domain:samschoenberg.substack.com
TwiceHuman
4m ago
Granted, how you're speaking here is how I speak to myself internally, and I consider that voice to be myself when I identify with the part of me responsible for rational thought (which I don't do much anymore. I should be more grounded in my body and less in my head). I might have misinterpreted you, or perhaps the brutal honesty you have with yourself comes across as holding others to brutal standards as well. I have multiple "real selves" so I can understand you more than average people can.
I no longer dislike that normies communicate not for the sake of information transfer, but for the sake of social coherence and good-will. What I dislike is the sort of evil which stems from weakness and fragile minds (being triggered, jealousy, the crabs-in-a-bucket mentality, and various other herd morality).
It appears that you can't have it both ways?
What I disliked was the dishonesty, and the... schadenfreude perhaps? which pretended to be quality. This is a flaw in people, and not in the site itself, which is why it's not solvable by the site. But I do think that taste and correctness are in conflict. Do you know this article? Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans. It's wrong. Good taste cannot co-exist with open information. You cannot be human and do science simultaneously (unless you can approach science as "serious play" like John Conway could. Probably easier with math than with politics). But "the mask" is not an issue when it exists purely for aesthetical reasons (i.e. for the sake of beauty), under such circumstances it becomes [manners] and even [art], rather than [manipulation] and [fakeness].
But while you cannot have both openness and taste, can have free, honest communication without hostility through sportsmanship. You know how boxers can be enemies doing fights, but friends outside of it? This idea allows us to "fight as friends", and it's what fragile minds lack. Negative emotions like anger do not need a target. You can simply acknowledge "That makes me incredibly angry", without making the other person responsible. You could even give in to the emotion without blaming the other person for feeling it, and without becoming malicious. A lot of things which are logically impossible happen to be psychologically possible, so you might be throwing away advantages through e.g. enforcing internal logical consistency. Grammar and logic are restrictive, they're self-imposed limitations.
Also, the old internet is different both in structure and in its inhabitants. Communities with intellectuals and freedom of speech are something like 90% male with an average age of about 35 (pure guesswork). We used to have freedom in spaces with average ages of 14 or 15. The mentality of teenagers is entirely different, which is why the modern internet is unable to replicate the atmosphere of the past. Granted, I'm speaking about 2005-2012, if you go further back, the ratio of older men goes up once again.
hydroacetylene
7m ago
I have upvoted all three of his posts to help him get out of the hole faster. Is a monthly ‘introduce yourself, the mods will pay attention to approving these posts, regulars will drop by to upvote’ thread something the mods would be willing to do?
07mk
9m ago
Define "tolerant".
In the context of free speech, it would be something like, "Impose no consequences on someone else on the basis of whatever opinions they might express" - e.g. in an alternate universe, if that person hadn't expressed that opinion, you would have treated that person indistinguishably to the real universe where they had.
I don't want to eliminate values I consider hostile to mine. I just don't want to live near them, as that is just going to result in lots of conflict. If "tolerance" means sharing power mechanisms and living space, my argument is quite simple:
The range of values humans can actually hold is wide enough that some points are mutually incompatible with other points.
Sharing power mechanisms and living space with the values-incompatible trades off directly with the things that make coordination/cooperation valuable.
1st bullet point seems obviously true to me. I'm not sure why that second bullet point would be the case. Why would it trade off directly with the things that make cooperation valuable? Cooperation can offer value in a lot of ways, but one is that when you're cooperating, one potential thing you're substituting is murdering each other (or imposing a pinprick's worth of pain, or anything in between). If we share living space and power mechanisms with people whose values are incompatible with ours, as long as the power struggles between groups with mutually incompatible values stay limited to the agreed upon power mechanisms, we're at least able to keep the living space a living space instead of a killing field, which seems valuable.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
24m ago
There's a new-user filter, and you were in it. it goes away when you get a certain number of cumulative upvotes. No, we can't turn it off. Yes, we'll manually approve your posts until you're out of it so long as they don't break the rules extremely egregiously. Yes, this is dumb, we're sorry. Please just ignore it and comment freely, and hopefully it'll go away fairly quickly.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
27m ago
Yet the argument remains just as valid as ever, and so I still insist on being tolerant of values that are are foreign to mine and especially tolerant of values that are hostile to mine.
Define "tolerant".
