domain:nunosempere.com
BahRamYou
15m ago
I grew up in a town that used to be a streetcar surburb 100 years ago. Looking at those old photos, it's almost like looking at a steampunk fantasy. All the streets that I know as sort of grungy, run-dow stripmalls, are full of very dapper gentlemen and their elegant female companions. They must have had to walk a bit to get there, but that's no problem since they were all (apparently) quite thin and fit. They don't seem to have any concern at at all for crime.
I would dismiss this as just some historical quirk, except that I've also experienced the same thing in real life- in Japan. Pretty much the same thing- low crime, low stress, low car ownership areas with mass transit, high trust, and lots of people walking in fancy fashions. They have other problems too of course (getting groceries every day with no car in a declining economy is no joke), but they still manage to make it work.
Conversely, I've experienced the opposite, living in a somewhat wealthy neighborhood in Mexico. There, razor-wire fences and private security guards are the norm. Plenty of cars and material comforts, but absolutely no social trust.
I feel like (economic wealth) and (social wealth) are almost two independant variables, with very little relationship to each other. In the US, we've gained the former at the expense of the latter. It didn't have to be this way.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
21m ago
They can keep telling themselves that
Americans don't seem to believe this today but there are many outsiders who visit America and really dislike the country, not out of jealousy or poverty but genuine dislike for how society works. This was before Trump too.
New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco... they came, they saw, they don't like it.
Europe is stagnating. Why is this? In large part its due to US influence, US NGOs, US foreign policy. For better and for worse, the US leads the West. Yet there's this kind of schizo American attitude about their role in the world.
One day America is the best and greatest country ever, leader of the free world. The next day the lazy Europeans won't pay for their own defence (suppression of Russia) - they need to buy more weapons from America. Oh and go deal with Russia by yourselves, we're not interested in that anymore. Now it's time to bomb the Middle East and stir up some chaos there. Next, pivot to Asia - the vassals must enforce sanctions against China. Who cares whether this is in their economic interests. Australia needs to buy some submarines (we won't actually hand them over though because after taking their money to build the docks, we're still too clueless to build the damn subs). After that, everyone needs to copy American cultural norms and racial hysteria. Import some sub-Saharans, get some diversity (the refugees from our retarded wars we make you join will do for starters). Copy everything down quickly, you need to be woke... no now you need to be anti-woke. And why are you so poor, unlike us?
Europe and other US allies may well have retarded and despicable governments but the US has a special, higher level of responsibility for how it wields power.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
25m ago
I kind of like Thiel, but you have a point. If it came out in five years that Peter Thiel had been abducting wayward teenage boys and keeping them in a lovingly accurate recreation of a 13th-century Burgundian dungeon under his mansion, I’d be mildly surprised but not shocked.
Can’t imagine a woke HR overlady doing that.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
33m ago
It was either his Twitter or a Substack note. I'd look it up if it wasn't 3 am on a Monday :(
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
35m ago
Thiel is not saying all three are luddites, he's saying that the reason Marc Andreesen cannot be the Antichrist is because he's not popular like the luddites are.
Speaking of which, why is Marc Andreseen in the running to be the Antichrist again? I feel like I missed something. If you asked me to list the top 1000 people who might be the Antichrist...
phailyoor
47m ago
If you want truly online learning, you're in for an indefinite wait.
This is why I keep blackpilling on AGI. I have zero expectation of AGI without a system that can learn on its own.
yofuckreddit
57m ago
The worst parts of Infinite Jest are:
- The use of footnotes
- The fact that it's considered so pretentious to have read it that it's now just a punch line that nobody takes seriously
Still haven't met a single person IRL who's finished it. Bummer.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1hr ago
Clever strategy, but it'll only work for the first sprint or two
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1hr ago
Economically and technologically advanced, socially backwards.
