domain:firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com
srf0638
4m ago
I live in the western US and work in the woods, and while I guess "shoulds" are ultimately hard to argue this post reads as massively cucked safetyist nannyism.
faceh
8m ago
If I, as a male, want to be a bit cheeky, I can actually agree that a random bear is less dangerous to an American woman than a random male.
Statistically speaking, if the male is chosen COMPLETELY at random from all living males, then the odds are more likely you're getting a middle aged guy from Asia (esp. China), India, or Africa. I really have no frame of reference for what I expect such males to do in this situation, but the stereotypes are concerning.
Cursory Google search shows there are about 200,000 brown bears in the world, and around 800,000 black bears. Then presumably negligible numbers of Pandas, Koalas, and Polar bears, along with more exotic types.
So odds are that the randomly chosen bear is a relatively less dangerous black bear vs. the "will kill you instantly" brown bear.
So playing the odds, I might say yeah, a given woman is better off with a randomly selected bear in most cases, vs. a randomly selected male human.
But if we restrict the question to American males, and we specify that the bear WILL be one of the more dangerous varieties, I think the answer is clear.
Corvos
13m ago
I think it means, as you say, specific, personal drama from other forums. If I recall correctly, someone got tempbanned a few years ago for making a top-level post that was just a blow-by-blow of drama they'd had on a different site. I would guess the intent is to prevent the Motte being recruited for internet raids and turf wars. Probably less relevant now we aren't on reddit.
roystgnr
16m ago
If men are bad alone why would they be good together?
Because of the binomial distribution? If 1/6 men are secretly pure evil, so each individual man is Russian roulette, then a clump of just 5 random men gets the odds of evil ones outnumbering good down to 1/28, and a society of as few as 99 men gets us down to about 1 in 100 trillion.
Or just because of the multiplication rule in probability? If 1/6 men are secretly mostly evil (they'll commit a rape in a he-said she-said scenario but they won't kill unfavorable witnesses) then even a clump of 5 random men has the odds of unanimously-evil down to 1/7776.
And if individual men aren't quite as risky as Russian roulette, the risks get pushed down even faster in groups. A rate of 1% for individuals (now each individual man is a mere climb to the summit of Everest) now becomes 1/100,000 or 1/10,000,000,000 in a group of 5.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
20m ago
We used to be a proper nation.
faceh
27m ago
One possible solution is that you have people pay to have questions answered, and as part of that payment, they pay people to act as oracles who have good reputations.
Yeah, this was part of how Augur's system worked. Reward people who end up on the 'right' side of a final resolution question consistently AND anyone who is answering the question has to stake some portion of their reputation on the outcome they're judging. Eventually 'bad actors' (who are either malicious or are too stupid to reliably interpret contracts) lose out and the correct/consistent oracles accumulate more wealth so they can have more influence over future resolutions.
It helped settle into an equilibrium where it was usually not worthwhile to try to exploit an apparent ambiguity, while knowing that wealthier oracles will ignore said ambiguity and you'll lose money directly by trying to challenge them.
I've been blown away by how bad otherwise intelligent people are at writing and interpreting resolution criteria.
Yep. There are plenty of bright line rules for resolving ambiguity in legal contracts, and it can be permissible to pull in outside evidence to interpret them, but you have to think about the ENTIRE document in a systematic way, you can't just glance it over and interpret it based on vibes.
And glancing at things and going with your gut is how so, so many humans operate.
The problem is there's always a tradeoff when you try to get as precise as possible with your wording, in that it both makes it harder for laypeople to easily understand what the terms say (and less likely to read it all) and, paradoxically, can open up a greater attack surface because there's more places where ambiguities can arise.
This is where I imagine LLMs would have a role, if they are given a set of 'rules' by which all contracts are to be interpreted, and they can explain the contracts they read to laypeople, and everyone agrees that the AI's interpretation is final, then you at least make it more challenging to play games with the wording.
