domain:drmanhattan16.substack.com
f3zinker
Its A/B testing all the way down
16m ago
2 years late to the party but I've started playing Elden Ring.
Long story short, I mostly agree with the majority sentiment, that it feels like how games used to feel like. It's not exactly controversial to assert that modern triple A games are terrible. Much has been said and written about why modern triple A games have regressed in quality and how Elden Ring was a breath of fresh air because it didn't make those same mistakes.
But here's my shower thought. And it might be dead obvious but I'll share nonetheless. It doesn't have to be that way!
Elden Ring feels more like the games from the 90s than games from the 90s. And that's obviously because we have better tooling and hardware in just about every aspect. It's infinitely easier to make good games now than it was in the 90s, we just don't make them.
It's also infinitely easier to write good software now. We have gpt, forums with decades of content, ides, YouTube, etc. Why do we keep on writing bloated shit? We don't have to.
Macdonald's fries would still be good if they used beef tallow.
Just about every way In which the quality of things regressed, it's easier now than ever to make an even higher quality version.
Something is wrong with us, that we don't. And I don't believe it's an eternal September the masses want slop situation, that's a copout. Elden Ring is one of the best selling games of 2022. It's a culture thing.
curious_straight_ca
18m ago
That's not trading examples, I found that by looking for the exact comment you're referring to. Cjet's original post about race blindness, The Case For Ignoring Race, got 18 upvotes and 5 downvotes, which is a perfectly normal ratio. The most downvoted comment related to race blindness on his page has a net karma of ... -3, and it's in response to a 38 upvotes comment with the following:
As far as I'm concerned, the policy of acknowledging both race and additional information you have about a person is strictly superior to doing the same but ignoring race. I'd be more concerned if a black doctor was treating me since I know about how much AA they receive, I'd be less concerned if the doctor publicized his SAT score or had other objective markers for performance like a specialization in a field where his race counts for nothing (I doubt that's the case in the US, but I could be wrong). This is where AA in general taints by association, said doctor could absolutely be someone who managed to get in without not so subtle nudges, but since they usually lack a way to prove it, they're automatically discounted in the eyes of a rational agent with no additional information.
This is just ... not ... "people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as". This is "we should judge people on their merit, or our best estimate of their merit, and that merit is correlated with race is an objective fact about the world".
No_one
19m ago
Is it? Except for the most extreme Jews, conversion happen and are recognized now. They're merely difficult, which serves to preserve quality.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
30m ago
I can’t help but virtually don my fedora as a garbage human dudebro
Not the hero we wanted.
But the hero we needed.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1hr ago
That was a cool video, liked the fire-and-manoeuvre plus hand signals.
EverythingIsFine
1hr ago
Apparently they are running out of money, so I wonder how far he will get since many campaigns traditionally bulk out signature collection with paid canvassers. His website lists over half the states as "in progress" and even a good chunk of the completed ones aren't yet officially approved.
ProfQuirrell
1hr ago
Right, so the expression comes from that fact -- the mutually agreed upon statement points in two directions. One person can say "Aha, so we know that B is true." and the other person can say "Aha, so we know that A is false."
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
The Kennedy name takes him pretty far among the anti-establishment-but-doesn’t-want-church-types-running-things crowd, as well.
EverythingIsFine
1hr ago
Following along in your thought experiment, I don't see why that's so bad. My perception is that as a matter of actual fact we are not currently in a position where we have successfully equalized "outgoing" kind of measures of equality, the "disparate treatment" in and of itself. I guess my general train of thought is, there's every incentive to vigorously explore and work on explanations other than HBD and if we do pretty well on outgoing, treatment measures and at that point there's still some unexplained gap, sure let's go there, fine. Until then, we have tools that work just as well that are less controversial and can theoretically do the same thing, so let's pursue those. So sure, at some point maybe we do get in a situation where we are faced with only gaps-based bashing our head against a wall, or the HBD stuff. That's fine! I have faith if that were to happen we would in fact seriously consider HBD stuff, certainly more so than now. I simply don't think we've reached the point of "we've done enough" to merit having the discussion yet. I realize reasonable people might disagree.
