Open Thread 417
...
This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. Most content is free, some is subscriber only; you can subscribe here. Also:
1: Thanks to everyone who commented on the Dilbert Afterlife post, including people who offered critiques/pushback. I’ll try to have a Highlights From The Comments soon.
2: In the ACX grants announcement, I said one of our grantees was an organization promoting free speech in the UK, and I’d be signal-boosting it once it came out of stealth. I can now announce that they are SPEAK , their platform is a Free Speech Act for the UK, and you can follow them on Twitter at @speakukorg. Check them out, and join if interested.
3: You may have heard of mirror life, a hypothetical form of synthetic microorganism based on reversed versions of biomolecules. If it were ever created - for example, by bioterrorists, risky research + lab leak, or a rogue AI - it could act as a sort of super-invasive species that would threaten most forms of normal life, including humans. The Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund is the main organization working to prevent its creation (you can learn more about them on this 80K podcast) and they ask me to announce that they’re hiring. Open roles include deputy director and people & programs operation lead. Both roles are remote, salaries are $180K+ and $120K+ respectively, and first-round applications close 1/25 and 2/8, respectively.
A mural by Dain Fitzgerald, called "A Friendship Forged in Winter Fire": https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G-W7j9ZbQAAEJP5.jpg
Since prediction markets are everywhere, we should be able to get accurate predictions about the probability of significant future events, right?
Polymarket:
CA wealth tax appears on ballot: 50% (https://polymarket.com/event/billionaire-one-time-wealth-tax-on-california-ballot)
CA wealth tax passes: 52% (https://polymarket.com/event/billionaire-one-time-wealth-tax-passes-in-california-election-2026/billionaire-one-time-wealth-tax-passes-in-california-election-2026)
Somehow, the wealth tax is more likely to pass than it is to even appear on the ballot!
Polymarket is bad at computing odds, this is a criticism of Polymarket's odd computation algo not prediction market.
Example say you arbitrage with 2k
CA wealth tax appears on ballot at 50% -> 1k on "Yes" (1k win, 1k loss)
CA wealth tax passes 52 -> 1k on "No" (1.04k win, 1k loss)
In principle you have 3 scenarios:
A: Appears on ballot, doesn't pass -> you win 2.04k [say this is at a 5% chance]
B: Appears on ballot, passes -> breaks even [say this is at a 50% chance]
C: Doesn't appear on ballot (auto not pass) -> you win 0.04k [say this is at a 45% chance]
So, if your belief is that there's at least a 6% chance the proposition fails, and that it makes no logical sense "appears and passes" should be 4% more likely than "appears" (a fair assumption to make, given first order logic) ... you'd win ~$120
Not a great return, but, it's 6% annualized, greater than bonds, and you get ~3% annualized on first order logic alone
Ok, how does this actually play out if you bet right now:
A: The *actual* win is 1.7k
B: This is not an actual break even, you would lose ~0.25k
C: Instead of winning 0.04k you lose ~0.27k
So on average you are... now losing $160 instead of winning $120
Indeed, there are *no* ways of arbitrating this diff. That's because order books are thin ... and were a lot thinner when you made this comment.
I expect that in about 1-2 months they will normalize (indeed, I am noting the odds evening out as I speak, as some people are correcting the market) - but the corrections happen only when people with the opposite belief see a deal in the middle, not because people are buying both to arbitrage.
In practice Polymarket doesn't really allow for arbitrage on most market under 10m or so in volume ... the only reason to buy a position is if you believe in it, and belief is a thickle thing. Why do more people believe that it will appear than that it will pass ? who knows, but 2% diff (even if illogical) should not bother us, because the system won't allow us to arbitrage it.
Realistically Polymarket should display these as 30-70% more so than 52% and 50% | Using the place where order books "even out" | But that would require people to look at a confidence range and that is too much
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_bar
Funny story about Ms. Rachel in the news: under one of her posts, she liked a comment that said “Free America from the Jews.”
Later, she made an apology video for this, saying it was an accident, and that she meant to delete it.
Under THIS video, there was a comment from @thepalestinenewsnetwerk that read “Spoiler Alert: They left that comment themselves.”
She pinned this comment and replied "oooooooooooohhhhhh"
Sometimes it feels like internet drama is both infinitely deep and infinitely shallow.
Everywhere you go there's a brand new iteration of "Person Who You've Never Heard Of But Apparently Is Very Important To Some People Said Something Stupid" vs "No You Really Have To Understand The Context Though"
But everywhere you go it turns out to be the same four or five dumb subjects over and over again.
I take your point, but I disagree this is an instance of that. "I'm deeply sorry for suggesting the existence of a secret Jewish conspiracy. The secret Jewish conspiracy tricked me into doing it" is funny without needing any context.
Those "secret" Jewish conspiracies really need to improve their OPSEC.
In other news, Shankar once replied to somebody's question by saying "think of it as the limiting case," and that was the funniest comeback ever. Except that you have to know the context to appreciate it. Sort of like the Ms Rachel thing.
That DOES sound like something I'd say, so if you've made up the example, kudos! (If you haven't, and that actually happened, could you please refresh my memory?)
Made it up. I’ve got your number, dude.
Yeah, such accidents happen to all of us all the time. More seriously, who is Ms. Rachel?
Ms. Rachel is an entertainer for very young children, like, one and under. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTqtGJwsJVE
My knowledge of her mostly ends at the Lindsay Ellis video about her, which is not an unbiased source. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwpanShgOp4
I wonder if the 1 year old kids actually prefer this kind of content, but to me it feels like a new form of torture. I can feel the IQ points leaving my brain as I watch.
> who is Ms. Rachel?
Mr. Beast for babies.
Who is "they" here?
In this context, that's standard terminology for International Jewry.
Unhappily I have neither Apple TV nor Google TV so I will not be able to watch the stars of Substack broadcast!
"Today we’re launching the Substack TV app for Apple TV and Google TV. Substack is the home for the best longform—work creators put real care into and subscribers choose to spend time with. Now these thought-provoking videos and livestreams have a natural home on the TV, where subscribers can settle in for the extended viewing that great video deserves.
That might mean watching Dolly Parton reflect on her showbiz journey, George Saunders read from his book, or Tina Brown interview leading figures in news and culture. Chris Cillizza, the author of So What and a frequent on-air contributor, put it simply: “Video doesn’t have to live in any one place. It needs to be wherever someone chooses to consume it. The Substack TV app does just that for me and my work.”
It's sure irritating to come here and see I have an item in the Activity box, then click and discover it's a notice that Hanania's live on Substack.
Agreed! Mine is always for a free press live that i don't care about
ETA: Found the setting i think that fixes it. I went to the gear in the activity window and then in Notifications expanded Live and unchecked all those. Hope that helps!
Hi guys, I'm the Third Coming of Christ. Yes, I know that makes me sound like a schizo, but hear me out.
gayasarainbow.substack.com/p/the-third-coming-of-christ
AMA!
Come again?
"The Second Coming was Nietzsche.
...in Islam where the next prophet is supposed to be the anti-Christ."
Checks out so far.
Okay, I'm too old for this, I've seen too many "hey guize here's my cool new take we are all God, see?" variants before, but someone who has never encountered any of this in the wild might be interested. I am no more impressed by "let me slap on a coat of hip new quasi-scientific buzzwords of the day" this time round than by the previous of-their-time hip new quasi-scientific buzzwords in former efforts.
Good luck to you all.
EDIT: And there's even a proto-Gnostic quote! I've never read any of the Gospel of Thomas but I recognised the "saying of Jesus" as not something I've heard in the canonical Gospels, looked it up, and my oh my there we go.
I'm laughing here. Of course it is, of course it is. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!
“You can say yes and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no and we will remember.”
Don Vito Corleone is speaking perhaps?
He talks a big game, but the Danish flag still flies over the ice of Greenland.
Scuttlebutt says this is Trump's way of preventing the next Sevastopol. Capiche?
TACO!
Mark Carney's speech at the World Economic Forum:
https://youtu.be/dTvFnC-oFGw?si=Pe76pZ9sFi7CaRa-&t=39
I don't have a specific point I want to make, just wanted to share what I think is one of the best political speeches of this decade so far.
Fascinating the lies that someone can spread, isn't it?
Have you ever tried Canadian puerh tea?
Without anything specific, what is the value of this comment?
Asserting that it's rather rich the Canadians talking about "keeping international agreements" when they've hijacked NAFTA to work as rebranders of Chinese products. "Look, it's gotta be better, it's Canadian!" (given China's issues with pine nuts I can sympathize with the person, even if they are dumber than a sack of bricks).
I read it, which is how I always consume political speechifying, and was agog. Literally historical-level good both on the merits and as communication.
The final three paragraphs form a peroration that Churchill or Obama or Reagan or MLK -- thinking offhand of some of the greatest English-language public speechmakers of the past century -- wouldn't have been ashamed of.
Also some people whose wisdom in such things I tend to respect say that Carney's manner in delivering it was every bit as good. Perhaps partly because he personally wrote it at least in large part, hence was not reciting but rather speaking his own thoughts.
All that from a 60-year-old banker whose very first partisan-politics role at any level began less than a year ago....January 2025 me did _not_ have any of that on my bingo card, couldn't have picked Mark Carney out of a lineup.
The speech was excellent, and appropriate. The question is whether the Canadian people will back it up with more than words. And I'm frankly quite skeptical on that.
Same goes for the rest of the target audience. It's so much easier to imagine that the fine words will be enough.
It is not a matter of will, but simple capabilities. Ambition is worthless unless you have the resources to do anything with it. A rebellious will does not change the fact that their only choice is to serve or die.
Even against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy who is certain to win a military confrontation, a weaker country has no choice but to fight a war with the objective of making the engagement as costly as possible for the neighboring empire, or (much) preferably to signal they will do so without actually having to do it. The higher the cost the greater the degree of freedom the diplomats will have at the negotiating table when hashing out the terms of a surrender agreement. This is because even if the greater power wins, it is some inconvenience to them to spend the blood and treasure it'd take to pacify them, so there is a range of options that is better for both parties than active war. Once again, the greater the cost, the greater that range.
You again. OK, let's do this.
In addition to "serve" and "die", Canada has the choice of establishing a new alliance with people powerful enough to stand up to the United States. I see at least two obvious options there. And I see no advantage to the United States in pushing Canada down that path.
Canada, as the proud owner of twenty-five large heavy-water fission reactors, also has the option of establishing a strategic nuclear deterrent capable of going full MAD. If they die, we die with them. Given the long and mostly indefensible border between the two nations, and the fragility of modern economies, there are also plausible non-nuclear deterrent options available to them.
And even if those options were unavailable, Canada would only be faced with the choice between serving or dying, if a superpower demands "serve or die". Since you're pretty clearly thinking of the United States in that role, that gives Canada the third option of hoping that the American people would do the right thing and, if necessary, destroy the United States of America before America can kill all the Canadians. You might be surprised by how many of us would step up for that.
Canada may end up choosing to serve. But if they do, it will be out of cowardice rather than necessity. And maybe the Canadians will surprise us both and follow Carney's lead on this.
This edgelord-y crap has been all over the internet recently, and has gotten old and tiresome very quickly. All the more so because it's so plainly and egregiously wrong.
Canada has, of course, a smaller population, a smaller economy and a smaller military than its neighbor to the south. But it is neither weak nor helpless, and has been charting and following its own course for over a century. There's no signs that it will stop doing so any time soon. People saying things like this appear to have not even given the situation 30 seconds of serious thought, but instead pattern matched to "we strong, they weak, therefore they gotta do whatever we say." Which is absurd and patently false.
The actual fact is that the U.S. of 2026 doesn't have much leverage to compel Canada to do anything. A year ago it seemed plausible that the U.S. might extract significant and painful concessions from Canada through careful use of economic coercion. Instead, the newly-formed administration spend several months pointlessly dicking around using large threats to obtain very small gains, and then proceeded to completely blow up it's leverage by trying to apply aggressive and broad-based tariffs to *nearly the entire world*. That predictably and immediately backfired, and by now I don't expect Ottawa would move much at all even if the U.S. made even more aggressive tariff threats: the power of those threats is largely gone.
The U.S. of years past might instead have tried to compel Canada through diplomatic means: by gathering allies and threatening to isolate Canada on the global stage. Instead, the U.S. has managed to badly and repeatedly alienate the global community and isolate *itself*, simultaneously squandering its ability to build coalitions and increasing the importance of keeping healthy ties to more stable countries like Canada.
But I suspect you're thinking of neither of these things: people who say this kind of crap usually seem to be possessed by the childish fantasy that military power is the only sort of power that matters. They imagine that because the U.S. has more tanks and planes and missiles than anyone else, it can just tell countries like Canada what to do and be obeyed. To which I say "go ahead and try it." I doubt Ottawa would respond to military threats from Washington with *open* mockery. But I highly doubt they'd comply in any meaningful sense, either. Probably they'd make a great show of being polite and accommodating and then draw things out and drag their feet and ultimately do nearly nothing that the U.S. asked for. See, basically everyone who's not a completely mindkilled red-triber knows how utterly disastrous the outcomes are likely to be if the U.S. *actually* attacked Canada[1]. Obviously it would involve terrible and needless loss of life on both sides, and I doubt it would be *fun* to be living in Canada if it happened. But the attempt would wreck the U.S. like few other actions possibly could. (If you can't see why this is true, then you simply don't have the basic understanding of people and knowledge of the world to understand politics *at all*: you'd be better of sticking to sports of video games.)
[1] Including (I assume), large portions of the U.S. military brass, who have a reputation for being no-nonsense realists regardless of their personal politics.
Today Carney announced he won't be pursuing a "trade deal" with China, due to Trump's "threats" of 100% tariffs (given our current stance on China, I'd rather call those "promises").
Soft Power: wielding the great American economy as a cudgel to keep Canada from doing something stupid, that Canada itself would regret (note: I'll withdraw this assertion if Canada was simply "Negotiating" and wants a better deal with America. Trump's not adverse to using carrots, as the Abraham Accords (pipeline!) shows).
Did they actually reverse course from what they announced previously? From the reporting it just looks like they're saying they have "no plans" to go further. That seems like it could easily fit under the umbrella of "they'd make a great show of being polite and accommodating and then draw things out and drag their feet and ultimately do nearly nothing that the U.S. asked for"
This is international politics. If the United States has communicated a "red line" beyond which there will be consequences (either hard or soft) and Canada says "message received", then the negotiation has been held, and no more jawjawing is needed. If Canada was securely in the United States' court, this would not be needed.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/canada-s-carney-hails-new-strategic-partnership-with-china/ar-AA1Ukakc?ocid=BingNewsSerp
So, um, yes, there's actual plans (along with kneepads).
Its neighbor to the south? Most of Canada's population is south of the northernmost part of the Continental US (not counting Alaska).
This is an extremely weird and silly nitpick.
Start from a point inside Canada. Move due South (i.e. along a latitude line) until you are in some other country that is no longer Canada. What country are you in? The answer for every the vast, vast majority of points in Canada[1] is "The United States."
In the straightforward way that most English speakers use and understand words, that puts the U.S. "to the south" of Canada. Regardless of whatever weird quirks of human geography you happen to bring up.
[1] The exception being parts of the Maritimes where the answer is "The Dominican Republic" or "Venezuela", that one tiny bit of Newfoundland where you technically end up in France, and a section of the B.C. coast where it looks like you'd stay in international waters until you crossed Antarctica, and not actually intrude on the territory of another nation until somewhere in Asia.
And you can go due south in America and get to Canada (without using Alaska).
My point is that Canada is a very empty country, and that most of Canada, area-wise, behaves very differently than "the part with the Trans-Canada highway."
I really liked Letterkenny. : - )
Agree. And reportedly he wrote it himself.
It’s a great clear-eyed speech.
What do you guys think about intergenerational transmission through influence? I wrote an article relating to it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/mumbiss/p/baby-mama-recursion?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
How do White Supremacists that put a lot of stress on the Black-White IQ gap deal with the (Ashkenazi)Jewish-White IQ gap? Isn't it challenging to foreground a metric in which you are smack in the middle between your alleged inferiors?
Whenever you bring up Asian IQs, they usually pivot to saying "we need to keep non-white people out of the country because of culture".
Didn't stop them from almost getting wiped out every other century. Maybe there's more to race than just IQ? Either way, it's not as if blacks have any accomplishments under their belt... except inventing jazz, I guess. Even that didn't last.
My impression is that "white supremacy" is not at its heart a claim that "whites are smarter than anyone else and therefore should rule", it's just a desire that whites should rule. Reasons are only opportunistic.
Let me be clearer. I am asking about the particular set of people that:
A. Say that whites are superior to other races.
B. Say that jews aren't white.
C. Often cite IQ studies to demonstrate blacks are inferior to whites.
We can also replace "white" with "Aryan" to get a larger set.
Malconstructed argument.
I can as easily construct a "white supremacist" that is logically consistent:
1. White IQ > Black IQ (and other large groups that have lower alleged IQ)
2. Don't want tribal people with higher IQ and strong in-group preference to lord over you
3. Get them all out of the country, so you can live among your own
But at this point it isn't so much a "white supremacist" no more, than ethnic nationalist (like Chinese in China are, like Jews in Israel are, etc).
So realistically speaking, every time you hear an alleged "white supremacist", it's most likely just an ethnic nationalist - that happens to be white, so you open the whole can of worms of mental gymnastics, ad-homs, etc, etc...
The Chinese are actually racist. See that "won best advertisement in China for the Year" washing machine advertisement where they literally whitewash a black person into being chinese.
Ethnic Nationalists are ... all of Spain, pretty much. It's why Spain always wants to dissolve as a country.
White supremacists presumably have a holistic understanding of white supremacy that weighs intelligence highly but not as the only factor. As motivated reasoning goes, this is not even difficult.
I think that any reasonable white supremacist would consider Jews to be white and not inferior to other whites. Historical race science often divided the white race into the subraces Aryans, Semites and Hamites. E.g. look at this old map from an encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race#/media/File:Meyers_map.jpg
You can come with a narrative where your group is just right, and the other groups are either holding you back with their low IQs, or plotting against you with their superior IQs. I've seen people do that.
It would appear that you do not have access to very good IQ tests. The best IQ tests are long-term, and are definitely not advertised (these are IQ tests designed for the higher range of humans, naturally. People failing the marshmallow test do not apply, and would not do well if enrolled).
Marshmallow tests aren't IQ tests.
No, of course not, but a person who consistently fails to change their smoke detector because they fail to register the pattern isn't going to do well on a long-term intelligence test.
So now you're onto a third topic...
It's a different angle to the same topic, actually. Metaintelligence.
The pattern is that when the battery runs down the thing drives you crazy by beeping. You believe there are many people who fail to grasp that?
Online data of people playing videogames (aka there's a lot of audio recorded while people are playing Doom, etc. -- the first person multiplayer shooter games, in particular.) suggests that Yes, there is a correlation between race and "not changing the smoke detector."
Pattern recognition isn't the same across people, and certain races have higher genetic variability than others. Given that, and even a "everyone's the same on average" (which, hardly, but even assuming that...), you'd expect to see some people "not tying the beeps together."
The marshmallow test is not a reliable measure of willpower or adult functioning more generally.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11581930/
Can you explain what you mean?
Scott, FFS, you're asking Wimbli the Aristocat to explain what he means. What could possibly go wrong.
The name keeps changing but the inane jive remains the same.
I can barely read these threads anymore. The flood of shit makes it not worth the time to block the Shankars and Wimblis.
Yep, the garden no longer feels well-kept.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism
Scott, you need to figure out how to make moderation happen effectively while you are busy. Now it's a joke; once in a month you ban someone, the next day they are back with a new account.
Yeah it’s an abandoned lot in a decaying town at this point. And no, “busy” is not an acceptable cop out - this thing is a wildly profitable business, isn’t it? We’re a long way from the SSC of yore.
I understand what it's like to have kids, and I even didn't have twins. But I can imagine some simple solutions that could be tried, and kept if they work.
First idea: Scott appoints volunteer moderators, let's say five people, and creates a Discord channel for them. One chat for moderators talking to each other, another chat for moderators talking to Scott.
Whenever there is a bad content, moderators discuss it among themselves. If there are e.g. 3 votes in favor of a ban and 0 votes opposing, they prepare the case for Scott, and if Scott approves, they ban the comment and/or user.
Now Scott's work is reduced to reading a short comment and replying with "ok, ban" or "don't ban" or maybe "ban, however not permanently, but only for a week". That's minimum time involvement. Even better if Scott would just get a mobile notification. (Not sure if Discord works with mobile. If not, do the same in Whatsapp.) Still, no ban happens without Scott's approval.
I just don't see "having kids" as a viable excuse. Per the numbers in mmmmm's link, this is a solid 6-figure job, grossing as much as half a million a year - a corporate VP-level compensation. Either figure out how to have kids taken care of while having a 1-percenter job, or "resign" if this job is too much to handle or unimportant to you. Plenty of Americans manage to have kids and do their jobs at the same time.
Well, widely profitable is a stretch. Subscription numbers are going down year by year, even back when he actually gave a damn. I remember Scott himself saying that the blog won't be financially justifiable if trends continue. Which, well... given current events, it's probably only going to become harder to justify paying ten dollars a month for basically nothing.
Okay nevermind, I checked the subscription numbers: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/subscrive-drive-25-free-unlocked He's still making fuck-you money, so I guess there isn't any incentive for him to give a damn. Oh well.
Yeah, it was fun for quite a while but… yeah. The conspicuous avoidance of observable reality, the sane washing of all the bullshit being put out right now is too much.
Anything can be discussed except… the transparent destruction of the Republic, the tossing away 80 years of an imperfect but valuable rules based order by the Toad in Chief… Nauseating.
And there’s plenty of interesting stuff to read elsewhere. I’m a bit fed up with the AI Doom / prediction markets / Bayesianism for everything shtick.
It can be discussed. Well, not with Wimbly, they're insane, but everyone else is at least somewhat grounded in reality. The fact that we do not share the same values doesn't mean we can't have some good faith argument. Your disgust, on the other hand, is not particularly interesting. Why can't we set our sentimentality aside and just talk?
No we can’t. Well, at least I can’t. I can’t have a normal conversation when a bunch of morons/psychos/whatever constantly butt in: “what about the Jews!”, “Coloreds are dumb”, “Trump is good akshuly” etc., ad nauseam. Fuck this shit.
It's not going to be possible for much longer to keep pretending that everyone shares your values. Life will become very difficult once people feel safe enough to say those things in public. May as well get used to it now.
I want to roll my eyes right now but my doctor says that if I keep doing that it may cause my ocular muscles to spasm and eject my eyeballs.
One of the problems with "traditional" IQ tests is that they need to be easy to grade (and relatively quick). It is rather hard to grade creativity, is it not? How about long term pattern analysis? Or predicting consequences more than one step ahead? The last one is tricky to grade, as you're grading the logic (and, naturally, the independently-devised models) and not the correctness of the consequences.
In this world, there do exist jobs that demand general intelligence (with starting skills being relatively immaterial). There is a high "financial" incentive to find the smartest people on Earth, and the companies are willing to devise tests that don't need to cover, say, below 120 IQ (which outlines a different problem with traditional IQ tests, they purport to cover all of humanity with a single scale.).
So wutz on these tests? How are they developed? Is there info online about them? Have you taken one? Do you remember any of the items?
I know someone who administers and grades such tests (he's a "top 1000 in the world" talent, so you've definitely encountered his work). I wouldn't pass, so no, I haven't taken any.
I could easily imagine games like "The Magic Candle" or Minecraft being part of a long-term IQ Test -- "how much initiative and creativity do you show? how goal-directed are you when given a world to explore, and only a very vague time limit?" (remember the part about "hard to grade?")
In general, modelling, pattern recognition, analysis and creativity, with a consequential deemphasis on "verbal intelligence" and memorization.
Usually they'd point to something about how they're naturally covetous and evil. It's kind of like how some say that Asians have higher IQs but we are "more creative".
If they really took that stuff seriously, they'd talk about how some of the biggest mistakes the US ever made were the Chinese Exclusion Act which kept all those Chinese immigrants from making a life here and having kids, and the Immigration Act of 1924 which ruined America's chance to accept millions of Ashkenazi Jews fleeing antisemitism. Imagine the improved genetic makeup of the nation! The national IQ score!
I think a lot of them accept it, and then use it and other supposed "selection pressures" acting at the population level to argue for their deviousness, cunning, etc.
So this would mean that they consider blacks inferior and jews superior but evil? Or intellectually superior but morally inferior?
The old George Carlin joke: "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"
"White supremacist" is rarely a self-applied label.
The ones who take IQ data seriously don't call themselves that, and the ones who call themselves that don't take IQ data seriously.
With an ex colleague I founded https://unbubble.news, a tool that uses LLMs to analyze links or screenshots and give more context, surface biases and propose different perspectives.
We're in the validation phase, to see if this idea and implementation has a future, or decide to kill it and try to fight social polarization from a different entry point.
I'm very much interested in feedbacks and hot takes about it! If you are interested, please reach out :)
It did an ok job with this:
https://www.unbubble.news/wrap/pZzHPRfreQ6hTVN8BKPP?utm_source=share
It noted what i also noticed, that a bunch of D controlled states did not participate, although it apparently doesnt assign it the same significance that i do.
