domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
5m ago
Note that Alexander Wales also has an ongoing work, Thresholder (currently at 650,000 words, vs. 1.7 million for Worth the Candle).
quiet_NaN
10m ago
It is linked under library on lesswrong, so it is kind of the top of the canon as far as rationalist fiction goes. Other major works are:
- Scott's Unsong (Original setting)
- Alexander Wales' "Worth the Candle" (Original setting)
- Alicorn's "Luminosity" (Twilight 'fan'-fiction, of all things)
- Eliezer et al's planecrash (collaborative glowfic, Dath Ilianian isekaied to the world of the RPG Pathfinder)
All of these authors also have shorter fiction. If you are unsure, I would start with something shorter and see if you like the style. There are also audiobooks of HPMOR and Unsong.
SophisticatedHillbilly
16m ago
The problem you’ve presented is not comparable to 1x1, but rather to (1x/y) x (1y), which would equal one in either system.
A better comparison is: you have a property that is 1 mile in length, and 1 mile in width. How large is it? Certainly not 1 mile. Is a response of 1 mile or 2 miles closer to reality?
I think the system we have for math is very useful, but it’s not necessarily cleaving reality perfectly at the joints, and maybe there’s a way it could be.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
23m ago
"aid from other parts of society" is how this underclass is maintained in its longstanding condition.
You know, I just got through a book about the Irish potato famine and the parallels between the 'Democrats run modern welfare plantations' narrative and Trevelyan are pretty interesting. You say welfare is how the underclass is maintained in it's current condition; Trevelyan says:
In his book The Irish Crisis, published in 1848, Trevelyan later described the famine as "a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence", one which laid bare "the deep and inveterate root of social evil", that evil being Ireland's rural economic system of exploitative landlords and peasants overly dependent on the potato. The famine, he declared, was "the sharp but effectual remedy by which the cure is likely to be effected... God grant that the generation to which this great opportunity has been offered may rightly perform its part and we may not relax our efforts until Ireland fully participates in the social health and physical prosperity of Great Britain." This mentality of Trevelyan's was influential in persuading the government to do nothing to restrain mass evictions.
In the summer of 1846, Trevelyan ordered the Peelite Relief Programmes, which had been operating since the early years of the famine, to be shut down. This was done on 21 July 1846 by Sir Charles Wood.[13] Trevelyan believed that if the relief continued while a new food crisis was unfolding, the poor would become permanently conditioned to having the state take care of them.[13]
I'm too lazy/short on time to pull actual quotes, so I hope you'll forgive me for copying wikipedia wholesale. It was the heyday of Adam Smith and laissez-faire economics, along with widespread acceptance of Malthusian philosophy (interesting for entirely different reasons in the debates around TFR), both of which influenced Trevelyan's thinking significantly. Trevelyan may have been correct that the situation in Ireland was untenable (TFR >4, increasingly small plots of land that necessitated subsistence potato farming, rampant poverty and illiteracy), but his actions directly led to the preventable deaths of 750,000-1,500,000 Irish and the emigration of a million more. I'm not convinced that his actions had any impact whatsoever on education, self-sufficiency or any meaningful improvement of the lot of the Irish. They also didn't noticeably move the needle on eliminating Catholicism, which he cared for about as much as he cared for their welfare.
There's a certain delicious irony that modern Ireland has double the GDP per capita of Britain, although my rudimentary understanding of economics is that this is largely due to finance and tax havenry rather than a truly productive economy. Regardless, given that it took Ireland more than century after the famine to turn things around, are you confident that Trevelyan's choice to let millions of people starve was correct? I'm working on a second book detailing the path from the potato famine to modern prosperity, but I have a hard time believing that you could draw any kind of causal connection between the two. Perhaps more germanely, are you confident that slashing welfare programs in the US would lead to the outcomes you (we?) want, and do you have any examples of underclasses being cut off from welfare and becoming prosperous within a generation or two?
quiet_NaN
47m ago
I think "someone says something with is laughably wrong and also outrageous on the motte" does not warrant a top-level post.
We have our share of trolls and Nazis. Every once in a while we get an holocaust denier. I am sure that I could make a civil argument about why we should kill and eat all the people with the letter x in their legal names as a matter of national policy without getting banned for it.
I think it is important to establish that a lack of refutation is not the same as silent approval. Trolls can make outrageous statements a lot quicker than anyone can refute them. See xkcd.