Skulldrinker
31m ago
ATVing in wisconsin north woods. Turned a corner and there was what looked like a large black dog in the trail. It was sitting oddly, like a human would. Then it got up and lumbered off. "Oh, that was a black bear. Cool."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
38m ago
Read about the political influence of Kiryas Joel if you’d like
I have. I've even talked about it to others IRL as a model to emulate, whereby the universal response is that such a thing only works for Hasidic Jews; that there are unique elements there — ranging from their long history and separate language to their ability to suppress criticism by denouncing critics as antisemites — that cannot be emulated.
Every Protestant church has religious protections.
Every currently existing Protestant church. But, AIUI, you're talking about creating a new one. And, also AIUI, the IRS tends to default to treating all new religions as tax evasion schemes until proven otherwise.
Personally, I have had divine revelations in dreams and given an understanding of mystical meaning behind Biblical symbols and allegories.
And these just so happened to give you true belief in the specific doctrines of the denomination you found it most convenient for your political goals to join? If so, then lucky you, I suppose.
Yeah, civic nationalism has really been working hasn’t it?
And where did I endorse that? It's clear that isn't working, either. But I don't see 'just rebrand your secular political goals as a religion and start a cult, bro' as a viable project either.
BahRamYou
39m ago
I had a crazy idea recently. What if we took LLM AI and, uh, scaled it up? Make a social media platform where you are the star of the show. Just you, or maybe you plus a handful of friends, plus hundreds, thousands, or millions of AI chatbots who all adore you and want to worship you as a celebrity. Finally, every single person on Earth can be the most popular person on the planet!
Tomato
39m ago
There’s a saying I’m paraphrasing that I think is basically right,
Black Bear is fine unless you startle a mom with cubs
If a brown bear sees you it’s too late
If you see a polar bear it’s too late
BahRamYou
45m ago
Interesting. Was that just for skilled jobs, or for everything? And why couldn't they just get employees from other Eastern Bloc countries- was it the language barrier, or was travel for work just forbidden?
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
51m ago
East Germany had something like this. Because of its unique situation with continued flight to the West, many factories and other businesses were constantly begging for employees.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
56m ago
Political goals are accomplished through influence. Communal political influence requires (1) the conscious saving of money which is reinforced socially especially for the rich members, (2) the directing of the money to a centralized lobbying arm which can efficiently accomplish goals, (3) protection against out-group propaganda. Read about the political influence of Kiryas Joel if you’d like, which at one point was the poorest town in America, yet senators would make a speech every year to them because of their donations and block voting; and they then benefitted from that politician’s funding of amenities and lack of investigation into crimes. Political goals are also accomplished through consumer behavior. Religious cultures direct consumer behavior toward in-group providers, and boycott companies against their goals. Religions take the money that is ordinarily spent on wasteful consumerism and direct it to communal goods. They also hire among their own.
vastly overstate said religious protections
No I do not. Every Protestant church has religious protections.
isn't this just "instrumentalizing religion”
That depends if you believe in it or not. If you don’t believe in it, then obviously you shouldn’t do it. Personally, I have had divine revelations in dreams and given an understanding of mystical meaning behind Biblical symbols and allegories. But that’s just me, you know? I’m also tired: of people who don’t understand how people work, of my dog eating deer poop, of hubris, of the cost of a double cheeseburger at Wendy’s. I am not sure what tiredness has to do with this conversation.
ridiculous idea
Yeah, civic nationalism has really been working hasn’t it? Was it Einstein who said that the mark of a genius was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Meanwhile, I will stick to my understanding of how culture operates which is informed by thousands of years of history and a hundred years of social psychology.
Sloot
1hr ago
If men are so bad, why would having more of them around help? If a majority of men decided to use violence to subjugate women, it would be easily accomplished since men are more violent, better at organizing violence and are stronger.
It’s because men and their shittiness cancel each other out when there’s a group of them :nailpolishemoji:
It makes sense if one is accustomed to expecting men to white knight against other men on your behalf, or if one’s mental model of the world is heavily influenced by media, memes, and tropes. Conservation of Ninjitsu: One man is a deadly threat, but an army of them is just a sea of potential simps and orbiters, ATMs and meatshields.
zeke5123a
1hr ago
Well I assume the question is in near proximity. If you are in the woods, chances are there is a man somewhere in the woods as well if you define woods large enough.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
There's insertion and then there's insertion.
drmanhattan16
1hr ago
Just a minor point, but it is unclear to me how Hanania distinguishes social progressivism from woke. In particular, I think deBoer's definition matches what is meant by "woke" much better:
- Academic rhetoric
- Focused on the immaterial.
