domain:noahpinion.blog
Hieronymus
1hr ago
I think you misunderstood me. Most of the concern in my post is directed at the unimplanted embryos at the end of the process. That is also where polygenic screening becomes a focus of discussion.
I do think that the post-fertilization attrition rate is morally relevant insofar as it compares unfavorably with natural conception, and I said so, but that's not what I meant by destruction.
Magusoflight
1hr ago
That escalated quickly
Reposted as standalone.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
MAGA is pro-positive balance of trade. Not anti-trade.
Quantumfreakonomics
2hr ago
Real civilization has never been tried.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3hr ago
It's not just grandstanding, the administration has done remarkable things like detaining and attempting to deport students who committed no crimes for simply criticizing Israel.
"Students". A guy who has spent more than 10 years as an undergraduate, mostly stirring up shit on campuses. A better description than "student" might be "foreign agent",
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3hr ago
It's the old established areas of Europe that have an allergy (or ideological objection) to A/C, not the ex-communist countries.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3hr ago
Those economies were a pittance compared to the world of today
Irrelevant even if true (and I'm not sure a meaningful measurement is possible).
Slavery and other similar rent seeking behavior is less of a detriment in a weak economy with weak competition than a global one with more competition.
There was plenty of competition in Europe and around the Mediterranean Sea... but slavery still persisted.
But personally unproductive leeches are a drain on society whether they be a slave owner or a union worker demanding busy work.
Being a slave owner doesn't make you a personally unproductive leech, any more than being a factory owner does.
Supah_Schmendrick
3hr ago
The rich and powerful are expected to get away with some crimes. Sex trafficking children is not on that list.
Err, the west covers for sex trafficking kids all the time, and you don't need to be rich and powerful to get away with it (though it helps). Popular entertainers get away with it. Politicians cover massive-scale abuse - far beyond what Epstein is accused of - up and journalists look the other way to avoid having their foreign policies outed as idiotic, avoid having to be on the same side as icky migration restrictionists, or to avoid being called racist.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3hr ago
It's anti-international trade.
2rafa
4hr ago
In a civilized society
So your contention is that there has never been a civilized society?
Tractatus
4hr ago
Nicolae Ceaușescu would dispute this. So would Stalin, for that matter; unless we're going to reduce the claim to a tautology, that the fact that all movements have leaders makes those leaders by definition "elevated factions" renders the possibility of an "uprising of the masses" defnitionally impossible.
The elite do not enforce their will by their own hand; that is done by the security state, whose ranks are filled from the very masses whose necks they are stepping on, and who stay loyal so long as they have faith that backing the elite is a better deal than the alternative. No amount of in-group cohesion will save the ruling elite if and when they decide "hey, why do we need all these lessers around," or elite incompetence erodes the secuirty apparatus' faith in the elite.
NunoSempere
4hr ago
Positive states of being are psychologically healthy
you can only be altruistic by improving yourself to be more than self-sufficient, so it's a kind of inverse parasitism.
mmmh!! top points, thanks
NunoSempere
4hr ago
I mean, we want people to be prosocial, provide public goods, play cooperative games, coordinate around positive outcomes. But you don't want this to be suicidal. Not sure if that's just a restatement. of what you are saying.
Skulldrinker
4hr ago
What's currently the most cost-effective and practical method of getting ahold of Ozempic/whatever weight-loss drug in the US without a diabetes diagnosis?
Also, is it worth messing with oral delivery, or are they flat-out less effective than the injection method?
I'm tired of people lying to me that I'm not fat when I observe the differences in the way the world treats me vs other people every day.
MollieTheMare
4hr ago
Honestly, it might be for the best for you personally. The conversion rate from in a Ph.D. program to tenured physics professor is laughably small. Even if you make it to the tenure golden land, you will have given up what will probably be the most productive years of your career in opportunity cost to make the starting salary of a quant at a B-tier fund. You'll also have to move a zillion times anyway for a very likely postdoc grind.
