domain:nunosempere.com
And if the Earth gets warmer this isn't a crisis
Come on. It would suck for far more than "penguins and polar bears". It'll suck for the current balance of worldwide agriculture, it'll suck for coastal population centers, it'll suck for vast swathes of land that are already near the threshold of unlivable, and, oh yes, it'll suck for all the currently temperate areas which will inherit the latter's status as the arid "well, you can eke out a living there, I guess" hell-holes. This is true even if you're correct about global warming opening as much hitherto-frozen land for settlement up north as it will ruin further south. We'd be looking at a major reshuffle in what countries control what kind of territory and resources, which may not favor the West much. (Indeed, odds are it wouldn't: we'd been dealt a good hand already, to the point that some view sheer luck of the draw on Europe's local climate as, if not the secret to Europeans' worldwide success, then at least a crucial prerequisite. We can really only go downhill.)
Even if it turns out net positive in the end, it needs to be anticipated and planned for in order to mitigate the damaging side-effects of the disruption itself. Which is exactly what I had in mind when I spoke of "global implications" and why we need climate scientists. I agree that the Earth getting warmer isn't x-risk. But there's far more to whether a crisis is worth averting or mitigating than whether it'll literally wipe out humanity. (Particularly if we're talking about a specific country's incentives rather than Homo Sapiens's as a whole.)
WandererintheWilderness
7hr ago
Many kinds of scientists are irrationally prone to thinking their particular specialty is the most important thing evah, but AI risk is still a real thing, space exploration is still a real thing, deadly viruses are still a real thing, etc. I think the same is obviously true of the climate. Global warming isn't going to literally set us all on fire by 2035 but climate change is still an ongoing phenomenon with massive global implications and it needs to be studied. So long as you don't follow them on X, I think most scientists still produce more light than heat, if you'll forgive the expression.
they just need enough to make the cost of a nuclear exchange so high Israel would never risk it
But this has further implications that you omit.
If Iran has the bomb, they can provide it to a smaller, far more suicidal group of allies (the Palestinians) to lock the Israelis into their current borders unless they negotiate with Iran. Technology transfers, taxes, religious rites/rights, not purchasing American weapons, etc. is what that looks like.
In this way, the Hamasi would serve as the permanent Iranian veto over the [Ashke]nazi. Because they simply don't care if the Israelis nuke them in response- the fact is, the Israelis get hurt far more than the Palestinians, the Palestinians are suicidal, and that is sufficient to accomplish this goal.
Conversely, if Israel believes that Iran will, or already has, or will inevitably soon obtain, a bomb like this... then their only response is to start removing the local kebab as fast as humanly possible. They didn't like the paragliders the first time; imagine how much they're not going to like them when the settlers further encroaching on their territory prompts an air-borne SADMization of the Israeli countryside.
The Iron Dome can stop a lot but the bomber is going to get through. And sure, Hamas could always attack from another country (perhaps one in which they seek refuge after the dust settles), but in that case that other country [and its people] are collateral the Israelis can threaten such that Hamas is kept down- since if Hamas manages to get an attack off then it's the entire host nation's problem, and Israel becomes the one with the nuclear veto.
Which climate scientists have made a prediction including a date of extinction for the human race, particularly one with a date that currently counts as definitely falsified (presumably in the sense of having already passed)?
magicalkittycat
5hr ago
Throwing up a lot of words as a smokescreen doesn't change that Mamdani's claim was well out-of-bounds.
There are people who have called Elon Musk, who is much pastier in skin color an African American before!
The category "Black or African-American" isn't nearly as ambiguous as "Hispanic", and neither extends to people of Indian ethnicity born in Africa. Historical changes in the meaning of the term "white" don't matter either, because none of them would make a person of Indian ethnicity born in Africa "Black or African-American" either.
If every other category we use for ethnicity and race is fuzzy and ambiguous, how is that not relevant?
This argument still doesn't address the elephant in the room, it is patently obvious that the term "African American" for darker skinned people doesn't make sense when a light skinned person whose family has lived for generations in Africa and practices local traditions does not count when they move to the US but a dark skin person whose family has lived in France for generations and has no African cultural identity does.
If there's a major discrepancy between category and reality, what does that suggest? The problem is categories.
magicalkittycat
10hr ago
The alternative is exceedingly simple. "African-American" is commonly understood to mean American Descendants of Slavery, not Elon Musk.
