domain:felipec.substack.com
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4m ago
It's @SkookumTree, on his way through The Hock!
So, who is identical with who? And who's the odd man out here?
If #2 actually is as you seem to be intending him, then #1 is the odd man out, because #2 does not actually believe the axiom that "we know how to solve all our problems is shorthand for. Free market democratic capitalism observably doesn't solve all our problems, ASIs don't exist in the present tense, and wouldn't be "we" even if they did. As you seem to intend him, #2 doesn't claim that we have the tools at hand to solve, say, racism and poverty, or indeed any other problem, doesn't claim authority to use those tools, and doesn't blame people for getting in the way of the fixes he doesn't have. All of these contradict the description I laid out.
On the other hand, if #2 is a "Libertarian" who believes nothing matters as much as solving the alignment problem, or is scheming about "pivotal acts", or believes that we should export "free market democratic capitalism" to the rest of the world at gunpoint so as to make the ASI arrive sooner and thus shorten and minimize the death-agonies of our non-utopian existence, then there's a fair argument he actually does believe that "we know how to solve all our problems", and #3 is the odd man out.
If someone actually believes the axiom I'm summarizing as "we know how to solve all our problems", they can be a lot of different things, but whatever they are is flatly incompatible with both Libertarianism and Christianity, at least as far as I understand the two concepts. The axiom is a claim that one has the right to wield absolute power over all other humans without accountability or restraint. It is not a subtle thing.
I don't actually care whether the plan is Marxist revolution or Pivotal Acts purportedly aimed at preventing unaligned AGI; either is inimical to my values, and for the same reasons.
epohon
5m ago
I might have taken it too literally, I read it as that a job must be provided to any applicant, nobody can be fired, and simultaneously people are not compelled to work. On second thought, this isn't impossible, it's just welfare mixed with LARP.
fishtwanger
5m ago
I... was making a joke about the problem of getting new members to this forum, if we're deliberately not making it easy to join.
But OK, if we can get the makers of virtual boyfriend (or girlfriend) app to insert hypnotic suggestions to follow the "Courtesy" rules in the sidebar, that'd be a major win for humanity. Heck, even "don't be egregiously obnoxious" would go a long way toward making the Internet usable again.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6m ago
Two astronauts orbiting, one with his arm extended, holding a handgun.
Come on, it's fun as long as it's just a joke. You can poke fun at women two, though it's different kinds of jokes.
Maybe I'm stunted, but I think this is an essentially elementary school bullshit,
That's how I took it, and in that sense the whole meme seems pretty fun. It's just bants, confused flirting at worst, like you said. But then, I regret to inform you, that the male (or otherwise) feminists are at it again taking the whole fun out of it.
epohon
9m ago
Testy? Just a tired and resigned addition of another pebble to the mountain of evidence that "female" is equivalent to one of the many kinds of enemies.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
9m ago
He's swearing he's not American, but he does seem to say a lot of (sort of) American things. They do have huge swathes of actually wild land over there, so I can understand the sentiment. Though even then, I'm pretty sure plenty of Americans still go hiking alone.
TowardsPanna
11m ago
Jokey or not, it does reveal that it is socially accepted and even fashionable to denigrate men.
TowardsPanna
19m ago
That is not a truth. Lots of people go hiking in the woods alone in my country, without incident.
Botond173
1hr ago
The simple truth is that nobody, either man or woman, should ever go hiking in the woods alone, with or without bears inhabiting those woods, period.
Maybe I'm stunted, but I think this is an essentially elementary school bullshit, on the level of pulling girls by their braids (does anyone still do it?) or calling boys/girls gross: confused flirtation going too far. To the extent that adult American women are sincere in saying that they're less afraid of a bear, they're stunted too; unfit to be citizens, literally infantile, living in an egocentric world where "beliefs" are merely transient activations of the underdeveloped brain, means to coordinate physical wailing and flailing to get gibs from the infinitely caring environment. Admittedly this is an adaptive mode of reasoning in a spoils-based society, so long as you belong to the correct caste.
But I presume they aren't sincere, for the most part, and just do not care about contents of their words or the impact on too serious men. So it's signaling and taking jabs at men.
Few great comedians are women, but on average women are impressively adept at wordplay and deadpan sarcasm, in my experience.
Now as for men and their daughters, this is more obviously pure signaling to fit into the stereotype of an overprotective macho. No one's actually leaving anyone in a forest with a bear or a stranger, so it's a cost-free signal.