I mean, mods could use the "Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be." rule to shut down such comments, by ruling "denying humanity to a significant portion of extant h. sapiens is a claim which is so inflammatory that you should require ten recent articles in top-notch scientific journals making that claim as evidence" (and then relying on the fact that this level of evidence can not be met).
But this would also put us on a slippery slope to tone policing. As the late Niemoeller observed (paraphrased): "First they came for the holocaust deniers, and I said nothing because fuck Nazis. Then they came for the blacks-arent-humans people and I said nothing, because fuck racists. Then they came for the genetic-IQ-difference crowd, and I said nothing because it was not a topic which interested me. Then they came for me for using a generic masculine form and nobody was left to speak out for me." So I am kind of fine with the odd Nazi comment as a price to pay for having a forum where any opinion can be expressed, because some other controversial opinions are at least interesting.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
52m ago
Yes, you could, but the question is "how much?" You need to spend your money on satisfying the basic physiological needs of your slave, on preventing them from escaping, on forcing them to work.
And this work has to somehow be both simple, so your slave can't screw it up and force you to spend even more of your money, and lucrative, so the whole operation makes sense economically.
And the whole operation has to scale.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
53m ago
if we align incentives to drive synergy, we can realize asymmetric outcomes that act as network multipliers
But that's just "this looks like a situation where two or more people working together can get more than twice the work of two individuals working alone so let's see what it would take to get everyone interested in working together" said with more buzz. There's a perfectly logical concept behind that concept even if the language used might make it harder rather than easier for the listener to get the meaning.
ApplesauceIrishCream
54m ago
Sure, but that's not the point. I was talking about effects, not intent.
If a college girl says, "I have a boyfriend," she may intend that to mean, "I am not interested," or "I am interested."
In the first case, the statement may be true (she's being honest and straightforward) or false (she's saying buzz off, per @Skulldrinker's dude-repellant comment below).
In the second case, she's flirting, which is the context that @roystgnr was addressing above. This is an example of saying "no" when you mean "yes, please," and I agree, this may well be a filter intended to exclude guys who can't parse the conflicting social cues.
All of that said, what she is actually accomplishing is filtering in favor of guys who are willing to read "I have a boyfriend" as "please continue to flirt, this could go somewhere." This strategy is remarkably unlikely to attract a guy with integrity who wants to develop a relationship, especially when the one thing that traditional and progressive advice to guys agrees on is "no means no."
fishtwanger
59m ago
Yeah.
Also, another thing that bugs me is that, while we do see in the background some hints of how intensely Holmes studied various empirical fields, in the stories all of that takes a back seat to his brilliant feats of deduction. He comes across as effortlessly cool, and we rarely if ever see the kind of work that would be required for someone to build up such a base of knowledge. (It sounds similar to parts of being a doctor, that people have been writing about here, recently.)
fishtwanger
1hr ago
The Brits have a phrase, “overly personal” for getting too deep in someone else life story. Sometimes I want to enjoy a colorful cast without a therapeutic analysis.
Oh, wow, thanks for the phrase. That's precisely the thing that bugs me about so much sprawling Internet fiction (fan- or otherwise). The author feels the need to delve into the inner depths of so many different characters, and then the plot bogs down because anytime anything happens, we have to see the event from everyone's perspective, because each viewpoint is precious and important. G.R.R. Martin used to be a model for keeping this in check, but I think he started to succumb in his last few ASoIaF books.
somedude
1hr ago
For some of us it's more like we just give up. As far as I can tell, virtually every single place on earth where they make up the majority of the population is some kind of dysfunctional shithole and it doesn't seem to matter what continent it's on, what country it's in, or how many generations of effort well-meaning white liberals have squandered trying to fix it. It never gets better, and it doesn't look like it's ever going to.
It's not that we're all ideologically dedicated to the idea of HBD, necessarily, so much as it's the fact that the alternative is a hodgepodge of unfalsifiable just-so excuses that in aggregate strain credulity beyond the breaking point. I just don't really buy that they're equally capable but have coincidentally been kneecapped by one historical mishap or another, everywhere, a hundred percent of the time, forever.
