domain:forecasting.substack.com
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3hr ago
It doesn't feel like AI to me, and the free AI detectors don't ping. It might help that I entered college roughly the same time as the author and what people thought was necessary to get in to a top school rings true (I didn't do it, but I went to a state school). But it also seems it wasn't written recently -- it refers to the Obama administration as the present.
In my opinion, the only distinction worth considering a difference is the degree to which our knowledge of character constraints our expectation of their future actions.
To elaborate, how would they behave if unconstrained? Would the person putting on the show of charity cease and desist the moment they had nothing to gain by it? Or does someone's internal conviction or innate "goodness" persist when they're not being forced to be "good" or not punished for being bad? Or when doing the right thing would be a costly signal (and one that isn't outweighed by the gain in prestige, as most costly signaling is)?
At the risk of reducing everything I say to commentary on AI, should you choose the model that pretends to be good because of punishment, or the one that tries to do the right thing despite risking punishment for its actions, or at least without obvious ulterior motives? That particular choice is clear to me, and I believe the analogy extends to humans.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
3hr ago
You were talking about hoping Jennifer Gilbert's children would die.
Yes, I've told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.
I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they're breeding little fascist? Yes.
Such a punchline. Much LOL.
He's stone cold serious when he says these things. He's doing political calculus that dead Republicans help his policy goals because they oppose him.
johnfabian
3hr ago
This type of "hypocrisy gotcha" you see as a go-to defence mechanism is very frustrating to me. "OH, so YOU EXPECT ME to be BETTER than [my political outgroup]? Why don't you hold them to the same standard?!?!?!"
Well firstly, often people are. Not everyone is locked into a rigidly partisan mindset. Secondly if you proclaim you are better, loudly and repeatedly at all times, you have to walk the walk.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
3hr ago
I guess I like the same spirit. Like an overarching series of interesting characters just doing their thing and growing over time. Its also kind of low stakes which is fine.
I might go and check out Hornblower or Sharpe next and see what comes of it unless I get a better suggestion.
johnfabian
3hr ago
I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this.
Be honest and admit that these kind of "just joking" comments come from all sides. I don't like it, I think it's probably more insidious than people think, and at its core is corrosive to an open society. But if you think this is solely a "left-wing" or "Democrat" phenomenon and one couldn't trivially produce examples of Republicans doing the exact same thing, you're lying to yourself. Hell, it's not uncommon to see this kind of sentiment on this forum, albeit typically worded more fancily.
johnfabian
4hr ago
Suppose Hornblower is the obvious next suggestion, but the question is whether you want something in the same niche or something in the same spirit. The former is easy to find, the latter is hard.
oats_son
4hr ago
My God, you're right. Look at these comments. What the fuck? We've really been living in a country like this for this long? There's nothing that can't be sanewashed, can't be whatabout'd? There is no evil so bad that you can't blame it on Trump? I just can't believe what I'm seeing this year. I swear, the culture war is gonna go hot in a way we have never seen before.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4hr ago
I suspect that what you saw was a bunch of children raised to go through a bunch of hoops, one of which being community service, but this wasn't necessarily indicative of cynicism elsewhere. Many of those children likely had ideals, which they pursued as they gained independence and power.
I was one of those American Teenagers. The Key Club didn't seem to do anything useful as far as I could tell but I got a tshirt and marched in a parade. I started a Math club at my brother's middle school which was ok, maybe inspired some kids to think of math more creatively but didn't help anyone improve their math scores. I was in Varsity Swimming and Club Swimming, which was the biggest time suck of them all but it made my father happy.
I viewed all this as things to put in a portfolio that proved I could handle many things at once, that I was able to get along with a club of people, that I was able to act independently enough to start a club, etc. It was selfishly about proving what I could do. But.. that's what kids do. That's what kids are. What are your limits? And most importantly from the schools' perspective, are you going to graduate from an Ivy League school with a full course load and some extracurriculars?