I dont like that it just regurgitates various claims without further investigation. Example "Critics warn that assembling a federal database with names, birth dates and partial SSNs heightens breach risks and could chill registration and turnout." or "Academic work and advocacy-group analyses find only isolated, often unproven cases of noncitizen voting, far below levels that could sway national results." could have used some links so i can evaluate for myself how much i should believe 'Academic work and advocacy-group analyses'
Ah, right, in the context! Yes, I could add the sources also there. Thanks for the feedback!
Anyone have experience donating a kidney while single? All of the experiences I've read so far involve the donor being cared for by a spouse but I'm at a loss who to ask to be my caretaker.
What about a task rabbit? The hospital won't discharge you if you still need IVs or can't walk to the bathroom without help, so it doesn't seem like you need somebody with medical training. A task rabbit could come a few hours a day and make you a meal and a sandwich for later, run errands, clean the cat litter box, etc. If you think you will need more help than that, or if the hospital requires you to have someone with you for the first 48 hours, there are services that provide home health aides, probably for 8 or 12 hr shifts, also people who do that work outside of a agency -- many are retired nurses and the like. I believe there are funds to cover expenses of kidney donorsand it seems like it's reasonable for you to ask them for coverage for paid help for a brief period.
Another alternative is to simply lie and say someone will be with you. I did that after I had IVF procedures, which are just a day surgery but leave you feeling like you've been run over by a truck. I had just moved to the town I was in and did not know anybody there well enough to ask them to stay with me, and thought the risk of me being alone was pretty minimal. I did have on old friend who lived in another state on alert, and she and I checked in a couple times over the course of the day when I came home, and that worked out OK.
Maybe you can ask a transplant center if in this situation they would pay for professional help with recovery.
What are some plausible mechanisms behind rumination?
As I understand it, rumination is getting stuck cycling through more or less the same set of painful thoughts, thoughts that evolve anger, sadness, fear, etc.
If these thoughts are painful, why won't the mind snap out of them, trying to escape the pain? Or is it the case that whatever pain these thoughts evoke is the lesser pain (ie. rumination as distraction)?
I understand that one way to stop rumination is to label it and force the focus away. Another way is to try and remove what seem like triggers (people, places, etc). I suspect journaling or Gendlin focusing might help by "consuming" the rumination, ie. producing action on it, telling the brain it's ok to let go.
I'm very curious about others experience with rumination and handling it--less from a seeking advice perspective, and more from trying to understand how different minds ruminate.
Rumination is a big part of being obsessive and obsessive people often find solutions to problems that other people don't. Unfortunately, some problems don't benefit from rumination but from the inside it's hard to know which is which. So unhelpful rumination is a failure mode of an evolutionary strategy that on net confers some advantages.
I find I do not want to stop thinking about sad or angry or frightening topics when I find myself ruminating about one of them. They don't feel like pain states that I'd like to escape, the way a headache does. They feel like motivational states. I don't crave to escape them, I crave the event that will relieve my distress. If I am angry I want to interfere with the events I object to, or punish or expose those who are to blame. If sad, I want to have the thing whose absence is making me sad. It feels to me like I keep ruminating because I am busy seeking a way to get the thing that will make me feel bettter. And that's true even when my common sense tells me there is no way to get that thing.
Described that way, that tracks better for me now. It's not that rumination is painful, it's that it's more like keeping focused on a problem, almost compulsively, without finding a way to crack it.
For me, I rarely ruminate on technical problems, but often on people problems.
I guess from inside, rumination is like: "Hey, I am trying to *solve* this problem. How am I supposed to solve it without thinking about it first?" It feels like working towards a solution. Rewarded by feeling that you are doing the right thing.
The argument from outside is like: "Uhm, you have already spent a few months or years thinking the same sequence of thoughts over and over and over again, without coming to any conclusion. How is another month of doing the same loop going to improve anything?"
The response from inside is denial ("this time it will be different, because I will do it properly"), because the person feels like they have a choice between doing the thing that feels right (even if evidence kinda points against it), or face the bad feelings without the protective shield of hope.
The proper solution would be to try something else. But that requires stopping the loop, admitting that there was no progress so far, and brainstorming other possible approaches. Some of the other options, often the obvious ones, may even be connected with bad feelings, for example you would have to do something that you prefer to avoid, such as start exercising, say something openly and risk a conflict, give up something convenient, etc.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, I guess repeating the same thoughts may feel like asking your parent for a help repeatedly -- which is a strategy that sometimes works for children; being annoying may help you get your wish granted. The problem is that this time there is no parent; you are just talking to yourself.
Rumination is the cognitive focus of melancholia or phlegmatism. As some people, choleric in temper, are ectomorphs, the Melancholic or phlegmatic personality tends towards endomophism.
In short: "do nothing unless pressed" is a way to preserve energy for later use.
Imo it's beneficial to ruminate sometimes. You find solutions by thinking about things. If the local tribe's Chadgar slept with your wife, you may ruminate on it and find the evolutionarily advantageous strategy of bashing his head in and sleeping with HIS wife.
You find solutions by thinking about things.{{citation needed}}
cogito, ergo sum
Rene Descartes ~ 1637
Nice theory, won't work unless you're nuts.
"I'm killing the devil with the sword God gave me" does tend to have you carted off to the hospital.
"No, what I meant is warmed-over Buddhism" is better, but you may be English as a Second Language and though your fluency is good, it's still a little off.
I'm not a rationalist, and if you don't want to seem to have plagiarised Buddhism, maybe lay off on appropriating terms and themes straight from it.
'Desire is suffering, cessation of desire is the solution' is not your original discovery.
You remind me very strongly of our rabbi friend who had the solution to everything, we just needed to subscribe to his podcast and Substack and other channels and anoint him undisputed supreme leader and follow his every directive of his sure-thing answer to life, the universe, and everything.
"So, here we go.
Mysticism – demystified.
Sky – fell.
And now, you are faced with a choice:
Turn life into Heaven
Or live in your Hell."
That's a big claim. And so far, you are not persuading me. What, if I don't pick you as the choice, then I am going to live in Hell? Well, better invest in some asbestos underwear then, I guess!
A lot of Tolkien's characters have names that are fairly literal descriptions in a language other than modern English. Sometimes a real-world language and sometimes in one of Tolkien's fictional languages. For example, Gandalf is Old Norse for "Wand Elf" (and is not of Tolkien's invention: he borrowed the name along with the names of Thorin &co from a Norse saga), and Círdan the Shipwright's name is Sindarin (one of the in-universe Elvish languages) for "Shipwright".
The full Fellowship's names render to modern English as:
Wise (Old English)
Halfwit (Old English)
Green Leaf (Sindarin)
Fiery (Old Norse)
Revered King (Sindarin)
Steadfast Jewel (Sindarin)
Wand Elf (Old Norse)
Great Lord (Welsh)
Foreigner (Latin)
Challenge: without looking it up, identify which LotR character was named "Spider-Woman" and which was named "Goldilocks". The former appears in the Peter Jackson movies, while the latter was book-only.
Not responding to the challenge, but can't not share this:
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/632
Love it, thank you!
Related:
Tolkien: My favorite part of fantasy writing is the elaborate word-building.
Interviewer: Don't you mean "elaborate world building"?
Tolkien: I enjoy that, too.
ROT13:
Fcvqre-Jbzna jnf cerfhznoyl Furvybo, hayrff vg'f n gevpx dhrfgvba. Tbyqvybpxf jnf qrsvavgryl bar bs Fnz'f qnhtugref.
Pbeerpg ba Fcvqre-Jbzna. "Ybo" vf na nepunvp Ratyvfu grez sbe fcvqre, n inevnag bs "pbo" nf va "pbojro". V'q sbetbggra nobhg Tbyqvybpxf Tnztrr; Rynabe vf gur bar bar bs Fnz'f xvqf V erpnyyrq. Ohg va nqqvgvba gb ure, gurer'f nabgure punenpgre (bar jub unf npghny fperra gvzr va gur znva fgbel va gur obbxf) jubfr anzr zrnaf Tbyqvybpxf va n qvssrerag ynathntr.
V qvqa'g xabj "ybo", qrfcvgr orvat n sna bs byq-snfuvbarq navzny anzrf yvxr "gbqq" naq "pbarl". Gur fynat grez V xabj sbe n fcvqre vf "obevf", juvpu V'z cerggl fher vf qrevirq sebz Gur Jub.
Tbaan gnxr n fubg va gur qnex ba gur erphefvir Tbyqvybpxf naq fnl Tnynqevry. Vg fhvgf ure, naq nyfb fbhaqf nobhg evtug va grezf bs babzngbcbrvn.
Qnzzvg, whfg fnj lbhe bgure pbzzrag nobhg Tbyqvybpxf abg orvat va gur zbivrf. Vg'f Tybesvaqry, vfa'g vg?
Lrf, Tbyqvybpxf vs Tybesvaqry.
Apparently the Norse word is believed to have meant 'elf familiar' rather than 'wand elf': https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gandalfr#Old_Norse
You're leaving out a lot of detail about that there Wand Elf:
‘The Grey Pilgrim?’ said Frodo. ‘Had he a name?’
‘Mithrandir we called him in elf-fashion,’ said Faramir, ‘and he was content. Many are my names in many countries, he said. Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.’
The character named "Spider-Woman" is Shelob ("She" meaning of course a female, "lob" an English country word for spider).
"Goldilocks" would be Glorfindel (and I didn't even have to look that one up!) 😁 Lemme pull out that quote I mined years back about "hair-names" for the Elves:
"XI.
THE SHIBBOLETH OF FEANOR.
With an excursus on the name of the descendants of Finwe.
The names of Finwe's descendants.
Few of the oldest names of the Eldar are recorded, except those of the four leaders of the hosts on the Great Journey: Ingwe of the Vanyar; Finwe of the Noldor; and the brothers Elwe and Olwe of the Teleri. It is not certain that these names had any 'meaning', that is any intentional reference to or connexion with other stems already existing in primitive Eldarin; in any case they must have been formed far back in the history of Elvish speech. They consist each of a stem (ing-, fin-, el-, ol-) followed by a 'suffix' -we.
…The first elements were often later explained as related to …Common Eldarin PHIN 'hair', as in Quenya fine 'a hair', finde 'hair, especially of the head', finda 'having hair, -haired'; …The others are doubtful. All the Eldar had beautiful hair (and were especially attracted by hair of exceptional loveliness), but the Noldor were not specially remarkable in this respect, and there is no reference to Finwe as having had hair of exceptional length, abundance, or beauty beyond the measure of his people. (He had black hair, but brilliant grey-blue eyes).
With regard to Findekano/Fingon it may be noted that the first element was certainly Quenya finde 'hair' - a tress or plait of hair (Common Eldarin *phini- a single hair, *phinde a tress; Sindarin fin; find, finn-).
…(cf. findesse' a head of hair, a person's hair as a whole), but this is not conclusive proof that the name Finwe was or was thought to be derived from this stem. It would have been sufficient for Fingolfin to give to his eldest son a name beginning with fin- as an 'echo' of the ancestral name, and if this was also specially applicable it would have been approved as a good invention. In the case of Fingon it was suitable; he wore his long dark hair in great plaits braided with gold."
This was part of legitimate discontent with "The Rings of Power" (and not just review-bombing, the go-to excuse for "why is our show getting all negative comments online?"), what is this short back and sides/90s boyband male Elven hair, give us our boys with long plaits of gold! Only Gil-galad had proper hair! 😁
EDIT: "to the East I go not", says he, so what do our genius showrunners Payne and McKay have I Can't Believe It's Not Gandalf (Okay You Were All Correct, It's Gandalf) do? Go to Rhûn! In the East! To find his staff! Conveniently meeting up with Tom Bombadil! And also Is This Dark Wizard Guy Saruman Tell Me This Is Not Saruman He's Gonna Be Saruman Isn't He Next Season?!
(That show has reduced me to the Pratchett excess of exclamation marks state. "'Multiple exclamation marks,’ he went on, shaking his head, ‘are a sure sign of a diseased mind.' ")
tl;dr
Gandalf is Odin with a glass eye. Tricky guy who shows up when he's not expected, always has a plan he won't talk about, excessively cryptic but kicks butt when needed.
You mean Gandalf the grey. Gandalf the white is an entirely different person, different powers different personality.
>You're leaving out a lot of detail about that there Wand Elf
You're absolutely right. He's one of the worse offenders in the legendarium in terms of having a bazillion names, albeit not quite as bad as Túrin Turambar or Sauron. Each has a different reason, though. Gandalf acquired different names given to him by various peoples he has dealings with, Túrin used pseudonyms to obfuscate his identity and also acquired several kennings from his varied (mis)adventures, and Sauron did a bit of all three.
For Elves, Tolkien gave them multiple names partially as an in-world explanation for their standard names often being extremely on-point. IIRC, the standard custom is for Elves to be given two private names in childhood, one from each parent, and then one or more names in adulthood assigned by peers or self-chosen. We mostly (often exclusively) hear about Elves by peer names or self-chosen names, which are often descriptive, and that's where we get the the guy with especially beautiful blond hair getting named "Goldilocks" and the great ship-builder getting named "Shipwright the Shipwright".
>This was part of legitimate discontent with "The Rings of Power" (and not just review-bombing, the go-to excuse for "why is our show getting all negative comments online?"), what is this short back and sides/90s boyband male Elven hair, give us our boys with long plaits of gold! Only Gil-galad had proper hair!
Even Gil-Galad looked weird in RoP. The styling in the front combined with his receding hairline and the lack of sideburns or forelocks makes his hair seem mullet-adjacent to my eyes.
I think the most damning observation on how RoP styled the Elves was that Robert Aramayo looked more like Elrond when he appeared in Game of Thrones (he played young Ned Stark in a flashback) than he did in RoP when he was literally playing Elrond.
https://tvovermind.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Who-Plays-Young-Ned-Stark-in-Game-of-Thrones.jpg
I have heard a claim that they styled the Elves differently for rights reasons, but that sounds like bullshit because they licensed the film rights to LotR from New Line and constantly make gratuitous forced references to the Peter Jackson movies. If they don't have the rights to the look and feel of the Elves, then their lawyers did a shitty job negotiating the contract.
Similarly, a lot of the gaping plot holes get excused by claims that they only have the rights to the books and the appendices. But the Tolkien Estate is involved in the project, and by all accounts Simon Tolkien specifically wanted them to do a Second Age show, so it makes absolutely no sense that the Estate wouldn't have licensed them the rights to the relevant material at least from Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
>EDIT: "to the East I go not", says he, so what do our genius showrunners Payne and McKay have I Can't Believe It's Not Gandalf (Okay You Were All Correct, It's Gandalf) do?
I still insist that Meteor Man should have been Tilion, the Maia of the Moon. Even with the alleged rights issues, the song Frodo sings at the Prancing Pony in Fellowship (written by Bilbo based on much older Hobbit folklore) establishes that Hobbits have the idea that there's a Man in the Moon who might have come down to Middle Earth at some time in the past.
I think they were dancing around "We are obviously copying the *hell* out of the movies, but we also can't be *too* obvious in what we're lifting wholesale", so they had to change up some things (white plastic scales Númenorean armour, anybody?) plus also my opinion of Payne and McKay is so stellar (sarcasm off) that I do think they thought "aw yeah, short hair Elves, we're so cool and original!"
Apparently Elrond was going through his Edgy Teenage Rebel phase with his hair like that*. Still doesn't explain Celebrimbor, but the guy playing that character got dealt an awful hand (when they *finally* let him do some acting instead of "stand there in the corner like a bumbling idiot" I went "okay, *now* I see why this actor was cast in the part").
I can't wait for Season Three. Because the spite must flow 😁 (and yes, I did mean "spite" not "spice" there).
*They said it, not me:
https://archive.ph/crewx
“Elves don’t have shaved heads or short hair”
Payne: If Tolkien ever wrote a comprehensive style guide to hairstyles in Middle Earth over its thousands of years of history, I would love to see it.
McKay: Part of this show is to go deeper and broader into each of these races and cultures. To say that any culture as rich and with as long of a history as the elves would all have the same hair for 9,000 years … that doesn’t seem to correspond and harmonize with the breadth of the imagination that Tolkien left us."
Practical, Doylist reason:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LOTR_on_Prime/comments/sp9v47/why_did_they_make_the_elves_have_short_hair/
"Because it's cheaper. Good make-up and wigs are very expensive and you need a staff to maintain them and it take a lot of time to keep the hair right in shoots. I can't think of any creative reason why."
Spiteful, Watsonian (okay, my) reason:
Because Payne and McKay are talentless hacks. Yeah, sure: we're harmonising with the breadth of Tolkien's imagination. So we ripped off all the Big Recognisable Characters from the movies in order to drag in viewers, rather than working on original characters.
On second thoughts, their original characters are so bad, maybe it would have been worse. After all, they gave us OC Imaginary Daughter for Elendil, who is so drippy she should be playing Uinen; Imaginary Son for Pharazon, who *would* be a moustache-twirling villain if he could only muster enough testosterone to grow a moustache; Healer Lady in Forbidden Romance who loved her part so much, she skedaddled after the first season and had to be hurriedly killed off for the second; Low Down Cheatin' Skanky Ho who threw over the guy who genuinely did everything for her in order to canoodle with Isildur in hopes he'd take her back to Númenor and she could ditch the mud and gloom of whatever god-forsaken region they ended up in (Pelargir? I think it was meant to be 'this is where Pelargir is going to be') and others too numerous to remember or care about.
Oh, how could I forget Creepy Backstabbing Traitorous Innkeeper Southlands Guy? As easily as the show did, my dears. Not to mention Healer Lady's Rebel Without A Clue Son, and Daylight Walker Orcs because all you need is a hood made from what looks like cast-off snakeskin, apparently.
Ooh, and Fluffy! The Killer Warg! She's a good girl, yes she is, yes she is! The most ferocious giant chihuahua in all of The Southlands aka Mordor!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erDc9HWq1D8
Sigh. Wouldn't you rather watch the show that was made purely as a distraction? Aka the original scripts said "Do not make this show." (and also "Do not set it in Wales").
I gave up on RoP an episode or two into the second season. The first season was rough going, but I was willing to make allowances for medium shift and early installment weirdness and give them a chance. to get better. And it did have some good bits. I agree with Deiseach about Adar. Elrond and Durin were well-acted enough to salvage all but the worst lines. The Numenor politics plotline had potential, even if several of the details were poorly thought-out.
I got really, really annoyed with it late in the first season, when the payoffs for the mystery box elements turns out to be silly and they committed to making major changes to the lore that were gratuitous and quite a bit worse than the source material. I tried to give Season 2 a chance, but it seemed to be doubling down on all the bad bits. The "Middle Manager Sauron" flashback was absurd, and the despite the actor's best efforts to sell things, "Sauron as master manipulator" seemed to be getting implemented as "Sauron gets away with everything because he's surrounded by idiots". Sauron's charisma and manipulation are so essential to the Second Age storylines in the lore that if it's being done badly, I'm going to be too annoyed with it to appreciate any good bits that manage to make it into the show by accident.
I also concur with Brett Devereaux's line of criticism of RoP setting up the context of the action scenes so incoherently that it ruins the stakes. As he put it:
>for the audience to care about the outcome of the battle, that outcome needs to feel like a product of the decisions characters made leading to it. The moment the audience feels like the battle’s decision depends entirely on the whim of the storyteller, disconnected from anyone’s actions, those actions stop mattering and the audience loses investment in the battle. Instead the storyteller needs the audience to feel like each decision, each event shifts the potential outcome of the battle, the way that for instance much of the action of The Two Towers and the first chapters of Return of the King determine the shape of the eventual battle outside Minas Tirith: the reader sees the decisions being made and then watches one by one as the consequences roll in. As a result, tactics that make sense to the audience are important for sustaining that investment. Does that mean the tactics need to be historical? No, of course not; most audiences do not have degrees in military history. But they need to be plausible and as with so much of the worldbuilding, accuracy is a shortcut to plausibility.
Having incoherent world-building in a Tolkien adaptation of all things is utterly unforgivable, since the world-building is right there waiting for you to use it. "The rules are made up and the points don't matter" might work for Whose Line is it Anyway, but not for a LotR prequel.
I am in the same boat as Deiseach: Tolkien is my fandom and has been since a similar age. I was really, really excite for RoP when it was announced. The Peter Jackson movies had proven that good screen adaptations were possible. I love the Second Age material in Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, but it's frustratingly unfinished. I would have loved a decent adaptation.
I started off with "I would like to see a show based in Middle-earth, it sounds like they're not trying to remake Lord of the Rings, yes I'll give it a go".
First episode was a bit iffy, but okay, they need to change a lot of things, compress the timeline, I get it. New original characters are terrible but it's only the first episode, maybe it'll improve. Except Adar, thanks mainly to Joseph Mawle being able to act the hell out of that part, but when you've got me cheering for the Second Banana Bad Guy because the Heroine is so unbearably awful, you're maybe not in "moral grey areas, not simple black and white, situations are complicated, there's good and bad reasons for what they're doing on both sides" but "we flipped the black and white so the Good Guys are the Bad Guys and the Bad Guys are the Good Guys, ain't we cute?" territory instead.
Hint: it did not improve. And they were trying to remake the Lord of the Rings. And what was even more aggravating, there was no excuse for "we didn't know such-and-such a detail", because they put in little blink-and-you'll-miss-them Easter eggs for the lore nerds (like the Bough of Return on the Númenorean ships https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Green_Bough_of_Return)
So I switched to mainly watching the reviews (critical) and then catching up with the episodes to see if they were continuing to slide downhill.
Okay, second season! This time round I had *no* expectations at all, in fact I was watching to see how much stupider it could get, and it did not disappoint me (Orc Guy rationale for betrayal? "Daddy doesn't love me!")
However, some bits *were* decent, I have to give them that. When they *finally* gave Celebrimbor's actor something to do, he was good in the part. And I will take Halbrand-Sauron shooting him full of arrows as being as close to book canon as this show will give me, I'm not too proud to accept scraps.
Floomp-monster Sauron was hilarious, too.
Best bits were the critical reviewers, though. Erik Kain, God bless the man, started out as TV critic saying "come on guys, give it a chance" but the first season wore him down and by the second he was happily alongside us being a Haladriel shipper and hoping for cute Elf-Maia evil babies 😁
Charlie Hopkinson had the real characters reviewing the show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNyNyqgkgh8&list=PLyJrI7fwl_bP8yueSwegq_msQL_Rt5nTS
So, season three (of five, which I don't believe at all will happen) is slowly, slooooooowly, shambling its way towards us (supposedly sometime early 2027, don't hold your breath waiting). And I anticipate it with great anticipation, because in order to fix everything they screwed up, they will need to pull off a miracle in writing and direction (seriously, guys, how could you manage to hire a director who screwed up your climactic battle of season two? how?) and these guys are **not** miracle workers.
Why do I care? Because LOTR is my fandom since I was eleven and got my hands on a copy of The Hobbit. Were this just "generic TV fantasy show", I'd have watched a few of the first season episodes, shrugged, and dropped the whole thing without caring a straw about it. But they got me to fork out for a Prime subscription to watch their mess and by Tevildo Prince of Cats, I am going to get value for my money out of this some way!
I miss Ren the Unclean (and tolkien experts that weren't afraid to add new mythology).
Relevant video: https://youtu.be/vGi9sUpl4lE?si=BNDJN482NYlnxVD7
Gandalf's not an elf, though, he's a Maiar, and is resurrected with a different powerset and personality.
Tolkien originally attached the name to the character who would become Thorin Oakenshield, with the wizard having the name Bladorthin. About halfway through writing The Hobbit, he decided to shuffle the names because "Wand Elf" fit better on a wizard than a dwaven king. I think that was before he decided on the nature of wizards.
Later, he justified the "elf" part with the idea that men who didn't know that wizards were Maiar but did know a fair amount about their habits and activities often assumed that they were Elves who, like Cìrdan, were old enough to grow beards. It stood to reason, since they were far too old to be Men, Hobbits, or Dwarves and were too tall for the latter two categories besides. This gets discussed in the Istari essay in Unfinished Tales.
Reading the HoME book about how LOTR was originally conceived, it's amazing the differences that happened. Everyone was going to be a Hobbit, because the publishers wanted a sequel to The Hobbit, and tactfully (but definitely) rejected his hopeful submission of what was, at the time, The Silmarillion as far as it had been completed.
And then about a third of the way in, he went "Nope, this is not working, scrap everything and start again". Sir Stanley Unwin was a very patient publisher, but also very shrewd, and the subsequent unlooked for success has made everyone very well-off indeed:
"From 1972 letter
15 July. I spent yesterday at Hemel Hempstead. A car was sent for me & I went to the great new (grey and white) offices and book-stores of Allen & Unwin. To this I paid a kind of official visitation, like a minor royalty, and was somewhat startled to discover the main business of all this organization of many departments (from Accountancy to Despatch) was dealing with my works. I was given a great welcome (& v.g. lunch) and interviewed them all from board-room downwards. ‘Accountancy’ told me that the sales of The Hobbit were now rocketing up to hitherto unreached heights. Also a large single order for copies of The L.R. had just come in. When I did not show quite the gratified surprise expected I was gently told that a single order of 100 copies used to be pleasing (and still is for other books), but this one for The L.R. was for 6,000."
Agreed. In particular, Aragorn started out as a mysterious Hobbit called "Trotter" because (depending on the draft) he wore wooden shoes or had wooden prosthetic feet. Tolkien tried on a bunch of backstories for Trotter and didn't like any of them before making him a Man instead and giving him the Chief of the Dunedain backstory. The two backstories for Trotter that I remember were that he was a "wild" Hobbit from a tribe that had never settled down in the Shire or Bree, or that he was one of the young Hobbits besides Bilbo whom Gandalf had sent off on adventures (and was a cousin or uncle of Frodo on the Took/Brandybuck side of his family).