I don't really buy that we just need to eradicate the latest iteration of structural systemic invisible racism and suddenly their homicide rate will plummet by 90%, etc. etc. I just don't buy it. It looks exactly like an ethnic group with lower IQ ending up exactly where you would expect it to while people make up other reasons for it. The idea that they're collectively capable of advanced civilization on their own is, let's say, unevidenced, and it doesn't look like that evidence is ever going to come.
remzem
1hr ago
When people refer to US empire they aren't really referring to a traditional empire in which one country benefits off another. It's more the "globalist" empire, or stateless elite empire. American's are just as much colonists having their wealth funneled off as any of the other vassals in Europe.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
Status in the progressive art scene
There’s a thread on Reddit about social progressive influences in the youth arts and music scene. (The link is an archive with all comments, no need for account.) It’s a glimpse into a social world from members who would otherwise not talk about it. This particular community is artistically and culturally aligned with progressive culture but politically more moderate or to the right. A lot of this you have probably heard before (quick to cancel, quick to signal), but I found the below selection to be informative:
”I grew up evangelical Christian going to youth events/camps blah blah and the in-group out-group culty dynamic is literally the same. None of these fuckers are individuals”
”i understand that obsessive complaining about "woke" stuff can be cringe, but when people claim that the dogma isn't actually as cartoonishly insane as it's made out to be, you know they have never played in bands in places like this. even actual RWers don't understand how crazy it gets. when my bf's parents make fun of pronoun stuff we're just like, don't even start, you guys have noo idea”
”I live in a particularly "progressive" part of Philadelphia, and this is how so many people are. I feel like so many people learned about the depths of systematic racism, started to scream about how terrible white people are, realized that they were white, and instead of learning a fucking thing about how to cope with this, they decided that they too are victims of systematic oppression, and this led to a spread of smug virtue signaling culture. Makes people feel like less of a potential perpetrator of racism or whatever phobias if they begin to identify with every marginalized identity they feasibly can”
”This generation are obsessed with curating their looks amd their spaces. Everything is tailored, edited, thought out and calculated except the music and the lyrics. The amount of palace intrigue that goes into consensus building about what local bands, people, places are permissible is ludicrous. It's like there is a giant Pravda book everyone is reading from silently at home. When they go out they wanna impress the Party. When they go back home.they inform and do espionage in little meetings no one hears about. Dark non-arts are taking hold everywhere.
The characterization of “palace intrigue” is insightful. Indie art, basement shows, etc are unpoliced places where the members have no religion, organized morality, or moral mentors. They are anarchic gatherings of young horny people who do not believe in higher authority or cling to a moral tradition. Status is rewarded with fame, sex, drugs, favors from the few trustfund members, and coveted but longshot employment opportunity at some shop / label / magazine / bar. Low status leads to utter and irrevocable ostracization. The stakes are, uh, big. So what happens is that authority and a code of conduct develops organically but very primitively through cliques and “palace gossip”, with the valuable positions at the top guarded tyrannically. Its Lord of the Flies except sometimes it smells worse.
I think the missing piece for understanding why the scene is so unhealthy is that members are imitating group exemplars. The imitation of group exemplars is a universal human habit, a relic of tribal days. These scenes first congregate on Twitter, tumblr, or instagram, and only then do they disperse to real life watering holes. (As one user put it: “music scenes were about capturing real life and putting it online; now it's putting online into real life.”) What they see on social media is that gossip and public accusation gets the most attention and name recognition, which is valuable for securing a place in the social hierarchy. The more signaling you do and the more explicit you do it, the more you gain attention. The increasing numerical value of likes or reblogs on social media tricks the users into believing that the number is an accurate sign of social value — and this consequently turns it into a real social value. You only need to persuade a small minority that the numbers indicate social value for the numbers to eventually become the dominant social value. Why? Because if 5% of social value is suddenly administered according to an online number, then this will be noticed and more people will pay attention to it, leading it to comprise 6%. And if 6% of social value, then … and so on. This will continue until participating online is a necessary requirement for obtaining the niche’s social value (how LinkedIn works). That original 5% is guaranteed because social media is addicting.
The reason it devolves into a base form of status signaling is that, well, everything is status signaling. But developed cultures long ago figured out ways to sublimate status signaling toward prosocial ends through the laying down of criteria and similarity with which to judge value. Were these guys Confucian, their ability to memorize prosocial axioms and follow certain rituals would give them value. If they were Muslims, their ability to mirror Muhammad in their life and live according to Allah’s decrees would give them value. (Interestingly, Muslims go one step further and ban all music except the whiny melodies which color the precepts of the Quran. This is certainly one way to ensure that your music scene doesn’t devolve into a monstrosity).
