domain:streamable.com
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
13hr ago
Olive beat me to it! Here's the full quote, from a letter Lewis wrote to a friend in 1939:
What did you think of Snowwhite and the VII Dwarfs? I saw it at Malvern last week. . . . Leaving out the tiresome question of whether it is suitable for children (which I don’t know and don’t care) I thought it almost inconceivably good and bad—I mean, I didn’t know one human being could be so good and bad. The worst thing of all was the vulgarity of the winking dove at the beginning, and the next worst the faces of the dwarfs. Dwarfs ought to be ugly of course, but not in that way. And the dwarfs’ jazz party was pretty bad. I suppose it never occurred to the poor boob that you could give them any other kind of music. But all the terrifying bits were good, and the animals really most moving: and the use of shadows (of dwarfs and vultures) was real genius. What might not have come of it if this man had been educated—or even brought up in a decent society?
EvanTh
13hr ago
But by that reasoning, wouldn't the drawing of state legislative districts also be a purely internal act? Because the states are sovereign, and if a state want one district to be ten times the size of another, that's its sovereign right?
You've got a strong argument, but it flies in the face of decades-old Supreme Court precedent which I haven't heard anyone arguing to overturn.
jkf
13hr ago
It's not a good idea to go off such n=1 anecdotes in general.
Certainly true -- I'd consider it n=2 now though! My lifestyle absolutely involves a lot less exposure to infectious diseases than yours, so I doubt that I'm like highly immune anymore -- but would expect severity to remain mild if I get it again.
How severe were your more recent infections?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
13hr ago
There's yet to be an example I can think of where he made a promise then got beaten by a competitor to delivering on it.
Tesla robotaxi comes to mind. Waymo has been serving customers and steadily increasing its coverage for years now. Musk has been promising autonomous robotaxis since 2019 (initial timeline: 2020) and Waymo launched its Phoenix pilot in 2022.
faceh
14hr ago
Agreed. Hence I generally support the Rationalist project, hopeless as it seems.
faceh
14hr ago
Yep.
But it starts to drive you (well, ME) a tiny bit insane to have to act 'normal' while you have an acute awareness of the impending moment.
I literally cannot believe that I'm sitting at my desk, at work, while some other dude, in a lab or office somewhere else, is engineering an AI that is going to replace my job or possibly kill me in a few years.
Its like if humanity discovered the massive Egg that Godzilla was about to hatch from. And scientists on analysis estimate that "This thing is going to hatch within 2-10 years, and there's not much we can do about it."
But I have to go back to work and ignore the Godzilla egg and do spreadsheets and contracts and all the stuff that keeps society moving, knowing that unless the hatching fails entirely, none of this will make a damn spit of difference.
faceh
14hr ago
If I may AKSHULLY for a moment.
He overpromises and never delivers on schedule...
And then STILL delivers an end result closer to the hype than any of his rivals.
That's been the secret. Hype something up and then deliver (eventually) a product that doesn't live up to the hype but is still better than anything else in its class.
There's yet to be an example I can think of where he made a promise then got beaten by a competitor to delivering on it.
So failing to deliver isn't fatal if nobody else can beat you to delivering.
Blueberry
14hr ago
Lab leak has a few things going for it, but these are always presented in isolation and no pushback. It is worth to read through Scotts Lab-Leak-Megapost, which is itself only a summary/review of the 15 hours of Lab-Leak-debate videos. I wouldn't rule out Lab-Leak completely, but I downgraded its probability.
lagrangian
14hr ago
maybe "continuity" is the word you're looking for?
hydroacetylene
14hr ago
China seems unlikely, but the EU, on the other hand…
hydroacetylene
14hr ago
You can’t, in a nation of laws, just go around seizing people’s shit.
TowardsPanna
14hr ago
Should I abandon my main reddit account?
It's got hundreds of thousands of karma but has been in use for 14 years and was once compromised by a paypal deal where my real name was revealed to one redditor...