Inidentally, it's struck my that Elrond got a pretty substantial retcon in LotR that doesn't get talked about much. In The Hobbit, he was introduced thus:
> The master of the house was an elf-friend [...] In those days of our tale there were still some people who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors, and Elrond the master of the house was their chief.
Apart from the "master of the house" bit, that sounds more like Aragorn's backstory than Elrond's as established in LotR. Frodo's astonishment at the Council of Elrond to discover that Elrond was old enough to have been personally participated in the War of the Last Alliance feels like one of Tolkien's retcons (acknowledging and correcting the impression given in Hobbit that Elrond was a mortal descendant of mixed ancestry rather than being an actual Elf Lord), like the better-known and more comprehensive retcon of the stakes of Gollum's riddle game.
Yes, Sir Stanley Unwin was extremely patient. One of the things that struck me reading the Tolkien Letters compilation was the recurring theme of Tolkien starting so many letters by apologizing for taking weeks or months to write back. Several letters that start thus are responding to Sir Stanley or someone else at Allen & Unwin.
>while the latter was book-only.
Oh, so it's Tom Bombadil.
Not Bombadil, but Goldilocks is one of the book characters whom people complain about being dropped from the movies.
You do not perhaps mean Goldberry, wife of Tom Bombadil, by chance?
No, there's a Goldilocks.
(rot13)
V guvax gur ynggre vf obzonqvy'f jvsr jubfr anzr rfpncrf zr ng gur zbzrag (V guvax vg fgnegf jvgu T?). Gur boivbhf nafjre sbe gur sbezre vf furybo, ohg gung ernyyl vf whfg n thrff.
Lbh ner pbeerpg nobhg Furybo. Ure anzr vf fur (Zbqrea Ratyvfu) cyhf ybo (nepunvp Ratyvfu grez sbe fcvqre, inevnag bs "pbo", nf va "pbojro"). Tbyqoreel vf n tbbq thrff sbe gur bgure, ohg ab.
Bu, V'z n sbby. Tybesvaqry, gur zbfg snzbhf obbx-bayl punenpgre!
Lrf, Tybesvaqry vg vf!
Her name was Tbyqoreel.
So what’s going on with the economy? Job creation numbers are barely positive, ~35,OOO+(barely a rounding error) in the latest federal report. News reports and social media are full of job search horror stories, what with years of experience required for “entry level” jobs, six or seven or even more interview rounds, rampant ghosting, you name it.
And yet, federal figures for first-time claims for state unemployment benefits are extremely low, at levels not seen for decades. Not many people are getting hired, but then again not many people are losing their jobs. I don’t believe the US has ever before had this sort of situation.
I personally think this is the "phony war" phase of the next recession. Lots of local small businesses are throwing in the towel lately, saying that they've never been able to get out of the post-pandemic funk and are tired of trying. Lots of big or unprecedented layoffs lately.
> Not many people are getting hired, but then again not many people are losing their jobs. I don’t believe the US has ever before had this sort of situation.
There's a huge pool of "not looking" men that has been growing steadily, who don't show up in the commonly reported unemployment statistics.
https://imgur.com/a/sDz7dP1
Anecdotally, this matches what I see in the economy. Everyone I know who's unemployed has been since the pandemic and has basically given up hope for finding a job at this point.
IIRC, the prime age labor force participation rate was actually at record highs back in 2023. The Biden era rebound was real and not explained by people giving up looking. (Which of course doesn't mean that *noone* gave up looking, just not many people statistically.)
How are they living, then? On Welfare and Food Stamps? Are they unable to find -any- job, even a fryguy at McDonalds, or a maid , or a dogwalker?
"are there no prisons? Are there no poor houses?
To answer your question - it depends. Some are relying on family, others have taken a series of gig or freelance positions or service industry jobs.
Sure - a better term here might be "underemployed," but I think the point stands.
No, it damn well doesn't stand! People taking gig jobs are still looking for work. They are still working and registered on the Rolls. We see them in the Federal Statistics. they aren't MISSING.
20 million people MISSING out of our jobforce is a Problem. The type of problem that people start looking for "vaccine related injuries" to explain (see the multiple studies on mRNA vaccines causing accelerated cancer, including the population study in South Korea).
In my experience, most young unemployed men are living with relatives (parents, mostly) and are not even looking for a job because they don't want one. Most of them probably could find a low-skilled job, but for the most part they simply don't want those jobs. They may feel that those jobs are for losers and are soul-crushing so there's no point in getting one.
I think there's a general feeling of disillusionment and hopelessness among young men.
Have you met a lot of these guys? How many of them do you think would show up for an $18/hour job (no bennies) of hard, semi-skilled labor (half a year's experience needed)?
I have only met a handful of people like this, by nature of them being pretty reclusive. Many of them I knew in high school and they just never did anything after graduating. I don't keep contact with any of them so I'm mostly guessing at how they may feel.
I worked some warehouse and general labor jobs after high school and during college, and I usually didn't have a lot of coworkers who were around my age, especially not men. These are the kinds of jobs I would assume young men would be willing to work at, but that's not what I observed. I think maybe they have high expectations and aren't willing to work their way up or get a higher education.
If it's 20million people, does that change how many you'd have expected to meet? (the number of these people going "back to college" might be high, too. My retard of a cousin (literally retarded) got a masters degree in English).
I knew a guy whose dad worked as a department store manager. He got out of school whenever there was a Big Sale (that's what the parental permission slip said, "He needs to work."). Yes, warehouse jobs and general labor used to be something "late teens and twentysomethings" did. I wonder how much of this is "the trades need youngsters badly, and pay a lot more?" (in short, they may actually be getting "better" jobs -- bricklayers in my city are straight out of prison, for example, and that's because finding twentysomethings is difficult).
Yeah I think this is where anecdotes start to become obviously inadequate to describe what's happening. I really have no idea how many reclusive NEET men I would be likely to meet on a yearly basis, particularly because they are reclusive (on average. Making an assumption), and I would need to know exactly how reclusive in order to have a good estimate for expected encounters.
Like you said, I also happen to know a lot of young men who do well for themselves. My narrow experience can't give a good picture for what's actually happening broadly.
It does seem to me that the trades are growing in popularity for young men, by how much I'm not sure.
There's obviously the whole "male loneliness epidemic". I'm not sure how much validity there is to that, but it does *seem* real. Maybe it's just a society-scale mass hallucination.
If we assume they aren't physically disabled, you'd have a good shot of finding them, say, buying milk at the grocery store. You look for "things that everyone's kinda gotta do" (in a "not city" you'd look for them at gas stations, presuming they aren't badgering someone else into filling up for them).
I naturally have absolutely no idea on most of this, as I'm more reclusive than the NEETs, at least in terms of consumerism.
Gen Z is the only generation that gets stupider the more education they get (and also, we have 20 year olds that are more conservative than 70year olds,first time in history that's been the case). This is probably tied into the "male loneliness epidemic". Liberal education teaches that everything is boys' fault. And that women should "strive to exceed expectations" (which are already sky-high). Women, taught that they "shouldn't settle" -- don't. It's not "find a guy you like in college" -- it's "find the millionaire, and marry him! Or keep searching!"
Note how nobody talks about the female loneliness epidemic? That's there too, but women tend to realize There's A Problem at a later age -- it becomes empty nest syndrome.
I am not claiming that this is what’s happening, but you can imagine the sort of person who would rather move in with mom and dad than take a job that doesn’t fulfill socioeconomic expectations.
20 million? Last I checked (a couple years ago), the feds were looking for vaccine-related injuries to explain this discrepancy (unlike women, who can be pregnant or busy with kids... men are basically driven by sex (extremely high sex drive), and to get sex, support a family, you need a job).
We're pretty sure they're not dead, at least!
Optimistic take?
https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/working-papers/2025/04/pulled-out-or-pushed-out-declining-male-labor-force-participation/
OpenAI seems bad. That certainly doesn't apply to everyone at the company. I'm sure there are people there who are doing their best and trying to make the best product they can. But their legal team and leadership have had enough incidents at this point that I feel like I'm surprised that people who are concerned with AI safety (including Scott) seem fine with using (and paying for!) their products. I am not trying to draw a hard line in the sand here. The purpose of my comment is mostly just confusion. I won't use ChatGPT and use Claude instead, and I don't know why this isn't more common. I understand that there are things ChatGPT can do better than Claude at this point, and that any one person's impact is going to be minimal, but with the importance of the subject, I would really like OpenAI's bubble to pop and market share to head towards Anthropic. Why aren't more people acting the same way?
If you are curious what problems I have with OpenAI, here is a list of major incidents.
2022: The OpenAI board decides that Sam Altman was untrustworthy after compiling a (as yet unreleased publicly) 50 page document of times he was manipulative and fires him. He got reinstated and still leads the company today
2024: OpenAI is caught withholding vested equity from employees leaving the company unless they signed an NDA that prevented saying anything negative comments about OpenAI for the rest of their life (https://web.archive.org/web/20240601032823/https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/5/17/24158478/openai-departures-sam-altman-employees-chatgpt-release),
2025: OpenAI tried to subpoena all private correspondence about SB 53 (CA AI bill) from people involved in the bill. The PR firm they are using has previously said explicitly that "The goal was intimidation, to let everyone know that if they fuck with us they'll regret it" (https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/1976649129179959304)
2025: OpenAI cofounder donates $50M to start Leading The Future SuperPAC, which makes it the largest non-partisan lobbyer organization, and they are attacking anyone trying to pass AI safety bills (namely Alex Bores)
This feels a lot like saying "Why do people keep drinking Coca-Cola? It's bad for your teeth, and causes weight gain. Drink Pepsi instead."
Anthropic used similar NDAs, and its founders also made large political donations.
This is false equivalence. From looking into the FEC findings, Dario Amodei has donated a total of about $136k, and none of that has been since 2020. Daniela Amodei has donated $6k and I can't find donations from any of the other Anthropic founders.
In contrast, Greg Brockman and his wife are the 5th and 6th largest donations on the MAGA Inc FEC page, totaling $25M. This is not including the reported $50M that he has put toward the Leading The Future PAC.
(https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00892471&two_year_transaction_period=2026&data_type=processed)
Sam Altman has donated $1M to Trump's Inaugural Fund. (https://www.opensecrets.org/trump/2025-inauguration-donors)
That means OpenAI founders have donated more than 500x what Anthropic founders have.
As for the NDAs, the existence of an NDA is less of an issue than OpenAI withholding vested equity, money that would have been understood as already being banked by the employee. They are essentially taking money (sometimes millions of dollars) out of the employees bank account if they don't sign the NDA. That is not normal practice and it's not what Anthropic did.
I like ChatGPT a lot but I've recently become Claude-pilled, I'll have to think more about it.
https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/noboycott.jpg
Re prediction markets: supporters argue that there are big benefits to predicting the future, because it allows us to more accurately measure risk, apportion resources, and otherwise operate efficiently. Detractors don't generally disagree that there are benefits to predicting the future, but rather argue that prediction markets are a uniquely bad way to do this because of the inherent corrupting influences of the profit incentive and what that means at a macro scale.
As an example of the latter, we generally want things to trend towards 'stability', so a lot of effort is made to make things more stable. The more likely stability is, the more money there is to be made in predicting that things will suddenly become unstable, which in turn incentivizes people to do destabilizing things. Another way you can think of this is that prediction markets create pressure to move everything towards a toss up, proportional to how certain something seems to be
It is still early days for prediction markets, but I would love to hear concrete predictions from supporters about when they would turn around and say 'actually this whole thing was a bad idea' (the way we are already starting to see with legalized sports betting, for eg)
Prediction markets seem to be morphing into "sports betting, except for everything", or maybe that's what they always were but now they're going mainstream. It's kind of predictable that tech companies become sketchier when they start getting big money.
I do think the tech companies are exacerbating issues with prediction markets, but I'm more interested in the fundamental tension of prediction markets providing financial pressure towards destabilizing outcomes (tautologically, if you define destabilizing as unpredictable)
That's a good point, there is never going to be another American invasion or police action that doesn't make some Pentagon guy rich enough to buy a boat.
> That's a good point, there is never going to be another American invasion or police action that doesn't make some Pentagon guy rich enough to buy a boat.
Still, all this is scriptable, so surfaceable information.
Any security team worth their salt is going to have automated monitors looking out for said actions since Maduro, and presumably some of those will be able to act quickly or efficaciously enough that they avoid the capture, and make Pentagon guy lose enough that's he's boat-poor instead of boat-rich.
Also, any savvy trader is going to be programatically looking for last minute buys like this that look like insider trading enough to buy the upswing, so Pentagon guy's arbitrage is going to get eaten more and more, too.
I am starting to wonder if prediction market advocacy is going to turn out to be a big egg on the face of Rationalists. The "insider training is good actually" argument is looking progressively worse over time, as insiders get enormously rich for trivial information gains (eg discovering about some policy change ~20min before you otherwise would have known), and all of the major real-money platforms are rapidly converging on becoming a sports betting clone. Prediction markets may well just turn into a giant money pump to transfer money from young men with addictive personalities to corrupt government and business insiders.
I think it was obvious these were dumb arguments even three years ago, and it's a continual discredit to people like Scott who still push them (though at least Scott has started to acknowledge some of the downsides).
This isn't hindsight either - I've been consistent in arguing against prediction markets all along.
To be fair, I was massively wrong about AI, so I guess I'm 1-1 there compared to the Rationalists. Or 2-1 if you count crypto.
> I am starting to wonder if prediction market advocacy is going to turn out to be a big egg on the face of Rationalists
There's a failure mode that I notice that I'm struggling to put into words, but its something approximating 'typical mind fallacy'.
The average very smart person sees prediction markets and goes 'o neat!' because they think everyone will use it like the average very smart person, while the average person sees prediction markets and goes 'wait no this wont work' because they think everyone will use it like the average person. There's a stereotype about intelligence being anticorrelated with wisdom and I wonder if this kind of typical mind thing is pointing to some kind of mechanism / kernel of truth -- very intelligent people by virtue of being very intelligent will *not* have a 'typical mind', so their 'typical mind fallacies' are more egregiously wrong. I think something similar happened to crypto (cf FTX?)
Mark me down as the average person, because "becoming sports betting, you say?" isn't surprising me. I said back when these were being discussed that I thought they would not be the pure perfect rational tool for using the wisdom of crowds to set policy as hoped, but instead once people thought that they could make money off this, that is what the aims would be diverted towards.
Very Smart People thinking "we can invent a way to make better decisions, and handing out money prizes is only the equivalent of getting that gold star from teacher, not a motivation in itself to put profit and expediency above truth and honesty" is the failure mode here. If you confine prediction markets only to the Very Smart People, they'll be too small to mean anything. If you let everyone in, then yeah - sports betting markets.
Is that actually a bad thing? I've always seen gambling as a natural way of moving resources from people who would have squandered it anyways, to people who can actually make productive investments. Isn't that what we mean by "dumb money"?
Even by the usual standards of gambling, legalization of online sports betting has been a massive disaster, with measurable increases in all sorts of social ills.
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-online-sports-gambling-experiment
As discussed below, much of that is an issue with the ease of declaring bankruptcy. This would not be an issue if we had systems to ensure that debts were returned, even if they requires the loss of some agency for the debtor. Banks every incentive to take the necessary actions in order to ensure that they are made whole. They simply need to be allowed to do so in the first place.
> I've always seen gambling as a natural way of moving resources from people who would have squandered it anyways
But this is just not true. Many people who may struggle with gambling can live very productive lives if they manage to abstain, much in the same way alcoholics can live very productive lives if they manage to avoid alcohol. It would be callous to argue that 'alcoholism is a natural way of moving resources from people who would be addicted anyway to bartenders' or whatever
More generally, I think that these things are not binaries. It is *much harder* to abstain from gambling if gambling is everywhere. Every single person is on some gradient of 'very likely to be addicted to gambling' to 'not likely to be addicted to gambling' and the place where an individual falls on 'addicted' or 'not addicted' is as a result a mix of their own tendencies AND how society is structured around them
Alcoholism is an issue because it's a drug, and the adverse effects inebriation and poisoning cause on society. That doesn't apply to gambling. Sure, they might need to sell a house or a kidney to make ends meet, but again, those are resources going to people who can make better use of them. Though, we may need better systems to force people to pay back their debt to take full advantage of this...
> that doesn't apply to gambling
Why?
I just explained it. It doesn't cause them to be a nuisance to society, and doesn't cause health problems that would prevent them from being useful to others. They do not need wealth to work off their debt.
> It doesn't cause them to be a nuisance to society, and doesn't cause health problems that would prevent them from being useful to others
I mean, massive citation needed? Poverty is one of the biggest causes of health problems, and most people do think impoverished people are a nuisance to society. You say:
> they might need to sell a house
Even before we get into the obvious deterioration of mental health and the impacts that may have on spouses, families, communities, etc. do you think the homeless are *not* a strain on our public resources?
Even in your framing -- which I do not agree with at all, mind you -- I do not understand still why you draw a line between alcoholism and gambling addiction. Your logic of 'the resources would be better spent with someone else' seem to still apply. "I'm alcoholic, I sold my house to get my fix" is no different than "I'm a gambler, I sold my house to get my fix" -- in your framing, the house goes to someone who can 'utilize it better'
> "I'm alcoholic, I sold my house to get my fix" is no different than "I'm a gambler, I sold my house to get my fix" -- in your framing, the house goes to someone who can 'utilize it better'
Well yes, the only difference is that alcohol is also a drug. Gambling is a safe way to accomplish the same goal.
In a perfect world, we'd have denser, more affordable apartments or employer-provided accomodations, allowing people to go into debt to pay for such housing on the condition of being indentured... But yes, I agree that before these things are legalized, allowing completely unrestricted gambling is less than optimal. However, that's an issue with the current legal environment, not gambling specifically.
> Well yes, the only difference is that alcohol is also a drug. Gambling is a safe way to accomplish the same goal.
I agree that gambling is not a chemical that you ingest, but I disagree that gambling is safe, and I disagree that whether or not something is a drug matters even a little bit.
> But yes, I agree that before these things are legalized, allowing completely unrestricted gambling is less than optimal
haha, I'll take what I can get! I don't think anyone needs to die on the hill of gambling as a platonic good or bad, if we can agree that _this_ kind of gambling in _this_ particular context is causing negative effects. I like playing the casual poker game as much as anyone. But, yea, all things in context.
and what exactly is the problem with sports betting in this context, I assume you aren’t referring to gambling addition?
You can choose whichever example you want of 'thing becoming legalized resulting in adverse consequences'
That sounds too IYKYKy. Could you please be more specific?
I don't know if this is what theahura had in mind, but when I hear "previous supporters of legalized sports betting starting to turn around and say that it was actually a bad idea," this essay is the sort of thing I think of.
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-online-sports-gambling-experiment
For historical interest, the pools in Britain were a form of mass sports betting before the likes of the National Lottery. They used to be huge, are still going, but have fallen away from their peak. The attraction was that anyone could play, even housewives, so filling out your coupon and handing it over to the collector was nearly a weekly ritual:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pools
"In the United Kingdom, the football pools, often referred to as "the pools", is a betting pool based on predicting the outcome of association football matches taking place in the coming week. The pools are typically cheap to enter, and may encourage gamblers to enter several bets."
How to work out the scoring:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2jW8sYONBs
Reading out the scores:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V03ZZmkmUDU
+1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal
Neuroscientist Erik Hoel thinks he has proven that it is impossible that an LLM is conscious:
https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/proving-literally-that-chatgpt-isnt
I think I don't understand the argument well enough to summarize it, and there's a 30 page paper too, but it makes a lot of sense from what I can tell.
These arguments usually fail for me by not defining "conscious" in a way that makes sense to me.
I assume there really isn't a well defined definition in common usage?
Eric claims that his method applies to all non-trivial definitions.
I concur; there isn’t.
This post sounds an awful lot like "we can't scientifically distinguish conscious from unconscious AI" or "a falsifiable theory of consciousness is impossible" rather than the claimed "LLMs are not conscious." A theory has to be falsifiable for humans to consider it scientific, but human limitations about testing things does not say anything about the underlying reality.
I got about halfway through before I realized the central claim, that this is a theory-agnostic proof of non-consciousness, is wrong/exaggerated. Granted I'm very much just a layman here, so take this with a grain of salt with a value equivalent to the mass of the human soul, but my objection goes something like this (trying to steelman his claims the best I can, tell me where I'm wrong):
Hoel: "This proof is theory-agnostic. It doesn’t rely on any particular account of consciousness."
Critic: "Ok, granted that we're talking about a narrow space of purely physicalist theories, you treat lookup tables as paradigmatically non-conscious and classify any theory that disagrees as trivial. But you never establish that lookup tables must be non-conscious, you just assume it and build that assumption into your definition of triviality.."
Hoel: "Any theory that cannot make principled distinctions between paradigmatically conscious systems and paradigmatically non-conscious ones collapses into triviality or unfalsifiability and therefore fails as a scientific theory."
Critic: "Then your conclusion isn’t that ChatGPT isn’t conscious under any theory, but that no theory violating your prior boundary conditions is allowed. Those constraints THEMSELVES constitute a substantive theory of consciousness, so calling the proof theory-agnostic is misleading."
It's just the same IIT nonsense restated in the negative pretending to not just be that. Humans are conscious (are we? did we prove this?), calculators are not (aren't they? did we prove this?), therefore we need to draw some dividing line between calculators and humans (do we really though?). If you draw the line *just right* you can put chatgpt in the calculator side of the line. This makes the proof entirely circular and trivial.
> Humans are conscious (are we? did we prove this?), calculators are not (aren't they? did we prove this?),
I despise this argument. If you don’t think humans can be proven conscious, and you don’t think calculators can be proven not conscious then we can’t really say anything about humans, dogs, cats, calculators, rubber ducks, atoms, French fries, a bag of chips or LLMs. So in reality there’s no need to discuss any of this.
The argument seems to be that because we don’t know what consciousness is we can’t say what it isn’t. We don’t know what dark matter is but can say what it isn’t.
We don't only know ordinary matter isn't dark matter - we can prove it's not dark matter. But how do we approach proving a calculator isn't conscious? It's not a pointless question at all - the inability to define consciousness itself tells us something about consciousness. It adds to plausibility of the hypothesis that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that can happen in many different ways - after all, it would be much easier to disprove if it could happen only one way. If there are many ways, then there are many paths for computers to achieve consciousness. So in a sense, the harder it is to disprove a simple calculator is conscious, the easier it is for massive data centers to achieve true consciousness. And when we manage to prove a simple calculator is definitely not conscious, the odds of datacenter succeeding will take a nosedive.
> Humans are conscious
Yeah, that's the one thing you can be most certain of, that you're having experience.
> Calculators are not
I think it's more that a theory that grants consciousness to calculators would grant consciousness to everything and therefore have no predictive power. Similar to one granting consciousness to LLMs.
Does A theory that everything is made of atoms have no predictive power?
Democritean atomism doesn't seem to have much predictive power to me. Our own theory of atoms is far more complex than "everything is made of atoms" and predicts things like atom bombs. It also doesn't hold that everything is made of atoms.
>Yeah, that's the one thing you can be most certain of, that you're having experience.
I strongly agree with this personally(but I'm christian and I believe in the soul and free will implicitly), so *shrugs*
However a decently large category of consciousness models dispute this point in various capacities (illusionism, solipsism, some versions of simulation theory).
>I think it's more that a theory that grants consciousness to calculators would grant consciousness to everything and therefore have no predictive power. Similar to one granting consciousness to LLMs.
There is a large body of coherant, non-magical, non-trivial consciousness models that resolve this contradiction: Global Workspace Theory, the Self-Model, Higher Order Theory, Attention Schema Theory, and Sensorimotor Contingency Theory, to name a few. Most of them would be described as "trivial" by Hoel despite being major classes of consciousness theories. All of them have totally separate claims about what would be required to make an AI model "conscious".
So you see why I think Hoel's claim that ChatGPT is *literally proven-by-science for all non trivial theories of consciousness* is at least misleading, and the real claim is closer to "ChatGPT is provably not conscious, assuming you implicitly believe in a very tiny subset of IIT-adjacent consciousness models"
Hmm, I'm gonna paste this in a comment in his post, maybe he replies. However, I did read Hoel's book, The World Behind the World, there he says that IIT is essentially vacuous, so he can't be really defending that theory here.
I think only illusionism disputes the existence of consciousness (which makes it the craziest thing philosophy ever produced). In solipsism, only oneself is conscious, and I don't see what simulation theory (I feel this shouldn't have the word theory, it is not scientific) has to do with consciusness: even if you're experiencing a simulation, you're still experiencing!
He doesn't know what consciousness is, yet he purports to prove that LLMs don't have it using arguments that it's too similar to other things he claims cannot have consciousness (the thing he doesn't know what it is, remember).
Who does? It’s a useless word right now.
I'm still reading the paper, but let me point out that he claims to know *some* things about consciousness and not everything, so I don't think there's a paradox as you're describing it. In fact, he claims to derive certain necessary conditions for consciousness, while agreeing they're not sufficient. He might be wrong, but if so I expect the problem to lie in his assumptions, not some sort of illogic in his argument.