That's what the Europeans say as they stagnate in all ways. They can keep telling themselves that. Personally I enjoy watching people find out the opposite, as they realize the joys of having a place where they don't have to deal with their neighbor's noise, or worry about annoying their neighbors with their own. Of being able to get from one place to another without worrying about timetables, or transfers, or weather, or how to carry stuff with them. Of a grocery store that has everything they need for a week or more in one trip. Or even of natural areas larger than a square block and not filled to the brim with people.
BurdensomeCount
Unable to escape TheMotte's cycle of Samsara...
1hr ago
Ancient Greek as a language is very different from modern Greek (more so than Chaucer is distinct from modern English), I don't know the first thing about modern Greek so please do your own research on how modern Greeks speak.
I am pretty pessimistic that even the median earner is tax positive (pays more than they cost) and because of progressive taxation cities that incentive anything less than above the 90%ile to relocate become per capita tax revenue poorer.
dragonfly
1hr ago
worried about rogue ai paperciip maximizers
I always joked (in person) about them creating God in their own image.
The only real difference between a paperclip maximiser and a corp is speed, anyway. (Granted it's a huge difference)
Gaashk
2hr ago
"Poetic Woods" by Anne Blockley (2023), hardcover version. I like it! Well bound, lots of paintings of slightly abstract forests.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2hr ago
I'm really locking into Infinite Jest, a work of unrealistic genius and prescience, so good that I don't even know what to say about it.
On audiobook I finished Two Weeks, Eight Seconds which was exactly what I wanted at the time that I wanted it. A perfect sports book.
In between I've been reading the Fort Bragg Cartel about drug running in the specops world in the South. It's good, but the author is just such a weenie. I'm antiwar as they come, but the book is so preachy about it when it is irrelevant to the action in the book.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
The joke is that the US is already a mess from the perspective of outsiders. Economically and technologically advanced, socially backwards. Any actual improvement is so unimaginable to Americans they come up with these warped eschatological narratives about civil war or apocalypse, or they twist themselves around to see this weird lifestyle as normal and any change as a threat. Like a nation of people who tunnel and dig in refuge from a self-inflicted disaster, only to be dazzled and frightened when they see the sun or feel fresh air, rebelling against surface.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
2hr ago
How does a civilization deal with software that's thousands of years old?
Lewis2
2hr ago
I saw a tweet that read,
Beyoncé released a song called "Bodyguard" to hide the Google search results about her yearlong affair with her bodyguard. Same thing is happening here with "Peter Thiel antichrist"
It doesn’t seem too far-fetched.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2hr ago
They exist elsewhere on the planet. It’s not like it’s impossible.
All of the resources required for me to build a new set of Great Pyramids exist elsewhere on the planet - it's not like it's impossible for me to build them. But it still won't happen.
Furthermore, the long term benefits of getting REE and bringing home the manufacturing of chips especially for defense are getting those critical components out from under the thumb of a geopolitical rival, creating jobs that would be decent paying manufacturing jobs, creating an industry with the potential for export. Those are not trivial wins, especially if China decides to wield its power in ways we oppose.
These are all incredibly good things, and you're right that this would be a huge win. In fact, there's actually a great case study for a country in a similar position - China's helium industry. Previously, China was utterly dependent upon the US for helium supply, because helium is used in a bunch of essential industrial/medical processes. Because they didn't want to be dependent upon a geopolitical rival for a vital resource, they invested heavily in alternative supply chains and alternative processes, discovering new ways to source and efficiently use helium. They now only get 5% of their helium from the US, which is why they're now in a position to start cutting the US off from vital industrial inputs without as much fear of retaliation. It took them several years, but it was a really worthwhile project - bit of a shame that the US doesn't have the several years required to reshore all this stuff.
If China makes a play for Taiwan, do you really think they’ll continue to sell us the material, let alone the chips themselves that we’d use to defeat them? Would any sane person in the Cold War feel comfortable sourcing critical components from Eastern Europe? That’s pretty much where we are, hoping that China will continue to sell us weapons that they know in a hot war we’re going to use on them.