Blueberry
14hr ago
Yet, the most visceral image of it is Bill Gates releasing non-viral mosquitoes to a room of white people:
Ha, didn't know that. It is quickly over though, more dorky thing in a longer nerdy presentation by Gates, than a flashy publicity stunt.
hydroacetylene
14hr ago
Columbia is an influential non-state institution, but it isn’t sovereign. Really us moderns tend to think of sovereignty as so tied in with statehood that the whole idea of institutional rights and prerogatives is undermined. The USFG won’t send in the 101st airborne every time; there are institutions right now who just accept minor sanctions to do thing the government doesn’t like very much. Relevantly for the topic, hillsdale and Bob jones universities. These have a limited sovereignty, not the full non-state sovereignty of, say, the order of Malta, but if the 101st airborne showed up at Hillsdale, well, Andorra wouldn’t exactly fair any better.
Tree
14hr ago
It would be a good start to remove their tax exempt status, sure. Seizing the money sounds bad, but this is not money that rightfully belongs to an individual proscribed by a capricious state, it’s from a heavily-subsidized institution that in theory performs government-like functions. It could be seen as just correcting some accounting mistake in the financing of government goals, or as making them pay some tax arrears, or inheritance tax.
You’re a reasonable guy, Ben. Maybe you can tell me what the obvious, very good reasons against a 1%/y wealth tax is. All I ever hear is that taxes are bad, which okay fair enough, but that’s not specific, and liquidity problems, which I don’t find convincing. If you can’t cough up 1%, you’re either incompetent or bankrupt, and you shouldn’t be holding assets.
stuff that all of society benefits from, and almost nobody else wants to do.
That’s an argument from laziness, tainted with status quo bias. You want to fund science, fund it. There's no reason to delegate this power to universities, when it's clear their goals can very much diverge from the societally beneficial one. It's spelled out in the OP: they almost used the money society granted them to fight a titanic legal battle against the government for partisan reasons.
Your other argument is that since any one person or institution cannot fund all of USG, they shouldn’t be taxed.
hydroacetylene
14hr ago
Yes, and the flu shot has very similar but quieter opposition as the Covid vaccine- working class conspiracy theories that it spreads illness, shortens lifespans to save social security, doesn’t work at all but big pharma bribes employers to push it, etc are a dime a dozen.
hydroacetylene
14hr ago
My white, tradcath, smoking and drinking are what you do, Covid measures are the mark of the beast circles did very well.
Face it- the virus just doesn’t affect people who don’t give a shit.
I did have an uncle whose annual hospital stay was due to Covid. But, like, his annual hospital stay.
zoink
14hr ago
The neurotic shot takers I know do seem to be sick a lot, but they also seemed to be sick a lot before covid. Possibly too much observation bias for me to draw a strong conclusion.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
14hr ago
Exactly. The entire trans-sports debate needs to be reframed in those terms: the debate isn't really whether MTFs can be allowed to compete, it's whether they be allowed to win.
Which is what's so frustrating about the dishonesty of the debate. Athletics are great, I'm a big advocate for them, but formal competitions aren't a necessary component. There are plenty of hobbyists across many sports who never compete, will never compete, and still get a lot out of it. Most rock climbers never compete. Most golfers never enter a tournament. Most Yogi aren't even aware of the idea of a tournament!
Most of the people at my BJJ gym will never enter a formal comp, and while the girls tend to stick together at need the rolls are co-ed. If a trans girl joined the gym, she'd have every opportunity to advance at the gym, and if I had to roll with her (though I'd probably avoid it if I could) I'd treat her like anyone else weaker than me, and she'd be expected to treat other women the same way. It's only once you start talking about a comp that there's any possibility of real trouble, and most people never enter comps. Hell, my good friend is a black belt, entered one tournament in his life, broke his collarbone, and immediately said "never doing that again."