We can not expect every single person to have been exposed to everything and culturally absorbed this in their life, especially when it is so unintuitive. Like that XKCD comic that's pretty famous, there are a lot of people out there who don't have or never experienced "everyone knows" situations.
So if your category is unclear and inconsistent, and other more intuitive interpretations clash with the culturally accepted one, then you are inevitably going to land on a bunch of people who use it "wrong".
You're just "African", and that's how it will be until race/ethnicity-based affirmative action schemes are totally abolished.
So he's an African, and he's an American, but he's not an African American? Certainly you can understand how that at face value looks incredibly stupid right?
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
The real lesson is actually 'if you oppress a group of low performers you must never stop. If you grow tired of oppression then leave no survivors, but only if they are low performers. It's fine to just liberate Chinamen or Ashkenazim because they'll catch up without really needing the help their more unhinged activists demand.'
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
10hr ago
This is missing some steps. There are plenty of government rules, which, on their face, are not enforced through violence and kidnapping. In many of those cases, you have to posit a persistently-oppositional figure and a continued escalatory cycle to get to an eventual end state where the ultimate response to unending opposition is, indeed, violence/kidnapping.
It's the same picture. The government won't give up until it has won.
ControlsFreak
14hr ago
Government rules are enforced through violence and kidnapping.
This is missing some steps. There are plenty of government rules, which, on their face, are not enforced through violence and kidnapping. In many of those cases, you have to posit a persistently-oppositional figure and a continued escalatory cycle to get to an eventual end state where the ultimate response to unending opposition is, indeed, violence/kidnapping.
If such a proposition holds, it should hold in other domains as well. Let's consider household/family rules. At different stages for children, some household/family rules are directly enforced via spanking or timeouts or whatever (violence/kidnapping). For others, you can often find a similar escalatory process if you posit a sufficiently oppositional child. Another end state may be 'exile', kicking someone out of your house. Of course, if we assume a maximally-oppositional child, what might it take to actually enforce kicking them out of your house? If they just refuse to go? Violence? Kidnapping? Calling the state... to use violence/kidnapping?
I think this reasoning about maximal-opposition holds for essentially every rule ever, government or not. That is, under the hypothesis of maximal-opposition, essentially every rule ever is either ultimately enforced via violence/kidnapping or... well, at some point, it just goes unenforced, as efforts are dropped in the face of maximal-opposition. Of course, one might think that choosing to present maximal-opposition is, itself, a rule that is chosen by someone.
That is, there doesn't seem to be anything unique to government rules here. Yet, I don't think that most people are willing to apply this same standard to the entire set of rules in the universe.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
14hr ago
He's gone on record on videos saying he's not African American since he's Indian. We joke about identifying as a Hispanic Trans person on college admission forms and this guy actually did it, unsuccessfully. Not the Trans part.
Zohran Mamdani, who claimed to be black to get into Columbia and is probably going to face zero consequences for it.
Ironically, this could be called a lie. Per the NYT article
But as a high school senior in 2009, Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, claimed another label when he applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times.
This is a man born in Uganda, and lived in South Africa through his early life.
Whether or not he's African American, and likewise with similar non-black Africa > America immigrants is a difficult question given that he literally is an African who became an American, and it's really hard to even think of an alternate term to call them along the lines of what we would call other groups! Like do we say "African-place Americans" instead to make the distinction clear? I'm not sure what the alternative even is here, we clearly don't have an established alternative.
This is realistically more the fault of terrible and misleading categories that are culturally outdated. It is weird, unintuitive and often nonsensical nowadays that Black people who have been living in South America or Europe for generations are considered "African" but someone literally from Africa isn't. And it makes for an interesting question, why do we call them African until they move then?
And if we want to say "well that's because they were originally African" or something, then it's a rather arbitrary cutoff that originally only applies to the great grandparent or great great grandparent or great great great grandparent (depending on the person's particular heritage) but is also a moving definition that applies to the great(x4).grandparent next and so on and so forth to where you could be great(x20) grandparent heritage now and be African but someone with great(X2) heritage now isn't, and also doesn't include we're all from Africa originally so why is there a cutoff to begin with then? Does that mean a black person in the year 300000 will no longer be considered African anymore because we've hit the time limit on African heritage? It doesn't make things much less confusing or weird.
WandererintheWilderness
4hr ago
This only holds for climate scientists trying to come up with new global models. Useful climate science looks like trying to make specific predictions about specific areas on a specific time scale in the context of an extant model, so that human infrastructure can anticipate and adapt to disruptions to established patterns.