- Structural criticisms followed by individual prescriptions.
- Treating emotions as political problems i.e. Failure to Cope under Capitalism
- Fatalistic (declaring that only systemic solutions can save us, but no such change is ever possible)
- Thinking that politics is solved
- Oppression is virtue
It seems to me like deBoer is at least picking up on a very important set of attributes shared by the online woke, and that serious socially progressive people are not a perfect match for this. One can, for instance, be like Ezra Klein, who may have his own issues, but doesn't come off in the same way.
Or perhaps I'm just mistaken, and wokeness is the black sheep of the socially progressive family in Hanania's argument - an embarrassment that is disliked by its own peers, but still to be defended from outsiders.
zeke5123a
1hr ago
Bears are faster than pretty much any human. Rate of attacks is “it depends” on a lot of things.
zeke5123a
1hr ago
It is also dumb. If you are attacked by a bear there is a good chance you won’t live to tell the tale and that your death will be painful.
But it does provide some kind of insight into women—or at least modern women. Their main concern is with the social benefits derived from being able to say “I experienced trauma” compared to actually minimizing the amount of trauma they experience.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1hr ago
It's funny to me how both sides of the battle of the sexes will endorse the Mike Pence rule, while also mocking the other side for adopting it.
gattsuru
1hr ago
They will absolutely wreck you in Vintage Story, to the point where they're more feared than most of the not!zombie enemies. Only the Bells, as mob-summoners, are really worse; even the T3 and T4 drifters can do comparable damage, but they're much slower, where your best hope when being chased by a brown bear before getting iron or steel armor involves trying to pit trap or outswim them.
Thems Fighting Herds has Huggles, who acts as the final boss for each arcade mode run, and is frankly unfairly hard. There's a bonus mode version you can play as that's even more overpowered, though it's intended for the rest of a multiplayer fight to team up against whoever gets to play the bear.
The Elder Scrolls have pretty consistently had bears as some of the most dangerous enemies, to the point where they could out-match some lesser dragons in Skyrim.
I've had Tribal runs in Rimworld wrecked by an early-game bear manhunter, though I dunno if that was vanilla or a mod. The Long Dark has some dangerous bears, though once you've got a good rifle setup and prep they're kinda loot pinatas.
I guess maybe Five Nights at Freddies, for a loose enough definition?
But yeah, they're definitely often treated as far less threatening or dangerous than they should be, even in some survival-themed games.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1hr ago
Federal authority is a norm, not an immutable law of the universe, and norms can go away over time.
Except it's a norm backed by a lot of guns.
Here, defiance by Red Tribe provides the other half of the back-and-forth wrenching that will tear this norm out of its cultural foundations.
And what is left after the norm of Federal authority is "torn out," if not the raw "obey or die" assertion of power through raw force?
If Abbott and DeSantis continue on their current trajectory, then we'll see more Broad spectrum resistance from Reds as well.
Only until Abbott, DeSantis, and their supporters end up in prison or dead.
Keep that up, and it's entirely possible that Federal authority loses all credibility
They don't need credibility, they just need to send armed FBI agents to do pre-dawn no-knock raids on enough of those who oppose them to deter the rest.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1hr ago
Why do you think using it to coordinate Red Tribe defiance is a bad idea?
Presumably, because "Red Tribe defiance" is itself a bad idea? Either because one is Blue Tribe, or because one sees "Red Tribe defiance" as leading only to Blue power cracking down even harder?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1hr ago
the so-called captains of industry, who tend to lean right,
[Citation needed], as they say. Because from what I've read, these days "industry" leans ever-leftward — see DEI, ESG, etc.
The difference is that in those cases, it's the Left doing it, with the backing of all the institutions they control. The Right, being mostly powerless, will not be able to get away with it the way the other side can.
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