This didn't stop me from being deeply concerned about many things in the world with vague plans on addressing them later. But as a child, you have very little control over your life. I did what my parents wanted me to do, and they wanted me to do this because at a young age I had taken an IQ test that had proved to them I had the ability to do this. I had some options on which clubs I joined, but some things I had very little choice at all. I swam varsity swimming because my father swam varsity swimming and coached swimming and that was what our family did.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
4hr ago
If one believes that cynicism dominates over genuine do-gooding in everything, what's so bad about harnessing cynicism to create a bit more of do-gooding in the world? When the orphans are fed by a hypocritical heartless billionaire, does the food turn to ashes in their mouths?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4hr ago
Holy mother of em-dashes. I'm not accusing you of making this post with AI, but there are so many that I find it deeply distracting. Most of them could have been commas.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
4hr ago
Yeah, I also caught that. What's with all the decade-old political references?
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4hr ago
Is this is an essay you are recycling from elsewhere, or something you wrote years ago? The focus on Obama (in the present tense), without mention of three presidential administrations since, and other dated references, is odd.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4hr ago
Yes, Democrats Really Do Want You Dead
Some people have already put the Charlie Kirk assassination into the memory box. For others it still feel terrifyingly relavent. The initial shock at the cheers and jubulant celebration at his gruesome public execution has faded slightly. The public square dominated by Democratic figures and Never Trumpers invoking some fraudulent both sidesism has, like it or not, dulled some of the public backlash. And honestly, the compulsive conspiracy theorist on the right hasn't helped maintain moral clarity in the wake of his murder either.
You may remember, I've talked before about the casual genocidal bloodlust the average Northern VA Democrat has based on the time I lived there. And while Democrats, for now, seem to have enough message discipline to not get on CNN and openly say "Yes, Republicans deserve to be murdered", their line is just shy of that incredibly low bar. Enter Jay Jones.
He's been caught essentially laying out the case that Republicans should be shot and killed, and their children murdered in front of them, so that they change their politics. A DM conversation "leaked" where in he has this conversation with a Republican colleage in the Virginia House I believe. So this wasn't even exactly an "in house" conversation. Just straight up telling the opposition, "Hey, I think you deserve to die" like it would never or could never come back to haunt him.
As of now, no Democrat has pulled their endorsement of him, I saw one single local Democrat say he would stop campaigning with him, several groups have actively reaffirmed his endorsement still saying he's somehow better than your generic Republican. His brazen assertion that you should kill even the children too, because "they are breeding little fascist" is probably a huge hit in Northern VA. Finally someone who openly talks and thinks like they do. I've seen those exact words on the NOVA subreddit every day. He's very likely to have top legal authority over me and my children, whom he believes deserve to die.
I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this. This is how Pogroms work. In the famed Jewish Pogroms of 1881, 40 Jews were killed leading to a mass emigration from Russia. I wonder if we'll hit that number in Virginia the next 4 years. I fully expect my deep red rural county that's been electorally attached through gerrymandering to Fairfax will be aggressively "enriched" as punishment for voting wrong.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5hr ago
Thanks, I enjoyed the screed. I'll respond with some only slightly on-topic rambling.
I've reflected on my phone use before (as well as my alcohol use) and I've concluded that I don't actually really enjoy either of those things much in isolation. When I'm having a great day doing something fun and active I rarely drink or look at my phone. When I'm at home scrolling/and or drinking, I'd actually rather be doing any of the following:
- reading a book
- sitting in silence
- making small handicrafts
- listening to some relaxing music at a low volume
- enjoying a cup of tea
What I think I really want is some inward-oriented quiet time. My wife and I are introverts, before having kids we would spend entire (romantic!) evenings together exchanging only a few words. Now I have a job that requires me to talk/message all day, multitask, and manage human relationships. But when I go downstairs, instead of peace and quiet, there are 4 small children hitting each other, jumping, screaming, and otherwise causing a ruckus. Which is great, I love my kids to death. Still, I need time to recharge in between work and home life, but I don't get any. I'm trying to cut booze so I live to see 60, and so I scroll.
I know the scrolling is bad, but the alternative is losing my temper or just bottling everything up. The former is bad for obvious reasons and the latter impacts my sleep and I sometimes end up staying up late and only getting a 2-3 hours of sleep due to stress.
I suppose my point is that not everyone scrolls out of laziness or neglect. That doesn't make it okay. Just wanted to give a different perspective. I suppose I need to somehow find time to decompress between work and home life. Tough to do when working at home in a small poorly soundproofed house.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5hr ago
Which matters more, act or conviction?