(It's the difference between "AI risk researchers" who come up with yet more convoluted thought experiments on how to do timeless bargaining with omniscient gods, and "AI risk researchers" who are actually creating code to interpret and control what's going on inside neural networks. I can see why someone would be fed up with the former, but the latter is actual expert work that needs doing, and - so long as they sub-optimally remain a package deal - justifies the existence of the overall field.)
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
22hr ago
Well, yeah; this is 100% an autistic Christian thing.
You make yourself an enemy of the God of America when you lie on the form, because He knows the contents of your heart and what is done in secret.
That is why "lying on the form about the contents of your heart" is accepted by American culture as both valid, and an offense that strips you of any right to participate in it so long as they see fit that the question remains on the form.
Interestingly, it doesn't actually make any moral judgment- it still maintains the presupposition that there are good people who are also [disqualifying class]- but then, if the man be good, he would not lie on the forms because [see above].
Thus lying on the form is, while a completely natural thing to do, a sin -> if you were good, you're certainly an enemy of God [and by extension, the country] now -> OK to revoke and eject on those grounds.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
There’s nothing wrong with saying that you find a comparison ludicrous, but we ask that you leverage a more substantial complaint than “TDS.”
The category "African-American" is neither limited to American Descendants of Slavery nor does it include Elon Musk. The Census definition is "A person having origins in any of the Black [sic] racial groups of Africa."
Not only is this silly in that it declares government to be the final arbiter and definer of race, it doesn't even work out well when governments themselves disagree on these types of definitions.
Check out the status of groups like the Brazilian or Portuguese Americans for instance.
For the Portuguese, whether or not they are officially Hispanic depends in part on the state they live in.
Some states, such as Florida, categorize Portuguese Americans as Hispanic, while others, such as California, do not. In a few places, including Massachusetts, laws and regulations treat them as a disadvantaged group for at least some purposes.
Is ethnicity really a concept that is state defined? Does a person's ethnicity really change if they move from California to Florida?
Brazilians are even more confusing, they aren't officially considered Hispanic or Latino either, and yet it seems more than two-thirds of them define their identity that way
This is more people than some traditional Hispanic groups!
In fact, enough Brazilians identified as Latino in 2020 that they would fall in the middle of rankings of U.S. Hispanic or Latino origin groups by size, if they were officially counted as one. In 2020, Brazil would have been the 14th-largest Latino origin group with 416,000 who identified as Latino, ahead of Nicaragua (395,000) and below Venezuela (619,000).
It even changes constantly in this list of racial prerequisite cases on who is determined white
Syrians, Asian Indians and Arabians are both white and not-white. Mexicans btw in the single case for them are white.
Chinese aren't white, but they do get a pass in Jim Crow Era Mississippi to attend the white only schools and join the White Citizens Council so it seems even that isn't fully clear!
Barfknuckle
10hr ago
Roman soldiers often became loyal to the generals that distributed them land and victories over the roman state itself. It's really hard to not see this dynamic replicated.
Ludicrous comparison. TDS.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
16hr ago
Well, they've gotten better and better over time. I've been using LLMs before they were cool, and we've probably seen between 1-2 OOM reduction in hallucination rates. The bigger they get, the lower the rate. It's not like humans are immune to mistakes, misremembering, or even plain making shit up.
In fact, some recent studies (on now outdated models like Claude 3.6) found zero hallucinations at all in tasks like medical transcription and summarization.
It's a solvable problem, be it through human oversight or the use of other parallel models to check results.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
These scientists continually produce predictions which turn out to be cartoonishly wrong. When they don't come true they just change the date for extinction of the human race and demand more power. Climate science exists for the purpose of pushing a single environmentalist narrative with a single goal(states of nature as close to pre-European colonization as possible) for which they are willing to sacrifice human achievement. I think this goal is stupid, and I'm sure not willing to entertain people wanting to sacrifice human achievement for it. Australian megacats are really cool and a valuable source of scientific knowledge, not a crisis. And if the earth gets warmer this isn't a crisis, either- maybe it'll suck for penguins and polar bears but it'll open more land for settlement and that's good, and there's plenty of animals that aren't penguins.
vorpa-glavo
7hr ago
While I fall somewhere in the "state capacity libertarianism" and "liberaltarian" spectrum, I would say my main objection to naive libertarianism is the problem of petty tyrants.