Search engine duckduckgo is holding a poll on whether you're YES or NO on AI.
https://voteyesornoai.com/
Get your vote in! Currently, NO is crushing YES. I wonder what the implications of that are for AI safety and AI in general.
It's amazing how AI has become marketable in every way regardless of one's feelings on it. DuckDuckGo is especially funny as they have DuckAI and are actively working on different AI products even as they also pander to the anti-AI crowd.
Hate AI? You get redirected to one homepage with a proud "no AI!" banner
Love AI? You get redirected to another homepage with a big DuckAI interface
I've seen posts on Reddit about this DuckDuckGo marketing bit with 20,000+ upvotes. It is a clear PR coup for them to lean into anti-AI sentiment even as they are not actually penalized by continuing to work on DuckAI and offering that service as well.
I imagine we'll see a lot more companies straddling this divide with even more conscious separation of AI and non-AI services. I guess one big question is whether there are enough rabidly anti-AI folks where they will exert pressure to remove all AI services and not just the ones they are exposed to (or deliberately redirected around).
I was just in an online conversation among doctors about a contract provision saying that we wouldn't use any software with AI functionality, and there was general agreement that it's becoming impossible to avoid AI, it's being built into *everything*.
As AI usage has become more popular, the criticisms became more ridiculous. We went from existential concerns and threats to our ability to make a living to talking about how data centers use electricity.
For AI safety purposes, it's good that there's a public backlash against AI, for whatever reasons, no? The backlash is also taking the form of rejecting AI outputs.
Imo no. It means we will miss out on benefits of AI all while countries that do not respect public opinion can proceed themselves with destroying the world.
Well it makes people lump in the serious arguments with the not serious ones, making AI concerns seem less serious overall.
Hmm, I have a hunch that the people that would dismiss serious arguments because of the arguments the public is using are an insignificant number.
I don’t think the supporters of AI know how much it is detested. They should get out of their bubble.
What a uselessly vague question. It's like asking "are you yes or no on cars" - it depends a lot on what situation you're using it in!
I would say probably 80% of AI uses I've seen seem pointless to me, but I wouldn't say I'm "against AI," I just think it's overhyped. That other 20% looks pretty interesting!
I think it's deliberately vague for comic effect.
The point of the question is to serve as an ad for DuckDuckGo. Your answer doesn't matter.
> You’d rather skip AI. With DuckDuckGo, you can, because it’s optional.
> You’re into AI. With DuckDuckGo, you can use it privately.
Ah, I didn't actually click on the vote button because I was annoyed with the question.
No need to make it that complicated. Apply whatever metrics are important to you and vote accordingly, if you're going to vote at all. Do your 20% in favor outweigh the 80% useless/harmful, then vote Yes, otherwise No. The poll is not an aptitude test whatsoever, you're not going to be graded, so why be aggrieved about the lack of direction? You could, of course, always ask some kind of always confident assistant whether you're yes or no on AIs...
I think a lot of people would just say they are "No" on cars too.
I expect it's mostly the same people.
Hehe, most likely, yeah.
The "AI safety" movement has come a long way toward creating the apocalypse they wanted to prevent. Now you want to do mirror life next?
Cautionary advocacy doesn't work. Cautionary tales don't work. The human race's best defense against the horrors on the tech tree is its lack of imagination. If you think of something you don't want to see happen, please just shut up about it.
The mirror life people tried that for a while (I remember that in order to discuss any biosecurity stuff with EAs I had to promise never to blog about certain things without their permission, and mirror life was one of them, and the fact that you spent the whole 2010s never hearing about it was a success of this policy). Then the NSF gave some people a grant to produce mirror life, and the smart people decided that never mentioning that this might be bad, even as other people tried to create it, probably wasn't the right tactic anymore. See the very first section in their Technical Report, "Rationale For Public Release".
Also, I think the AI safety talking point is overblown - you think without Eliezer Yudkowsky, they wouldn't have invented the transformer?
Google more or less sat on the transformer for a while. I guess I think ChatGPT or RLHF could have come a couple of years later and we'd have had a couple more years of "human joy and wonder and regret" before the end. That is a lot of QALYs.
I guess I think the first group trying to create mirror life will probably fail, or get lucky and not release it, or get cancelled for being too woke or not woke enough. It's not like the first attempt to build AI ended in paperclips. It takes sustained effort to destroy the world (and that's why we are still here).
Greg Egan has mirror life as a plot point in one of his novels, where rich people are getting "converted" to mirror life so they don't have to worry about biological weapons which wouldn't effect them anyway.
I’m not part of any movement and I think my feelings about AI are much smaller than those of people in the AI safety movement, but if the things you list as not working don’t work maybe it’s because those are just noises people make instead of actions people take.
If you don’t want a given technology in your life, take action: change your life to omit that technology. If you want other people to do the same, lead by example and show them why your way of living without that technology is better.
What do you propose he do if he doesn't want a particular technology in anyone else's life, even if they want it in theirs? The traditional approach is to leverage state violence against its developers, distributors and users. In what ways is your suggestion better?
Are you familiar with the serenity prayer?
I said in my comment above that if you want others to do what you do, lead by example. I have written previously on my blog about why it is that so few people (none as far as I can tell), even within the AI safety community, have issued a statement to the effect of “I have stopped using AI and so should you” even though that would be far more effective than cautionary tales.
To summarize my thoughts, 1) they mistakenly see non-connection between everyday AI use and future AI development, 2) possibly some of them don’t really believe their own arguments, and 3) they have internalized a paradigm in which technology adoption is deterministic, forgetting that there is always an element of choice.
I can see how talking up something like mirror life makes it likelier that scientists and wacko evildoers will get interested in the topic and work on developing some mirror life, and that making it likelier it will spread or be spread and do damage. But how does talking about AI killing us all make that likelier?
OpenAI, Anthropic, and from what I have heard DeepMind were founded and funded by people influenced by Yudkowsky. They needed some AI to align, so they built some. They needed investors to fund that, so they looked for applications. The whole arms race was created by "safety" people! It doesn't seem likely that we could have avoided it forever, but it *has* to have been accelerated.
I guess the exact same sequence could play out with mirror life. How are we going to prevent it from killing us all if we don't make some to study?
Deepmind was not founded by Yudkowsky acolytes, it was founded by Demis Hassabis, whose background was in video games. He worked on Black & White, which had very advanced NPC AI for its time, back in 2001. Although if you're just saying Hassabis subsequently read Yudkowsky or heard of Yudkowsky-influenced ideas, then that's of course possible (indeed probable), but I doubt he'd consider him a major influence.
AI development was like a fire in a bone dry forest with lots of deadwood. It could have been set off by any of a number of things, but was guaranteed to be set off by somebody People have been fascinated for a long time by the idea, and built calculating machines and the like not long after the science and tech of their era made it possible, and their were serious attempts at building something we would call AI before Yudkowski et al. were even born. Being harmed by smart robots and the like is also quite an old idea. Once science and tech reached a point that made it possible to build AI of the type we have now, human ingenuity and greed guaranteed that someone would build it and that there would be enormous interest in it, enormous deployment of resources etc. And our fear of it was also inevitable.
https://blog.ai-futures.org/p/against-misalignment-as-self-fulfilling
> The human race's best defense … is its lack of imagination.
"The most merciful thing in the world," eh?
Flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.
Bite my tongue.
Nuclear test ban treaty.
Fleeing from the blinding bright light of progress into the safety of a new darker and less radioactive age.
Do you expect there is nothing at all which is physically possible but not wise to do?
Like everybody else on the board, occasionally I have dreams about 2015-era SSC essays.
Last night, I had a dream about "Untitled" and re-engaged with it in a world where the grooming gangs in England are common knowledge and pulling the whole (played out) "Where are the feminists?" game.
Then I realized that this was (yet another) Marxism Brain thing (for lack of a better term).
In most circumstances, if someone says "I am in great pain because I do not have X", Marxism Brain's immediate knee-jerk response is "We have an obligation to get you X."
From each according to his something something, whatever.
But when a somewhat nerdy guy says something like "I am in great pain because I do not have a meaningful romantic relationship", Marxism brain immediately seizes up and the fight gets *WEIRD*.
"NOBODY OWES YOU A RELATIONSHIP!"
"YOU ARE SO (FREAKING) ENTITLED!"
"THIS IS RAPE CULTURE!"
That sort of thing. People with Capitalism Brain (for lack of a better term) read "I am in great pain because I do not have a meaningful romantic relationship" and smile sadly and nod and say "yeah, life is like that... hey, you should do some things to change your life. Groom yourself better. Shower more. Work out more. Get an interesting hobby like cooking. Hang out in group settings where people hang out and make friends."
Why? Because they read something like "I am in great pain because I do not have a meaningful romantic relationship" and do *NOT* immediately respond with "therefore we, as a society, have a responsibility to get you laid".
People whose brains immediately kick in with "therefore we, as a society, have a responsibility to get you laid" have to immediately start screaming "YOU ARE SO FREAKING ENTITLED!" at the guy who is, quite honestly!, saying "I am in great pain because I do not have a meaningful romantic relationship".
The screaming isn't merely at the guy who is appealing to a very important foundational emotional response, it's also the screamer screaming at themselves trying to tamp down the immediate knee-jerk response to have the government institute something like Universal Basic Girlfriend.
People with Capitalism Brain would never IN A MILLION YEARS imagine something like UBG.
People with Marxism Brain hear "I am in great pain because I do not have a meaningful romantic relationship" and the first thing they think of is UBG and because this is an obviously odious conclusion, respond with arguments about how the person making the claim that they are in pain is *WRONG*. They are bad. They are undeserving. They have no right to a girlfriend at all.
Anyway, I woke up with that in my head.
Bummer…
You got me to crack open the Communist Manifesto again, where Marx (presumably) argues that there's no such thing as a loving relationship and communism will merely expose the truth of the ongoing orgy pile to the light. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
"Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital."
Presumably under Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, it will be simple and easy to find a gf, or you can ask your friendly neighborhood super intelligence who knows what's up with everyone for help.
I was sure that was going to be an acronym. Now I have to figure out an acronym.
Fully Automated Luxury Gay... Universal... Yommunism?
Full-Auto Luxury Lesbian/Gay Universal Yommunism.
I miss the days when one of the more silly political factions we had were feminist ideologues making hysterical accusations about "rape culture." Nowadays, they're the sane ones.
Let's not pretend these are isolated incidents. The right was galvanized in large part because they felt the need to permanently deal with these feminists.
Yeah. Generally, extremes feed each other; the typical reason people join one is that something made them fear the other.
As an extremist politician, the opposite extremists are in some sense not your enemies; they are rivals. When they get stronger, you also get stronger (because "they are getting stronger" is a great slogan for your recruitment). The actual enemy is someone who says: "uhm, guys, stop talking nonsense, we have more important things to do, let's focus on those", because when people start listening to that guy, both you and your rival start losing votes.
(Oh, and I have come to suspect that I had conflated Untitled with Radicalizing the Romanceless in my dreaming state. I feel like I should regret the error but, hey. I was asleep and my brain was doing stuff.)
I'd really like to hear more of what happened in your dream...
Also, what does UBG stand for? Universal Basic Grooming? United Breaks Guitars? Ugly Bald Guy? Upvoted Because Girl?
Oh, it's gone now. Poof. Out the window.
UBG == Universal Basic Girlfriend.
This feels like a Capitalism Brain take on a Marxism Brain.
To make the jump from "the state should transfer wealth from those who have it to those who don't to alleviate poverty" to "the state should transfer sex from those who can get it to those who can't to alleviate sexlessness," feel natural/inevitable, one first must adopt a key Capitalist Brain axiom - "interferences with my property are functionally the same as interferences with my body, because I use my body to labor to obtain property."
But the "Marxists" simply don't believe that. It's a popular take in Randian/Libertarian circles, but not Marxist (or even mildly left-leaning) ones.
Thus, a leftist simply wouldn't view "if the state should forcibly transfer wealth to solve poverty, then it should also (obviously) forcibly transfer sex to solve sexlessness," as a valid statement. They don't have this "my property is an extension of my body and thus my rights to integrity of both are mirrors of the other" thought pattern going, so they'd just say that the nature/importance of the two rights proposed to be infringed are fundamentally different. Doing the one need not imply doing the other. And most people would probably agree, at least intuitively - it's pretty safe bet that most would view welfare work requirements very differently if they were welfare sex work requirements, or if we tried to have people pay taxes in blowjobs.
It's not just about property, it's about status.
Yes, in capitalism, owning property increases your status. And high-status guys typically get laid more. But abolishing (the importance of) property wouldn't abolish status differences -- it would just change the relative importance of various human traits.
Things like "work ethics" and "careful planning" would probably lose some of their value. Not all, because you still need to do some household work, and plan your holidays or whatever. -- Unless we assume that the communist government would also provide 100% childcare etc. If you go far enough this way, then the only important thing about your partners becomes how enjoyable they are in bed. Which is still a wildly varying thing, because some people are prettier than others, some are more funny, or more adventurous. The communist utopia (without sex redistribution) would still have incels.
(Also, even if people still valued traits related to work ethics and responsibility in their partners, these would become more difficult to signal. In capitalism, you can sometimes see their accumulated effects. Things like "this guy can talk a lot about changing the world, but he can't even keep a simple job for more than a month".)
> Things like "work ethics" and "careful planning" would probably lose some of their value.
It will be like going back to the dynamics of the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness.
Physical skill, demonstrated excellence, looks, high social skills? All get top marks. Athletes and salespeople will dominate that future's status pyramid.
I actually argue we're going to get here even before Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism - when everyone has a superintelligent AI assistant + life coach + super persuader in their ear, everyone has a super-ego that works, and things like "planning" and "work ethic" matter relatively less, because a much bigger slice of humanity is empirically demonstrating them (even if they were largely following an AI's plans and being super-persuaded to do so). So all those physical EEA things will move upwards in relative status even earlier.
That is a good point, but I think it can be easily rephrased to ignore the body-property collusion:
Just as a state may pay for higher education, health care services, food or accommodation of the less fortunate, it may also finance sexual services for those who lack such. This does exist to some extent, afaik in Germany and Netherlands disabled people can get prescriptions for receiving such, and that was the case in Australia between 2020 and 2024.
That being said, I agree that the description for the "Marxism Brain" by op is indeed how "Capitalism Brain" interprets it. I am myself also thinking in the terms of the second one, but let me try steelmanning the "Marxist" position:
There are oppressed and oppressors, we must help the former and fight/weaken the latter to better society. One of the best ways for this is to transfer resources from oppressor group(s) to oppressed group(s). Males as a group are in a superior position compared to women. Creating services for which the primary cost bearers are women while the primary beneficiaries are men increases the oppression and makes society worse.
Wouldn’t legalized hookers achieve the same end? There would be costs involved, but as the old saying goes, the difference between sex for free and sex for money is that sex for money is a lot cheaper.
Not entirely. It would most likely help, but some people would be priced out of it, just like in case of any other services (food, healthcare, education is legal after all, but there is still government support).
It is not a coincidence that in the mentioned German and Dutch examples (some) disabled people are the targeted group: Although any adult can already purchase sexual services (prostitution is legal in these countries), but if ones circumstances inhibit him/her from earning well, they likely won't be able to finance it for themselves. (Or even if they technically could, (social) insurance may support it by the same logic it supports non-critical medical/welfare requirements).
If I do not own my body how can I sell my labor-power?
I feel like I'm being asked to "steelman for all leftists broadly" a little bit here, but I think most leftists, at least in the American sense of the word, would enthusiastically embrace the idea that you own your body. See, e.g. basically all their abortion arguments.
Honestly, body ownership doesn't strike me as much of a left-right divide. I think Americans broadly would agree to that principle.
It's the idea that "because I own my body, the fruits of my labor-power are an extension of my body, which I used to get them. There's no distinction between my hand and the apple that I used my hand to pick, and therefore infringements upon the one should be treated alike to infringements upon the other" where the most libertarian parts of the right cross a bridge that most people on the left (heck, most people in general) probably won't go over with them.
For a certain kind of Randian, one can make the argument that a tax paid in dollars and a corvee labor tax are "the same thing," but for most people that argument will fall flat because they intuitively recognize that there is something different about infringing upon the money that was earned with the body's labor vs infringing upon the body itself.
I'm sorry to have contributed to your feeling that way: not my intention. I was just interested in your claim that most marxists lac the thought pattern: "my property is an extension of my body and thus my rights to integrity of both are mirrors of the other." Interested because it surprised me!
You're arguing against me as if I argued that "Marxists argue for UBG!"
But I did not argue that.
I pretty explicitly came out and said that their response to a guy saying "I am in great pain because I do not have a meaningful romantic relationship" is stuff like "NOBODY OWES YOU A RELATIONSHIP!"
Which is one of those things that I think is demonstrated in, for example, the essay I mentioned.
Sorry if I'm being unclear here.
>>People whose brains immediately kick in with "therefore we, as a society, have a responsibility to get you laid" have to immediately start screaming "YOU ARE SO FREAKING ENTITLED!" at the guy who is, quite honestly!, saying "I am in great pain because I do not have a meaningful romantic relationship".
>>The screaming isn't merely at the guy who is appealing to a very important foundational emotional response, it's also the screamer screaming at themselves trying to tamp down the immediate knee-jerk response to have the government institute something like Universal Basic Girlfriend.
What I'm saying is that a leftist doesn't have a neat kneejerk response to *every* problem that says that the governement should solve X with universal basic X. That's a common Capitalist Brain take on "what Marxist Brain wants," but it's not an accurate take. All they have to do is distinguish between property rights and bodily autonomy rights and there's no need for them to do the self-screaming you're under the impression they are doing.
So they aren't yelling stuff at themselves, they're only screaming at the guy who said "I am in great pain"?
That's less charitable to them than I'm being but... I'm willing to accept that.
More that the leftists doing the screaming are overclocking on the nutjobs their algorithms are feeding them of people saying that the way to solve male loneliness is stuff like taking women out of the workforce and restoring the sexual politics of the 1950s, master key vs shitty lock, etc, which is causing them to lash out as though your hypothetical lonely guy had said all that, when actually all he said was "I am in great pain," without really any indicator that he is "one of *them*."
People are pretty lousy at empathy when you lead with a flag that you might be part of an outgroup that is hostile to them. Not that he owes the world that kind of tiptoeing, but the vitriol from people who misread the signals is the shitty inevitable result of engaging with something vulnerable in a public forum.
And naturally, this being the internet, his algorithms are also elevating the worst of their responses to help him maximize his engagement as well. Great system we've got going for ourselves.
What a complex world we live in
That's pretty good, never thought of it that way. Fatal blocker in Marxism Brain, recognzining that people are supposed to exercise their agency, it's not all systemic.
Hmmm ... SPEAK cite only one reference for their headline claim "25+ arrests per day for online posts in the UK" and that's to the Daily Mail, a right wing tabloid that's earned such a reputation for inaccuracy that Wikipedia has a blanket ban on using it as a source.
Their "core principles" include "Direct incitement to violence" and "Repeated, targeted harassment of individuals" but not of groups or communities of people based on their skin colour, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexual orientation; an omission which would permit exactly the sort of indirect incitement to violence which leads to harassment of and stochastic violence against immigrants, refugees, muslims, Jewish people, LGBTQIA+ people etc which existing hate speech laws attempt to mitigate, but which their proposed free speech law would negate.
And most extraordinarily amongst the 'Cases" they list they include none of the almost 3,000 people arrested for peacefully holding up signs saying "I opposing genocide, I support Palestine Action".
> And most extraordinarily amongst the 'Cases" they list they include none of the almost 3,000 people arrested for peacefully holding up signs
That's fair but:
1) even if they don't mention them, their proposed reforms would absolutely make that not a crime any more, and that's already something
2) ultimately this is what somewhat healthy liberal politics should be about, people converging on principles they support even if they empathise with different victims of them. Not all cases they report are right-wing coded (the girl who posted rap lyrics, the woman who held a sign at King Charles' coronation), and even if they were, the actual contents of the reform suggested are very well-defined and anyone can decide if they sound worth supporting or not.
The incitement to violence is a point, but it's entirely legitimate to argue that the stochastic terrorism argument puts too much responsibility on the speaker. After all, the same could be said of any political discourse - if you say e.g. "the policy supported by <party> will destroy our country!" you are creating a potential compelling argument for someone to go and do a terrorism against that party's leaders. Saying that the oil industry is destroying the Earth could invite shooting the CEO of Exxon, saying that AI might kill us all could encourage someone to kidnap Sam Altman. Criticism of US pharma industry was obviously a big part of what radicalised Luigi Mangione. But it's hard to argue these things should be curtailed wholesale for fear that they might cause extreme reactions. Then the only argument left is "ok but these criticism are right and the ones based on ethnicity or religion are wrong" which is too subjective to be encoded into law.
> stochastic violence
Yes, this is so nebulous a category that essentially the POINT of all free speech advocacy is to stop the government using it as an excuse.
A worldwide database of AI hallucination cases. https://www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinations/
Organized by case, nation, party (judge, lawyer, etc.), when, nature (citation, outdated, etc.)
And a course which seems to be a book's worth of material.
Has anyone here played around with grokipedia.com? It seems to work incredibly well.
As far as I can tell this is the first time an Llm has been successfully used as something like a judge/moderator.
When Grokipedia was announced, I went to check the article for Parliament for Finland, and it had the wrong numbers of seats. I just went to check it again and it continues to have the wrong numbers of seats:
"As of October 2025, the Eduskunta features eleven parliamentary groups, reflecting ongoing minor shifts such as MP independences or realignments since the April 2023 election. The election yielded seats distributed proportionally across nine parties: National Coalition Party (48 seats), Finns Party (46 seats), Social Democratic Party (43 seats), Centre Party (31 seats), Left Alliance (27 seats), Green League (24 seats), Swedish People's Party (10 seats), Christian Democrats (5 seats), with the remainder comprising independents or minor adjustments.[1] [71] This fragmentation precludes single-party majorities, fostering dynamics centered on coalition bargaining for government formation and policy passage.[72]"
This doesn't even pass the basic sanity check of the stated group sizes together being (something below) the total number of seats, ie. 200. One can see the actual numbers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Finland
Interesting! I also found errors but they were a bit more subtle. Have you tried reporting an error?
No, as I'm not particulary interested in Grokipedia itself or invested in its success.
I've tested it a bit as a Wikipedia editor and I was impressed by some things and not so impressed by others
+
1. Accuracy is generally okay, I don't have statistics but in the areas I know well I don't find many errors. Wikipedia is also not error-free but that's a topic for another day.
2. Some articles are much better than Wikipedia, especially those that a) require frequent updates and b) few people care about. See "Economy of Laos" for example
3. The UX
-
1. Everything to do with sources. Sometimes I get the feeling that Grokipedia treats citations as decoration rather than as fundamental building blocks of an encyclopedia. There are lots of instances of inline citations that don't support the content they purport to support. Many sources are self-published, using only online sources it excludes most academic sources. But see + #1.
2. Opaque rules. While Wikipedia has publicly available policies (for example on who is deemed important enough to merit an article) Grokipedia is a black box.
3. No images
see less obvious flaws here
https://x.com/AlexO_risk/status/2012272799507743020
Search for "elon musk" yielded 0 results
Going to his actual page, there's a lot of missing information.
Just seems like a really dumb and biased mirror of wikipedia with poor search functionality.
Looks like the search failure was temporary. It's working now.
Search is horrible + yes, we should think of this partially as a musk-propaganda tool.
Here is what impresses me most:
Try and find something on Wikipedia/Grokipedia that is obviously untrue and try to correct it. The Grokipedia experience is no doubt 10x better.
i think it's pretty likely that something like this (claudipedia? geminipedia?) will take over Wikipedia at some point.
Search isn't just bad, it seems to be completely nonfunctional. I got "0 results" for everything I tried.
In the hopes of getting *something* I tried clicking on the "recent edits" on the front page, and it gave me "this page doesn't exist yet."
I guess the only way to be sure you don't say anything woke is to say nothing at all...
Looks like the search failure was temporary. It's working now.
Maybe I am late to the game, but I just started using Claude Code over the last week. For the first time, I'm really excited about the possibilities of AI. In some sense, allowing Claude read/write access to a local folder is a minor innovation, and so is allowing Claude to write and execute command line prompts.
But the whole is much more than the sum of its parts: instead of relying on Claude to give a good enough answer based on its glance over a file, I can ask it to find the appropriate tool, write the appropriate command and then it'll ask my permission before executing it. I've had it write python code, run simulations, graph the results and write a dummy paper with introduction and references that I would probably accept if asked to referee for a lower ranked journal. I've more-or-less delegated my tax receipts to it. I intend to get it to update my webpage... these are not lofty goals, but I can see it has potential and it's exciting.
Have others used it for interesting projects? Are there even better tools out there?
Hi yes, soft plug: I am a very avid user of coding agents, regularly use 5+ at a time to build, and have used them to build my entire company's codebase of which virtually 0 of it is written by hand. Coding throughput is through the roof. You are very early to the game.
My company builds tools to help engineers and teams go from 'help i dont know what an agent is' to, well, doing what I am doing above. Claude Code is great but would recommend our cli and our configs to make it even better. In case you're interested, feel free to reach out!
Yeah! I have the same feeling.
So far I've built a tool for checking the accuracy of citations on Wikipedia and a cooperative-competitive game set up in a medieval Russian republic. Looks like I should use it more haha
I hear that with Claude Code in agent mode, you can spawn several agents and essentially have a team of software developers working under you. But I don't know about that, I feel it's reliability when coding is like 80 - 90%, you have to be aware of what it does, it isn't like giving the task to a human dev.