I don't want to eliminate values I consider hostile to mine. I just don't want to live near them, as that is just going to result in lots of conflict. If "tolerance" means sharing power mechanisms and living space, my argument is quite simple:
- The range of values humans can actually hold is wide enough that some points are mutually incompatible with other points.
- Sharing power mechanisms and living space with the values-incompatible trades off directly with the things that make coordination/cooperation valuable.
This is not me trying to generate an argument for why purging anyone who is different is a good idea. Not all or even most values-coordinates are mutually incompatible. There's a wide range of compatibility. Values-incompatibility is not an "I win" button or a tribal superweapon, it is net-loss for everyone involved, we should not be seeking to maximize it. We need to cooperate, because that's where all our good things come from. But if we can't recognize where the cooperation breaks down or isn't possible, we burn value for no purpose and open ourselves up to disaster.
If toleration isn't possible, the alternative isn't annihilation, it's separation. People who can't get along should endeavor to leave each other alone; that's strongly preferable than attempting to exterminate each other. There are values-modification mechanisms other than one group stomping on another; humans observe outcomes and modify, ideological structures that adopt bad values adapt toward better ones over time, even without hard outside pressure, and then maybe in the future reproachment is possible.
But right now, we're at a place in the culture where weaponizing the legal system and organizing lawless violence against the outgroup are on the table. That is, to me, past the point of no return. There is no credible way to un-tolerate these things, to re-establish a taboo, at least not one that I can see.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
30m ago
you have to actually bake that feta
Hahahaha thanks for the memory, this was pretty good pasta I will say
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
31m ago
If research and model development costs more than your inference margins (and your inference margins aren't somehow greater than 100%) you're losing money.
No, because at any point you can just... Stop doing R&D and happily sell tokens at a 42% margin.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
40m ago
To push back on a few things:
So what we ultimately have then, is a company that loses a lot of money...
I'm pretty sure that I remember reading that the unit economics per token are actually quite good on Zvi's substack. So the AI companies could actually make money selling their current AIs. The money burn issue is because they're trying to hyperscale and dumping epic amounts of cash into R&D.
... is available for free, has a poor conversion rate for paid versions ...
Again, a memory from reading Zvi, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the AI giants revenue is from API tokens anyway, not subscriptions
... and is selling itself as a product you didn't know you needed rather than filling an obvious demand.
I'm not really sure how to differentiate these. Prior to Uber's existence I was annoyed by Taxicabs and still took them when I needed to go somewhere. Once Uber started existing I learned that a functional taxi app was infinitely better and started using that instead. If I had known a slick taxi app was something I needed pre-Uber, I could have invented Uber.
ChatGPT/generative AI is now incredibly useful to my life. Google got slopified before ChatGPT 3.5 was released, I was already appending "Reddit" onto every search. I had a demand for not-shit search and now ChatGPT provides that to me (among so many other things).
I use it at work all the time too for a variety of things (consulting). It's really, really useful and if every GenAI model was Thanos snapped out of existence tomorrow, my life would get more annoying and my work output per hour would decrease.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
46m ago
Giving up academia because of idpol is like escaping a burning building because you’re worried about getting ash on your shoes.
The economics of postdocs and tenure have not changed. What constitutes polite society amongst your peers has not changed. Every reason you’d have to avoid it is still there, except you might get a welfare payment from Vance for your trouble.
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
48m ago
Reply above is filtered, btw.
For someone who loves the British royal family so much not knowing Charles' regnal number should be an automatic disqualification. I am sorry, but this is the rule.
I think the biggest most obvious fault of your model is the women's chart. Why do all starlets migrate from the Princess to the Whore and then to the Queen? What makes them lose this "soft status" and then regain it as they lose their attractiveness? Is it even the same status?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
51m ago
What's Sentinel? Is this the name of an organization that performs sentinel surveillance of disease?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
52m ago
Correlation, causation.
We suborned Japan because we were able to completely restructure their government and economy. How we got to that point was much less important. If we’d applied a Treaty of Versailles, they’d have been back at our throats in twenty years, probably as a Soviet satellite.
Kant
54m ago
We all like thinking about big things. Some of us haven't found people who feel the same way. How did you learn to feel recognized by those around you, while keeping this part of you to yourself?
07mk
56m ago
It seems obvious to me that the thing producing this slide is a slide in core values between the tribes. As median tribal values diverge, as the gap between the median positions widens, the basis for mutual toleration disappears as well. We tolerate and cooperate with people because doing so is seen as an obvious net-positive.