This is all trivial. The interesting question here, if any, is whether norms encouraging such long-winded and massive pranks are acceptable or a sign of dysfunction. Remember, many Americans are in fact retarded, paranoid, schizophrenic, pathologically anxious etc. – a middle-class joke that's presented as consensus can have real impact. Is [functional] 85 IQ enough to reliably distinguish ubiquitous mean-spirited kidding from common sense, without it leaking into world-model representations? Is 80? 75? The true distribution is not Gaussian, there are lumps on both tails, and plenty of outliers.
Beyond this straightforward utilitarian concern for unwell people and their close ones, though, I'd say the problem of normalizing casual deadpan sarcastic misogyny is the same as with any other kind of mistreatment, and the appropriate response is the same as we see high-agency minority groups provide to politically incorrect smartasses. It is perceived, correctly, as the beginning of a slippery slope towards rhetorical superweapons and physical discrimination. In a degenerating culture like the modern American one, defending your personal and your collective identity's honor is in fact the sane attractor; it's unsustainable for some subpopulation, even if it be all men, to be all sticks-and-stones-but-words stoics, and others be of the "if they don't fight back this means we can hit harder" persuasion. (I'd go so far as to say that you can't be a stoic period; stoics are simply cuckolds with extra steps, just like their hero Marcus Aurelius was a literal cuckold. But that's beside the point).
My (obvious) belief is that it's not really acceptable but there's little that could be done.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
23m ago
If Texas wasn't sanctioned by China, what problem would they have?
The Panama Channel, possibly? Though I guess if Europe didn't really notice the detour around Africa to avoid the Houthis, it shouldn't really matter.
fishtwanger
27m ago
What aspects of linguistics interest you? I'm afraid I don't have much advice for how to get into it as a hobby, but maybe some of this will help. Overall, my main recommendation would be to start learning the International Phonetic Alphabet, in parallel with whatever else you try. No matter what you wind up doing, being familiar with IPA will probably help you later. And it can be fun (or frustrating) to try to make all the funny mouth noises at will.
You don't mention books, but if you did, I'd recommend starting with John McWhorter, who also does the podcast "Lexicon Valley". He's probably best known here for his political commentary, but he's also a linguist (studying creoles, which are super cool), and is a shining counterexample to the depressing trend of linguistics professors being bad writers.
You might check out the Language Log blog, which is by a couple of linguistics professors who mostly post random linguistics-related things they find interesting. The most prolific of them specializes in Chinese, so that's a focus, but you can search through the archives and probably find a few entries on just about anything. If you poke around and find yourself fascinated by something, that's a good sign!
From an academic perspective, I'd tend to divide linguistics into a few categories. First, there's the core disciplines, things like phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. These are usually a combination of describing how languages work at that level (as best we can), and the Chomskyan project of uncovering the underlying structure in the brain. This latter aspect should currently be going through some serious upsets, with the new ability of LLMs to generate language, and I wonder whether it'll even be a going concern in 20 years. (Also, sign languages are an important variant to consider, being fully formed languages themselves.)
There's also historical linguistics, which was the focus of the field before Noam Chomsky came along. This is stuff like reconstructing proto-Indo-European, and untangling changes in non-Indo-European languages. It's almost like a puzzle, except you're often missing half the pieces.
There's specializations and extensions of linguistics into other fields, like linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics (I love this, despite having to deal with sociology), child language acquisition, language formation, computational linguistics, neurolinguistics, and so forth.
And there's field research. All the other fields require data, but this is where data comes from. The most prominent type is going off into the middle of nowhere (often Papua New Guinea) and spending 3 or so years documenting the language (and culture, etc.) of an isolated tribe of people before their language and culture dies out completely. But it can also involve stuff like finding examples for the Oxford English Dictionary, or working on an OED equivalent for another language. Linguistics has been dominated by English speakers for the last half century or so, and by Europeans before that, so there's almost certainly good work that can be done by anyone in a different part of the world.
Anyway, that's what comes to mind as a description of the field, from my experience a few decades ago.
ThenElection
28m ago
No_one
1hr ago
You think Texas is gonna care about the alzheimer states of EU?
Lmao. TX is going to care whether they can trade with China.
Felagund
7hr ago
South Africa's Election
Since the 1994 election, the ANC (African National Congress) has been in power, and been running South Africa into the ground. Unemployment is sky-high, crime is rampant, power outages are now common (and usually scheduled), by the name of "load shedding", corruption is ubiquitous.
For the first time, in the election occurring one month from now, the ANC risks losing power. But this may not be a good thing, as more radical groups will be eager to form a coalition.