Trans advocates, taking them in good faith, are giving trans girls terrible advice when they send them to join the track team, where they'll be constantly hounded. If a trans girl has interest in athletics, she should just pick up hobbyist athletics without the expectation of winning medals in anything.
hydroacetylene
14hr ago
The implication of calling it ‘Kung flu’ ‘chink virus’ ‘Chinese cringe aids’ etc was, in the minds of those actually calling it that ‘it’s a flu. It’s way overblown.’
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
14hr ago
That helps, and those aren't stroads, but it's convenient for a variety of reasons to mingle residential and commercial developments (as has been done for nine thousand years from Chatalhoyuk until WWII).
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν
14hr ago
I’ve long since come to the conclusion that modern psychology and psychiatry are not just dead ends, but actually more harmful than anything else we could have come up with. It actually seems to make whatever problems that existed beforehand and makes them worse.
Yeah as I wrote above, I think that it can work in some cases for some people, but on the whole as a society I agree it's pretty corrosive to norms and civility.
I work in retail. I’ve apparently signed up to be an emotional tampon and am expected to accept that not only does the customer have the perfect right to treat me like crap, im not even allowed to object because “they might be having a bad day” or trouble at home or work or the moon is in the wrong astrological house.
Yep I've worked McDonalds and other jobs. It's not great. I feel for you man. Luckily enough if you're on here you're probably smart and well connected enough to find something much better.
The worst is in personal development. Because modern psychology encourages a feelings first model, people tend to overthink those feelings and put more emphasis on how you feel. This tends to make those feelings last longer and become deeper as you turn a bad day into a bad week and on to full on depression.
I actually do think "working through your feelings" is a legitimate thing, with incredible results. The problem is the actual teaching of it needs to be done by an incredibly wise and spiritually developed person to work. The vast, vast, vast majority of therapists are shambling emotional wrecks themselves, just spilling out their own pain and problems onto their clients.
Hence why I think working with God, Christ, or another idealized figure is, even from a purely secular/materialist lens, far better than trying to rely on flawed human therapists.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
14hr ago
· Edited 14hr ago
The AI community seems to care more about bioweapon risk, that's a big part of the whole AI safety rhetoric. But why should anyone care about whether AIs can synthesize bioweapons when the experts are already doing it so carelessly?
Nearly all of us also want GoF shut down, to be clear.
There is, however, some significant difference between "a vaccine-resistant smallpox pandemic", as bad as that would be, and the true final form of bioweapons that a superintelligent AI could possibly access.
The absolute best-case of what that looks like, as in "we know 100% that this can be done, we just don't know how yet" is an incompatible-biochemistry alga with reduced need for phosphate and a better carbon-fixer than RuBisCO (we know RuBisCO is hilariously bad by the standards of biochemistry; C4 and CAM plants have extensive workarounds for how terrible it is because natural selection can't just chuck it out and start over). Release this, it blooms like crazy across the whole face of the ocean (not limited to upwelling zones; natural algae need the dissolved phosphate in those, but CHON can be gotten from water + air), zooplankton don't bloom to eat it because of incompatible biochemistry, CO2 levels drop to near-zero because of better carbon fixation, all open-air crops fail + Snowball Earth. Humanity would probably survive for a bit, but >99% of humans die pretty quickly - and of course the AI that did it is possibly still out there, so focussing only on subsistence plausibly gets you knocked over by killer robots a few years later.
Medium-case is grey goo.
Worst-case is "zombie wasps for humans"/"Exsurgent Virus"; an easily-spread infection that makes human victims intelligently work to spread it. To be clear, this means it's in every country within a week of Patient Zero due to airports, and within a couple more weeks it's worked its way up to the top ranks of government officials as everyone prioritises infecting their superiors. Good. Luck. With. That.
It is possible for things, like normal GoF, to be extremely bad and yet still be a long way from the true, horrifying potential of the field.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
14hr ago
If you ever go door to door in local politics, you quickly learn to avoid greeting people by their first name, even if they know you could know their address-name connection, and know vaguely that you looked them up in voter records to know they are regular voters, they still get freaked out by being greeted that way.
This isn't on an app.
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