The thing that gets me about this is that, as a leftist/progressive/blue tribe child deep in the blue tribe bubble in the 90s/00s, I was taught that tolerating people with whom we share no core values was an obvious net-positive, because it's only by tolerating such people that we learn the errors in our own values that we are inevitably and necessarily blind to.
Of course, I eventually figured out that the people who taught me this were simply liars who wanted to use this as a tool to force people with very different core values than ours to tolerate and even cooperate with us, without any desire to reciprocate. "When you are powerful, I ask for mercy, etc." and all that. Yet the argument remains just as valid as ever, and so I still insist on being tolerant of values that are are foreign to mine and especially tolerant of values that are hostile to mine.
It does seem like there's something in the human brain that makes crab-bucketing your own tribe to the top by crushing everyone else far more seductive than uplifting your own tribe to the top by improving itself, and I'm not sure if there's a way around that. The one thing I'd say is that I'm highly skeptical of enforcing tolerance through the oppression of an iron fist, because, as someone who wants tolerance, of course I'd believe that it's okay to achieve it by crushing people who disagree with me; I'm biased towards discounting their suffering and stretching logic to justify why they deserve to suffer, and as such, my judgment that "the cost of the suffering of those who were crushed is worth it for the gain in tolerance" isn't credible.
Recognizing the nature of the problem is the first step to finding a solution.
FtttG
1hr ago
In men (and possibly women), hard vs. soft status corresponds very closely to dominance vs. prestige.
NunoSempere
1hr ago
Executive summary
Chikungunya is an exceptionally painful though rarely deadly mosquito-borne disease. Its prevalence is expanding as climate change spreads the range of the mosquitoes which carry it.
Disease basics
Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne disease caused by the chikungunya virus (CHIKV; see ECDC fact sheet, US CDC fact sheet, and WHO fact sheet). Symptoms of acute chikungunya include a rapid-onset high fever, severe joint pain, joint swelling, muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash. The incubation period is usually 3-7 days, with a range of 1-12 days, and symptoms typically last about 10 days. Approximately 15%20and%20joint%20pains.)-40% of CHIKV infections are asymptomatic. A recent study estimates a burden of disease of 17.8M cases annually, about a fifth of dengue’s.
Reports of people who have had the disease describe it as exceptionally painful. However, the case fatality rate (CFR) is ≤0.1%, similar to that for seasonal flu. Infants, especially newborns (age <30 days, CFR 3.8% in 2022-2023 in Paraguay), and, to a far lesser extent, elderly people with other health problems (CFR 0.6% among people aged ≥80 years in 2022-2023 in Paraguay) face the greatest risks of severe disease and death.
There is no specific antiviral treatment for acute chikungunya. According to the WHO, treatment “includes addressing fever and joint pain with anti-pyretics and optimal analgesics, drinking plenty of fluids and general rest. ... Paracetamol or acetaminophen are recommended for pain relief and reducing fever until dengue infections are ruled out, as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can increase the risk of bleeding.”
In addition to acute disease, CHIKV infection often causes long-term health problems as well. About 30-40% of people who get chikungunya have recurrent joint pain, in some cases for years. Rarely, myocarditis, hepatitis and ocular and neurological disorders can develop.
Vaccines
Two vaccines are approved for use in populations at risk, but they aren’t widely available. And the license for one of them, Ixchiq, was just suspended in the US, after administration in adults age ≥60 was paused in May because of serious safety concerns; the US FDA states that “one death from encephalitis directly attributable to the vaccine” and over 20 serious cases of chikungunya-like illness have been reported for the live-attenuated vaccine. However, the vaccine manufacturer states that recent adverse vaccine effects are "consistent with those previously reported during clinical trials and post-marketing experience." After imposing a similar license restriction in May, the European Medicines Agency lifted its temporary restriction on July 25.
Both vaccines currently in use appear likely to be very effective against infection. Phase 3 clinical trial data show that the Ixchiq vaccine elicits protective levels of antibodies in 97.8% of study participants 28 days after vaccination, which persists in 96% of participants at 6 months after vaccination, and 95% of patients four years afterwards. The second vaccine, Vimkunya, a virus-like particle vaccine, elicited protective antibodies pro in 98% of clinical trial participants aged 12–64 years and in 87% of participants aged ≥65 years, 3 weeks after vaccination. The percentages of study participants with protective levels of antibodies fell to 85% and 76% for the two age groups, respectively, after 6 months.
