domain:shapesinthefog.substack.com
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13hr ago
China has started on Biggest Dam (60 GW peak capacity, or about an entire UK's worth of annual electricity production if it works out): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medog_Hydropower_Station
thinking more about a physical, non-software based major visionary project that's happening in the physical world.
Why? The AI buildout is way bigger than anything else that's remotely feasible in the near-term. I'm a fan of nuclear fusion and nuclear generally, I think it'd be great to mine asteroids. Setting up largescale underwater mines would be cool. Doing something in Antarctica would also be good. Anything besides more welfare programs or endlessly increasing health costs, I'd welcome a big investment in anti-aging.
But I also have a sense of scale, AI is the front-page story even if people feel a bit tired of it. People talk about arcologies and they build data centres. The hyperscalers are spending about $200-300 billion on data centres annually. That's about one Apollo program every single year. The Medog hydro station is supposed to cost a mere $137 billion over 8 years. Even with a 3x blowout that's peanuts compared to AI. Microsoft alone is spending more than that.
What could be more visionary than bringing alien minds into existence? Elon made his fame as a hard-sciences guy with rockets, cars, tunnels but he's moved over into AI because of how important it is.
Come on, are Brits really going to pack up shop and go not to the North of England, not to the Welsh countryside or the highlands of Scotland or even the Falkland Islands... but Antarctica? Infamously uninhabitable Antarctica, with a kilometre of ice covering anything important, with seasonal accessibility, icebergs, vast distances to anywhere else? It's not like there's an asteroid's worth of minerals there.
Vision must be matched by cost-efficiency and prospective gains if it's to be anything but a pipe-dream. The cost of AI development is enormous but the potential gains are staggering. The cost of space colonization is perhaps slightly smaller but the gains aren't so great. While Western civilization underinvests in R&D and capital generally, it should be directed at the most high-leverage targets first.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
13hr ago
Bernie Sanders isn't a liberal. Neither am I. That is not a novel observation. I am telling that I am not a liberal. Observing this is not as effective of a strike as you think it is. And to say 'people pursue policies they personally think are good' is also a observation of little worth. Everyone does this. I am not totally cynical to believe that everyone is lying about their priors. I don't deny they have principles: I just think they're fatally compromised, stupid, quokka principles.
Frankly, we're not really arguing, because you're just stating the obvious and believing that it supports your position.
I am not an American. I do not care about America in the way an American would. But let me tell you this. A free-market capitalist economic zone is mutually exclusive with the vision of America as a Christian nation. There is no 'good policy' that is seen as good by partisans of either. Just ask anyone about the 'trans genocide' and how policy on one end can be seen as the malicious politics of revenge by the other. This is where I am actually cynical. People profess support for self-destructive policy all the time for no other reason that it gets their enemy's goat all the time.
You must accept that people are willing to hurt themselves, and very badly, just so that those who have it coming get what they richly deserve.
But if you don't understand the human impulse for justice, then there's no point in continuing the conversation, either. Darwin's dodos didn't understand humans either. Go hang out with TracingWoodgrains as he embarks on his quest to find the principled liberals of America. Eventually, someone will listen to him. Maybe they will even write a sternly written letter to the illiberal in charge. Who knows? God makes everything possible.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
13hr ago
You're right. Revenge is bad and unprincipled. I stand ready to applaud your valiant and arduous efforts to convince the Democrats to not seek retaliation or revenge after what gets done to them over the next 3.5-12 years, and to lash them with scathing criticisms for every hypocritical turn.
Just point us to where you're doing that. I'm eager to start applauding.
I've gotten testy on this topic here before. Maybe to you. Maybe to an old alt of yours, or someone else. But I'm going to be real with you dawg. Really, really-real. Ready?
If you want to argue for disarmament and cooperation, you have to already have a plausible commitment from your own side.
That's table stakes. That's the cover charge at the door before you even get to enter the building where the table is. Non-negotiable. Because without that, you're just a fool walking up to an enemy army (while your own stands battle-ready, blades still wet with the lifeblood of wounded POWs) and asking them why they insist on fighting. The audacity is just breathtaking.
And I notice, because of course I do, that no one ever, ever, ever, ever, ever makes this argument at Democrats. That they should just stop fighting, because fighting and defection is bad. None of the examples in this post are Democrats leaning into a revenge narrative. Even though that's functionally their entire pathos at the moment, with the calls to counter-gerrymander even harder and apply nebulous violence to all ICE agents.