I've never supervised 5 software developers... but getting the humans I've supervised to 80% reliability would be a win.
Seriously though - I find the token limits run out pretty quickly on any moderately complex task so I haven't needed multiple agents. My next goal is to work out how to use Claude skills to efficiently carry out small repeatable tasks.
Is the rapid development of new music genres a thing of the past?
When I think back over the second half of the 20th century, it is naturally broken into well-defined musical eras. In the 60s, classic rock came about, with huge influence from British bands (The Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc.) The 70s was somewhat of an extension of that, leading to a branching out of rock genres (hard, prog, etc.) as well as disco. I’m not actually familiar with the origins of disco, I assume that it arose due to culture combined with technological advancements in synthesized music? Hard rock led to hair metal in the 80s. The 90s is known for grunge, originating from Seattle, as well as gangster rap, a product from black ghettos.
(This is definitely not a complete history and I left out a ton of genres.)
What has developed since 2000? EDM? That probably counts, and I guess it came about from a specific subculture (the rave community).
But I can’t really think of any truly new genres that have emerged recently. New music mostly seems to be a mix of stuff that’s vaguely considered “pop” with heavy hip-hop influences. Most genre-oriented innovation seems to be an explicit mashup of two or more existing genres (rap and country for example). The closest thing I notice is a slow evolution of stylistic details over time.
I also get the sense that whereas in the past, entire bands generally became famous (often with the singer or guitarist being most well-known, but other members still getting plenty of fame and recognition), nowadays it’s more often just solo artists/singers that are widely recognized. Certainly there are still famous bands today, and there were famous solo artists before (e.g. Prince), but by and large that feels like the trend now.
So, here’s my pet theory: I suspect that the emergence of a new genre requires a period of relative isolation in order for the sound/style to truly develop, and the modern way of sharing music and getting instant recognition/feedback from a wide audience via the internet is not compatible with that.
To give an example, gangster rap became hugely popular because a small, relatively isolated community (gangsters in the ghetto) spent years developing the craft. When it was good enough and got out, it was already at a high quality level and people loved it.
But could gangster rap arise today? If no such thing existed already, and somebody posted a track with the vague traces of gangster rap beginnings, what would happen? I suspect that if it was bad, the artist would get no feedback and few listens, and would likely try pivoting to something that incorporated more popular trends. And if/once it started to become good, the novel elements would quickly get copied and incorporated into other artists’ musical works, in a much more diluted form than what gangster rap is today. There wouldn’t necessarily be a long period of innovation and maturation before presentation to the rest of the world.
Similarly, I suspect that the internet provides new paths for young and very talented musicians to become famous and turn into solo acts, as opposed to before the internet, the best option was probably to find other talented musicians around you and form a band.
And for the record, I’m not necessarily complaining or trying to come across as “get off my lawn”. I don’t really have a dog in this fight, as much of the music I listen to nowadays isn’t even in the category of popular music (e.g. old NES video game soundtracks).
I’m sure none of these ideas are new, and this is all just my speculation, so I could be totally wrong. I’d love to hear some counter-examples (I’m sure there are plenty!) or other takes on this.
Very Interesting. I am reading Mark Fisher’s ‘Ghosts of My Life’ and he makes a very similar point in his book. It’s quite a tricky read for me, but I gather his main point is that it’s rare you now hear something and realise it’s the sound of the future to come. I wouldn’t necessarily agree, I think synthpop although maybe not novel as a genre has developed particularly in the last 2/3 years to bring that futuristic feel.
I think the same thing happened to subcultures. TikTok is constantly throwing up fake lab-grown subcultures like cottagecore that are really just aesthetics, but if a small group of kids in, say, Provo Utah came up with a really cool subculture with its own slang and fashion sense, they'd end up on short form video in a week and be 100% commodified by Shein and other fast fashion in two weeks. The only subcultures that can survive are those so insular or anti-tech that they have a moat to protect them from liquid modernity.
You might want to read some of the substack https://www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/archive - there's a lot of articles with data analysis of pop music history. To start try - 101 Things I Learned Listening to Every Number One Hit.
The number of new genres being created is empirically true. Even worse once powerful genres (like rock) are on life support.
I suspect the reason for the former is the lack of technological change, and not the acceleration of it. Genres in music are often downstream of technology.
I would diagnose the present situation differently. I think previously, there were fewer different strands going on in music, and so those strands could more readily be classified into "genres." You had whatever was mainstream, and maybe a couple different counter-cultures/sub-cultures. Now you just have so many sub-cultures running in parallel that it's functionally impossible to classify them all.
Analogous to classical music history, where there was the Baroque era, Classical era, Romantic era, and any music from these eras (100+ years long!) is very readily identifiably of that era, and has tons of similarity. And then we get on towards the end of the Romantic era and compositional styles get caught up in the tide of nationalism, and German Romanticism dominated while composers in other countries tried to create their own "national styles"—very much a culture/counter-culture dynamic.
Then we get on into the 20th century, and "modernism" arises, but modernism means so many different things. Strauss' later works (Salome, Elektra) are pushing German Romanticism to the absolute limit, while other composers in Germany, Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, are pushing the boundaries of what people would even call music at all. France has Debussy and Ravel creating what gets called "impressionism." But you also have tons of masterful composers in this period who are totally singular, where you can identify just that composer by their sound world (Stravinsky, Bartok, Poulenc). Or composers who aren't so distinctive as to have their own style, but their style doesn't quite have a name either. You might hear a lesser-known composer like Ibert or Francaix and think, "oh, this sounds French," but there's not a name for that style. And even in the 1950s you still have tons of nostalgic Romanticism.
And that fragmentation and lack of definition of genres has just continued over time. For a time ivory tower modernism came to be pretty dominant, which did a lot to kill classical music for general audiences. But even all through that, more accessible works were still being written, and classically-trained composers were churning out beloved music in Hollywood. You can't point at the biggest names in classical music today and say what "genre" their music is. John Adams, Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly... The word "post-minimalist" is forced to carry a lot of water, because basically everything good that has happened in classical music since the '80s has been influenced by minimalism.
The point being, identifying genres requires a certain amount of uniformity. You can have a thriving music scene full of new innovations and an interesting variety of styles without being able to label everything, because that labeling actually requires that a lot of people are doing the same thing as each other, and that they continue doing that thing for long enough for it to become distinctive. If everyone's doing different things, and keeps experimenting with different things, then labeling sub-genres becomes harder and harder. You can still listen to new music and say, "oh, this comes from jazz," "this comes from pop," etc., much like you can hear a new classical piece and say it's kind neo-romantic or post-minimalist or whatever.
The struggle to identify new genres is actually a product of too many disparate new styles, not a lack of new styles.
I was thinking something similar. You worded it better than I could have.
I think it's important to consider the role the internet plays in making musical innovation more 'fluid'. Instead of in previous years when musical innovation came from singular sources (like one band or geographic region), today, the internet allows artists to more quickly adapt techniques and styles from one another. I think this probably blurs the genre lines a bit and makes them harder to distinguish.
Musical innovation is still certainly happening, it's just happening more continuously.
Yeah I think about this too.
What's interesting is that musical innovation came to a halt around about the time that music production got democratised. Now instead of an expensive music studio you can produce music on your computer in your bedroom; music unshackled from the constraints of actual musical instruments, any sound you can imagine you can produce.
You might have predicted that this would have led to a huge explosion in musical creativity, but it seems to have been the opposite. Maybe the lesson is that creativity is driven by constraints, and once you're no longer constrained (e.g. by the instruments available to you) you're paralysed with choice.
One area where music has advanced a lot recently is in mashups, an area where you're very much constraint-driven in what you can produce (there's only so many ways you can combine Uptown Funk with Feed My Frankenstein).
> creativity is driven by constraints
This.
Dubstep was developed by a singular man, in order to stimulate women's tatas. Particular soundwave, particular beat, voila!
So, no, one doesn't need isolation, one merely needs a sellable product. And dance music that is arousing is better dance music.
You can see "bad cattitude"'s take on "why we don't have good music anymore", it's also instructive.
Also: the popularity of gangster rap was entirely artificial, and a reaction to MC Hammer having screwed over his constract-holders (and then being a spendthrift, which made them even more mad than getting gypped).
What new musical.genres have emerged since 2000ad?
ChatGPT said:
Since 2000 AD, music has splintered rapidly due to the internet, affordable production tools, and global cultural exchange. Many “new” genres are hybrids or internet-native scenes rather than traditional label-defined styles. Here’s a clear, structured overview of the most notable genres and movements that emerged or crystallized after 2000.
Electronic & Dance (Post-2000)
Dubstep (early 2000s, UK)
Heavy sub-bass, syncopation, sparse rhythms
Later evolved into aggressive “brostep”
EDM (as a commercial genre) (late 2000s–2010s)
Festival-oriented electronic music
Artists: Swedish House Mafia, Avicii
Future Bass
Lush synths, modulated chords, emotional drops
Artists: Flume, San Holo
Vaporwave
Internet-native, ironic, nostalgic
Slowed-down samples, corporate & 80s imagery
Hardstyle / Rawstyle (modern form)
Earlier roots, but modern sound emerged post-2000
Aggressive kicks, festival culture
Hip-Hop & Rap Evolutions
Trap (modern Southern trap)
Hi-hats, booming 808s, dark melodies
Artists: Gucci Mane, Future, Migos
Drill (2010s)
Dark, minimalist, violent realism
Chicago → UK → NYC scenes
Cloud Rap
Dreamy, lo-fi beats, emotional detachment
Artists: Lil B, A$AP Rocky
SoundCloud Rap / Emo Rap
DIY internet-driven movement
Artists: XXXTentacion, Juice WRLD
Rage / Hypertrap (late 2010s)
Distorted synths, high energy
Artists: Playboi Carti, Yeat
Rock, Metal & Alternative
Metalcore (modern form)
Metal + hardcore punk, refined in 2000s
Breakdowns, clean/harsh vocals
Deathcore
Extreme metal + hardcore breakdowns
Post-Rock (popularized post-2000)
Long instrumental builds, cinematic sound
Artists: Explosions in the Sky
Djent
Polyrhythmic, palm-muted guitar tone
Coined in the mid-2000s
Indie Folk / Indie Pop (modern wave)
Lo-fi aesthetics, intimate songwriting
Artists: Bon Iver, Phoebe Bridgers
Pop & Internet-Native Genres
Hyperpop
Maximalist, distorted, chaotic pop
Artists: 100 gecs, SOPHIE
Bedroom Pop
DIY home-produced pop
Intimate vocals, minimal production
Alt-Pop
Experimental pop outside mainstream formulas
Artists: Billie Eilish, Lorde
Global & Fusion Genres
Afrobeats (modern global form)
West African pop fusion (not to be confused with Afrobeat)
Artists: Burna Boy, Wizkid
Reggaeton (modern revival)
Became globally dominant in the 2010s
Artists: Bad Bunny, J Balvin
K-Pop (modern idol system)
Earlier roots, but global genre explosion post-2000
Latin Trap
Trap fused with reggaeton & Latin pop
Experimental & Niche Movements
Witch House
Dark, occult imagery, slow beats
Lo-Fi Hip Hop
Chill beats, study/relax culture
Phonk
Memphis rap revival with drift-car culture
Glitch Pop / Wonky
Emphasis on digital errors & instability
Please don't ask an LLM and post the response, it's as obnoxious as "let me google that for you"
I wish we could downvote comments here.
"To give an example, gangster rap became hugely popular because a small, relatively isolated community (gangsters in the ghetto) spent years developing the craft. When it was good enough and got out, it was already at a high quality level and people loved it."
This isn't the case.
If you're talking about the subgenre of hip-hop we now call "gangster rap," it was a pretty natural evolution of the already-popular hip hop scene. The people involved got popular pretty quickly within the already-existing hip hop scene (although the early breakouts were definitely incredibly talented.)
If you're referring to all of hip hop as gangster rap, well, first stop doing that. Second, yes it did have a pretty long incubation period, but that had more to do with the fact that early hip hop was people live-mixing disco, r&b, and early techno (Kraftwerk, etc.) It took a while for the genre to become different enough to differentiate itself.
I mean specifically gangster rap, not broader hip-hop. It grew from an existing genre (like how metal grew from earlier forms of rock) over a reasonably short period of time (late 80s to early 90s, I think)? Its lyrical themes focused around a specific set of topics (hustling, etc.), more focused and more exclusive than hip-hop more broadly. There are also some well-known feuds (East vs. West Coast for instance) which I imagine would rapidly fuel innovation, though perhaps if they were already "well-known", that's evidence against my hypothesis. And from what I recall, it fairly quickly became a huge nation-wide phenomenon outside of its original audience/demographic, e.g. every white 12 year old boy wanting to listen behind his parents' backs.
I'm no expert so I'm sure I have some details wrong, so please do correct me more as needed, but I'm not trying to conflate the two.
I'm sorry - I've seen people conflate the two before and had assumed you'd done so as well. Please accept my apology, my comment was a bit too snide.
But to your point - I do think I disagree with your overall hypothesis, my perspective is that we're currently at a high water park for musical creativity, even if most of it doesn't gain traction. The modern-day equivalent of gangster rap, drill, originated in the relatively isolated hothouse of soundcloud and had the same kind of incubation period you're describing.
Interesting, I hadn't heard of drill before, thanks for the counter-example. There are plenty of good alternative explanations people are offering, so I'm definitely not confident in my original hypothesis, or at least, if that is a factor, it's likely not the main factor.
If the same incubation environments do in fact exist today, why do you think "crazes" don't seem to come about anymore as they did in the past (i.e. it doesn't gain traction, as you mentioned)? I still think it must be related to the speed at which new creative works can be output (even if incubation environment itself isn't the factor being limited), meaning there is much more out there to compete with, meaning potentially less untapped space to grow into something truly unique.
My intuition is that most people consume music in a pretty passive manner. They listen to what's on the radio and/or on the charts and that's about it.
Pre-internet, the minority of people who do consume music actively, and seek out new stuff, were basically limited to the same radio stations and record shops as the rest of the population.
So, a craze would happen when the novelty obsessed people found a new thing and it jumped to the majority.
Today though, there's just not much crosstalk between music nerds and normies, so the information flow is much less robust. Music nerds are still out there finding new stuff, but because we've fragmented so much, there's no effective mechanism to get the new music out to the masses. Hence, pop culture is stuck right about where this breakdown happened (mid-to-late 2000s, by my reckoning.)
"Unique" doesn't mean "good". People enjoy novelty, sure, but that requires something that is both truly novel and actually good to listen to. Both creators and consumers have seen enough to understand what works and what doesn't. They aren't going to deviate from that without good reason.
Of course. But presumably there are still people out there who are talented enough to create both unique _and_ good new music. So the question is, why doesn't this seem to set off "crazes" as much as it did in the past? Possible answers could be:
- Those people are out there but aren't incentivized to be unique, just to be good
- There's so much unique but mediocre/bad stuff out there that even the truly unique and good stuff has to fight through a lot more to become widely recognized than it did in the past
- Maybe crazes do still happen and my timescale is too small
- Maybe crazes do still happen but appear differently and more fragmented than in the past
- Most of the low-hanging unique sound has been captured already so it's harder to come across. That's not to say that there won't be more low-hanging unique sounds in the future (e.g. synthesizers opened up lots of novel sounds that composers in the 1700s could never have predicted).
Can you define “craze”?
A level of popularity that used to look like “nearly everyone in this nation of 70m people has at least heard the song” now looks like “this video has 100m+ unique views on Youtube but none of your neighbours have seen it”.
I guess I mean a very well-defined and widespread focus that seeps into many aspects of the culture, shapes the youth, and produces figures that act as cultural heroes.
The 60s would not seem like the 60s without the music scene, events like Woodstock, and the feedback loop between the music and cultural attitudes of the time.
The 80s would not seem like the 80s without big over-the-top hair styles, biker gang aesthetics to replace peace/love hippies, and shred guitarists (Van Helen, etc.) rising to idol status.
A more modern example might be rave culture, but it doesn't strike me as being nearly as widespread as past examples.
Maybe we'll look back in 15 years and be able to identify traits nowadays that are similar to these. But when I think about some of the biggest names in music right now (e.g. Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande), they don't strike me as being part of a more wide-spread cultural phenomenon/"craze" beyond fans simply enjoying that particular artist's music.
K-pop (via K-pop demon hunters), and before that Vocaloid / Hatsune Miku, were both youth crazes visible from where I am. My brain wants me to reject them as anything serious, the way the adults around me rejected my own interests when I was a teen, but it’s pretty visible.
EDIT (currently traveling, been pondering all this between patches of internet access):
The 60s were definitely a very special decade. I don’t expect to see that amount of culture shift all at once in my lifetime at this point. Music was a huge part of what was happening, but there was a lot more going on than just music.
I do note that a lot of what you discuss is much more than musical genre: it’s fashion choices, visual impressions, entire ways for people to express identity.
In those terms, a big youth culture shift in the 2010s was anime going mainstream and becoming not only widely and easily available in the west, but also widely and avidly promoted and consumed. The imagery has gone from virtually unknown to ubiquitous in public spaces; it informs conversation and fashion choices. I suspect that for at least a portion of people who were in their teens that decade (unclear how many, but also it’s hardly everyone that went full goth / full emo when that was the thing…) this will come to define it in their recollections.
Or it's the maturity of the medium; are there new genres of novel or movie being invented? Video games still seem to be creating new genres.
> Video games still seem to be creating new genres.
Like what? The only thing I can think of in the last decade that could really be considered a new genre is auto battlers (pioneered by DOTA Auto Chess in 2019). Everything else is derivative of existing genres.
don't really want to quibble about what counts as a new genre and what is derivative, but I think genres like roguelikes, loot shooters, idle/incremental games, survival/crafting open world games are newer genres (and quite dominant in the current market) that are at least as comparable to, say, heavy metal being a distinct genre from rock, and a couple of them are at least as comparable to rock being a distinct genre from 50's R&B that it came from.
Bullet heaven was codified by vampire survivors in 2022, extraction PvPvE games were codified by Escape From Tarkov in 2016, "Metroidbrainias", if we are to guess at their formation would be outer Wilds on 2019.
For subgenres, Doom eternal style fpses, where resources are tied to aggressive play has only existed for five years.
I'm not sure I'd agree with any definition of "derivative" which somehow separates auto chess from say random strategy games but not bullet heaven. I'd be skeptical of definitions which rule out doom eternal style games as a subgenre (well, the fact that there are like 5 games total in the genre may be incredibly damning)
I think that's only true for popular music, you go off the beaten path, you do find entirely new genres like vaporwave:
https://youtu.be/uzs8eMVdECY?si=oBBoPU-VBs2QeKId
or dungeon synth:
https://youtu.be/F_toMWQCikI?si=4DgjRup9jVFykjlp
Or anatolian psychedelic rock:
https://youtu.be/OfFXa7EncQI?si=9I9BzX0FxPHSfPdt
Or whatever this is:
https://youtu.be/6p2yf3E_Z2M?si=8bMMCEU-Bj9ZQSDo
I do feel like popular culture has become more homogenized.
Consider that you might be in a bubble and not being exposed to enough new music.
Just from my own playlist, I would find the following hard to categorise in terms of the musical genres that were familiar to me in the 90s/2000s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_gkpYORQLU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYRdJo3cG2Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clq66AiEvSk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slWcQORjPUk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_uS0aT0bG8
I could probably shoehorn them somewhere but they wouldn’t be great fits.
On a somewhat tangential note... how are folks here discovering new music? I find myself kind of stuck in the genres that I found and liked as a teenager/20-something, plus a few others (not very many) that I've encountered by chance since then. I know this is pretty typical, but I'd like to think I can do better.
Finding current pop music is easy enough, but with one or two exceptions each year, I mostly don't like any of it.
On the other hand, I liked a couple of the tunes linked in this thread. But I have no idea how I might have found them, other than random comments on a blog (that really has nothing to do with music).
I guess I could find a college radio station to listen to, but whenever I've tried that, I get bored really quickly.
There must be a podcast that specializes in unearthing new genres. Or something?
Someone should start up a "weird new song of the day" service. That's probably about the right frequency for me anyway. If I discovered something really good, say once or twice a month, I'd be pretty happy. Does this already exist?
Sometimes Spotify gives me something interesting in Discover Weekly or whatever. The last time I went to a music festival, I discovered one new band and genre. But there's a lot less discovery these days compared to when I was young and would just download random albums off slsk or whatever.
I find Discord is good for this. Join the servers for one or more of the big music bots (jockie, hydra, rythm…) and lurk in the party channels when people are playing music; join the fan discords for artists you like, do the same there. People in these places are generally super happy to swap recommendations as well.
Another possible source is the”x reacts to y” genre of music videos. You’re probably seeing them in your feed right now if you’ve been clicking the links here: “Jazz musician reacts to Blastbeat Felafel”, “Composer reacts to G.O.A.T.” etc etc. These are not in themselves worth watching, at least for me, but the channels of the people making them are a treasure trove of music that their subscribers really, really loved, were desperate for the human connection of having someone they could show it off to, and yet is so weird that they had to persuade one of these guys to watch it to get their fix instead of just talking to their real-world friends about it.
Thanks for the suggestions!
Are these distinct genres?
Yup. (Unless one is old enough to just lump everything together into “weird stuff the kids are listening to” I guess :) )
I am probably that old. What are the genres?
Now that’s a much tougher question! The artists generally self-describe by listing their influences “blended into a unique new sound”. I’ve tried to pick tracks that are central to clusters of things - the similarities can be heard, and also you can see which works (and artists!) are in evolving conversation with each other (e.g. Henson has now collaborated on pieces with Marcin and also with Nito!). As for neat labels, however - ask me again in a few years once the industry has come up with some :)
Sorry, I forgot to include a disclaimer, which is: I realize that there's still plenty of variety out there being created if you search off the beaten path. I'm talking more about huge crazes that sweep the nation. The 80s is _known_ for hair metal, for instance.
In the 80s we had a few radio stations and a few TV stations, and when those played something new over and over again for a season, the nation as a whole couldn’t help but know of it.
This unifying force is now gone, and with it the cross-community cross-generation nation-sweeping effects. Popular things are popular in particular groups, and (just as with literature, politics etc) those groups mostly aren’t really aware of what is happening elsewhere.
This is just an isolated version of the common observation that society is increasingly fragmented.
Yeah, it's entirely possible that that's all this is, and it's not specific to music at all.
What these seem to be doing is adding complexity, which is certainly not bad but I don’t know if it’s something you can make a new genre out of.
Thank you.
The first link is excellent and unusual.
I picked it up from a discussion of whether new genres are forming, so there are two questions.
Does fit into older genres? Offhand, I'd say it's sort of progressive, sort of goth, and if movie music is a genre, it could be movie music.
The other question is whether there's other music which is enough like it to say there's a genre..
Onward to the second link, Igorrr Felafel.
This does sound like progressive with more variety of tone. A bit of metal singing (is that singing? yelling into the microphone?) and a fair amount of middle eastern influence.
Link 3: てねてね / 悒うつぼ
This is brilliant. Game music but more musical/less mechanical.
From the lyrics: "Unattractive evil is unattractive". So true.
4, Bullug Gegbug Ibgabiug Gixcure Dagabciea Fuic
Rockmaninof
Gets smarter comments than most. Eighteen minutes of goodness.
5. Infected mushroom
Good illo. March of the electronic weirdos. The bit at about 3:50 and gets quiet and clicks is really good.
I think you have a genre there, and I'm calling it complex caffeine for the ears. Or maybe caffeine for complex ears.
I am glad you enjoyed! I like “caffeine for the ears”, but I’ve actually been thinking of each of those as representative of their own class - for each one, I have more things that belong in the same bucket (cf. my links to the Ichika / Marcin / Maromaro pieces for the Polyphia bucket in the post below).
There’s also remixers/resamplers to consider: when does something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kmbrih45lg become its own class instead of being categorised by its sources?
As far as the question of where you can take the 8-bit game aesthetic goes, I think of Ujico / Snail’s House as genre defining; e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nlSDxvt6JU
> The other question is whether there's other music which is enough like it to say there's a genre..
Here’s a couple more related examples by different artists for your consideration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2TzsEzp5mk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKYuPrxfuzM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n4KH7o5F78
Your bubble filter should be able to take it from there :)
This is a question I'm interested in too. One hypothesis I've heard mentioned is that it's the algorithmic feeds like spotify. These algorithms only show people what they are already likely to like, and will almost never show someone something from a new genre, because a new genre is essentially unclassifiable.
I first read about it on Ted Gioias blog https://www.honest-broker.com/ however I can't find the exact article anymore.
Rick Beato has some videos discussing a related topic, namely that kids largely don't consume music the same way that they used to - they're generally not going out and buying albums, listening to the whole thing 20 times, learning about the musicians' background, etc. Even knowing the names of the albums, lead singer, band members, what instruments they play. I'm sure there are some that still do, but almost certainly the minority. No doubt this has an effect on the market, what becomes popular, etc.
30 years ago or more, people were driven to innovate by boredom. If the radio plays the same 15 songs on repeat and going to buy a cassette or CD is an experience once a month, then you're driven to start playing yourself, to seek out like minded individuals and to make some music. For every band that made it, there were a thousand that didn't. When I was in school (late 90s and early 2000s) it seemed like maybe 1/3 of kids played music in some form - I'm sure that this proportion has decreased, though I don't have stats.