Several other vaccine candidates are in varying stages of development.
Where and how does chikungunya spread?
Large outbreaks and sporadic cases of chikungunya currently occur in the Americas, Asia and Africa, and small outbreaks occasionally occur in Europe. CHIKV was first identified in Tanzania in 1952 and has since spread around the world. It has been detected in >110 countries to date.
Non-human primates in Africa, bitten by forest-dwelling Aedes mosquitoes, are the original, natural reservoirs of CHIKV. Now, humans are the largest reservoir of CHIKV.
Both Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus (“Asian tiger”) mosquitoes carry the virus and are responsible for most transmission. Local mosquito-borne transmission in humans has been seen in all regions of the world with established populations of these mosquitoes. Both species bite humans primarily during the daytime, and while both species bite outdoors, Ae. aegypti also bites indoors.
Chikungunya can also spread through blood transfusions or other interactions with infected blood. It can also be transmitted in pregnancy to a fetus, or at birth to a newborn. CHIKV has not been found in breast milk.
In China
Chikungunya saw an outbreak in China this year, developing from 478 cases by the 17th of July, 3K cases by the 24th of July, 10K cases by August 8th. Monthly data for September is not yet out.
Although larger, China is further apart culturally, and thus granular data on disease spread is harder for us to find. Initial English-language reporting seems to have stemmed from a warning from the CDC in Hong Kong. Because of better data availability we turn to looking at this years’ chikungunya outbreak in Europe:
In Europe
In the short term
Chikungunya continues to spread in Europe. As of August 27, 227 cases have been confirmed in Italy, and 63 cases in France in 2025. Many in Europe are wondering, how much is chikungunya going to spread, and when is it going to stop? In the short-term, this year, not much.
First, let’s look at previous outbreaks in Europe. Six outbreaks with local spread have been reported in Europe before the current outbreak, with the first outbreak occurring in 2006. All of these outbreaks were in Italy, France or Spain. In four of these outbreaks, fewer than 20 cases of local transmission were reported; another outbreak saw over 200 suspected cases, and the largest outbreak to date saw nearly 800 confirmed and suspected cases. All of these outbreaks ended.
The fundamental reason why these outbreaks ended, and why the current outbreak will likely end soon, is that Ae. aegypti is absent in nearly all of Europe, and while _Ae. albopictus _is established in much of southern Europe, _Ae. albopictus _adults generally die off in the fall in Europe. When the adult mosquitoes die, transmission stops, and outbreaks end.
(Sadly The Motte doesn't allow for images, so just giving the source) (Source: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/aedes-albopictus-current-known-distribution-june-2025 )
(Source: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/aedes-aegypti-current-known-distribution-june-2025 )
Currently, chikungunya case clusters are active in northern Italy (Bologna, Verona and Modena provinces), one unspecified province in Italy, and in over 20 departments throughout southern, western and northeastern France. Ae. albopictus adults are likely to die off in all of these regions over the coming weeks to months, as temperatures become inhospitably cold. And when the adult mosquitoes die, chikungunya will stop spreading in Europe.
Spatial distribution of locally acquired chikungunya virus disease cases in 2025 through 27 August 2025:
And here is this same map as of the 2nd of October; it has spread a bit further:
Some Ae. albopictus populations in Europe are starting to become adapted to the cold, including some populations in Rome, Italy and the Region of Murcia, Spain. So it’s not impossible that some transmission could continue in southern France or perhaps in new, more southern areas of Europe.
Forecasters think there’s an x% chance (range, y% to z%) that the current outbreak in Europe will end this fall rather than continue through winter and into 2026.
In the United States?
Last week, authorities reported on a local case in New York, i.e., not associated with travel. The CDC page on Chikungunya in the US doesn’t yet confirm it, but it hopefully will be a good page to watch for an increasing number of cases—although recent cuts from the Trump administration might have left the CDC somewhat under-resourced.
The big picture: shifting climate patterns will change the distribution of diseases
At Sentinel, we have been tracking potentially worrisome diseases in our weekly brief over the last year. In general, we are seeing many diseases, particularly those originally tropical, expand and shift their geographic ranges as a result of climate change. Europe becoming more hospitable to mosquitoes leading to the spread of chikungunya is just one example. In the US, we saw the spread of the West Nile Virus, also a mosquito-borne disease.
Beyond mosquito-borne diseases, Spain and Greece faced alerts due to rising cases of Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), spread by ticks. In the US, cases of alpha-gal syndrome exploded, carried by ticks described as “a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor”. In general, we are seeing many diseases expand and shift their geographic ranges as a result of climate change.