Some background on racial history may be needed.
There are four racial categories used by the government for people in South Africa:
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White people are of European descent, of course. There are two main populations: people of British ancestry, who more frequently speak English, and Afrikaners, who are descended mostly but not entirely from a mix of Dutch, German, and French ancestry, and speak Afrikaans, a language descended from Dutch. White South Africans have a distinct group identity. They don't think of themselves as European imperialists, or something. Afrikaners in particular see the Great Trek when they traveled inland after the coming of the British as important ethnic history.
Currently, white people make up about 8% of the South African population. This is the largest population of European descent anywhere in Africa. Demographically, they are relatively older and have lower fertility rates, so expect this percentage to shrink. Per wikipedia's data, they make up about 5% of those in the 2011 census who were under 15.
Also of note is that white South Africans are disproportionately wealthy. South Africa has one of the highest levels of inequality in the world. Some portion of this is due to legacy from Apartheid, as whites were privileged economically and lived in regions closer to economic activity, by statute. And, of course, European institutions were better set up to lead to economic prosperity.
(To prevent economic competition with black workers was actually one of the driving factors behind the establishment of Apartheid.)
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Unlike in the US, where colored is taken to be a slur of sorts, in South Africa, coloured is a distinct racial classifier. Coloured people are mixed race, descended from a variety of groups. They are the most ethnically and genetically diverse ethnic group on earth. Among the genetic influences are: the Khoekhoe pastoralists that once lived in western South Africa prior to the arrival of the Europeans, white European ancestry, ancestry from the black Bantu groups, both from eastern South Africa and from slaves imported from elsewhere in Africa, and east and south asian ancestry, especially Malaysians. This population is not homogeneous; different places may have different ratios. Coloured people primarily speak Afrikaans, and make up a large portion of the population in the Northern and Western Cape, the two westernmost provinces. They make up about 8% of the population.
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Black refers to the portion of people who have ancestry primarily from the Bantu ethnic groups of Africa. South Africa has many such groups—of the 11 official languages, 8 are Bantu. The largest and most important Bantu populations are the Xhosa and the Zulu peoples, who together are about half of the black population. (The Zulu have existed in their current form for surprisingly little time: the Zulu empire was built in the early 1800s, when the small Zulu clan, under Shaka, violently conquered and incorporated all their neighbors, before being conquered by Britain decades later.) About 81% of South Africa is black.
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And Asians, who make up about 2% of the population.
I'm not really entirely familiar to what extent more fine-grained ethnic distinctions matter to group identity and decision-making, as I don't live in South Africa.
Some Relevant History
Apartheid (pronounced uh-par-tate, not -tide) is infamous, of course. Running up until 1994, the Afrikaner National Party was in power, and had regulations keeping racial separation and government-backed privilege of whites in place. Among the key causes in its formation was white Afrikaners wishing not to compete for employment with black people in the early 20th century.
1994, with the end of Apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela was a key moment. South Africa managed to transition relatively peacefully and democratically, as these things go, though not without incident.
The ANC, or African National Congress, was formed under Apartheid. It was communist (the Soviets trained them), and participated in violence. Nelson Mandela, though a peacemaker late in life, was much less of one earlier. And his wife, Winnie Mandela, was far more violent: she was known for necklacing, that is, drenching tires in gasoline, putting them around the necks of victims, and setting it on fire. But nevertheless, the transition in the 1990s was generally peaceful, with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and so forth. Since then, the ANC has remained in power. The ANC remains economically left-leaning. It has implement several racial programs, including Black Economic Empowerment, a form of affirmative action, which pushes black ownership and management, especially, among companies. (You may think that this would lead to whites struggling to find work, but this seems not to be the case; white unemployment is far lower than the national average, though still higher than in the US). The ANC has struggled with high levels of corruption.
Under the ANC, South Africa has struggled. Among the more visible parts of this is the electricity situation. Eskom, the state utility apparatus, has had pervasive issues with corruption. Contributing further to this is issues with crime: stealing electricity (that is, illegally hooking up lines to the power grid, to get free power) is common in the slums, increasing the load on the system, and people have been known to steal the copper from the power infrastructure in order to sell it.
Further, much of South Africa is doing poorly economically more broadly. The unemployment rate is somewhere around 32%, which is the highest in the world, slums exist, roads are often poorly maintained, and overall things aren't great. There has been some inflation of the rand (their currency), though certainly nowhere near hyper-inflation levels.