Can you draft up a letter to Gavin Newsome, explaining that he's being a hypocritical, unprincipled fool?
Are you aware that you won't even try? I honestly wonder how cynical these takes are. Is this the work of Grimma Wormtongue? Or just Retarded Rose Tico?
Because in the real world of Iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas between actual factions that have their own beliefs and minds and aren't just going to be Jedi Mind Tricked into suicide, tit-for-tat is a generally optimal policy. Revenge is a fully sufficient justification when you don't want people to hurt you again, and you don't have a trustworthy arbiter to seek justice on your behalf.
And the way your faction approaches this instead, is something like insane demon logic. When someone chooses to cooperate, progressives defect against them with savage malice. And when someone defects, progressives choose to cooperate (with other people's money).
Slave Morality risen to halls of power, laureled in madness.
So please, show me any sign that someone on the other side is willing to take an L for the sake of peace. Because if you're not even capable of waving a truce flag when you come make the breathtakingly audacious demand for disarmament, then the response need not be civil.
JTarrou
13hr ago
It means they consistently believe this tactic will build them credibility to burn in the future on some more important issue. You're not even close to cynical enough for politics.
JTarrou
13hr ago
Every organizations chooses the battle to burn their carefully built credibility in. The ACLU dropped free speech to chemically castrate gay kids. Weird flex, but ok.
One day FIRE will as well. I can only imagine how stupid the issue will be.
JTarrou
13hr ago
Principles are easy until you've lost a few elections. Once you realize no one else has them, it becomes difficult to maintain an interest in such a filthy game without playing it.
JTarrou
14hr ago
Pointless ideologically, potentially important demographically. Hard patriarchy is what gets birthrates up.
hydroacetylene
14hr ago
I mean, it’s a news story every few years that the pope(or secular Italian government) offers to pay for medical treatment for some very sick baby thé NHS is pulling the plug on and the organs of the British state won’t let the parents take him to it.
Primaprimaprima
I am trying so hard not to say the MBTI type of everyone I reply to
14hr ago
It essentially implies the difference between the right wing and left wing argument about things are about morals and not about the effectiveness of policy or economic ideas
"Effectiveness of policy" is that last thing that political disagreements are about. If you listed all the causes of political conflict in order of importance and relevance, "effectiveness of policy" would rank around... 67th place? Maybe?
Political conflicts arise because of clashes between incommensurate value systems, misalignment of tribal interests, the competing demands of heterogeneous subjectivities, emotional biases both conscious and unconscious... if political conflicts could be settled through rational argumentation then people would have done so already.
Of course people will still try to convince themselves that politics is really about "policy", for various reasons. It could be because they're classical liberals who recognize that liberalism needs to postulate a universal, expansive, and malleable blank slate core as part of human nature in order for liberalism to function at large scales over long periods of time. Or it could be because they find the idea of human subjectivity to be intrinsically uncomfortable, and a world of rational information-processing agents is more amenable to their tastes. Whatever the reason.
The sooner you adjust your frame of reference, the sooner things will start making sense.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
14hr ago
Oh dear. It's fixed now.
hydroacetylene
14hr ago
You mind unfiltering the comment you’re replying to?
hydroacetylene
14hr ago
The parts of Siberia that people actually live in(a non-negligible number of them), are much warmer than Antarctica. They have trees, and you can swim in the water.
Are people moving to Nunavut? Neither the traditional nor the modern Nunavut subsistence strategy is likely to be allowed by the British(they’re opposed when Japan does it) in Antarctica, nor is it very appealing to outsiders. Greenland, likewise, is a wasteland of severe alcoholism and doesn’t seem to generate any ROI for Denmark. The Inuit may be fine people, but they’re not taking to modernity very well. You’ll notice that the European colonies in the warmest parts of Greenland failed.