Looking to the longer term, it looks very likely that chikungunya transmission will eventually occur year-round, as warmer conditions in Europe expected with climate change will likely allow Ae. albopictus adults to survive all year. Chikungunya will likely become established in Europe, as it is on other continents.
A big unknown is the impact of the changing Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which normally warms Europe but which could slow down or collapse. If it does so, Europe would become colder, stopping the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.
Overall, Chikungunya in particular doesn’t seem like a COVID-level risk, but the shifting pattern of diseases as a whole seems [statement of severity]
Some possible forecasting questions my team might forecast on:
- Forecasters think there’s an x% chance (range, y% to z%) that the current outbreak in Europe will end this fall rather than continue through winter and into 2026.
- Chikungunya numbers in Europe will exceed X next year
- Chikungunya will exceed 10 cases in the US next year?
- A newly expanded tropical disease will kill over 1M people in any one year in any of the next ten?
- What other operationalizations for the longer term thing?
I might also add a statement that my team may or may not trade on the above, in the style of Hindenburg research, because I think it's cool. But the play, if any, probably involves buying the stocks of the vaccine makers next year once it has faded from salience and before it fades into view again in Europe's/the US's summer.
Dirty_DemSoc
Registered Demoncrat
1hr ago
I’m not sure if I should be pleasantly surprised or deeply alarmed that I’m fully in agreement with you on this.
faceh
1hr ago
Burning billions on the cutting edge doesn't give you any lasting advantage against 11th hour entries who spend 1/10th the amount to produce something 90% as good at half the price to their customers.
This factor has surprised me completely. The assumption was that any company that got an edge in AI would probably be able to use that edge to speed up its own improvements, and competitors would have to burn a TON of money to try to catch up. So the first mover advantage would be potentially insurmountable.
And its worked about that way in a lot of other industries. With Uber itself, sure there's Lyft and Waymo and a few other small competitors, but the network effects it achieved have kept it out in front, handily.
In the AI space, I guess the fact that its working entirely with bits rather than atoms means the cost of 'catching up' is much lower, especially once a particular trail has been blazed.
What this does seem to reveal is that the player placing bets are REALLY assuming that whomever wins is going to win REALLY BIG, big enough to justify all the previous burn across all the losing companies.
It is hard to imagine (for me) a world where more than, say, 3 AI companies are standing once all is said and done.
Thoroughlygruntled
1hr ago
California's affirmative action ban is the perfect example of how personnel equals policy. The UCs have been flagrantly violating the affirmative action ban for essentially the entire time it's been in effect. It's just laundered through a "holisitic" admissions program where everyone knows the "personal statememt" all applicants write is where you talk about how much Kwanzaa drag shows meant to you growing up.
The combination of a fig leaf ban and a system where the top 10% of high school students (not sure if state-wide or per school) are guaranteed admission in at least one UC means they have marginally more white and Asian enrollment than they would prefer, but the schools are still doing everything within their power to put their thumbs on the scale.
I went to a Catholic high school and took a class on the different varieties of Christianity, both historical and modern, both extinct and existent. Jehovah's Witnesses we used as the example for a modern, existent, non-trinitarian division of Christianity. We learned about some older, extinct ones too like Arianism. While the LDS church does also seem to fit the non-trinitarian definition, they weren't generally lumped in with the JWs. The class was taught by a Jesuit, who despite being a member of the Catholic clergy did make an effort to teach the material objectively, with clear times in class where we could discuss what we thought of these different groups and he would also as his personal opinions at times, always in conformity to Catholic understanding. He tended to divide the 'wrong' Christians into two broad groups: those who have misinterpreted genuine scripture (he put the JWs in this group) and those who have elaborated, extended, and expanded what they think counts as scripture to an extent that they aren't really Christians at all anymore if you examine them in depth at all. He put the LDS church in this group (as well as Islam). He actually mused on the similarities between Mormons and Muslims more than once. His take as to why they were alike was that both groups (early Mormons and 6th century Arabs) had received the proper scripture, both descend from historically Christian populations, but found the New Testament unsatisfying to their egos and elaborated falsely upon the legit scriptures b/c they needed a way to make their group the main characters in the story of God, implying their motivations were both childish and selfish, and a deliberate rejection of grace. He was fun when you could get him going.
More options
Context Copy link