I think a contributing factor is that we live in a world saturated in media. We don't have to seek out anything new - we're bombarded with new media all the time. It's slop, mostly. But no-one buys a magazine about music, reads about new bands and then seeks out their album to see if they'll like it anymore. No-one discusses music with their friends to see what the latest thing is. Making and listening to music is not a social experience anymore.
> No-one discusses music with their friends to see what the latest thing is.
Sure they do. It happens on social media, though, instead of where you can see it. Discord servers with streaming bots where teens hang out and queue up their latest discoveries to listen to together are a huge thing.
The alternative is that we've simply exhausted the possibilities of music that sounds good. There's plenty of modern, experimental music being developed today, but no sane person would want to listen to it, so in obscurity it stays.
The possibilities of music per se are pretty unlimited. The possibilities of popular music are less so, because of the requirement for simplicity. Arbitrary restrictions, like using only 4/4 time and major chords make popular music even more limited.
They're not arbitrary. Due to what I can only assume to be innate biological tendencies, people find certain types of rhythms and melodies more intuitive and pleasing than others. Most people want stability. They do not find it comfortable for measures to be uneven and changing all the time, nor do they enjoy dissonance.
4/4 time and major chords are very arbitrary. You find them intuitive because you're used to them.
Yup - in the Balkans odd rhythms and scales with minor 2nds are common and people there are used to them, but they will likely sound weird to you.
Ah yes, that music comprising random squeaks and gibbers, with the occasional crash of garbage can lids! No music is worthy of the name unless if can stir some kind of emotion in the listener, and it's hard to imagine that style doing so with anyone!
I have a theory that people tend to favour music opposite to their personality. So laid back or outright cold people like emotion-laden music such as Wagner, whereas highly-strung people find formulaic Bach fugues and late Baroque more soothing because of its somewhat dry lack of emotion.
Heroes of Might and Magic III got a lot of mileage out of "we found the bird chirps on the soundboard." And people love the soundtrack for that. I've seen other games using owl-hoots and other animal cries, and they're wonderfully atmospheric.
Also, "Happy Worker" -- a talented musician like Tori Amos can pull off a fantastic piece with truly weird instruments.
The phrase "working to prevent its creation" is the stuff of Greek tragedy.
The Dilbert pushback I've seen failed to recognize the half-dozen or so self-owns throughout the piece as well. Those self-owns make it clear that Scott sees Scott as type of himself. Perhaps this was too subtle for most people to notice, but many of his critiques were clearly self-directed as well!
Does schizophrenia typically start at a later age in women, compared to men? Are there any known racial differences?
Also, can a traumatic event, like a close friend getting shot, trigger its onset?
OK, here's what I know, fortified by a visit to GPT. The peak age of onset is a bit later in women: Male peak onset is late teens to early 20's, female is mid-20's to early 30's. the data on race are unclear. Appears that blacks are more often diagnosed with schizophrenia than whites in the US, but there are reasons to question that data. Did not see data about Asians. As for traumatic events, the common diagnoses for people who have a diagnosable response are anxiety disorders (panic disorder, generalized anxiety, depersonalization and PTSD). There's a thing called Brief Reactive Psychosis where someone develops psychotic symptoms that do not last long right after experiencing a traumatic event, but it is not considered a form of schizophrenia. Symptoms resolve quickly and do not recur. And it is not common. I have never seen someone with it.
As for somebody developing schizophrenia after a traumatic event: There is evidence that a first break occurs in association with stressful life events, but stressful events in this kind of study are things like leaving home for college, having a first sexual relationship, working on a goddam dissertation, etc. -- not mostly things like auto accidents, close friends getting shot, etc. And the psychotic state doesn't usually spring into being quickly. The picture is typically much more that the person over a period of weeks or months gets increasingly reclusive, uncivilized, and odd. They stop going to class, stop showering, make weird jokes and comments to their friends, etc. Then one day they tell someone a weird tale about new strain of Argentinian rabies that is spread by sex during daylight hours, and it's clear that they really believe what they're saying, and somebody takes them to the university health service.
Anyhoo, if you want to know more ask away.
Thanks!
I was asking about a particular media personality, not anyone I know personally, so all I was going off of was the evolution of what she's saying on camera.
36 is after the main early-adult onset peak for women and before the smaller midlife (peri-menopausal) peak reported in some studies.
Thanks.
You don't get any points for correctly guessing who I was talking about though. I made it pretty obvious. :D
There are a couple other paths to being crazy besides schizophrenia. One is being bipolar, esp bipolar manic. The lawyer in Michael Clayton who takes off his clothes during a deposition is quite a good representation of the quality of that kind of crazy. The other is being so committed to drugs that you're high all the time. Musk may have that going on. People becoming schizophrenic generally become low-energy and reclusive, so if a media personality is still showing up at work and spouting some wacko ideas on camera it's fairly likely they are manic or perpetually drugged rather than schizophrenic.
Thoughts on Martin Luther King Day: it comes at the wrong time of year. Too close to Christmas and New Year’s and not far from Presidents Day.
A much better time for it would be maybe the second week in August. This would help fill the long holiday gap between Independence Day and Labor Day. Instead of his birthday it would commemorate his famous I Have a Dream speech (August 28, 1963).
Agree, and having it be on/near his birthday is pretty arbitrary, shouldn't be hard to pick a time for the holiday and then backfill a justification. Surely there are plenty of anniversaries more relevant to civil rights, and more broadly the struggle for racial equality, than MLK's birthday.
E.g. along the lines of what you say, you could replace Labor Day with MLK Day, and then move Labor Day to spring where there's a big gap between Presidents Day and Memorial Day. Could have May Day as a holiday. Or Patriots Day.
Ironically, the rest of the world celebrates International Workers Day on May 1 to honor a labor uprising in Chicago.
Mid-April would be an ideal time for Labor Day as it would fill the three-month gap from Presidents Day to Memorial Day. Good Friday is too explicitly religious, though it’s a holiday in some states, while May Day has some lingering socialist connotations and comes too late in the gap.
Another holiday issue is that we have no Hispanic holidays even though they are now the country’s largest minority group (Cinco de Mayo is just for fun).
I always assume it's in February, during Black History Month, and am always surprised by its arrival.
MLK is overdue for cancellation anyway, apart from the whole mistreatment of women thing his entire schtick would be considered Colorblind Racism these days.
Time to commemorate a true hero instead, I nominate October 14 as George Floyd Day.
Be less annoying, please.
Yep fair call
You're behind the times. Now it's the right who is against colorblindness again.
Agreed. Terrible date.
Early April is better. There's a U2 song with the date explicitly included.
There aren't policy proposals that can fix the housing issue. Nothing fixes the fundamental problem of scarcity. Housing is a good unlike others in that you can't really create more of it. Yes, you can build more housing, but that's just chopping up existing land. The YIMBYers will point to places like Tokyo as an example but almost everything in Tokyo is apartments squished together. Do you think American families dream of owning a 500 square foot condo? Obviously not, which means that all you can really do is something like Dallas-Fort Worth where you expand outwards aggressively. But now your nice little suburban home is an hour away from your job, making your quality of life worse and there are practical limits to how far you can go out. Now anyone who wants more affordable housing has to chop up the land around you, meaning that there are fewer homes of the type Americans want. The government can favor existing suburban homeowners who want to keep their existing homes or it can favor prospective homeowners who are priced out. But you can't do anything to make them both happy.
But although it's not a policy, there is one outcome where everyone can get what they want: lower population. Existing homeowners get to keep their homes while new homeowners can afford to buy a house but that has its own issues.
We have a lot more land than places like Japan does. One solution is absolutely to build more houses. In terms of spacing, not every American wants to live in a suburb. Single family homes are a really inefficient way of housing people usually, but is still an option. Building more affordable housing to those who are completely priced out is also an option that YIMBYers advocate for.
In Seattle, developers are happily chopping up big single family lots in newly rezoned areas to build quad-plex homes and they sell very quickly, people really want housing they can afford in nice areas, even if the houses are smaller.
For that matter, people were enthusiastically buying really small Japanese style "apodments", kind of like upscale SROs, until the always-helpful city council made them illegal to build.
Do you live in a major city? Nyc residents have already traded the front lawn option for something else. But they are stuck in crummy pre war buildings with no laundry machine and no garbage disposal in the sink, barely functional AC. Those buildings could get a lot taller and a lot nicer with better policy and that would in turn create more room elsewhere for single family homes. I agree though that a tall building isnt a good substitute for a single family home, but its a great substitute for a 4 story walkup.
Sure that’s a policy issue that could be fixed if you didn’t have Mamdani as a mayor.
The inability to replace bad housing stock didnt start with mamdani. The policy fix may seem easy. But the politics of achieving it is hard and the whole purpose of the yimby movement. Hence: there are in fact housing proposals that can vastly improve housing in certain areas. They just havent been enacted. And it can be very frustrating.
Mamdani has surprisingly done a whole lot for housing in the past month, so you're kind of revealing your ignorance here.
Him and Hochul essentially ended environmental reviews and he started a task force to look at available city land for development. He's streamlined zoning variances already too. Also quite a lot of money for public housing, but I'm not really convinced how much of a difference providing cheap housing to disabled and poor people will make on overall housing costs.
The fact people are willing to pay $5,000+ a month to live in NYC shows that a significant number of people would like nice, dense housing. Concentration in cities frees up the suburbs as well for people who prefer that lifestyle.
One of his advisers helped enact an extreme rent control law. But he is also pushing for policies that lead to more violent felons in the streets so maybe that will convince enough New Yorkers to leave and make homes more affordable.
Yeah that's the biggest danger of his administration. The one thing you can't accuse him of is being anti-growth or anti-housing.
Rent control is one of the most anti growth policies you can have.
Rent control already exists. Mamdani didn’t invent it.
The difference between a 0% and a 2% rent increase on already rent controlled buildings isn’t much. New development isn’t rental controlled (unless they go for a major tax break, where it’s rent controlled for a period of 25 years). I agree that rent control is bad for growth, but Mamdani isn’t changing much there.
Mamdani didn’t invent rent control but he wants to make it worse. That was one of the core themes in his campaign so I don’t know why you’re ignoring it. It would affect nearly a million units, which is huge. If you honestly think there is going to be significantly more housing built under him, you’re just flat out wrong.
Where are you getting your information on the subject and how informed are you? It seems like you're just repeating talking points from the opposition without really knowing what Mamdani's actually doing.
Literally the first thing it says on his website platform is that his plan is to freeze rent.
https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform
In theory, eventually, there's scarcity limits that can't simply be solved by building more... but I don't think we're *anywhere* near them.
I live one of the cities that's in the top-20 cities in the US by population and we really aren't anywhere near 'carrying capacity', either urban or suburban. At one point, I lived about a 10-15 minute drive from tech company I worked for and still drove past farms on my way into work.
And sure, not everyone wants to live in a 500 square foot condo (though... you know you can make bigger condos than that, too, right? Tokyo has a wide variety of sizes, while we've forbidden the small ones), but lots of people would, given the opportunity and we aren't building enough to meet that demand.
And the "hour from your job" problem assumes that your job is in the main downtown which is often not true, even assuming it's not remote - larger metro areas often have multiple "pockets" of more urban areas which often have offices, rather than one central urban hub that everyone commutes to. (e.g. the Durham/Raleigh/Chapel Hill "Research Triangle") And secondly "one hour from your job" depends on how good public transport is, which absolutely can be affected by policy choices.
>But although it's not a policy, there is one outcome where everyone can get what they want: lower population.
That's a good start, but there's another, complimentary way. It's about population density in the end, so you can improve the density not just by lowering population, but also by increasing area!
So is that finally the Grand Unifying Theory of Trump II policies? Lower the population count (deport brown people) and also increase available space (annex Greenland) to build more 'burbs because real Americans would rather change the world than change themselves. Enrich himself in the process because he's an urban developer. Be envious of Russia and China because of their huge tracts of land. It makes so much sense now.
This conveniently allows us to predict which countries Trump is going to go after next:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
Everyone below the USA (183rd) in population density can chuckle and be in danger. Venezuela (187) and of course Greenland (245th, dead last) about to go down, a few more to choose from. Notably, there are some more South American countries that would qualify, so they better watch out now. Also Canada (233), which is an ongoing interest of Trump's, but I repeat myself.
They don't need to stop at brown people, of course. Given that whites don't even make up half the population now, an aggressive ethnic cleansing effort could more than double the amount of living space available to Americans, even before expansion. Automation and off-shore labor camps can make up for the lost productivity.
>Automation and off-shore labor camps can make up for the lost productivity.
AI and charter cities, which is why Trump brought the billionaires and crypto bros on board. It fits like a glove, thank you for your contribution.
That is basically the main use case of charter cities that I can think of. It solves the issue of the citizenry getting upset over the presence of immigrants, and makes it practical to do manufacturing in a territory that the US controls without the worker protections that are meant for citizens getting in the way. Medical research also makes a lot of sense for the same reasons.
You've essentially reinvented the feitoria. Not that you're wrong, they worked pretty well for the Portuguese and the Dutch...
Huh, those really are just charter cities under a different name. Well, if we have a system that's proven to work already, that's good news for the future of charter cities as well.
It’s very reasonable for people to not want to live cramped like sardines.
“I don’t personally want this thing, therefore it should be illegal”.
The reason some people dislike the idea of living like cramped sardines is that they do not want to alter their present, habituated lifestyles, and these are based around suburban living. Or rather, their dislike is conditional on having habituated lifestyles which differ from the prospective ones.
This is to say, they have built their lives around things like gardening and lawncare, which can only be done in suburban areas. Change is frightening and people will do anything to avoid it.
However, if we look at this from the perspective of people who have habituated to dense, urban life, they would probably find the idea of giving up their urban lifestyles equally as detestable. Those people see the same fear as the first group, just reversed. The suburbs are their fear-specter.
Essentially, people become accustomed to preestablished lifestyles and their subjective preferences are merely contingent on chance.
You've never heard someone complain about the pipes having orgasms, I take it? One of the basic complaints of "living like sardines" is "I can hear my neighbors shouting and fucking."
This is a SOLVABLE problem. We can absolutely build sound-free walls.
Gardening can absolutely be done in a city, as can lawncare. Do you really need a full acre to be happy? Maybe all you need is a 10 foot by 10 foot garden (with fences to keep the deer out)?
Now now, don't get all defensive about your own insight. Own it! Run with it! Least of all, don't mistake my enthusiasm for sarcasm. Like everyone else, I've been scrambling for purchase in my attempts to plumb the depths of Trump's intentions, but you, if you'll forgive the triple metaphor, may hold the key after all.
You are very irritating.
Oh the feeling's all mutual. In a rational debate, little irritates me as much as choosing assertions that fit the desired conclusion, which I suspect is happening here: You declare all potential preconditions immutable, like zoning laws, the American Housing Dream, the size of a condo, the number of homes. All these things seem perfectly reasonable to change, yet "population size" is the only thing you'll admit. That seems VERY suspect to me.
Brandon: "The housing crisis is actually a space crisis."
You: "just build shoebox condos, dummy!"
Is it suspect to willfully misconstrue Brandon's thesis before accusing him of motivated reasoning?
Or you could just let builders build what they want and everyone gets to choose what they buy. If they don't build what people want then they go out of business. This is unbelievably simple.
That’s how you get Tokyo.
I moved from nyk to tky and got a bigger, nicer, cheaper place as a result. You may need an update as to what is available in tky. Its true that japanese seem to be fine with smaller homes. But other homes can and do exist there. Someone with a front yard and a basketball hoop lives 100 meters from my apt. Japan also has much higher population density to begin with. Tky policy in nyc would result in different homes than exist in tky.
Walk me through this, because an anchoring principle of your first post was that Americans don't *want* Tokyo. So why then, are you rejecting Fallingknife's proposal that American builders just build, and American buyers just buy, on the grounds that if that happens "that's how you get Tokyo."
Assuming you're right and nobody in the US dreams of owning a 500 sq ft condo, why wouldn't they punish a builder who created such a product by simply not buying it? Do we secretly long for the East?
Economics favor density.
Sounds like we secretly long for the East, then. Given the option to make a tradeoff, existing homeowners will sell their homes to developers for gobs of money, developers will build denser housing to allow new buyers to affordably trade off house/yard size against proximity to desirable hubs full of work opportunities, restaurants, services, social opportunities, etc, and new buyers will take the tradeoff and buy in.
That seems like an argument for YIMBY policy, though. Not so much "the government can favor existing suburban homeowners who want to keep their existing homes or it can favor prospective homeowners who are priced out," as, "the government can let the market settle into a natural equilibrium, or it can intervene to protect a specific subset of players, who like the disequilibrium they have and want to keep it going."
Chinese very famously do not do this. you can find very small houses being kept by homeowners as the expressways and mega-apartments spring up around them.
If you give an American prospective homeowner the choice between a typical home and a condo, they’re choosing the home. But the current land owner prefers to build condos because it’s more profitable, so without restriction that’s what you would get.
If the land owners who would prefer to build condos were instead forced or enticed to build single-family homes on that same land, then most of the people who would have been living in condos will instead be living in their cars, or in their parents' basements, or in the crappy studio apartment that they got for their first job out of college, or couch-surfing with their friend who is lucky enough to have one of the houses. Or maybe they'll get one of the cheap houses in e.g. Detroit, but really they'll rather couch-surf in a city with better economic and social opportunities.
What happens when you give Americans a choice between a condo, and a lottery where they have maybe one chance in four of getting a typical house? Or an auction where they have to outbid the three other people who want that house as badly as they do?
Yes, at a platonic level, if you reduced every aspect of the choice so that it was down to a condo or a detached house on the exact same spot of land for the exact same price in the exact same location etc etc etc, Americans will prefer the house to the condo.
But a home purchase decision isn't taking place in that kind of platonic ideal space where only one factor is at issue. Buyers are making a bundle of tradeoffs around price, location, size, schools, community, work opportunities, etc etc etc.
"The developer prefers to build condos because they are more profitable," but the condos are more profitable specifically because enough buyers would rather trade off size for location & other factors. And the developer only has the land in the first place because the seller is more interested in developer dollars.
It seems like there's this fundamental conflict, where simultaneously:
(1) American buyers don't want Tokyo, but,
(2) If American buyers, sellers, and developers all get to bargain in the market and come to a result that best balances out all of their competing wants, that result will be Tokyo.
I think the fundamental NIMBY problem is that American buyers have a revealed preference that if offered good location and a relatively smaller price, they'll trade off size and buy into Tokyo just fine. That's the whole reason market restrictions are necessary in the first place. Kind of like fighting imports because "nobody wants cheap Chinese shlock goods," but the revealed preference is that every time it gets an opportunity for buyer choice and price tradeoffs to enter the equation, Walmart crushes American manufacturers with Chinese products left and right.
Imagine that I’m a homebuyer who budgets for a single family home at $300,000. I look around, find one and close on it.
Now imagine that I have the same preferences but there is far fewer single family homes around. Most space is dominated by more dense housing. Because there are fewer single family homes, they are more expensive, and I can’t find one under $400,000. So I get a $250,000 townhouse. Would you say my revealed preference is for the townhome?
That seems unrealistic. Since there is more housing available, prices should be lower even for single-family homes.
Yes, because that's what "revealed preference" means. In economics, "preference" is not "what you want in the imaginary world where you can have anything you want at no cost"; it's what you are willing to actually pay for and/or accept the real-world tradeoffs of.
That's an actually useful thing to know. The bit where I might hypothetically want a mansion with a fully-stocked harem, a mad scientist's laboratory, and an airfield for my fleet of private planes, is of little interest to me and none at all to anyone else. That I'd be willing to pay half a million dollars for a decent house in El Segundo is at least somewhat useful and interesting even if there are presently no such houses in that price range.
Did I mention fantastical scenarios that don’t exist? I was talking about actually existing housing versus a hypothetical more free market approach. If you’re going to talk down to me like this by making up things to make me sound stupid, then don’t bother responding at all.
Pretty much. To try to reduce it to a digestible number of factors, when offered a tradeoff of location, size, and expense, you were more interested prioritizing cost and location than you were in prioritizing size by looking for something further out. Size mattered to you, but less than other factors.
And if the majority of the market thinks that way, than, yes, deregulating zoning and other YIMBYist ideas will lead to more Tokyo style density. But only because buyers keep consistently prioritizing location and price over size, and if that's how they construct their own priorities when offered the tradeoff, why should policy push contrary to those priorities?
I don’t believe revealed preferences are the end all be all of what people really want. And in my scenario, what they actually wanted was never even an option to choose from.
...Yeah, and? They don't have a housing crisis.
Yeah and the only option they really have to live in are these tiny little apartments.
Exactly. None of these actually exist: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&hs=HXCp&sca_esv=59623aa993e8ccae&sxsrf=ANbL-n54OKCrrvnFHvj_xUbgm_KaPJXzCg:1768940373668&udm=2&fbs=ADc_l-aN0CWEZBOHjofHoaMMDiKpaEWjvZ2Py1XXV8d8KvlI3p-ML-906rRL_m6h4jR-tdCH-vUIlZq9RzugLEcfjf51b4dfDKizXS4hTwRCZW2Tyeo_h9FK7Iw3R0k8aayAiwgxQtxaQNpn9K2zQZ41LPRF7NeaOQYIY1zqr3iyqiOoe9obydYrYEkk2yISZASm-Lfpad78H5IUt5i146gHHiFwFAlvUA&q=japanese+houses&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQu-e0-JqSAxWyPUQIHWyEOTgQtKgLegQIFxAB&biw=1670&bih=890&dpr=2&aic=0
There is plenty of houses available outside of the densest areas of Tokyo, and more than anyone knows what to do with once you leave it entirely. But everyone wants to live there because it turns out everyone living in the same place is extremely convenient for everyone involved. If it stopped being dense, suddenly it's no longer convenient, regardless of how much you reduce the population. Of course, if you want to raise your child in a nice home in nice school district, you can do that, because everyone isn't legally incentivized to sit on their house like their life depends on it.
How far do you have to go before you can find something that looks like a typical American home?
Obviously there are a lot of conveniences with Tokyo but it takes some things away. There are a variety of ways of living that are mutually exclusive with one another and policy can’t resolve contradictions.
Interested to see the free speech for the UK organisation. The main body already on the ground is the Free Speech Union set up by the extraordinary Toby Young. The FSU lobbies and provides legal and financial support and have won quite a few legal cases. He has been cancelled a million times but somehow still bounces back. Very sceptical on climate change and lockdowns (though not vaccines) and set up the Daily Sceptic website/newsletter. Hugely interested in education he set up the UK's first free school when the Tories made that possible. And I could go on for thousands of words and not capture his extraordinary career of successes and disasters. Oh, and did I mention, he just got appointed to the House of Lords? So he is now Lord Young. (His father was also in the House of Lords - Michael Young, the man who coined the term 'meritocracy'). Anyway all this to ask Scott to produce an article 'Toby Young - more than you wanted to know'. I think it would be great!
Was the pun intended? I would certainly be interested in an article "To be young - more than you wanted to know".
Has anyone used a cold essential oil diffuser and how was it?
I got a cheap little essential oil diffuser, I like it, and I hate refilling it every day. It seems like the cold essential oil diffusers just run for 4-6 weeks without needing more oil, which sounds awesome.
Whatever you do, my advice is not to buy this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B0D5H6GFVJ
I posted a longish review, which 13 people have found helpful, and gave it 1 out of 5 :
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R2AWFPTZBZZGNA?ie=UTF8
Thanks. That’s helpful!
How do you actually get European freeloaders on collective defense (Italy, Spain, Beligum, etc) to actually contribute and what does that contribution look like?
I was going to joke about European posturing on NATO breaking apart. "Sure", I thought, "Europeans can posture about NATO breaking apart but European security is guaranteed on the US nuclear umbrella. Without the US, the Ruskies have nukes and Europe in general doesn't. As long as Europe is absolutely dependent on the US for nuclear security, all of this is just a joke."
And, well, bravo, bravisimo to France and the UK. It looks like in July they actually sat down and are beginning to coordinate their nuclear strategy and arsenals. (1) And they actually have submarines with nuclear weapons, so they've got guaranteed nuclear second-strike capability. Yeah, it's mostly them forming a joint committee at this point but, well, that's just kinda how the Europeans do things. This is still awesome; finally some Europeans taking collective security seriously and coordinating their own key defensive plans.
And right now this looks awesome, again, bravo to the UK and France, but in 5-10 years...this still looks like Europe coasting on the Red, White, & Blue, just with 2 new flags instead of the old one. It's awesome that a European military force is arising but for the near future it looks like it will be carried, in both nuclear and conventional terms, by the British and the French. If the (no offense) the larger and richer US got fed up with European freeloading, how long until the British and French do to. Especially given the fact that the UK is outside the EU and France is...French.
But what do, like, Italian and Spanish contributions to collective defense actually look like. Is Europe really going to be comfortable with German remilitarization, including with the AfD in the wings? What can a country like Belgium actually do?
(1) https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/reading-between-the-lines-of-the-new-france-uk-nuclear-entente/
Another option is an alliance with Russia and China - which would be my preferred choice. After all Russia has invaded a sorta European country and the US threatens Denmark, a proper western country.
I’ve felt for a while that US is post western, rather anti western both on the right and left. The left is just obviously anti white/european, the right anti Europe.