That's why I'm actually quite curious downthread to if the other user answers my honest question about when they think we already reached a tipping point where we've "done enough" for racial equality and it's time to throw in the towel, so to speak.
I elaborated also downthread about the dark street thought experiment, but more specifically, the "potential cost" I was referring to was actually "how does the group young blacks feel if someone crosses the road to avoid them". I don't think they would be that broken up about it, and I don't think it would make them feel particularly victimized (and even if they did the material impact on their life is approximately zero). So in that sense, it's a stupid example because both the overall societal cost and the impact on the discrimination recipient are low and also the potential cost to the discriminator is very high. This is, by all accounts, an abnormal rendering of a typical discrimination moral dilemma.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
Is this fear of Ukranaian Nazis genuine, or just an attempt to sap anti-Russian energy in the West by associating Ukraine with one of the past century's great villains?
Speaking for myself as someone who doesn't really consider themselves pro Russian (but would likely be considered as such by others) there's no real genuine fear of Azov - they're just shown as an example of the hypocrisy of western governments. Nazis are the worst ever and need to be punched in order for democracy to survive... but these nazis are actually heroes, and your tax dollars need to be used to support them. The reason people bring up the fact that western governments are actually extremely pro-Nazi in the Ukraine is to damage the illusion that Western governments are motivated by ethical values("defending democracy" etc) rather than pure realpolitik.
There is potential concern that after Ukraine's defeat the remnants of the Azovites will become a far-right paramilitary organisation with a bone to pick with Europe, but nobody really cares - the far right are probably ok with an armed neonazi terrorist remnant fighting for their side and bombing synagogues, while the people who support the Ukraine war are doubtless extremely happy for there to be another reason for European tax dollars to get funnelled to arms/"security" companies once the war is over.
crushedoranges
1hr ago
You're making me blush.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1hr ago
What I'm curious about is how committed you all are to the rules-based order.
The commitment is to the foundation:
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases.
The rules are crafted in service of that, moderation is conducted with it mind, and where the rules and the foundation might seem to conflict, the foundation trumps.
So far, between me and the Jew-posters, you seem to be committed to banishing assholes more than having legible principles.
I mean, one of the very first rules is "be kind," so banishing assholes is definitely also rules-based. Of course the rules are not self-enforcing and the mod team is not a calculator, we aren't always perfectly predictable and we aren't always right. But the vast majority of our users seem to get on just fine. In general if it looks like you're even trying to follow the rules, you'll be fine. It's the people that go looking for just how far they can go without getting banned, who tend to be the biggest problem.
In principle, it's fine to ask questions about the rules, and discuss them when it seems warranted to do so. But in practice, the vast majority of the time I get questions about the rules, it is from people who are looking for ways around the foundation itself, rather than ways to understand and follow the rules better. (Weirdly, it's also almost always from people who are obsessed with Jews for some reason, including one particularly persistent troll who has rolled literally dozens of alts at this point--like, think of the good such a person could do if they directed their efforts toward literally anything else! But this just seems to be an all-too-predictable symptom of the age.)
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1hr ago
You can be polite about it, or you can be a dick about it. One way will get you modded.
EverythingIsFine
1hr ago
Funny, yes you do. That's literally how using statistics and math to evaluate social problems works. You can't just slap a number system onto something and call it good. That's Stats 101. Even some more advanced numerical analysis can sometimes reach the literal opposite conclusion if done or designed incorrectly. On that same note, explanatory power is also insufficient if your categories are fundamentally flawed. Why? Because what you want to do with your model matters. Even if you are trying to be predictive vs just descriptive of the past changes some potentially vital assumptions. It's, mathematically, just wild to vigorously defend arbitrary categories that have demonstrated flawed mechanisms and so-so generalizability just because it happens to kind of work as an explanation. That's not rigor, it's agenda, quite frankly. And we are talking about IQ as a tool, and you defend it based on... some non-sequiter argument about how people in charge are ignoring it or something?