Crime rates are high in South Africa. Several South African Cities are listed as among the cities with highest murder rates in the world. Of course, the same could be said of the US cities, and it requires that you have a government capable enough of tracking and releasing those statistics even to show up, so that may not be the best measure. Nevertheless, crime rates are still high by any standard. People have gates with bars in front of their doors, and often fences around their property, at least, among the well-to-do. Many live in gated communities, with private security. There is four times as much private security as police officers.
All this said, South Africa is still among the most prosperous African countries, so there is illegal immigration.
Since 1994, South Africa has had four presidents, all of the ANC. First, and most famous, Nelson Mandela. Second, was Thabo Mbeki. Under both of these people, corruption was common, but it was under the third, and most controversial, Jacob Zuma (president 2007-2017), that it became the most extensive and well known.
While most of those in leadership in the ANC were Xhosa, Jacob Zuma is Zulu, which has made him fairly popular with much of the Zulu populace. He has been known for sexual license, for more rampant and open corruption, most notably, with the India-born Gupta brothers, and pushed for left-wing economic populism and racial grievance.
Since 2017, Cyril Ramaphosa has been in power. While some were hopeful that he would be better than Zuma, South Africa has not done especially well. Controversy has continued with Zuma, with him spending some time in jail, before being released early.
The ANC is currently polling at around 40% nationally, under 50% for the first time since 1994. This makes this election a little unstable, as some coalition will have to be formed.
Enough of history of South Africa and the ANC, now to the opposition parties.
Opposition Parties and the Election
The largest such party is the Democratic Alliance (DA). The DA has long held power in the Western Cape province, where there are fewer Black Africans, and has also managed to govern some cities in the province of Gauteng, where the largest city (Johannesburg) is, and one of South Africa's three capitals. Otherwise, though, it has been the largest opposition party.
The DA is generally considered to be much more competent. The Western Cape has been doing the least badly of all the provinces. The DA is fairly centrist, economically, and opposes affirmative action and the radical redistribution programs suggested by more extreme elements within South African politics. Unfortunately, it also has something of a reputation of being the "white people's party." Its base is certainly not entirely white, as it has been getting around 20% of the vote, of late, which is more than double the entire white population, but that is not entirely unfounded. The leadership is more white, at least, and white people are disproportionately likely to vote DA. It's also relatively popular among the Coloured community. But this isn't good for getting elected. Helen Zille, the leader of the DA from 2009 to 2019, also had the scandal of saying that colonization was a net good for South Africa, which, while maybe true, is probably something you should try to avoid saying when you're a minority party trying to hold together a coalition of like-minded people. The DA would like to have more power less centralized, and more at the provincial level, presumably so that they can get to manage more of the western cape and be less hamstrung by the national government.
The EFF (Economic freedom fighters) was formed in 2013, when Julius Malema and his friends broke off from the ANC. The EFF is very far left wing: they advocate for confiscating land and wealth from white people. If you saw online the discourse about the "Kill the boer!" chants, these were those people. Malema has said that he is not calling for white people, for now. (Yes, the "for now" was part of what he said.) They are communist in ideology, like the ANC. Malema has advocated for aid to Hamas. They wish to (quoting wikipedia here), "expropriate White-owned farmland, nationalise the mining and banking sectors, double welfare grants and the minimum wage, and end the proposed toll system for highways." (Remember, South Africa is at 30% unemployment, and economically relatively stagnant.)
It would be bad if the EFF ended up in power. Because in this upcoming election, the ANC is likely to fall belower 50%, the DA has been worrying about a "doomsday coalition" between the ANC and the EFF.
The EFF has drawn most of its voting from young black men. It received about 11% of the vote in 2019, and was feared to be polling at maybe 17% of the population for this upcoming election, up until a few months ago, but is now back down to around 10%.
A few months ago, Jacob Zuma announced the formation of the MK, (uMkhonto we Sizwe), named after the old paramilitary wing of the ANC. Zuma has wished to be eligible, which is constitutionally questionable because of a 2021 conviction. Nevertheless, he still has had courts rule in his favor, though the process is ongoing.
The EFF and MK are fairly aligned, and seem to be willing to cooperate after the election. The MK supports such things as "expropriating all land without compensation and transferring ownership to the people under state and traditional leadership custodianship," change to a more African-based legal system, replacing the constitution, making college (including through post-graduate) free and compulsory, and providing permanent jobs to everyone capable and willing.