JarJarJedi
14hr ago
the right frames the last 20 years as if the left sat in a war room and planned out a list of slow coordinated encroachments
Oh no, "encroachments" stage was decades before. The last 20 years was "the walls are breached, time to burn and pillage!" stage. Unlike many preceding stages of the campaign, this one doesn't really require careful coordination - just letting your foot soldiers do their worst works fine. Does each foot soldier realize they what they are collectively doing? Maybe yes, maybe no, but it doesn't matter because it is happening anyway.
but there are certainly places that ban left-leaning opinions
Like what? Let's take the inventory. The mass culture is about 90%, it's not that right-coded entertainment doesn't come out, but it comes out maybe once a year or less, and is always a huge controversy. Woke is the default and considered normal setting. The academia is thoroughly cleansed - lone celebrity professors that can't be cancelled are profoundly isolated and kept around to demonstrate "here, we have all kinds!" but on non-genius level, if you're not woke or at least pretend to be, you don't have a chance. Teaching the teachers? Thoroughly woke. Teaching the lawyers? Mostly woke too. I'm not talking about history, sociology and pol-sci - there's probably no right-wing professor left there in the nation, and the "moderates" there see Sanders as a dangerous right-winger. The press is absolutely woke on the "official" side of it - even the dreaded Fox News is at best "center-left company which tolerates some of the right hosts" (for a time). Of course, there are independent bloggers and radio, but as far as institutional press goes, it's very heavily left leaning. I'm not talking about such powerful institutions as government bureaucracy or the unions - their leftist sympathies are predictable and expected. Other cultural institutions? I can't go to a museum now without encountering at least several woke exhibit - and sometimes the whole exposition is subsumed by the woke and it's no longer about art but about social justice or climate change or some other woke cause like that.
What we have left - big business? More and more major companies come out as woke, and very rarely the reverse - that is mostly small to mid-size independent businesses. Banks are glad to debank right-wing figures - but did any of them debank prominent leftists? Not that I heard of. Billionaires tend to the woke side (understandably, they can buy power there) - for one Musk, there's three Cubans, Soroses, Simonses and so on. The army now has pride parades and features soldiers in furry costumes. I'm pretty sure the officers who authorized that are not inclined to listen to any contrary opinions.
Now, which prominent places ban leftist opinions? Internet forums? Local gun enthusiast meetups? Which cultural institute, comparable to what I described above, is excluding the left-leaning opinions to a measure comparable to exclusion and persecution of the right-wing ones? If we can't find any, or can't find a list as comprehensive and powerful, then demanding the right stops fighting back - without any history of prior consistent and prolonged demand to do the same from the left, at least - can not be read as anything but telling the right "why can't you just lose quietly so we all can stop this unpleasantness?". It is not hard to see why the right wouldn't look favorably on such approach.
Surely the left would tell a similar story about how they were all for free expression until the mean old right wouldn't leave them alone
And that's true. They were, when the right had institutional power and tried to shut down all kinds of leftist speech. And lost (mostly). The famous "fire in crowded theater" maxim was pronounced specifically against the leftist anti-war speech, and was overturned as a grave mistake later (99% of leftists aren't aware of either of these facts). Now, when the leftists have the power, they have no need in free speech anymore, and it's the right's turn to fight for it. But that turnaround wasn't caused by the right going "too far" - on the contrary, it was caused by the left seizing the institutional power and no longer needing the feeble "free speech" soapbox when they can use the powerful platforms provided by the institutions they captured.
hydroacetylene
14hr ago
Ok, this is a fundamentally different perspective on politics, I am an active Republican because democrats hate me. The remaining democrats would say the same in reverse.
Of course, I would say they are wrong and I am right- I notice that democrats are very hostile to my tribe. Presumably, you disagree, but I think the government should protect my tribe from people who hate us. I don’t think you disagree with me(although you might on the premise). I also want protection from democrats more than I want any particular good policy.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
14hr ago
When have the Democrats nationalized a private company?
Consider also that this is simply retarded. It's not Trump or Republicans who will own $INTC, it's the United States Government, and so in 3.5 years it'll likely be handed to "Democrats".
roystgnr
14hr ago
Oh, no, I'm mixing up the premises of 1 and 4! I'd like to say that it's the scriptwriters fault for going to the "mysterious alien menace threatens Earth and the twist is that it's actually connected to 20th century humanity" well more than once, but I'm just trying to rationalize away my own shame.
Tolkien has always had a loyal following among college-educated conservative Christians, and my mom was recommended The Hobbit at a Christian college.
I think he had a lot of loyal followings. My first introduction to Tolkien by name was in writing by Isaac Asimov (Jewish atheist), and of course modern medieval-fantasy from D&D onward is like 80% Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off.
She does love the Peter Jackson films, but insists that everyone should watch the extended editions.
Of course! Especially the Two Towers extended edition - the theatrical version didn't include Saruman's death, and without knowing that Jackson had made that change to the plot it was unnecessarily disappointing to see The Return of the King end with no scouring of the shire.
