domain:betonit.substack.com
Wave_Existence
7hr ago
this already kinda exists : https://community.openai.com/t/vampire-game-where-you-convince-llm-to-let-you-in/604295
you talk into your mic to try and convince various AI characters to let you into their home. The AI doesnt judge you for your tone, but this is a pretty great proof of concept of how this tech could be implemented in a bigger game imo.
OliveTapenade
7hr ago
Yes, I think this is true. 'Catholic' can continue to function as an identity even in the near-total absence of believe. 'Jew' and 'Muslim' both do the same thing to an extent as well, where they come to denote an ethnic or cultural background or upbringing. Protestantism largely does not do this. If you stop believing, you are no longer a Protestant or even a Christian.
Thus anecdotally I do often run into Catholics whose response to anything about doctrine or practice is roughly, "Oh, no one pays attention to that, don't worry." Catholicism can be grounded in something other than genuine, sincere belief. Protestantism cannot be.
(As a Protestant I'm inclined to see this as good, or at least, as not wholly bad. But that's a value judgement that could certainly be argued.)
I wonder how the supreme court looks if you track it, not by formally stated religious identity, but by actual practice? If we trust NCR, Roberts, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and certainly Barrett all seem to be practicing Catholics. Kagan is Jewish but it doesn't sound like like she's practicing? Gorsuch attends an Episcopalian church, and Jackson is very reticent on the subject, so I don't think I can tell how pious she is. At a glance it sounds like maybe a bit over half of the supreme court is meaningfully religious, in terms of personal practice?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
7hr ago
Always amused and astonished how determined most western governments are to make any economic activity apart from finance and working for the government totally impossible.
Hyperion
7hr ago
pushes low-value companies out of high-value land (as a pro).
If by 'value' you mean a market value people are willing to pay for, then that is true. But, this is a distributional effect. It's like how if we had let the plains Indians own all that prime farmland on the prairie, it could just be used by them to hunt buffalo, but if they had to pay a land tax, they could never afford it. Both outcomes are Pareto efficient, under certain extreme, frictionless, assumptions. However, the distributional consequences are very different, with the land owners rents being totally redistributed to the tax collecting government and these distributional consequences determine what is produced, it's just both outcomes are as economically efficient.
OliveTapenade
7hr ago
Yes, that's where you'll find the majority of culture war Catholicism. What is the Catholic Church? Is it what Catholics actually do or believe? Is it the doctrine of the church? What is the doctrine of the church, and who defines it, and that way lies a whole debate around tradition, magisterium, the papacy, and more.
jkf
7hr ago
We've been hearing "You guys are ruining this place with your nannying speech patterns" since before we left reddit.
Not from me you haven't -- the frequency of it has markedly increased lately, whether due to the additional manpower on the mod squad or a shift in tolerance IDK, but the place is changing under our feet and not for the better.
Anyways look at the results and ask yourself the question about your rules bringing you to this -- what good did this ban do the forum?
I think people haven't fully grappled with the implications of Evolution. And maybe don't understand how capitalism works. I barely do either.
Here are some talking points I see:
Why shouldn't an owner be able to buy a failing restaurant, sell the real estate, and then let the restaurant fail?
There's the inconvenience of being reorganized. All the employees on the healthcare plan, who've moved across the country for this job for their family, who've put effort and sweat every day to make the company better (and other such sympathetic narratives), are suddenly shuffled into the labour market without their consent.
Particularly when the company is on net-profitable. A narrative that this perfectly fine business that's meeting people's needs is deemed "unvaluable" by corporate spreadsheets and then gutted to make room for some high-end fancy business. Rich people are willing to pay more than poor people, and now this veers into gentrification arguments.
if I buy something I should be able to do what I want with it
There's also aesthetic quality to this.
Buying a rare painting from a private collector and then burning it is legal and unimpeachable, and yet I still feel there is something lost, an aesthetic duty to the commons. Memories, sentimental memories lost to the wind. Perhaps less so with a property like Red Lobster.
flitter
8hr ago
Ah, I have a very shallow model of Georgism.
Specifically I got it confused with the argument that it pushes low-value companies out of high-value land (as a pro).
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
8hr ago
I don't think our moderation has changed, I know our rules haven't, and clearly it is not just Nazis who are able to write effortful posts without catching bans.
We've been hearing "You guys are ruining this place with your nannying speech patterns" since before we left reddit.
jeroboam
8hr ago
Good summary of the competing narratives.
My take... What's with all the talking points about how it's somehow evil to buy a company and then sell it for parts? Why shouldn't an owner be able to buy a failing restaurant, sell the real estate, and then let the restaurant fail? Or more, accurately, if I buy something I should be able to do what I want with it.