You can hand-wave away the fuzzy boundary problem all you want in an observational sense, but it actually matters a lot (this is underselling it, it's literally foundational) IF you want to use IQ as a tool of making actual proscriptive, "do this and not this" kind of arguments based on what it tells you. Such as exhibit A: do we continue, change, intensify, stop, etc. "racial uplift" efforts?
I additionally think, as a factual matter, claiming that all efforts to help Black people in the last 50-60 years have failed is a pretty wild and weakly supported take. As far as I know the proportional wealth gap for example stalled out more in the 1980s or so, so 45 years, but your language seems to imply this is a more longstanding. Perhaps a more useful question I have for you then would be, at what point historically do you think things presumably got 'fair enough' that you can say "well we tried and failed so it must be their fault not ours"? I assume that is your actual argument, yes? That we as a society tried and failed at "racial uplift" and no use throwing good money after bad, that kind of thing?
My grandpa told me a story last year about how while he was growing up his dad decided to quit being a realtor because he was so mad at the realtor's association refusing to allow him to sell a house to a nice, well-off Asian couple the house they wanted because of explicit redlining. He was willing to go to bat for them and fight it and they just gave up. Redlining for example only became technically illegal in 1968 and sure as hell didn't magically stop overnight. You know, the main way Americans build generational wealth. Sound familiar? Don't get me wrong, there's sure a limit to assistance, and personally I favor a more, well not entirely race-blind approach, but certainly a more targeted approach that mainly focuses on wealth as it is rather than other groupings.
Esseintes
Que sçay-je?
1hr ago
With this thread, I don't think I'm going to bother with this season. The only thing amusing to come out of this is Starlight's boggening https://i.4cdn.org/tv/1718365064375134.jpg (Actually pretty fucking sad to see)
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
If you meet a famous / powerful person (even if they are context-dependent famous) and they are kind of dumb-bubbly in personality (think "human golden retriever) they are probably incredibly smart in either IQ or EQ.
If you meet a famous / powerful person (even if they are context-dependent famous) and they are tight-lipped, only say the minimum, and seem sort of distant they are probably incredibly smart in either IQ or EQ but feel an tremendous amount of imposter syndrome
If you meet a famous / powerful person (even if they are context-dependent famous) and they talk like their context's version of Elon Musk or a podcast bro - they're a charlatan who has mostly gotten to where they are on political maneuvering and deception ..... or you are literally talking to elon musk.
Esseintes
Que sçay-je?
1hr ago
Within Japan, expatriate women from North America (US and Canada) or Europe are either: 1) Divorced 2) married to or the consort of a Japanese man. 1) Will be politically progressive 2) will be neutral, disinterested, or conservative
In my experience, the vast majority of North American expatriate men in Japan are also progressive, especially the ALT crowd. Which is hardly surprising since they are almost uniformly liberal arts college grads fresh out of school.
ok-target-7361
1hr ago
You misunderstand me if you think I'm interested in rules lawyering. What I'm curious about is how committed you all are to the rules-based order. So far, between me and the Jew-posters, you seem to be committed to banishing assholes more than having legible principles.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
Is it performative?
My theory is yes, it is performative.
It's a way of ostentatiously showing in-group solidarity by demonstrating you know what things ought to be lauded. This will get you a lot of praise from the in-group. Add on some very stylistic expression of praise for "the correct thing to like" (i.e. the whole "crab legs" thing) and now you get a bonus for creative expression of solidarity.
ok-target-7361
1hr ago
In the defense of midwits, people who argue against the hypothetical intuitively sense that the other party is trying to convince them of something, and that is always unambiguously suspect, so it's better not to give the other party an inch.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
I like this comment because of the avalanche of "multiple things can be true at once" it evidences;
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Romeo was an otherwise good kid who didn't know how to handle his emotions in one specific context and - were this an office instead of a rock climbing gym - was certainly risking being fired with, perhaps, a lot of downstream career damage.