MK is most popular among Zuma's base, so it is doing best in KwaZulu Natal, the Zulu homeland. It has been polling overall at about 10%, taking votes primarily from the ANC and EFF.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) is affiliated with the Zulu monarchy. Historically, they've done well with Zulus, though that was less the case when Zuma headed the ANC. They support power being transferred to provincial governments rather than the national government, and don't seem crazy. They are polling at only 5% or so.
ActionSA, my vague sense is, like the DA, but more black, and is polling at maybe 3% or so. They left the DA in 2020.
The VF+ (Freedom Front plus) are right leaning, and most popular with Afrikaners. They are in favor of the rights of minority groups, such as Afrikaners and Coloureds, and are against affirmative action, and in favor of free markets and small government. They are in favor of Cape Independence. I think they may have something of a reputation of right-wing racist extremists, because they're Afrikaners disproportionately, and Apartheid was a thing. This perception is funny, because they are policy-wise one of the parties least in favor of racial discrimination. I think they're currently my personal favorite, but I haven't looked excessively deep. They're only polling at 2% or so.
There are more parties.
Of course, all the parties are also gesturing at how Their One Plan Will Work to fix the electricity situation, reduce crime, lead to more jobs, etc.
The DA has organized a Multi-Party Charter to work against the ANC, EFF, and MK, including all the other parties listed above. I haven't yet worked out what exactly that's supposed to accomplish.
It is still unclear what coalition will be formed, and what policies that will result in. I could imagine the EFF or MK being in a ruling coalition could lead to many whites seeking to leave the country.
Provinces
A few provinces are also up in the air. The Western Cape, governed by the DA for the last 15 years, looks like there is a chance that it loses control of the province, or at least has to enter into coalition. This would be bad, as the Western Cape is the province doing least badly. The Referendum Party was recently formed, and is running in the Cape, in the hopes that the DA will need them to enter into coalition to run the province, in order to hold a referendum for cape independence, to get the Western Cape to secede from South Africa. The VF+ also supports cape independence. There were polls not long ago indicating that it is also relatively popular with the people of the cape, with at least a referendum agreed to be worthwhile by the majority. If any such thing happened, it would be strongly disliked by most of the country. The referendum party and VF+ support it, under the right of self-determination, and in order to stop South Africa from dragging down the Western Cape. The Western Cape is the only province that is not majority black, which means that many think cape independence is racist. Of course, even if a referendum occurs, and passes, which are both not especially likely, it's still probably unlikely South Africa just lets them go, and international politics isn't going to want to help the white-coded people by the imposition of pressure.
KwaZulu-Natal, the Zulu homeland, is also uncertain. The MK is doing well, but the ANC, DA, and IFP will all also be relevant.
Gauteng, the most populated and most urban province, containing Johannesburg, Pretoria, Soweto, etc. could also end up governed by a coalition other than the ANC. It was barely won by the ANC in 2019, so it will probably need to be some coalition after this election, but who knows the constituents.
All the others should be taken by the ANC, I imagine.
I guess I'll have to report back later (no idea how long coalitions will take to sort out) how that all turns out. It's looking like we will have a situation where the ANC, DA & co., and MK+EFF will each have enough of a block that any two of them would be able to coalition, but none on their own. I'm not sure what will be most likely to form from that.
If anything radical happens, like the Western Cape seceding, or South Africa Zimbabweing itself, that'll be sure to have an effect on the discourse around the country. (And of course, more importantly, on the people themselves.)
RegularlyExpressed
1hr ago
I can't recall the last time I saw a bear portrayed as a threat or a cause of a dangerous scenario in a movie/tv show/game.
The only quick example I can think of is The Revenant, which was from a while ago.
Botond173
1hr ago
It's also true that no bear will ever falsely accuse you of rape or domestic violence, will never scam you online, will never drag you to divorce court etc.
SerialStateLineXer
1hr ago
My mom once said I was "so hot."
I have mixed feelings about that.
Felagund
1hr ago
HighResolutionSleep
3hr ago
I think roughly 0% of respondents would actually pick the bear. They are, to borrow a phrase from yesteryear, virtue signalling.
The more notable revelation is how cleanly this whole ordeal demonstrates that hating men is very much considered a virtue in some spaces.
No_one
46m ago
would sanction it to hell, all national and international businesses would leave, unemployment would skyrocket, a lack of federal subsidies would make programs that keep the underclass in these states under control and pliable
Sounds just like what was supposed to happen to Russia, yet here we are.
has no real need not to keep trading with both parties.
If Texas wasn't sanctioned by China, what problem would they have? Chinese sell everything.
Are we allowed to do anything alone or do we need adult supervision at all times no matter what?
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