But why does the signaling competition devolve into Progressive shibboleths? Why not something else? I think the boring answer is that it started that way. If this alt scene were originally Confucian, then all new members would have adopted Confucianism. But it started progressive because no one with a strong traditional morality would dedicate their whole life to hosting licentious music. They cared more about school, they prioritized health, they had reservations about playing music bad for the soul. Meanwhile those without morality have no such concerns, and also use drugs as a lure for their power. There’s probably also an element of progressive shibboleths being boosted because the primitive wisdom that kids learn in early education is “everyone is the same, be nice”. So naturally, any devolution would go back to the shared morality which encites even the dumbest person. If everyone in school learned that the ultimate evil was being racist and mean, then that becomes the criteria for ostracisation. If you’re in a group of not very intelligent or moral art people, you can imagine the difference between accusing someone of being racist versus accusing someone of “a sophisticated ruse in which they themselves accuse others of being racist in order to elevate their standing”. The second one makes less sense when you are drunk or high, and it’s way too many words for me to read on Twitter at 2am. The first one contains the word “racist”, which I have been trained to bark at like a dog.
As mentioned in the thread, artists and musicians can’t say anything about the tyrannical hold of social progressivism because their career, reputation, and social network and under the purview of this process. When that occurs the shibboleths become an unconscious signal of membership, leading to a deep internalization in the heart of individual member. (Remember that normal people don’t think their beliefs through; like, writing about social and political values and engaging in discourse is an unusual thing. People want social value, not an optimally correct system in the grand scheme of things.)
One more thing to add. There’s a story in the Book of Daniel where two high status men threaten to blackmail a woman for sexual favors. She refuses to be blackmailed, so the high status men accuse her in front of the whole community of infidelity — something that would lead to her death. Our heroic prophet of the story, the young Daniel, takes on the role of Mr Bean. “Are you all so stupid that without examination or evidence you are going to condemn this woman?” He asks each one of the men alone under which tree the event transpired. One says a large canopied tree, but the other says a distinctly small tree. They have been caught in their lie, and the high status men are executed by the community.
This is the kind of story which humans once had as their foundational tales. Less “crime bad”, more “withhold judgment until wisdom, because corruption worse”. Kids would have learned this story instead of “racism bad”. And for artists, the story of Susanna was one of the most popular scenes in the history of Western art. Think how beneficial that is! You require your artists to draw Susanna, a beautiful semi-nude figure, and then you require him to draw the corrupt licentious high status figures, ready to blackmail her before being executed. It not only creates a good moral tale for children but it ensures that your artists don’t become regressives.
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
How about a culture war outside the traditional red/blue conflicts for a change?
The Guardian ("I read it for the math problems") reports on the decision by a court in the Philippines to ban golden rice, a GMO plant designed to combat vitamin A deficiency. The NGO arguing for a ban (aside local farmers) was Greenpeace.
[https://www.supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-letter_rjr.html](168 Nobel laureates) have called on Greenpeace to stop campaigning against golden rice in 2016. Here is a discussion on EA forums.
Now historically, I have not been vehemently opposed to Greenpeace. When I was a kid in the 1990s, they were protesting French above-ground nuclear weapon testing, which seems fair enough. While pro-NPP myself, I think there are solid arguments to be made for opposing nuclear power (like proliferation risk and long-term disposal of used-up fuel elements), but I can't understand why you would target NPP before you would target fossil fuel power generation.
The steelman of the Greenpeace argument would be that allowing patent-encumbered GMOs will be a foot in the door for pushing more GMOs on rural farmers which will eventually result with Monsanto owning the small farmers. The situation for GMOs is not unlike the situation for software: expensive to develop, but cheap to copy. As a free-software advocate, I very much would prefer outcomes where the companies who develop the software/GMOs do not end up with a stranglehold on the end users due to copyright or (even worse) patent laws.
At least for software there exist alternatives like FLOSS. From reading the FAQ of golden rice, it looks like they could not develop their product without using technologies patented by biotech companies, so they got to them to agree to waive licences for farmers who make less than 10k$ per year, which is their target audience. This is still far from ideal (better would be a blanket free licence for golden rice, or constraining biopatents so much that you do not have to ask Japanese Tobacco to licence your rice plant, or perhaps abolishing them altogether), but does not seem like a terrible deal -- especially if you have a local court system which is rather pro small farmers.
So my conclusion is that Greenpeace's opposition is unreasonable and they have been become one of these organizations who advocates for policies which are deeply unpopular (like PETA, or "always believe the woman" groups) in the wider population as members race to signal how committed they are to their cause.
NullHypothesis
1hr ago
Upvotes don't mean anything and the parent comment he was referring to has just as many upvotes (and also significantly more downvotes) so the higher-effort post got more engagement just less agreement (or for whatever reason people downvote comments for). Does he even know that?