Isn't this one of the classic post-Reformation Christian theological arguments? Whether faith alone is enough (common among Protestants), or whether good works are required in addition to faith (IIRC approximately the Catholic view), or as a pathway to faith. Or whether those works are an orthogonal separate good. Or maybe its just predestination all the way down (Calvinism).
But I am curious when OP's essay was written: Obama hasn't been president for a while, and I haven't heard the name Ben Bernake at all recently.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
5hr ago
Honestly I'm confused what the point of Leonardo Di Caprio's character was.
The character had no point. Leonardo Di Caprio did. And it was getting consumers to actually show up and consoom.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
5hr ago
Which matters more, act or conviction?
Imagine a man who truly believes in doing good, but refuses to act for fear of personal consequences. What use was their conviction?
Imagine another who is utterly cynical and self-serving, but who performs an elaborate pantomime of do-gooding as a social manipulation tactic. Is good done any less?
What happens when the entire edifice of do-gooding is just cynical manipulation tactics lost in a purity spiral and stray idiot true-believing chaff?
MrNanaue
5hr ago
Selecting for Cynicism in the Ivy League
I did high-school in Chile, graduating in 1985—but I only got around to applying to U.S. colleges in 1990. When I finally did apply, I was a flat broke 22 year-old—naturally, I applied only to need-blind schools: There was no point in getting into a college I couldn’t afford. So I pinned my college hopes almost exclusively on Ivy League schools, because all of them had need-blind admissions.
This wasn’t as fool-hardy as it sounds. I had the grades and the test scores—99 percentiles. But what I later realized made me so attractive to admissions committees was that I’d done stuff: Travelled through the Peruvian jungle, complete with a run-in with Shining Path guerrillas. Protested the Pinochet dictatorship, and gotten sprayed by a guanaco (water cannon) for my troubles. Lived through a 7.7 earthquake. Taught English as a second language. Written a first novel.
(I’d also done a few things which I realized wouldn’t go down so very well with the various admissions committees—like arranging my first FMF threeway at 19, brokering a sizable pot sale at 20, and other such adventures. These achievements I kept to myself.)
So when the envelopes from the various admissions committees finally got to my mailbox, they were all fat—I was lucky enough to have my pick of schools.
For fairly ridiculous reasons mostly having to do with the nearby Skiway and the shiny computers every freshman was supposed to get on arrival, I chose Dartmouth as my school. When I got to Hanover as a proud member of the Class of ‘95, I was surrounded by kids who were completely different from me.
Not in their brains or even their backgrounds. Most of them were—like me—private school kids of well-to-do parents. Most of them were—like me—incredibly smart, yet fairly arrogant about those smarts. Most of them—like me—had read pretty much everything, and could talk—knowledgeably—about just about anything.
But there was one big difference between me and my peers:
Community service, and volunteer work.
All of my peers in the Class of ‘95 had done boatloads of community service and volunteer work, before arriving in Hanover: Either reading to blind elderly people in nursing homes, or volunteering at the local homeless shelter. Fundraising for the Make A Wish foundation, or candy stripping at the local AIDS clinic. Going door-to-door for Amnesty International, or Greenpeace, or the World Wildlife Fund—these kids had done all these things.
It wasn’t just the ordinary American clubs and organizations that these kids had joined: Not merely 4-H, or the Boy Scouts (actually, there were precious few who had joined either one of those organizations). And it wasn’t short-lived trivial causes, like saving abandoned puppies for one Sunday afternoon in the year.
Just about all my peers at Dartmouth had joined socially aware charities and causes, and had devoted quite a bit of their free time to them. Quite a bit of work to them, often as much time and effort as if these causes had been paid part-time jobs: Ten to twenty hours a week devoted to these causes was not uncommon.
At first, I was rather intimidated by all this do-goodism—obviously: I was a hedonistic little shit. To me, “doing good” meant scoring some Thai stick, lining up a hot girl for the weekend, and being on a first-name basis with the doorman of coolest club.
But reading to blind people? Cleaning the diapers of old people in a nursing home? Teaching parolees whatever? Hell, I didn’t even know any parolees . . . except maybe my dealer.
So naturally, I was rather awed by all this do-goodism—at first. This do-goodism seemed to render my peers morally pure in a way that I could never be—
—that moral awe of mine lasted all of half a day.