I think there's a sense in which libertarians mostly ignore the ways that a local bully with a lot of property and social influence can make a person's life a living hell. If we live in a Dickensian libertarian utopia, what exactly stops bosses from treating their employees like crap? If the bankers refuse to give you credit because of some immutable trait of yours, how are you supposed to build wealth? If everyone in town refuses to hire someone who looks or talks like you, how are you supposed to make a living?
At best, I think the libertarian just hopes that society ends up supporting a diverse enough set of viewpoints that somewhere there will be a boss that isn't crappy, somewhere there will be a bank willing to take on more perceived risk, and somewhere there will be a person willing to follow the financial incentives and hire you.
But I think similar to the old financial dictum that "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent", there's a societal corollary that "Petty tyrants can make your life hell longer than you can remain solvent." Sure, the bigotry or social censure of a petty tyrant and their supporters ends up "irrational" from an economic perspective, but that can still create situations like those that necessitated black motorists creating the Green Book to help them find gas stations, restaurants and stores that were willing to serve their kind.
If the libertarian response to a black motorist who wants to use the government to make more spaces open for them is just, "Don't worry, it is in their financial interest to serve you, in the long run they'll be out-competed by the gas stations, restaurants and hotels that do serve black people", then a part of me feels like the response is incomplete.
A similar situation emerges with the treatment of untouchables in India. Even without law, people of higher casts often don't want to be in the same room or even have the shadow of an untouchable touch them. How were the untouchables supposed to end that situation in a libertarian utopia? In the real world, a lot of the way it happened is the Indian government using men with guns to integrate untouchables in schools, the same way it happened in the United States.
I'm curious if a more traditional libertarian can point to success stories of an oppressed underclass becoming a normal, accepted part of society without government intervention to force the petty tyrants to comply. I'm a little unclear on how a libertarian watchman state where all of the government enforcers are racist/sectarian/whatever, ever stops being bigoted. If you belong to a class of people whose de facto status is that you can be lynched or murdered and the local government will look the other way, is it not sometimes worth it to have a larger government that sends in men with guns to stop the local government from letting people get away with murder?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
8hr ago
Iran could threaten the use of a salted bomb on the grounds of the Temple Mount, maximizing radioactive contamination. The ultra-religious have enormous political influence in Isael. This would act as deterrence in a way that targeting a major city would not, while minimizing loss of life. Al-Aqsa isn’t super important for Shia Muslims, but the Temple Mount actually needs to be the place of construction for the Third Temple.
No_one
14hr ago
That's what I am saying.
But the only way to do it is thermonuclear weapons.
20*20 kilotons on Israel would be catastrophic but it'd be survivable for Israel.
It'd not be survivable for Iranian government.
100*400 kilotons would destroy Israel, possibly even partially prevent retaliation.
That's the moment when Iran would have true deterrence and MAD with Israel.
Being able to wound the enemy and then assuredly die is not deterrence.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
16hr ago
I expect that when people usually say that, they're implicitly stating strong belief that the problems are both solvable and being solved. Not that this necessarily means that such claims are true..
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
47m ago
It's fine to just liberate Chinamen or Ashkenazim
Looking at the current geopolitical situation, there may have been other downsides.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
I think there would be no warning until some very important Israeli infrastructure just all of a sudden disappears.
Useless to Iran, because Israel and the US will know damn well who provided the bomb. I don't know what happens if a country starts a nuclear war, but the other nuclear powers of the world going "Oooh, aren't you tough, we'll just give you whatever you want" is not going to be on the table.
The point is to nullify the strategic advantage Israel has because it has enough bombs to check Iran (and outside US intervention is the only reason they haven't been conquered yet)
Israel's nukes aren't really doing much with respect to Iran. Because Israel can't start a nuclear war without the shit hitting the fan any more than Iran can, they can only be used in a retaliatory manner. And there's no need for that, because Israel is conventionally strong enough to defeat all comers. (Whether you think that's because of the US or not)
The cuts to science funding seem likely to do major damage to American R&D, cause a mass exodus of skilled workers to Europe, and give China the opportunity to get even farther ahead of us in key fields such as battery development. As an attack on the woke elements of the Academy they seem both disproportionate and poorly targeted, and as an attempt to burn it all to the ground they are clearly insufficient. I'd like to see someone at least propose a new Bell Labs-type enterprise as a replacement for the scientific infrastructure that they're trying to dismantle, if that's the way we're going.
In other news, Elon promised to start a new political party and to primary a bunch of Republican congresscritters if the bill passed. That should be entertaining to watch if he doesn't chicken out.
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