Pretty much - except that they have just decided to not sell the US the weapons they know will be used against them. The US hasn't recovered their stocks of interceptors since they spent vast quantities of them against Russia and Iran, and now it looks like they won't be able to replenish those stocks until after they defeat China (good luck!).
somethingsomething
2hr ago
Yeah what you and prima said aligns with my thoughts, but it seems like you'd expect this wisdom to be in a philosophy text or blogpost somewhere and expanded upon
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3hr ago
I've heard some anecdotes at times describing Manhattan positively this way. Sometimes Boston or SF, too. If you can afford rent downtown, some blue places can be like this. But for some reason in the nicer places the rent is really high...
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
3hr ago
I said code-compliant permanent house. Some cursory searching indicates that at least one municipality has added "temporary housing shelters" to its zoning code as a permitted accessory use, without calling such shelters houses. Your municipality may have done something similar.
See also how some "tiny houses" actually are recreational vehicles that cannot be installed permanently in many places.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3hr ago
Thank you for clarifying! The Greeks at my church would be aghast at my ignorance of the language. Alas, I am part of hoi polloi after all.
rmtodd
3hr ago
And as someone (I think it may have been later SSC poster John Schilling) pointed out in a long-ago argument on Usenet, it's possible that Petrov may have made war more likely -- now every time things are all quiet, there's always the lurking possibility in the leadership's minds: "Are things really peaceful, or is there really a missile launch and another Petrov-wannabe in the radar center is playing games with our inbound data feed?" Soviet leadership knew, or should have known, that military hardware can be flaky, but raising the possibility that the underlings can be lying is not a method likely to lower upper-level paranoia...
Well, this is primary mechanism in play. Board members are elected, but I'm sympathetic to the idea democracy doesn't really work. Principal-agent problems do happen. Many companies do have stock ownership requirements for board membership, but I guess the financial consequences of poor choices here could be cancelled out by your executive price-fixing conspiracy.
Fortunately, it's not the only mechanism: you can just choose not to invest in companies that you think overpay their executives. If you think that leadership doesn't really matter/extra CEO pay doesn't get you much better CEOs, that's profit just sitting on the table, and companies that don't do that will do better, all else equal. This information is publicly available, nothing's stopping you or anyone who agrees with you from creating a 'low CEO to worker pay ratio' fund. This doesn't instantly solve the problem, but it does mean it's not your problem. It's the shareholders who are getting cheated here, not the general public or the employees who, after all, have not been deceived: they were offered a certain product/wage for the money/work and accepted it. It's only the board's betrayal of their fiduciary duty to the shareholders that's dishonest.
Not totally clear to me why this is the case, but I don't think it's strong evidence of corruption. Maybe they were underpaying them before, or maybe something about the corporate landscape has changed that makes leadership that much more important, or suitable applicants have become that much more rare. The increase alone is insufficient to demonstrate there's a problem.
If this does happen, I think it'll result in massively worse performance. There's some leeway for inefficiency in successful companies, but enough to divert 10%+ of revenue into an empty pit? Either the executive really is that great (which maybe isn't impossible, but most certainly aren't) or they'll get outcompeted by companies that don't do this.
The USSR indeed had infamously dysfunctional incentive structures. His treatment was not even particularly bad by their standards. That's really not an argument for adopting them.
That said: not like any other nation would have paid out that kind of money for equivalent actions. A medal would have been entirely appropriate; hell, he'd have been a far better candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize than most of its recipients. (And he did in fact receive various lower profile rewards from some Western organizations.) But a cash prize comparable to the amount of value he preserved? No way. The Soviets did spend an enormous amount of money on nuclear launch detection (the fact it didn't work notwithstanding), but offering huge rewards for correct judgements in these situations would provide the wrong incentive: why would you ever say the detection was genuine? Either it's a false alarm and you get the award, or you've got half an hour to live and it's not going to matter to you either way.
(And there's a more generally applicable takeaway: there's a difference between fulfilling a prior agreement and dolling out rewards case-by-case after the fact. The latter can be worth doing, but the former is obviously far more reliable, and reliability is the most important thing in leadership.)
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