Chatting with my new classmates on my first day in Hanover, I quickly learned that none of this do-goodism was genuine. That wasn’t my verdict—it was the verdict of my peers: The very ones who had done all this do-goodism admitted to me that it was not genuine—had never been genuine.
It was all done in an effort to get into a “good school”.
Since I’d done my high-school in Chile, I was completely ignorant of all these calculations—so my new classmates gave me an education. Very casually, as we hiked to Moosilauke Lodge—a trek every Dartmouth student makes before classes start—my classmates told me the ins and outs of extra-curriculars, and which were necessary in order to get into an Ivy League school:
One of the extra-curriculars had to be in a sport, varsity being the best. Another had to be a “leadership” extracurricular, like student government, or debate, or at least the presidency of some high-school club or other. One or two “creative” extra-curriculars never hurt, like glee-club or band or theater.
But community service or volunteer work was key: Any student serious about getting into an Ivy simply had to do community service or volunteer work.
Four years of high school meant eight “community service” extra-curriculars—one per semester. Anything more would seem like you were a “dabbler”, and therefore “weren’t serious”. But anything less would show a “lack of commitment”, which was equally bad. And the extra-curriculars had to be more or less aligned: You couldn’t read to blind people one semester and then go save the whales in the next. Rather, you had to work on saving the whales in one semester, and then volunteer to work on an organic farm in the next: That showed you were “environmentally aware”. Or else you had to tend a soup kitchen for the homeless, then read to the elderly in the next semester: That showed you were “socially engaged”.
My fellow Dartmouth students, as well as students at all the other Ivies that I would get to know over the years, did all this do-goodism as a requirement, in order to get into a good school—an Ivy League school.
They did it in order to get ahead—and they were openly encouraged to do it: Not just by their parents, but by their high-school guidance counselors, their college prep advisors, even the visiting admissions deans of the very universities they were applying to—
—it was simply part of the admissions process: “It’s like taking calculus,” I still remember a girl named Debra, from Nebraska, telling me on the bus ride back to Hanover from Moosilauke Lodge. “You have to grind it out, and get it over with.”
What is cynicism?
It’s the belief that people act for purely self-interested reasons, rather than out of honorable or selfless motives.
If you are encouraged to do certain highly visible “community service” and “volunteer work” for no other reason than to get something that you want—in other words, if you are encouraged to “do good” in order to get into a prestigious university—what does that teach you? What does that teach the youth of a country—especially the best and the brightest—the ones with the most promise?
We usually think of cynicism as an affliction of the world-weary and the jaded—a malady of people who have lived long enough, and seen enough enough, to be turned into cynics. They’re usually self-aware: They are men and women who have watched their innocence fall by the wayside, milled away over the years by the acts of selfish people—including their own—leaving them thinking that all is done for selfish, base reasons, no matter how seemingly pure the act.
To the cynic, no matter how selfless an action seems, at bottom, it is selfish and base. That’s why a cynic is such a sorry thing: He sees the world in the lonely monochrome of shades of selfishness. To a cynic, all surface hides retchedness and deceit. To a cynic, there is nothing good or decent or wholesome behind any act, no matter how seemingly noble or selfless. Neither love, nor goodness, nor beauty, nor insight can exist to such a worldview—to the cynic, all is selfishness. All is base and without honor or goodness. All is for sale.
One thing people don’t realize about cynics is, they are inherently conservative.
This is key: Cynics don’t believe in anything—nihilism is the nasty undertaste of the cynic’s bitterness. So since they don’t believe in anything, they don’t believe in changing things for the better. To the cynic, there is no “better”—there are only changes as to whose selfish benefit is being affirmed, and whose selfish benefit is being denied.
That’s the terrible worldview of the cynic—a perspective that leads to decay and death, nothing more, because to the cynic, there is nothing to aspire to.
And that is the education that Ivy League freshmen learned, in order to acceed to those ivy-covered towers—that lesson learned has become the necessary fee, to advance to the highest echelons of American society, and power: There is nothing noble and good to aspire to—it is all selfish and base.
At the time that I spoke to Debra, on that bus ride back to Dartmouth, I thought she was so clever, to have maneuvered the system so as to get her way.
But now—as a grown man—I’m fairly horrified by that conversation with Debra: I’m horrified by what it revealed. About her. About the other students on the bus. About all the people percolating up through the Ivy League.