Also what's with all these deleted comments, I swear I see more and more deleted comments than I used to. I'm tempted to start quoting the entire comment just so the context of the conversation is retained.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
The thing in the whole debate is nobody doing the debate had George Floyd type black friends.
I spent a year and a half working an entry-level factory job. more than half my coworkers were black. They weren't graduates from prestigeous institutions. They were still obviously human. Meanwhile, it turns out that all the arguments for black inhumanity apply to white junkies as well.
However, there is an underclass that seems to need a huge amount of intervention in terms of policy and financial aid to develop communities looking anything like the rest of western civilization. They are not self-sustaining without aid from other parts of society.
They need tight-knit communities who deliver immediate punishment to defectors, with those continuing to defect written off. "aid from other parts of society" is how this underclass is maintained in its longstanding condition.
Bleep
1hr ago
A few weeks ago, I attended the NY Philharmonic rendition of Mozart's Symphony No. 35 and No. 39 and Beethoven Ah! Perfido! It was lovely, as usual.
Crowstep
1hr ago
My expectation is that the illegal immigration situation will continue to be as dysfunctional as it has been under the Conservatives. I think Labour's plan was to swap our boat people for France's boat people, though it isn't clear what the purpose of this is exactly.
As for legal migration, probably we'll see a more liberal visa regime, followed by public opposition, followed by tightening up, followed by party revolts in favour of looser rules, and so on in a circle. Basically what we've had for the last decade.
2D3D
1hr ago
Is this guy just going to necroed threads to look for wrongthink? Tourists are fine but this seems like the prelude to some lefty discord invading and calling us nazis.
Crowstep
1hr ago
That is precisely why so many former Conservative voters are voting Reform. Conservatism just meant Blairism with right-wing rhetoric.
Labour will win, of course. My hope is that the Tories will see how many of their voters went to reform and will choose an actual conservative as their leader.
As for what Labour will do, Keir Starmer has been very careful to not reveal anything of what he actually believes. He'll mock the government for tripling immigration after promising to reduce it, but he won't say that reducing it is actually a good thing to do. He'll criticise the government for being unpatriotic, and then give a job to a woman who is most well known for mocking the national flag.
My hope is that he's a Lee Kwan Yew-style pragmatist. Hell, I'd settle for rainbow flags on every town hall if he makes it possible to actually build houses.
NullHypothesis
1hr ago
The world doesn't need everyone to have a job where everyone needs a 130 IQ to function. Well, maybe the rapid onset of technology will change that but we're still not there. There's basically no job for 70 IQ people today. A 100 IQ person can still communicate information and do less intellectually rigorous tasks like documenting information, running and maintaining processes, and being able to actually follow instructions and directions. 130 IQ people can benefit from the work of 100 IQ people. 100 IQ people will not benefit from the work of 70 IQ people. 70 IQ is the literal level of mental retardation.
Jiro
1hr ago
The real life version of that cartoon is a patient who has a condition unrelated to his weight, but which is less fanciful than an arm falling off, and the doctor mentioning weight and ignoring his actual condition.
campy
1hr ago
Julia Child (in a TV documentary) once demonstrated that gold would be a great material for cookware.
I have my own theory for why your post took off: to the side of it, unlike most posts, is an image. And that image isn't something abstract or ineffable, but the image of an attractive young woman.
I think your post took off for the same reason TikToks with young women take off, and YouTubers put cringey faces in their thumbnails: human faces attract attention, and women's faces especially so. I don't think it's anything more complicated than that. My eyes are still automatically drawn to this image and I'm desperate for your post to drop off the front page (sorry) so I can stop looking at her mug.
So what we've learned is, if you're going to make an effortpost, make sure you're actually linking to something that contains an image of a hot woman.
I think the real reason the Knights of the Golden Circle aren’t discussed more is that they’re historically irrelevant. The 1840s–50s featured severe conflicts in Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri, while John Brown and his small group made waves in the southeast. Then Lincoln was elected, Fort Sumter was fired on, and the next five years were filled with more important battles than even most armchair histories can keep straight. Finally, you have Sherman’s march, Lee’s surrender, Lincoln’s assassination, Reconstruction, and the rise of the KKK. With all of that, who cares that some southerners and southern-sympathizers had dreams of eventually taking over the Caribbean? Or that an even smaller number wanted to create a northern confederacy centered around the Great Lakes? Both are pretty much just trivia.
More options
Context Copy link