>nukes and Europe in general doesn't.
I know we hate llm output on this forum but considering running your takes passed one if you are this out of your depth.
UK and France have nukes since the 60's, always have a nuclear armed sub with a credible second strike capability at sea. UK shares components with US but France's capability is completely independent.
If the US disappeared tomorrow there would still be no way the Russians could make a conventional or nuclear first strike without loosing Moscow, St Petersburg and the next ~10 most valuable targets. How much more credible do you want the European nuclear deterrent to be
The primary concern here is about unified control, structure, and guarantees. The French, for example, have had a very unique, very French, understanding of their relationship with NATO and how their nuclear forces will/should be deployed. That's what makes this arrangement with the UK such a big deal from my perspective.
Just as a quick refresher, the US nuclear umbrella is very well defined, very expansive, and has been in place since ~1945, as was the Soviet Unions. (1). This is especially important because both the US and USSR clearly understood the escalation ladder, ie what the risks were in a situation like the Cuban missile crisis and how to avoid an actual nuclear exchange. France, by contrast does not and has not participated in NATO nuclear planning and strategy. If you're someone like Poland, that makes a huge difference.
That's a big concern for border countries like Poland. If the US nuclear umbrella, which was very clear and well defined, goes away, under what circumstances will the British engage in a nuclear exchange and are those the same as the circumstances that would cause the French to fire their nukes. Are those circumstances clear to both the Russians (becuase we really want to avoid a nuclear conflict) and the Poles (who need to trust that the British and French will really risk a nuclear exchange instead of selling them out). In the abstract, the British and French have always had this capacity but actually establishing and coordinating MAD with a rival nuclear power is a non-trivial thing and I'm glad to see the British and French doing the hard work.
Also, you're a stupid poopy meanie head.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_umbrella
Considering the last time the Poles said "Russia bombed us! Invoke Article 5!" I think it would be better for the world if everyone decided to double-check before believing Poland. It is good that America geo-locks their weaponry before distributing it to mad dogs and the Poles.
Poland never invoked article 5.
What are you talking about?
Linked below. Poland, by ascribing the explosions (clearly missles, let's be fair) to Russia, was making a very serious allegation.
https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/collective-defence-and-article-5
Poland doesn't have enough military strength to defeat Russia. The only reason they were barking so loudly is "we can get all our friends to pile on." Either they were incredibly, irresponsibly twitchy, or they're just blatant warmongers (I find the later unlikely).
1) Are you withdrawing your lie that Poland invoked article 5?
There was only one time in NATO's history its collective defense provisions have been invoked, after 9/11 attacks.
2) Blaming this explosions on Russia was 100% kosher - also if these specific ones were for example AA missiles launched by Ukraine (as Russia invading Ukraine can be blamed on Russia, this includes reasonable collateral damage - and AA surely counts)
3) Also, interesting trick was used in at least some official statements about Russia-made weapons (and this covers vast majority of arsenal of Ukraine and Russia, made in Russia when it was USSR)
Sigh, yes, I misspoke if you think that I'm asserting they formally invoked article 5. Their actions were such that other NATO members were "flipping out" over the possibility, particularly when Russia wasn't even involved.
It's a little different when Poland says "Russia did this" than when Belarus says "Poland used a slingshot on us", simply because of Article 5.
"Russia-made weapons" sounds either like an analyst trying to be precise -- "I can't tell whose these were" or a diplomat trying to weasel "Russia" into a discussion of Ukrainian bad aim.
> Poles said "Russia bombed us! Invoke Article 5!"
Your exact words from two days ago. I do not believe that this was any sort of "misspeaking", and I do not believe it is about other NATO members "flipping out". You very clearly asserted that the Poles, and not other NATO members, in fact invoked article 5.
> particularly when Russia wasn't even involved
this is a lie
Russia was very much involved given that they fired weapons into Poland earlier and later and in this case AA missile was trying to shot down Russian device used in war directly next to Poland
pretending that Russia was not involved is a colossal lie, and what happened was fault of Russia far more than of Ukraine
> trying to weasel "Russia" into a discussion of Ukrainian bad aim
it was mostly Russia's fault, with very minuscule fault of Ukraine
Cite for earlier than 2022? I'm aware of some russian weaponry getting lost fairly recently (scuttlebutt says the controls were being jammed).
Yes, I'm sure, if you want to call "anything bad that happens because of the Ukrainian war" "russia's fault." Including the smuggled cigarettes into the Baltics!
> Cite for earlier than 2022?
what earlier than 2022?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Russian_annexation_of_Crimea
2014-2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia pretending to not be doing it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 where Russian army shot down civilian airliner by mistake?
Are you talking about the August 2025 drone crash in Osiny?
https://en.defence-ua.com/news/evidence_points_to_another_russian_shahed_136_incursion_100_km_into_poland_warsaw_starts_with_denial_again-15539.html
Apologies! Apparently I missed one in my recollection. I was speaking of the one where Poland figured out about the geolocking, because they tried to send missiles into Russia (this was under Biden, so years ago).
What the heck you are talking about?
"they tried to send missiles into Russia" - you seem to confuse Ukraine with Poland.
https://www.npr.org/live-updates/poland-missile-russia-ukraine-nato
I think after the first of these incidents (there's been several), Poland told the red button people, "turns out you can't hit russia anyway." (The missile defense is still quite good... for Defense).
What exactly you are trying to claim here?
What you mean by "geolocking"?
"because they tried to send missiles into Russia" - who was, according to you, trying to send missiles into Russia? How linked article relates to your claims?
Good attempt at a pivot. Given that you just learned UK/France had nukes today i'm surprised this is your core objection though. I'm not sure the US is any more or less ambiguous than UK on use of nukes. Article 5 is not if anyone takes one square foot of poland the nukes fly. Both UK and US say they will use nukes if they need to in service of the NATO alliance.
Maybe Us is slightly less ambiguous or slightly credible but I think the deterrence factor is similar
And maybe I am a meanie head but i'm a British meanie head who is a little tired of hearing how much we're freeloading and how helpless Europe are to stop Russia without the US
You have less of a standing army than Chamberlain did, and he went cringing in front of Hitler in order to buy time to arm up again. And you're reducing your police force as well, I hear.
Also, your tanks suck, and lose to shrubberies. Nato Combined Forces Doctrine does not have any solution other than "call in airstrike" (and pages of "what to do until airstrike comes"). Russia has overturned the "air superiority" model, and NATO has no "approved" solution.
I don't think you need to stop Russia. Russia just wants to sell gas and other natural resources at a fair price. You want to trade with Russia, and stop sending Germany out of business. (Why the Biden Administration found this completely unacceptable is perplexing. Russia is your natural ally.)
"Russia just wants to sell gas and other natural resources at a fair price."
are you aware of Russia invading Ukraine?
Russia is an imperialistic actor launching aggressive wars of conquest, and actively works to undermine democracy and freedom both at home and abroad by covert action and by exploiting free societies. Russia should be destroyed, or if not that diminished in its capacity to do so; the invasion of Ukraine shows that Russia is a villain.
>Russia just wants to sell gas and other natural resources
this is a lie; Russia wants a 'sphere of influence', wants to diminish other countries and is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of lives for this, including having kill-lists for civilians it seem might disagree with it. It routinely Gulags any opposition who then die in mysterious circumstances; there is no free speech; there is no justice; it is a society only marginally away from a dictatorship.
before you accuse me of falling for propaganda, please don't. I have personal experience of these things and others, and have materially supported Ukraine in resisting their invasion. I stand by these statements.
Your statements about tanks losing to shrubberies and the like are vacuous. Europe has been trying to play nice with Russia for decades, trying to see them as a rational actor who only wants to sell gas - but then you get nerve gas in capitals and countries being invaded.
Russia delenda est.
Would you apply the same metric to other countries? Ones with, say, better propaganda?
Yes, of course, Russia wants a "sphere of influence", every country wants that, except for countries too small to create a buffer zone (see Iran's buffer zone in Iraq, which it has for damn good reason). Ukraine has kill lists for civilians like Elon Musk, and even Donald Trump -- It's not that I object to the idea of a kill list (in principle this might even work for good... although it's a stretch), it is that the Ukrainian one seems remarkably ineffective and stupid.
I suppose I must confess to materially supporting suicide attacks waged by the Ukraine. Should I apologize?
Tanks losing to shrubberies is a description of materiel that fails without any enemy intervention. That is hardly a vacuous statement -- if European tanks cannot perform in the Ukraine, they are hardly ready for battlefield use in Poland. Were Russia to have tanks that had the turret fall off before getting to the front line, it would be equally stupid and funny (and I'm not saying they didn't.)
> Ukraine has kill lists for civilians like Elon Musk, and even Donald Trump
Source?
https://globalcommunityweekly.substack.com/p/elon-musk-alarmed-after-apparent
One would say it was more than a little impolitic to leave Trump's name up on the list after he won the 2024 election*. It took Americans pointing this out before the Ukrainians "fixed it."
*More importantly, this was after several assassination attempts. One would think the Ukraine would not want even the potential of being "fingered" as responsible for such things.
I would not lay this at the Ukrainian government's feet, if the Myrovetz folks had "actually powerful backers" (such as the Azov militia had, when they threatened to murder Zelensky if he stopped bombing his citizens) -- that is clearly terrorisms, be they allies of the administration or not.
Europe is definitely going to rearm, but non-proliferation may be going out of the window at the same time, and future American presidents might well need to deal with new nuclear powers.
One of the advantages of the European pacifist spell was that some of the richest nations on Earth didn't pursue WMDs even as a side project, because they felt safe under the American nuclear umbrella. That set of incentives is now out of the window, doubly so for traditional adversaries of Russia such as Poland and Sweden.
Smaller states have always ridden along on the defense policies of their nearby allies. Belgium in particular has existed or not existed based on the views of the surrounding states.
The contributions of the smaller states will be to send modest amounts of money and provide deterrence by showing a large set of allied European resources that hypothetically could be mobilized if needed. A country like Spain has no incentive to maintain a larger standing peacetime military that could be deployed abroad on a NATO/EU mission at scale, nor does anyone else have practical authority to compel it to do so. The Med states if called upon in a WW3 scenario would contribute mostly (a) access to the Middle East, (b) food, and (c) labor. For reasons of geography and specialization, Germany and the UK would struggle to keep armies in the field and an industrial workforce producing absent substantial food and oil imports. France could feed an army, but would need help with everything else.
There is certain specialization in play within alliances. For example, Finland is really good at building icebreakers. The US likely lost its capability to do so, as it launched it last domestically built icebreaker fifty years ago.
That leaves the question of just who Europe needs to be protected against. Russia would have been the answer four years ago, but subsequent events have shown its military to be a sick joke unable to fight its way out of the proverbial paper bag. Iran doesn’t seem to present an immediate threat to Europe. The same is true for the more unstable Arab countries; in the US we’re afraid of Arabs because they wiped the floor with us 24 years ago, but most Europeans seem less fearful. Afghanistan is scary but is far from Europe and has shown no inclination to use force beyond its borders. *Maybe* a long-term threat would arise if Turkey goes fundamentalist, but I’d say the likelihood of that is very low if not necessarily zero.
The Russian military is embarrassingly bad, but even a bad military can do a lot of damage.
Russian conscripts are "embarrassingly bad" if you mean "pimped out by the military for money." This doesn't have much to do with combat effectiveness, where Russian materiel has been consistently outperforming Western materiel, dollar per dollar.
It's to the point where Israel no longer wants American-made foreign aid.
The Russian military *was* a sick joke four years ago. They've had four years of hard-earned lessons in what needed fixing in their military. And the Russian military has generally been pretty good at learning from its mistakes. There's a limit to how much rebuilding they can do while still actively stuck in a Ukrainain quagmire, but anyone who thinks the Russian military of 2030 will be a "sick joke" is smoking high-grade copium.
European militaries, outside of maybe Poland and Finland, haven't really learned the key lesson: war is a messy, ugly business with an enormous cost in treasure and blood, *that your army actually has to be good at, before the war starts*.
Russian military four years ago still was able to remove "air superiority" from the Ukrainians. NATO has nothing else, other than "call in an airstrike" in their manuals.
(This is aside from the usual European nepotism, which always gets pruned in real war).
Trump is busy proving that "limited interventions" can have outsize effects, if you do them precisely and with accurate foresight.
There were no nato flights over Ukraine.
Read the Nato combined forces doctrine manual. ask how it's supposed to help the ukraine.
Russian military isn't a joke. They are unable to conquer Ukraine in a land war, but they are very capable of wantonly destroying cities, power plants and grid infrastructure on a large scale from the air. Look at how Kiev looks every morning after the nightly wave of Shaheds and other flying bombs arrives. That is not a joke for anyone living there.
This could happen to Tallinn, Helsinki or Warsaw in the next round of hostilities. At the very least, Europe needs excellent anti-air capabilities, much like Israel does.
Russia simply doesn't want to conquer the rest of the Ukraine. They have what they need, and some comfort margin. That's good enough for a sleepy bear.
Given the sheer amount of bloodshed (Ukrainian military is encouraged to not report dead soldiers, so they get paid salaries for dead men), Russia could curbstomp the rest of the Ukraine (or, perhaps, I should say, the rest of "flat ukraine" -- mountains are hard, be they Afghani or not).
> Russia simply doesn't want to conquer the rest of the Ukraine.
but they continue conquering it
sorry but you are hilariously misinformed, to the point of trolling
It's all a question of "blood for land" right? How many more Russian soldiers are they willing to burn for the next ounce of land?
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-31-2025/
That doesn't look like "continue conquering." Maybe I am misinformed by too much Civil War and World War II wargaming? You think this looks like a lot of land to have taken in a year?
> How many more Russian soldiers are they willing to burn for the next ounce of land?
current situation, recent history, deeper history give answer: a lot of them
> You think this looks like a lot of land to have taken in a year?
1) I answered whether they want to conquer, not whether it is going well for them
2) Russia keeps pressure in hope of Ukraine collapsing
> You think this looks like a lot of land to have taken in a year?
fortunately, no - but it is not a reason for dump optimism and huffing copium too much
Russia is still moving, Ukraine is in weak position and if things go badly Russia can end occupying Baltics by the end of 2026 (not saying it is very likely, but it is not something that is unable to happen)
And if this does not happen, it will not happen due to lack of Putin's desires for it.
The average age of a Ukrainian soldier is around 50 years old. The average life expectancy of new front line Ukrainian soldiers is less than a week. (Yes, these are slightly older numbers, possibly from 2024).
This is the sort of military Russia could just roll over, if they wanted to (it might invite non-Trump NATO sending in a ton of troops, mind -- there are a lot of responses Russia changing its entire strategic outlook might cause). They are holding ground, getting good and well dug in (three lines of defense? Why not build five?). And talking peace with Trump (and Zelensky).
If Russia thought "another year of large scale battles" would support their strategic goals, that's what they'd be doing (and you know Germany/EU has been hurt more by sanctions than Russia has).... Instead, Putin wants a favorable peace (That looks a lot like the Musk Peace Plan that got Elon put on the Ukrainian kill list).
Russia would be more likely to intervene in Moldova, if you buy their "we intervene for Russian supporting separatists." Or if you think the rather blatant European provocations would garner a response from Sleepy Russian Bear (look at the Moldovan elections).
Sorry but "Russia totally could won that war, they are not doing it for ???? reasons" is a blatant nonsense.
And quality of recruits for Russian army is not exactly a dream scenario for them either.
And europe is more than capable of responding?
Russia is vulnerable to Ukrain's airstrikes, what do you think will happen when squadrons of F35s start flying missions over Moscow which Russia is completely unable to deal with
> which Russia is completely unable to deal with
this is assumed in your question, but it seems risky assumption to make
"what do you think will happen when squadrons of F35s start flying missions over Moscow"
Trump switches them off remotely? No harm to his buddy and Peace Board cofounder Vladimir.
> Russia would have been the answer four years ago, but subsequent events have shown its military to be a sick joke unable to fight its way out of the proverbial paper bag.
What is the chance that the European army turns out to be equally or even more pathetic when shit hits the fan?
When Trump says: "NATO? what NATO? you still didn't give me the Nobel prize and Greenland. my good friend Mr Putin has a wonderful peace proposal that he gets the Eastern Europe, and you keep the Western part, and it's a very reasonable plan that you should accept, the best plan".
Russia still has millions of bodies it can throw at Europe, and China will happily supply it with parts for drones. Also Iran, if the regime stays. Currently, Europe is not even able to shoot down an occasional drone that Russia flies over their territory... the diplomatic strategy is to pretend that it never happened; we'll see how well that strategy works when there are thousands of drones flying towards strategic targets.
And on the side of Europe, Hungary and Slovakia and who knows who else will sabotage any attempt to actually coordinate on anything.
Trump's laying down better cards than -that-. Specifically, he's retreating the American umbrella to "Fortress America" (western hemisphere, down to venezuela and up to greenland). Perhaps when that's built out, the military will become more adventuresome again.
So, yes, if some strange time happened when Russia decided (against most of it's normal tendencies and proclivities), to romp over Europe, it could probably have the whole thing.
America doesn't shoot down chinese weather balloons, either. This is a "we could do that, but... why?" Spycraft has changed a lot now that drones are available -- everyone is in each other's business, and shooting down a drone says "you went somewhere we can't have eyes on" (which means "high priority spying target.")
> shooting down a drone says "you went somewhere we can't have eyes on"
Not if you shoot down *every* drone that enters your territory.
Oh, sure, and maybe that might work for Israel (on a good day. on a bad day Iran just sends "enough" to get some through). Russia is a VERY big place, as is the United States.
> What is the chance that the European army turns out to be equally or even more pathetic when shit hits the fan?
Why did the Russian underperform? Corruption, exegerting strength, new kit didn't live up to spec.
Europe has; a bigger economy, less corruption, better weapons (5th gen fighters, the best air to air missiles, the best air defense tech, much better tanks than the stuff Russia is pulling out of soviet era storage.)
Europe has around 1.5 million active personnel in basically peace time. Russia has about 1.5 after dragging every last convict they could out of jail and requesting assistance from North Korea.
Europe has another 1-2 million of pre trained, pre equipped reserve troops that could be mobilized in war time.
China will supply anyone with drone parts. European countries could shoot down drones if they chose to. They are choosing not to avoid escalation. The drone are drifting just over borders and landing in fields. There is no world in which a drone headed to Warsaw makes it there without being shot down.
> Europe has; a bigger economy, less corruption, better weapons
Yes to all... although the weapons might turn out to be obsolete for a modern drone war. Maybe spamming cheap drones with exactly the right abilities really fast is more important.
But also, Europe has a lot of internal political disunity, which will only get worse once the personnel starts actually dying. The usual bureaucracy will also slow things down -- imagine how much paperwork would be necessary for a tank to get from France to Russia's borders...
Those issues are real, but can we extrapolate them to a wartime scenario? I feel like (I have no special knowledge on this wrt to war specifically) that once shit hits the fan, things that usually take months suddenly become very doable in a day.
EU was never attacked on its territory, so we have no data here. Foreign military interventions were actions of individual countries (i.e. not EU as a whole); the few common activities were peacekeeping and training, not combat.
I wonder if EU even has common military trainings separately from NATO; if we are planning and training for the scenario if USA stabbed us in the back at the least convenient moment.
I don't necessarily mean "Trump joins with Putin and they attack us from both sides", because then I guess we are screwed anyway, but more like "Trump remotely turns off all American weapons and devices that European forces use, and everyone who uses Gmail or Microsoft Windows or Android finds that their secrets have somehow all leaked to Russia".
Russia underperformed because America always overestimates Russian capabilities. In the 1960s, we were absolutely convinced Russia was planning a full scale attack, when Russia couldn't have mounted one if they wanted to, and was trotting around a few old tanks just to "look good."
OTOH, State thought sanctions would crush Russia in 2 months. So russia overperformed as well, economically speaking.
Europe has a bigger economy. No, Europe has an "on paper" bigger economy with "added value."
Europe can't send their military anywhere because they don't trust their civilian populace (they also would have trouble if they put the troublemakers under uniform), and with good reason. Mr. Americani says "I Told You So."
> Europe can't send their military anywhere because they don't trust their civilian populace (they also would have trouble if they put the troublemakers under uniform), and with good reason. Mr. Americani says "I Told You So."
I have no idea what that means. What civilian population is not trusted by Europeans. If Europe needs to go to war it will go to war. Russia has managed to get a few hundred km into a country one tenth its size and gdp.
Obviously Europe is in a bit of a stupor right now but, in the abscence of a nuclear war, it would win.
The preferred solution is an alliance though, with Russia and China.
The Europeans have let in a substantial amount of non-Europeans, as refugees and economic migrants. Already, the number of non-Europeans has led to a mass cancellation of Christmas light displays across Germany, citing "security is too expensive."
Well, what happens if you give the non-Europeans guns? Or if you send the European boy-men to war, thus leaving only non-Europeans at home with the womenfolk? Nothing good (see the long-term coverup of rapes).
This was foreseen by Mr. Americani over half a decade ago. So, he told the Europeans, "You have a demographic problem, and you cannot raise a fighting force." He was told the "approved answer:" "Oh, that's racist!"
Now he just says, "I told you so."
Whose preferred solution is an alliance with Russia and China? Nobody wants that (except the Chinese), not even Russia.
I think you underestimate the effect of actual combat experience.
In the last exercise that Czech elite paratroopers performed with their Ukrainian counterparts, the Ukrainians wiped them out every single time with drones before they even came into close contact. Czech equipment was good, but the Ukrainians were better at using theirs, because they were actual survivors of a protracted conflict where you either perform at your best or you die. That is evolutionary pressure like no other.
As of now, Russia and Ukraine are the only two places on Earth that have profound, battlefield-tested knowledge on how to fight a drone war. Everyone else is just watching, much like the Great Powers of 1905 watched the trench slog of Port Arthur without actually adapting their militaries. Armies are conservative (including the Chinese and the American one), and their political handlers prefer huge purchases of expensive machines over anything else. It took a lot of grassroots organizing in UA to actually build up their drone force.
In a conflict between Europe and Russia, Europe would likely prevail in the end, IF it stayed united. (I am not that sure whether the French are ready to die for Danzig again, much less young French Arabs who sympathize with Putin anyway). But Russia would stand a realistic chance of conquering something tangible, the Baltics at the very least.
So, you expect Russia to completely overrun the European fortification of the Ukraine? (or simply go around it, see the Maginot line?)
No, I would expect them to try conquering the Baltics instead, if the political constellation is favourable.
The Baltics aren't arming up, planning an invasion of Russia, or stealing their one warm water port via "color revolution."
I agree, if you looked at the map, Russia's easiest targets are the Baltics... But this assumes Russia is a warmonger, and not responding to external provocations.
> The Baltics aren't arming up, planning an invasion of Russia, or stealing their one warm water port via "color revolution."
And how the heck it is supposed to change anything?
Ukraine was also not doing either before Russia invaded them in 2014.
Let me back down (I stand by what I said, but I'd rather make my argument than fight over facts) -- the Ukraine was inarguably changing alliances during 2014, attempting a "more EU turn", over the objections of Russia. That's something we can both agree with?
The baltics are already as "west" as a former soviet country can be (wester than Finland was, before they joined NATO).
Yes, Ukraine was changing alliances during 2014.
It does not ensure that Russia will not invade Baltics - if NATO can be defanged then invading them is much simpler task than invading Ukraine.
Russia has a long imperial history and is not even pretending that it changed its desires (unlike UK or Germany). Russia did multiple invasion in last decades, managed to conquer and hold territory and is in the middle of war trying to extend its territory.
Yes, and this is where we disagree. I don't buy the external provocations explanation. It has the credibility of the Gleiwitz incident.
Are you trying to claim that the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution was a Russian idea? Or simply that removing Sevastopol from Russian hands is an "incredible" goal for the West?
Ukraine does not "belong" to Russia any more than Egypt "belonged" to the UK in 1956 and they, too, are learning the hard way that jaw-jaw could have better outcomes than war-war. Only the Brits were wise enough to accept their decline. Russia doesn't get it yet, and will become a Chinese resource vassal with some nukes as a consequence.
I am very glad that my own country, Czechoslovakia, dissolved peacefully instead of the Czechs pulling off imperial bullshit like the Russians and the Serbs. This is just a way to kill a lot of people and destroy a lot of cities for ... what precisely? Sevastopol nowadays is an expensive killbox easily destroyable by missiles from Turkey or Romania and the Russian Navy withdrew most of its vessels out of it precisely because it is indefensible.
Experience is a factor but not decisive. Before Trump, with the US strongly supporting NATO, no one seriously worried about Russia's troops overmatching the alliance despite NATO's lack of recent peer combat experience. Russia is more experienced now, but has significantly fewer tanks, shells, APCs, aircraft, and air defence assets than it started with. They may have more experienced 30-year-old men, but they have fewer 30-year-old men in general.
Even accounting for experience, I don't think Russia could take the Baltics. The Baltic states know the threat and train specifically around it. There are already European tripwire forces in place; British troops in Estonia, Germans in Lithuania, Canadians in Latvia. And the geography has shifted dramatically: Finland and Sweden joining NATO means the Baltics are now surrounded by allied airpower from multiple directions. Russia can't establish air superiority over Ukraine with its handful of aging Soviet jets and donated F-16s — the idea they'd achieve it against NATO fighters operating from Finland, Sweden, Poland, and Germany isn't credible.