I’m no historian of American higher education: I have no idea when simple academic merit was replaced by this perverse con-game of community service and volunteer work. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it was an outgrowth of the student movement of the 1960’s. Did the required do-goodism become necessary for admission in the ‘70’s, or in the ‘80’s? I have no idea—all I know is, when I matriculated at Dartmouth in the fall of 1991, it was the way things were.
And it’s the way things still are, among admissions to the elite schools in the United States: A system that inculcates a core cynicism of frightening power. If anything—because of the cut-throat competition to get into Ivy League schools today—it’s worse than before.
Now, this would all seem to be so academic, this discussion of cynicism among Ivy League students—but it’s not, and for a very simple reason:
These people who have been taught such a powerful lesson in cynicism are the very same people who make up the leadership classes of the United States today.
This sensibility—this cynicism—informs today’s politics. In fact, every political and economic decision we see today is colored by that monochromatic cynicism. In fact I would argue that nothing that America’s leadership does today—in any field—can be understood without realizing that it is coming out of a deep wellspring of cynicism.
A lot of people—thoughtful but marginal people, who have no power in America—are so surprised that Barack Obama seems more concerned with the appearance of progress, change and reform, rather than the actuality of progress, change and reform. Many people—especially non-Establishment center-leftists—seem flummoxed that Obama has continued so many of George W. Bush’s illegal and immoral War On Terror measures; indeed, has not merely continued them, but expanded many of these measures, such as the authority to assassinate American citizens abroad, at the president’s whim. Something not even Nixon dared dream of—yet which Obama’s administration is defending tooth and nail.
Me, I’m not a bit surprised—in fact, I anticipated Obama’s moral timidity insofar as real change and reform on the one hand, and conservatism when it came to continuing Bush administration policies regarding torture and executive power on the other. I’m not psychic—but I did anticipate the half-measures of the Obama administration’s policies. Or rather, I anticipated the superficiality of so many of his “reforms”—be it health-care, financial reform, Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on and so forth.
I anticipated them because I know the type: Obama was a type I saw at Dartmouth all over the place. So is Timothy Geithner—Dartmouth class of 1983. So is Ben Bernanke. So are all the people in leadership positions today in America.
You see, the cynic is timid: He can’t go beyond the status quo. He won’t go beyond the status quo, because he doesn’t believe in anything beyond the status quo.
The problem with the United States today is, the status quo is leading the country right off the cliff. Financially, militarily, morally—the status quo is a death sentence, for the United States. America has to change directions now.
But it won’t. Because the leadership class—in politics, the press, business, finance—is made up of these timid cynics that were taught so well in the Ivy League.
The is—of course—a tragedy. A tragedy is sad because you in the audience see how the characters’ actions will lead to their downfall—yet you cannot prevent it. You can only observe.
So we observe.
FtttG
5hr ago
When looking at the country as a whole, I would suspect Polish and Hindi.
When looking at Dublin, it might be Portuguese and Mandarin.
FtttG
6hr ago
One of my new year's resolutions was to read at least 26 books this year. About halfway through the book I rather strongly felt I was no longer enjoying it, but I didn't want the time I'd invested so far to go to waste.
To be fair to Zink, the book wasn't boring as such. Her style isn't funny, but it's at least easy to read.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
Creationism is about twice as popular as woke ideas in opinion polls.
Bingbong
6hr ago
Honestly I'm confused what the point of Leonardo Di Caprio's character was. The movie essentially doesn't change if you just cut him. Maybe the funny phone call scene is lost but nothing much else.
I'm somewhat distressed by your distress over what, Twitter and Reddit comments? I hope you find peace.
Your link to your previous comment is about people wishing Trump would die. I am sure we could find an infinite number of comments wishing death on Hillary (or Biden, or Obama) if that would make you feel better.
Similarly, the reddit thread linked below is really boring? I did not see any calls for violence, although there was a TON of "whattaboutism".
It's also such a nothing burger, it's about a Democrat saying:
Which isn't tasteful, but a common joke template.
Comparing this to a Pogrom is somewhat hysterical, I genuinely hope you find some peace.
EDIT FOR FAIRNESS: After re-reading his comments, he made other gross insinuations as well. He is clearly not fit to be a public figure. He may have wished ill upon Gilbert's children, which is really bad, although given the leak doesn't involve what would otherwise be a profound smoking gun, it is not clear he did in fact do that.
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