Is Red Lobster such a valuable institution that owners must be forced to prop it up with infusions of capital? You know, for the good of society.
We need more zombie corporations going under, and less hand-wringing when they do. Failing companies failing is the engine of creative destruction, and therefore growth.
2D3D
9hr ago
Except, apparently, endlessly castigate the jews for being evil meanies and continue advancing the cause of Hamas because they will magically become good religiously tolerant liberals once the debt is paid (all jews dead).
4doorsmorewhores
9hr ago
Within the last year-6 months, someone in one of these threads posted some 50-60$ package that a dentist sells online that has a multi-step dental hygiegene and cleansing package. I lost my bookmarks recently and have been unable to find it, does anyone here remember when or by whom it was posted? Thanks
2D3D
9hr ago
The media is itself the culprit in this case. Barely a frame of the videos uploaded by Hamas themselves where they executed teenage girls and slaughtered children and whole families in between whoops of joy, but unlimited rehashes of crowded hospitals filmed by Hamas themselves. I still find it disgusting that the media does not give any coverage to the Darfur massacres, Perhaps it is because Hamas is a 'legitimate authority' so attribution can be satisfied, even though Hamas lies more than North Korea does.
jkf
9hr ago
I think that @JTarrou's comment made a valid well articulated point relevant to the discussion -- my point to you is that if you continue nannying people's speech patterns you will soon enough be moderating a forum mainly consisting of polite and long-winded Nazis, because (for whatever reason) they seem to be the only ones currently willing to put in the effort to self-police their speech to the extent that they aren't catching regular bans.
If this is what you and @naraburns feel 'the foundation' of the place is (and Zorba presumably agrees) then so be it -- but it seems to me that things have drifted very far from what it was, and I think it has accelerated lately in large part due to an increase in the specific form of moderation that you are engaging in at the moment.
cae_jones
9hr ago
Yeah, what is it with Chiefs-related news lately? They're also the team for whom a Deadspin reporter went to a game and decided to defame a 9-year-old in team colors bodypaint, and got Deadspin sued as a result. All these things happening all at once, and centered around people and events conspicuously connected to this one team ... would be an interesting coincidence.
Hyperion
9hr ago
This is.... Georgism???
No, it's just regular arbitrage. arbitrage would work the same Georgism or not. The whole point of Georgism, is that, if done perfectly, it only has distributional effects, it doesn't change the economic efficiency of the outcome. It is a pure transfer with no distortionary effects.
MarkySade
9hr ago
I first came across across Trace by reading his "Tracing Woodgrains: A parable on losing faith" post on /r/exmormon. I was the typical /r/atheism convert during my early 20's and had read/watched just about every inspirational, thought provoking, quotable thing the internet had generated in regards to losing ones faith. But Trace's summary of the Xenocide girl brought me to tears. As well as his follow up to how it compared to his own faith journey. I have read out loud or shared that post to many family members and friends as it genuinely changed the way I frame belief and unbelief. Since then he oddly kept showing up in the places I frequent. I was surprised when I saw his posts on /r/theMotte and even more surprised when the above discussed podcast I listen to said he was being added to the team. I never scroll past a thing he has written and look forward to any future paths he takes.
gattsuru
9hr ago
The recent discussion about Red Lobster (link) focused on analyzing how the $20 all you can eat shrimp bankrupted the company because it was too good of a deal and analyzing the declining social trust to keep it afloat.
Everyone in the comments has fun linking this to their favorite hobbyhorses. Here's mine talking about a cool idea for a legal system I was thinking about.
Great story everyone. But one question, is this actually true?
Some Xsocial users are linking the company's demise to private equity:
Quote https://x.com/windcomecalling/status/1790889866844422528
while this is a very funny idea, the reality is much more depressing: they made like $2 billion in revenue that year. the loss from endless shrimp was basically a rounding error—the thing that actually bankrupted them was private equity
Hmm.
Quote https://x.com/edzitron/status/1790493687572754654
Their ceo is a lawyer-MBA and they were bought by a Thailand-based private equity group that makes most of its money selling canned seafood, and they've been downsizing the company consistently since Thai Union Group took control in 2020
They also launched an insane permanent all you can eat shrimp deal that killed revenue. Thai Union basically ran the company into the ground.
Seems like the private equity group is deliberately running the company into the ground, and using the unlimited deal as a cover story. Another case of corporate greed destroying a profitable company and generally being evil.
Great story. But one question, is this actually true?
