contact (see The Reeve's Tale, where a plot point is the deception wrought by moving the baby's cradle from the foot of one bed to another). Now it's a lot more "put the kid in a separate room nowhere near the parents until it cries to be fed" which has got to have an affect.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
3d ago
My man, did you bother to do something as simple as Google the phrase thief beaten up India?
India, as you know, is a big place. I am confident that there's a thief beaten up in India every day. The question is, is pickpocketing and robbery rare, and is it rare because thieves are sure to be swiftly beaten? You claim it is, but again, I have met many Indians and I have never heard any of them claim that thieves are guaranteed an ass-whooping on the spot.
I don't have the time to watch the video right now, but my expectation is that they're preying on tourists primarily, which would be easily true in Delhi. They could also, more tentatively, simply be lying about the risks of being caught, or too dumb to care.
It's not a video, it's an article. The guy mostly picks pockets of people on public transit, which tourists are usually wealthy enough to avoid and has a critical mass of witnesses and people who would be available for administering an impromptu beating.
I can't even imagine what it means to be "too dumb to care" about being beaten to a pulp. It is possible that he's lying, but why would he lie about this? Why would he continue to be a pickpocket if he's getting beaten every day by mobs of Indians? More importantly, how could he continue to do anything but lie in a hospital?
That telling people to make lifestyle changes is highly ineffective? That implies nothing about whether or not the changes themselves don't work. I consider it clear enough, in the context of the comment. In fact, the very next sentence is:
Telling people to use their will to get over depression or diabetes doesn't, and the same is true for obesity.
The only reason we even bother trying is that telling people to do things is rather cheap and low-effort. In rare cases, they might even listen. It also makes us feel good, and ticks boxes.
wayfarer
3d ago
are historically used to them and because fear of foreign threat is an emotionally powerful motivator.
also, because it is quite hard to find alternative solution (other than "I guess we surrender if we end in a serious war") but states with such approach tend to disappear for obvious reasons
HereAndGone
3d ago
I'm not kidding here, we genuinely are rather unsure about the mechanism of action. Most of the commonly advanced suggestions were found to be wrong or inadequate at best.
I know, which is why I've resisted the blandishments of doctors trying to sell this to me. I know I'd be one of the patients who didn't stick to the stringent lifestyle changes you have to make along with the surgery, and I'd be one of the ones who over-eat to the extent of bursting the sleeve.
Trying to fill yourself with low calorie food is an approach known as "volumetrics", and it works okay.
I don't think just drinking water would work as well, because you'd need an uncomfortable amount to fill your stomach, and the body would quickly realize that it's just water, without calories.
Oh, I've tried the fibre tablets thing - eat this tablet before a meal, drink water, it'll swell up inside your stomach and make you feel full and you'll eat less. Never worked for me because I never got the "feeling full" bit even after taking more than the recommended dose (luckily, I think/hope eating too much fibre is not a bad thing as such).
To support this possibility: the FBI has done much worse. https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/what-did-fbi-really-know-terrorist-attack-garland-texas
An FBI agent tagged along to document the mass shooting. Following in a different car and taking photos. Only because the mass-shooting-victims-to-be were armed and shot back was there not a slaughter.
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