I don't know what the state of the art is in fusion research, but if you can manage to crank out even one marginal paper applying ML/RL techniques, call it AI on your CV and you should be able to get into the interview pipeline at some big tech or quant finance firms. Crush the coding interviews with leetcode grinding. Practice not doing anything too weird in the face to face. If you update your linkedin and are at a top 30 program, you should have recruiters contacting you regularly. They will provide interview prep. If you are not at a top 30 physics program you are never making it to the tenure golden land anyway, it doesn't matter how good you are. Something like 70% of the faculty in R1 research institutions have at some point attended one of something like 10 schools. Of the remaining, something like 90% come from a pool of the next 20. (US based, there's a paper about it somewhere on I think the arxiv)
Once you have your foot in the door, join the line of people hoping to jump to the next unicorn, or rest and vest.
TwiceHuman
4hr ago
I think that pure altruism is only impossible under the one definition that also renders "selfless behaviour" trivially impossible. You choose your own actions, so you naturally choose the ones you like the best, even if what you like the best is something like "to mistreat myself for the sake of others".
But let's talk psychology: Our mental states exist in a high-dimensional space, and one of the dimensions seems to be poverty-abundance. This is easy to miss if you haven't experienced the extremes of both. Do you know insecure people who are like black holes for compliments, affection and reassurance? That's the minus pole. But the plus pole also exists - a state where it becomes uncomfortable not to give. You'll usually have to be on drugs or to spend years doing spiritual practices in order to reach this state, but it's very real and basically a pure altruistic mindset.
And I have a reason to think that this behaviour will not disappear: It benefits the invidual, even when they do not do it for the sake of benefits. Positive states of being are psychologically healthy for the same reason that negative states of being are associated with dying earlier. And while altruism seems dangerous in that it's reverse eugenics, you can only be altruistic by improving yourself to be more than self-sufficient, so it's a kind of inverse parasitism.
On a negative note: I think it's literally impossible to protect society against exploitation without ruining every pleasant part of it. What follows from this is scary: Rules are bad. They're literally symptoms of problems rather than solutions to them. You cannot fix every loophole - you can only get rid of the type of person who would exploit a loophole.
Actually, I just realized a series of things - The way we're trying to reduce suffering is destroying all human experience. The way we're trying to minimize crime will result in the minimization of human freeedom. The way we're trying to model everything is destroying all mystery and wonder. Our attempts of reducing mistakes to zero is reducing meaningful actions taken to zero. You cannot solve all problems without killing all innovation. You cannot destroy competition without destroying growth. Many things are rotting because we refuse to let them die. I believe these are in the category of 'Complementarity Principles'.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
5hr ago
The rich and powerful are expected to get away with some crimes. Sex trafficking children is not on that list.
In a civilized society, that kind of behavior gets you executed, and not because you know too much.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Feral dogs are mostly a problem in places that don’t have wild boar(Americas, Australia). Mustangs have not outcompeted native wild horses for the simple reason that America doesn’t have any. And coyotes and wolves both outcompete feral dogs.
Theres interesting things going on with the evolution of feral cats, but in Australia and deserted islands, not the USA(which has bobcats).
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
These people will have South Korean tier fertility and they will not, actually, produce a race of super geniuses. They’ll produce photogenic phlegmatic types because that is what kids as luxury goods fill the need for. Docile and looks like a teddy bear.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
This isn’t an ‘act of desperation’, this is an act of smiting an enemy when you hold the rod. Thé DOJ likely has standing orders to go after any left winger they can.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
That has nothing to do with the Freon, that’s energy saving stuff.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
Propane runs at normal Freon pressures. The government limits the amount that goes in a system for neurotic safety reasons(it’s flammable), which restricts its use to refrigerators and smaller air conditioners. But it works very well in those things.
You are again purposely ignoring and denying what people mean when they talk about the situation. It's a ring of geriatric men trafficking and abusing a bunch of underage girls. Most people would agree that such a thing can be described as a pedo ring.
Nobody cares that technically, abusing 16 year old girls does not meet the criteria for a DSM-5 diagnosis for the mental disorder. People are still going to call them pedos.
More options
Context Copy link