This analysis is another interesting angle on it, quote https://x.com/cunha_tristan/status/1791807133886861317
Golden Gate bought Red Lobster for 2.1 billion, and then sold off a bunch of real estate for almost that much. Although at one point they actually bought back a little bit of it, which is weird.
But then after selling the real estate, they sold the restaurant business to new investors. They sold the initial 25% of it for over $500 million.
Which seems to show that the real estate and the restaurant businesses were more valuable split up than together. It seems like the restaurants owning their real estate was dragging down the value of the real estate, it was worth much more split off. Which would make sense if the restaurants were poorly run, that business was being subsidized by the real estate portfolio.
The land was more valuable than the company. Private equity bought the company to sell the land to someone who could make more money with it.
This is.... Georgism???
Great story. But one question, is this actually true?
I honestly don't know.
Here's a 2015 article showing Golden Gate Capital made the transaction the last tweet is talking about:
Golden Gate Capital, which bought Red Lobster from Darden Restaurants Inc. for $2.1 billion, and then sold that real estate to VEREIT for $1.5 billion, has now agreed to acquire $204 million of Red Lobster real estate back from the firm.
The narrative seems plausible and would be an interesting twist. But perhaps it's too good of a story.
Does anyone have more source/knowledge of this kind of corporate dealing? Is private equity delivering the Georgist promise?
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
9hr ago
I don't know why you keep dunking on rationalists when most people here are not rationalists and don't claim to be. But I don't think even rationalists would claim that "the side that suffers more" automatically carries greater moral legitimacy.
We have a few people in a very similar spot here. To them 'jews and Israel > The rest'. But getting to that point would break their own perception of themselves so we get to play this game of words instead.
A strange observation. I can see who you think you're talking about, but I cannot see the actual arguments you are describing. I do find it ironic that you speak of "transparent intentions," given that you speak with shuddering horror of Palestinians crushed beneath rubble and yet, I must admit I find myself having a very hard time believing that you really care overly much about Palestinian lives per se.
anon_
9hr ago
I don't think that this original wrong has been made right to the Palestinians
Nor has the wrong Russia did to Hungary or Czechoslovakia.
more persuasive if Israeli settlements were not still expanding
To the extent that this is the goal, the continuation of terror/rocket attacks only fuels the right-wing Israeli government which in turn fuels those settlements.
The only climate in which Israel was politically capable of curtailing the settlers (for a bitter example, when they sent their own soldiers to violently evict settlers from Gaza) was that of peace and quiet. Doing so is already a huge lift, it's unthinkable in conditions like these. And of course the shadow and chaos of 10/7 has absolutely been used to accelerate these things.
Maybe the underlying difference in moral intuition is this: the presence of a moral imperative is not a license to ignore empirical cause and effect. For example, you write:
seeing an opening, you shoot the kid, I will find it hard to fault you for the murder even though the kid is technically innocent of the misfortunes that befell you and this did absolutely nothing to help your situation
Well, I have two kids. If someone killed them both, I might consider this as an option.
OTOH, if a mafia boss killed one, and I had the option of either killing him and dying myself or living with the shame & pain in order to raise the other, that's the obvious choice. Morally it might be better to off him and take the L myself, but I'm not about to orphan my only living child for it.
anon_
10hr ago
Yes, there's a correct way to be Catholic. It involves believing and acting in accordance with Catholic teaching, which is very clear on some of those subjects.
At least as an empirical matter, no one seems to actually do this. Culture-war Catholicism seems to center around deciding which portions to ignore.
When was the last time a billionaire white nationalist or Nazi was punched? The infamous 'Nazi punch' was one guy and it set off a whole debate on the left about whether it was acceptable. Meanwhile of course Jews get attacked sometimes - the ADL (I know you may not trust them, but I doubt they're all completely fictional) cites 161 violent assaults in 2023.
But I guess beyond this I'm not particularly sure why you're focusing on white nationalism? Yes, white nationalism is an extremely hated and ostracised position in the US. I agree that white nationalism is more hated as a position than Zionism is. What is that meant to show? The fact that there exists an ideology more hated than Zionism does not mean that Zionism isn't hated.
Is your point just that you'd like for white nationalism to be at least as acceptable to argue for in public as Zionism?
In that case - great, good for you, but I hardly see how that reflects badly on Zionists. You can just advocate for white nationalism. No need to bring Zionism in at all.
(Unless the implication is that the reason white nationalism is widely hated is the Jewish conspiracy to destroy white culture and so on, but at that point we're just right back into the tiresome nonsense that I was sick of seeing in the first place.)
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