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@FiveHourMarathon demonstrated excellent leadership and tact in the storeroom-lights-out rouse ... but may have technically run a foul of HR policy in my imagined office-centric parallel universe
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Men being "human doings" is absolutely how many males self-conceive yet revealing that to women frequently elicits some sort of variation on "oh, get over it! Learn to love yourself." (Side note: this is where a lot of modern psychology utterly fails to help men. Build That Shed)
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Male performance related failure absolutely should be met with a constructive "hey, I lost, but I can get better / I can take pride in my level of effort etc." yet will also have a some amount of "HOLY SHIT I AM A FUCKING WASTE OF SPACE" as part of that process.
his main supporter base is "leftist" leaning people who care about the covid hysteria, covid injections, pharma system corruption, medical system corruption, food industrial complex corruption, military industrial complex corruption, and some other anti-establishment positions
originally, a large component of his supporter base were also anti-war but his support for Israeli war on Gazans caused heavy attrition among those people
I've no reason to distrust.
I recognize that name and she had a horrendous record of being wrong on pretty much every COVID topic and her opinion on giving the covid injection to children and pregnant women should remove her from being taken seriously
for e.g., her apologetics w/re the laughable garbage masquerading as "data analysis" during the covid hysteria
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
Treating stuff with extra decorum is kind of our thing.
No, I'm going to stick to my guns and I absolutely refuse to use a dark road analogy. It's legitimately one of the worst possible hypotheticals/thought experiments for this discussion.
- relatively rare situation few of us experience in daily life
- a far better situation would be an actual common and relatable one
- the people involved are very specific which makes the scenario feel overtly contrived
- very small changes in initial conditions can greatly affect individual responses which makes the scenario hard to discuss evenly
- if you cross the road to avoid someone in an obvious way, feelings are only mildly hurt, so even "discrimination" in this case is kinda like, ok whatever no big deal
- on the other hand you have presumably a major bodily harm risk
- which is again, rare when considering the totality of all possible race-related experiences
- can you see how this situation is not representative of a typical "do I discriminate" scenario? And easy to go in circles?
If you can't come up with a better example, it's probably because you don't have one (sorry).
Like, my actual real-world example of being a flooring salesman is much more typical. Some might defend giving disproportionate attention to perceived-as-rich people as a salesman because you do in fact have limited time, and you can get commission from higher sales, etc. I might even be wrong about being fair leading to more albeit less visible success/opportunities and maybe wasting time with poor people would hurt my sales. In either case, I'd defend the the moral requirement to treat people with a fair shake, and also defend the societal imperative to do and encourage the same.
Edit: Think I wasn't succinct enough in point #5. Made this description upthread which elaborates more:
Specifically, the "potential cost" I was referring to was actually "how does the group young blacks feel if someone crosses the road to avoid them". I don't think they would be that broken up about it, and I don't think it would make them feel particularly victimized (and even if they did the material impact on their life is approximately zero). So in that sense, it's a stupid example because both the overall societal cost and the impact on the discrimination recipient are low and also the potential cost to the discriminator is very high. This is, by all accounts, an abnormal rendering of a typical discrimination moral dilemma.
Nope.
Whether or not German racial purity laws considered Slavs to be "Aryan" or not isn't terribly important. I guess that's what's actually being argued there. It may or may not be technically true, but it doesn't change the fact that the Nazi regime launched effectively a war of annihilation against the Slavs, seeking to seize "Lebensraum " for the "German race" from them, produced boatloads of propaganda claiming the Slavs were subhuman, and then via the Barbarossa Decree declared that it was in fact a war of extermination and there would be no such thing as a war crime on that front.
And yeah, that's SecureSignals, our resident Nazi apologist. I don't think he'd even object to that label. We do need a little of that, since the anti-Nazi types aren't free from bullshit either, but yeah you might want a large grain of salt on that subject.
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