Also, you have to watch the Hobbit films either first or not-at-all. My kids got to enjoy them for what they were, not having seen the Lord of the Rings first, but then looking back after the LotR trilogy they understood how disappointed I must have been.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
14hr ago
I mean, if, as the article suggests, sufficient quantities of valuable natural resources are found, every incentive will be there to make those services available. It's probably not going to be that much harder than building remote North Sea wells or setting up shop in Siberia.
sodiummuffin
14hr ago
How is "adopt the policies of your political opponents" even responding negatively to them? Whether Trump or Harris gets a 10% government stake in Intel the result is the same, the only difference is which side supports it and what justifications they use. Would it make sense for Democrats to respond negatively to Trump by building the wall?
The only thing that would make it at least somewhat different is if the party doing it used it to somehow dictate Intel policy in a partisan way, but that isn't happening in this case and it would be short-term regardless, since after the next election it doesn't matter who was in power when it happened. It's not adopting left-wing tactics against them, Trump just genuinely believes in a bunch of left-wing policy positions like opposition to free trade and government ownership of companies.
There seems to be a recent tendency I've noticed online where people are so eager to signal animosity by throwing away their principles that they'll do it when it doesn't make any sense. For instance I've seen several cases where SJWs censored something and there were comments kneejerk supporting it as "what goes around comes around" because they somehow misinterpreted which side the censorship was coming from. If you don't have principles besides "oppose the enemy", and also you don't understand what your enemy believes, it's pretty easy to end up supporting the enemy against your own side.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
Pfft.. If your megastructure isn't large enough to have its own microclimate and cloud formation, it doesn't count.
NASA swears the Vehicle Assembly Building doesn't form its own clouds. But the version of that story I originally heard isn't that it formed its own clouds, but that it did so before they put in a ginormous air conditioner to prevent it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
And yet public health officials keep pressing for COVID vaccines for young, healthy adults and children.
Sure, but what do I have to do with that? As it stands, the side effect profile from the jab is no minimal that the harm is negligible, even if that's the case for the benefits in that age group.
You're still defending it, that's what you have to do with that. And I disagree; the typical flu-like symptoms from the COVID vaccines are already not "negligible".
Sigh. If there was a concerted effort at any point in time, it would have to have been a pan-national cover up of frankly astonishing proportions. If civilization was that good at organization, we'd have a Dyson sphere by now.
We had a pan-national shutdown of a vast array of normal activity. Civilization is clearly that good at organization; Dyson spheres are just harder. That said, the myocarditis coverup was clumsy by comparison and mostly consisted of public health officials lying a lot.
Pancreatic cancer consistently gets a podium finish in World's Worst Cancer To Get competition.
Yes, which is why it's good marketing for boosters to claim any given new technology has a chance of curing it.
So fucking what if it's expensive?
Yeah, that's the attitude that's making health care costs rise.
Drugs tend to get cheaper over time.
This isn't a single drug, it's a specific new drug for each patient.
It is not an intrinsic property of mRNA vaccines that they must be expensive and personalized, they can be spammed by the shipload when circumstances demand.
It IS an intrinsic property of this pancreatic cancer treatment that they must be personalized.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
14hr ago
Pfft.. If your megastructure isn't large enough to have its own microclimate and cloud formation, it doesn't count.
I blame the fact that, unfortunately, real estate prices aren't high enough to encourage that kind of vertical growth, and probably NIMBYism. Most of the world's ills can be blamed on the latter, so what's one more?
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
14hr ago
I wasn't thinking about it in a sort of "grass is greener" sense (I really am quite happy being invisible!) It strikes me more as a people vs things dichotomy. Like, the detailed flourishes of the attention are the draw of the work, for women readers, where as it's just not for male readers. And that isn't to say that women don't appreciate some plot, or men some interpersonal character moments. But I observe a sort of fascination from one or the other that serves as a fairly reliable tell.
And I would bet that for women authors, delivering satisfying amounts of good attentions, and satisfying comeuppances for bad attention is possibly the most important skill in their craft.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
15hr ago
My doctor friends told me once about Daughter from California Syndrome. I don't suppose you have an equivalent over there?
Sadly, we do. It is a human universal, including back in India. On the contrary, the fact that there's no financial incentivefor us to "do everything" means that it's easier to say no, though I have sufficient respect for my American brethren to assume they usually manage something in the end.
Drama is a great component of good rhetoric.
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
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