The real question is political cohesion, but that was always the question. The tripwire forces are European, not American. If we trust that British deaths in Estonia would trigger a response, US membership wasn't the variable that mattered.
Air superiority is last year's war.
"No one seriously worried about Russia's troops" -- this is demonstrably false. If you don't think Russia has a plan to take over Europe, I assure you, they do. They probably also have a plan to take over China, and India... and even America (although I figure that plan is probably -really- wild, and may involve bears). This is standard planning, you lay out what cards you can use to take over any nation you could possibly manage. America does it too. Canada has a plan to take over America, and it's even pretty good.
Air superiority is not a big part of the war in Ukraine because the shield of air defense is equal to the sword or aircraft. That's not a global change that's the state of Ukraine vs Russia. As Iran how unimportant it was that Israel got air dominance.
You are conflating someone having a plan and it being credible. Canada has a plan and the us should not be worried about it
Canada's plan is quite credible, I assure you. That Canada would not use it except under extreme conditions goes without saying (erm, Nuclear Winter? SuperVolcano?), but America does plan countermeasures, because that's what planners do.
> including with the AfD in the wings
I don't think that's really a concern. Germany is a European democracy: the AfD will almost certainly be banned before it wins, and if there's an unexpected surge and it manages a win, they'll annul the election and redo it.
Germany wants to call itself part of NATO despite... the treaty saying "you won't ban political parties."
> Germany is a European democracy
> the AfD will almost certainly be banned before it wins
Pick one
Why? I see no contradiction, and think they're both true.
EDIT: Maybe you're coming into this with Usamerican ideas of what "democracy" means. In the civilized world, a democracy is when the constitutional scholars and other experts in the judiciary decide who the most democratic candidate is, and then allow his party to form the government.
The US has a fairly active judiciary as far as I can see, so you may be missed a few history lessons. On the other hand in free countries, of which there are few enough, parliament is sovereign.
I can't tell if you're joking or just the world's most self aware liberal
People spend a lot of time talking about when AGI will be created. After it is created, what will we switch to talking about?
There's still climate change.
How could I forget?
Whatever you want to talk about. Do you expect to still be talking to real people at that point? Real users are a liability. Every comments section will be populated by threads personalized for each user in order to maximize engagement. You won't be able to tell the difference.
Well, there will be a long stretch where we debate "oh but is it *really* AGI"? Then after it becomes undeniable we'll start discussion when ASI will be created.
What will we talk about once we agree ASI has been created?
Whether or not there are spoons
One of the following:
“Who most overpredicted the impact of AGI?”
“How do I tie my shoes? My grandparents say people used to know stuff like this.”
“Me use rock to kill lizard. Me eat lizard.”
Velcro made people forget how to tie their shoes. They don't know how to read cursive or use flint and steel, either.
"Is it really true that people in the past used to communicate through sound waves?"
So, what you're really trying to say is... ... ... they're made out of meat?
Our relationship with it.
Why would mirror microorganisms pose a particular threat to existing life? What's their competitive advantage?
No predators and no immune systems would detect them.
Why not?
If the answer is that molecules can't detect their stereoisomers, then how will the mirror organisms detect the normal ones? If being anti-chiral comes with an automatic advantage then shouldn't that advantage work both ways? Wouldn't we be as much of a danger to them?
I looked at the linked LessWrong post so you (or some others reading along) wouldn't have to:
The short version is that there's a concern that mirror-bacteria specifically would be able to feed off substances that are achiral (i.e. have no handedness, and thus exist both for our biology and their biology), but be effectively invisible to our immune system.
There's some good conversation in the comments that suggests that our immune system would actually be able to handle it fine, but there's an additional problem that the kind of adaptive immune system that humans possess is not universal across all species, so many foundational species could be affected by pathogens of this sort.
The advantage of having a different chirality is a kind of first-mover advantage; bacteria that are like this would not have similarly-chiral predators, unlike bacteria of our chirality.
Caveat: I may be summarising this sloppily, I don't buy into this threat for a number of reasons (see more of the comments on the linked LessWrong article for some causes of scepticism, some of which I share), but I'm trying to do it some justice in a small number of words, because I too was curious and I'd like other people to have at least this basic context for the topic in this comment section without having to leave ACX for it. :)
Yeah, it sounds like this is generic risk-aversion on the basis of "this would be fundamentally different and therefore unpredictably risky". And hey, maybe that's the right attitude. I just think the disaster scenarios are unrealistically simplistic (as they always seem to be). Adaptation is tricky for any organism so I just don't buy the notion that a mirror version of E Coli would be a perfect superorganism. I'm sure there are subtleties in the way that the stereoisomers interact with world such that a well-adapted left-handed genetic sequence isn't the same as the equivalent right-handed sequence. That's just not how complex system work, ever. If it were possible to press a button and magically make a perfectly chiral copy of an existing bacteria, I would bet heavily that it would immediately die for reasons that would take decades to understand, and that tweaking its genetic code to fix those problems would be an evolutionary problem of a similar complexity to the creation of the same bacteria from scratch. But, like I said, maybe it's wiser to just assume that it would be ice-9.
Sure, life may be complex, but it's made of simple parts. The only two forces relevant to life (electromagnetism* and gravity) are very well established to have the necessary mirror symmetry.
Of course, there's the possibility that some chiral substance in the environment is toxic to mirror organisms, but evolving resistance to toxins is clearly something bacteria are capable of.
*In the case of electromagnetism it's also necessary, in the usual convention, to reverse the magnetic field upon reflection. With that caveat it works fine though.
>it's made of simple parts
But the complexity lies in the emergent interactions. I bet those aren't all symmetric. Some molecules are chiral in complex ways: they have both right and left handed parts. Sometimes several of each. I bet a universal reflection wouldn't preserve all of the relevant dynamics. I mean, I hear you about E&M and gravity being achiral ... I just bet there's something that wouldn't work. The weak force is chiral, after all. Maybe there's a yet-to-be-understood subtle consequence of that which would alter a biochemical equilibrium point enough to wreak havoc.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y8ysGMphfoFTXZcYp/biological-risk-from-the-mirror-world
This is another good introduction
Ok, I'm not a subject matter expert here, just relaying what a whole bunch of them said. You can check out this paper, I think it was meant for general consumption: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/386988387_Confronting_risks_of_mirror_life
There are reports that OpenAI will run out of cash in 2027, the way things are going:
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/big-tech/openai-could-reportedly-run-out-of-cash-by-mid-2027-nyt-analyst-paints-grim-picture-after-examining-companys-finances
> Given how quickly the evolution of AI has upended technology across the globe and is affecting various markets, it's nigh impossible to accurately predict where anything might be headed. There's no shortage of predictions, ranging from utopia to ultimate doom for established industries. An NYT columnist, however, has one specific bet: OpenAI will be destitute in 18 months in the wake of its AI endeavors.
According to an external report last year, OpenAI was projected to burn through $8 billion in 2025, rising to $40 billion in 2028. Given that the company reportedly predicts profitability by 2030, it's not hard to do the math.
Altman's venture projects spending $1.4 trillion on datacenters. As Sebastian Mallaby, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes, even if OpenAI rethinks those limerence-influenced promises and "pays for others with its overvalued shares", there's still a financial chasm to cross. Mallaby isn't the only one thinking along these lines, as Bain & Company reported last year that, even with the best outlook, there's at least a $800 billion black hole in the industry.
I would bet heavily against this if there were a prediction market. Sam Altman has shown a virtually peerless ability to raise capital; the only scenario I can see OpenAI running out of cash would be in the aftermath of a massive downturn in AI-adjacent stocks *and* a massive disappointment in their next-gen models (or some other catastrophic product rollout of some kind).
I could very easily see ChatGPT 6 turning out to be a minor improvement over 5. Would certainly cause issues.
So? They'll raise more money. It's not unusual for a growth-stage startup to only have 18 months of cash at any given time.
I'm sure they'll have investors lined up around the block next time they want to raise money.
Thing is that they lose cash even on paid users. It's not clear how they can become profitable. Not really how early-stage Google, Amazon, Uber etc. worked.
There are good arguments against OpenAI - this isn't one of them. Amazon lost money until 2003 and even afterwards had years of sparse profits. Uber went public with huge losses and turned profitable in 2023. Google is the only one that rapidly turned profitable, and while you can dismiss approximately ~99.9% of companies with the line of reasoning "not as good as Google," it's not a useful way to view the world.
The current version of the product is not the real product. The current version of the product is just what they sell to help offset the development costs of the real product. The gamble is that the real product, when it arrives, will be worth enough to make all these other numbers seem trivial (and also that it doesn't kill us all).
> The gamble is that the real product, when it arrives, will be worth enough to make all these other numbers seem trivial (and also that it doesn't kill us all).
And to be clear, I've run some numbers on this and if you're able to counterfeit just ~50% of white collar jobs just in America for 1/3 the current price, the AI company(ies) that do this will be netting at least $13T a year, or a third of the entire present economy. And that's NET.
"The business plan is to create God and ask him for money", as Matt Levine put it.
Hilarious. I mean *I'd* invest in that business plan!
I hadn't heard that. Droll.
It's entirely possible that the real product would have been worth enough to make all these other numbers seem trivial...except Google, Anthropic, xAI, and Deepseek all have better and cheaper models, so nobody uses OpenAI's model.
OpenAI will run out of cash... if they don't raise more money. But they will raise more money, and easily, because every investor on Earth is desperate to get exposure to them.
Speak UK: despite claiming "25 arrests per day" they can only list 18 convictions in total, many of which are, by their own criteria, racist abuse directed at specific individuals (and some others are genuinely concerning cases of racism by serving police officers). Literally their only landing-page cited source is the *Daily bloody Mail*. I feel quite concerned that this is the bar for ACX grant recipients.
Worth noting that under the terms of their proposed instrument the doxxing of Scott Alexander would be protected free speech (specifically, harassment and intimidation are only prohibited if they're face-to-face or conducted repeatedly; one-off online publication seems to be protected regardless of the size/reach of the publisher or the vulnerability of the target).
I'm confident the ACX grant programme does far more good than it does harm, overall - but, well, it's difficult to be sufficiently EA-minded to think of it that way when stuff like this is so much closer to home than any potential successes.
(note 1: I concede that of their 18 cases many genuinely are miscarriages of justice where the defendant should have been protected by free speech laws but wasn't - I'd say this is true for perhaps half of them - but by their own statistics that's 25 arrests *per day* and maybe 9 miscarriages of justice *in total*: I very much suspect this is a better figure than most countries, the USA in particular, achieve...)
(note 2: Why are anti-bigotry and anti-harassment laws so broad in scope?
Because perpetrators become incredibly adept at judging the threshold for police intervention and staying only-just below it whilst still causing life-changing harm to victims. Every proposed way of solving this is terrible, but "legislating against even on-paper-light harassment and allowing the police/judiciary sufficient common-sense discretion as to whether to prosecute/convict" seems to be slightly less-terrible than other terrible solutions (as evidencd by Speech UK's own 9-odd cases of injustice overall from their own claimed 25 arrests per day).
For example, let's say there's a student group chat and every time the black kid posts in it, somebody else posts a photograph of a banana. This is obviously a case of racist harassment, and if you're the black kid it feels *utterly horrifible* - potentially even life-ruiningly so - but if you make it illegal then eventually somebody somewhere is going to be come to the attention of the police for innocently posting a harmless photograph of a banana that got misinterpreted by somebody else. Since it's essentially impossible to define in law whether a particular banana photograph is racist or not, current UK law gives the police powers to interview people who post banana photographs that come to their attention, and as a backstop it gives the judiciary powers to determine, in the course of a fair trial, which ones genuinely were intended to be racist.
This system is, I admit, terrible and it fails in awful life-ruining ways - but it is *less* terrible than the system proposed by Speech UK, and it ruins far fewer lives than their system of legally protecting almost all racism and online abuse would)
Itd probably be easier for you to just accept that SA has different values. As a libertarian leaning American, he and many of his readers think legally protecting almost all racist speech is good not bad. You can expound the reasons you think otherwise, but he'll keep giving to groups that champion free speech.
As for the scenario you are concerned about. Their website says they consider limitations including "Repeated, targeted harassment of individuals". So this behavior would potentially fall out of protection
Thanks for the reply! It's true: I agree that would be easier.
I think legally protecting most bigoted/harassing speech has helped make the USA into what it is today. If that's what Scott wants, fine, but I'd rather he stopped trying to make Britain into what the USA is today.
Prohibiting "repeated, targeted harassment of individuals" allows for one-off-but-large-scale harassment of individuals (such as the doxxing that Scott says was so harmful) and for the repeated long-term harassment of groups (including small and vulnerable groups). And for other edge-cases addressed by large bodies of statute and case law dating back centuries - Speak UK would have this large and well-established body of law torn down without anything similar to replace it (leaving those the laws were designed to protect left unprotected).
This isn't even just a case of Chesterton's fence: in this case we /actually have evidence/ for A) what public discourse in a free-speech-absolutist state is like, and B) how much freedom, democracy, and open public debate we have in Britain* under our laws prohibiting bigotry, harassment, etc.
* (Specifically, the UK scores 9.9 on The Economist's global democracy index; the USA scores 7.85)
Perhaps a less well trod area of discussion than the merits of free speech would be the morality of cross border political influence, which is what you are pointing out here. One could claim, its moral to try to induce free and fair elections overseas as that way the ppl can get what they want. Its even moral to influence the electorate itself as that is just the spread of ideas, but its immoral to attempt to lobby the elected representatives directly, its up to the ppl of that nation to tell them what they want. Funding Speak UK might be a little bit of both of the 2nd two.
I'm not sure I could call the former a well-trod area of discussion; one of the reasons I felt so strongly inclined to comment is that I see very vocal "free speech absolutist" libertarian types (whose views, as you pointed out, Scott seems to share) but nobody at all really espousing the merits of the UK's long-held policy of regulating those areas of speech where we have strong evidence of their harms, but little evidence of any benefits from leaving them unregulated - despite the country having successfully followed the policy for a very long time. That seemed rather too one-sided, to me!
For your second point, I would agree with the idea that trying to induce free and fair elections in another country indirectly (eg. by means of economic incentives, speeches in the UN, etc. etc.) is morally permissible - possibly praiseworthy, even - but I question the *efficacy* of trying to make a 9.9-index democracy more democratic by inducing it to emulate a 7.85-index democracy.
For your final point, I'd agree that directly funding a political lobby campaign (or otherwise purchasing political influence) in another nation, the consequences of which one won't be subject to oneself, is wrong insofar as it seems like it sets up perverse incentives, dangerous precedents, etc. It may of course still come out ahead in the utilitarian calculus - but I don't think it does in this particular case (which of course goes back to your well-trodden free speech vs. honesty/civility topic, upon which I'll spare you any further remarks..)
Thanks once again for the polite and well-reasoned replies. It's a pleasure to talk to you, disagree as we may!
"This is obviously a case of racist harassment, and if you're the black kid it feels *utterly horrifible* - potentially even life-ruiningly so"
It's only life-ruiningly bad because children are slaves who aren't allowed to leave their communities. If I find a community where everyone is extremely rude to me for no good reason, either online or in-person, I could just decide not to interact with their social network. But students and teachers can make schools (and student group chats) really horrible because runaways are forcibly returned by authorities including the police if they try to leave.
What Does Free Speech do?
1) Prevents Backstabbing -- imagine if that banana-posting kid simply sabotaged the black kid's work, so that the black kid couldn't ever get a passing grade, and got held back?
2) Prevents Isolation -- even the racist can find friends, and friends make the entire group easier to infiltrate, and also easier to defuse (Not All White Supremacists murder people).
3) Improves Honesty -- you no longer have a "lie to everyone" ethos, where people are incentivized to lie and nobody knows what anyone else believes.
4) Improves people's mental health. If you aren't Type A Hostile, and convinced everyone is sneaking around and doing things behind your back, your blood pressure is lower, statistically speaking.
5) Social interactions with the banana-posting kid may lead to them "no longer being so racist". But you have to target that kid first, yes? Otherwise, he might just avoid your "wellintentioned outreach." Imagine 200 interactions with the banana posting kid, gently asking him for sources, showing him "well performing" black students, etc. Maybe those 200 interactions stop a school shooting. Maybe many people don't die.
I think 5) is a very important function of free speech. You get to say your thing, and see how many people you respect say "yeah, that's right." If you get laughed at, maybe you improve your argumentation.
"This is obviously a case of racist harassment, and if you're the black kid it feels *utterly horrifible* - potentially even life-ruiningly so - but if you make it illegal then eventually somebody somewhere is going to be come to the attention of the police for innocently posting a harmless photograph of a banana that got misinterpreted by somebody else. "
And that's why it should absolutely not be illegal. The proper recourse is for the black kid to leave the group chat and get better friends (if the chat is private), or for the school to ban the harasser from the chat (if the chat is school run). The law's role is not to shield everyone from every unpleasant interaction ever. That is a sure path to authoritarianism, and I'd much rather be harassed by a kid in a group chat than by an authoritarian state with a monopoly of violence over me.
Maybe I don't understand how school group chats work and possibly I could have picked a better example! I have to admit I'm, well.. not exactly close to school age myself..
I'm imagining (perhaps mistakenly!) a group chat that is not run by the school but that the entire class (or form or year or house or whatever..) is a part of, almost-all online social interaction is initiated there, all event invites, sports, club and society info, all social news and chat, even essential school information is disseminated that way (eg. the teacher tells the head of the class "there's a test next week" and the head of the class disseminates it through the group chat). Telling this kid he should just leave the chat is basically the same as saying he can't have a social life for the rest of his school career. (And after he's left school school - even if I'm wrong about how school group chats work, workplace group chats seem to work exactly like this.)
I agree that if the kid *can* sort it out himself, or with help from friends, or the school, or parents, or whatever, that's *vastly* preferable to having the police involved. But I want the kid to have the protection of the law for when those preferred systems fail, as in some cases they tragically do, and I don't think having a law against racial abuse or harassment makes the country into some kind of authoritarian state.
What do you mean by "head of the class"? Would the "head of the class" be a student? Picking one student as the "head" and making all communication from the teacher to the students go through them, so that if said head doesn't do his job properly then the rest of the students miss key information, seems to me to just be a bad way to run things, even irrespective of any other issues we've been discussing.
And if the "head of the class" was a teacher or staff member, why would they be posting information in a student-run group chat, rather than using their own channels?
It's how it was done when I was in school? The teacher would pick one student, disseminate all information to them, and they would be expected to disseminate it to the rest of the class however they wanted - if they told the rest of the class but somehow failed to tell you, and you missed the test (or whatever) it was typically considered to be your fault for "not finding out".
There was no such thing as a group chat when I was at school*, but twenty-odd years later, when I went to sea, the system was exactly the same amongst cadets, except by then the dissemination was done via group chat.
(*Except for, y'know, a group of people, chatting..)
I'm dead certain that if the person was irresponsible and deliberately didn't tell someone repeatedly, there would be consequences.
Nope.
> It's how it was done when I was in school? The teacher would pick one student, disseminate all information to them, and they would be expected to disseminate it to the rest of the class however they wanted
I've never seen that happen. When I was in school, if a teacher wanted information disseminated to a class, they would announce that information in class.
Today, they may post an official statement to a website run by the school.
> For example, let's say there's a student group chat and every time the black kid posts in it, somebody else posts a photograph of a banana. This is obviously a case of racist harassment, and if you're the black kid it feels *utterly horrifible*
I think the problem with all this discourse is that it vastly privileges certain types of bullying over all others.
Why does the hypothetical black kid being bullied for being black deserve a massive state-level response, but not the short kid bullied for being short, or the rich kid bullied for being rich, or the kid with weird teeth bullied for having weird teeth, or just the kid who is bullied because his classmates think his reaction to being bullied is funny?
I find this argument pretty disingenuous, I have to say. You don't claim "people are starving in Africa, so my food should be taken away too otherwise we're vastly privileging my right to dinner over theirs". Yes, I agree that privileging racist bullying over other types of bullying (and bullying over other types of abuse) is a problem. I don't think the solution is to remove protection from racist abuse victims whilst doing nothing about any of the rest of it.
The point of law is to step in when other systems fail. The other bullies' parents should be raising them to not be bullies; where they fail the other kids themselves should ostracise bullies and protect the victim; where the kids fail the teachers/schools should prevent bullying; and so on. The law is kind of a final back-stop to stop bad things happening when everything else fails, so: if all those other systems have tried and failed and this kid is still being harassed and racially abused, *of course* he deserves protection under the law (and if you want to describe protection under the law as "a massive government effort" then fine: he deserves a massive government effort. Government, like Jungle, is massive and making that effort is what it is there for.)
If there's an easy uncomplicated way to extend similar protections to other sorts of abuse victims then great, I'd be most glad to. But it took us decades (centuries?) to make inroads into racism and sexism and they're the obvious stand-out ones so I'm not exactly confident on that score, and basic human compassion says that we if we can protect some kids we should do so, even if we can't protect everybody.
You find it so disingenuous that you didn't even bother to address it.
They are not "obvious stand-out ones." All the more in that this law has been used to bully people
You seem to have a different stance on the role of law than most. I, and most people here, don't believe that the point of law is to step in when other systems fail, but rather to govern a very narrow and minimal scope.
This is a great point that doesn't get mentioned enough. Racism is widely considered uniquely super bad, but other immutable physical characteristics are mostly fair game. The closest characteristic to get such protection is religion, but that's not even immutable. It's not logical, it's vibes-based morality.
Race has political significance. Modern societies have all sorts of disparate peoples coming together and mingling, and in order to maintain public order certain ethical behaviors or etiquettes need to be adopted in order to avoid conflicts between these groups. Back when religion was a major risk for group conflict, there were all sorts of laws and customs about regulating interactions between different religious groups. For instance, keeping them apart.
But that doesn't mean the races need to be treated equally. Given the wide gap in population and capabilities between the races, there minority races simply do not have any leverage to make demands. Even in the US, blacks didn't force whites to do anything. Their rights were given entirely willingly by the whites. It can be taken away just as easily.
" Even in the US, blacks didn't force whites to do anything. Their rights were given entirely willingly by the whites."
A massive civil war and nationwide protest movements are what "entirely willingly" looks like to you? I'd hate to see what "unwillingly" looks like.
In all seriousness, I think you must have gotten your history from very biased sources. Every victory in the fight for black peoples' civil rights was won by a coalition in which large numbers of U.S. blacks were extremely active and impactful participants. U.S. whites didn't just wake up one day and en-masse decide they wanted to be less of shitheads to their non-white neighbors and quietly vote in different laws. They were persuaded, gradually, by a thing called "activism." Much of it was carried out by black people. And much of it *does* involve applying leverage and making demands: strategically, in the places it will be most effective.
"It can be taken away just as easily."
The U.S. is currently in the middle of the most massive and prolonged wave of civil unrest in generations, largely due to certain relatively limited and targeted attempts to take away some of those rights. Again, if that's your notion of "easy," I'd hate to see what "hard" looks like.
> The U.S. is currently in the middle of the most massive and prolonged wave of civil unrest in generations
The difference is that this time, those in power have no sympathy for the activists. The whole point of the crackdown in the first place was to remove the influence these people have on society. We are about to see what the state is capable of when it actually wants something.
Modern commerce and urban lifestyles are easy to disrupt through terrorism and riots. Blacks did just that back during the civil rights era. They and other low-performing groups continue to do that periodically when their perceived desires go unmet, see the George Floyd riots or any of the post-2000's Paris riots.
The elites of society have a number of options. They could restyle society under the fashion of medieval institutions and lock all their wealth and assets up behind castles and other fortifications, sallying out only with entourages of guards. They could attempt to genocide all of the low-performing groups in society, although that would come at some cost.
Or they could do what they do now... Which is bribe and placate disgruntled groups to the point where things will mostly run smoothly.
This last option appears to be the least costly, and so this is likely why our society is styled the way it is.
Interestingly, the "uniquely bad" aspect was codified in American law as being targeted at a "discrete and insular" group of people. Racism was worse than sexism because a racist can go his whole life without ever needing to interact with someone of another race, while the analogous statement is obviously not true of a sexist.
The American legal system seems to have completely forgotten what their own standard meant; in recent Supreme Court arguments, the justices have been insisting that transsexuals constitute a "discrete and insular" class.
What about a gay sexist, though? Surely he/she could largely avoid interactions with the opposite sex, if so inclined?
I think the basic idea is he's still got a mom.
What about gay sexist orphans?
What about them? They do not establish any level of isolation between men and women.
All the gay virulently sexist former orphans I know avoid the opposite sex.
So what? How is that relevant? What is it relevant to?
Just thought you should know.
This is at least partly because the types of discrimination which are legally prohibited tend to be the same ones which used to be legally enforced, or at least enforced through the machinery of the law.
So until the mid twentieth century in many places it was legal to attach to the deed of a house a provision that it could not be sold to a black person or a Jew. (It was also generally possible for a seller to get such a restriction removed, but while it was in place it would be legally enforcable.) Later on, by the late 1960s it became illegal to refuse to sell or rent your home to someone on grounds of the race or religion of the prospective purchaser or renter. In an ideal world I think we should just prohibit the use of the law to enforce discrimination rather than make it illegal for private persons to discriminate, but I understand why people think this is a problem the law should solve.
I've not looked too deeply into the org, but on the surface I'd say most of those cases listed shouldn't have happened. I'm going to guess we may differ on the some of the racist ones - I don't think people should be racist, but I don't think saying racist things in a *private group chat* should be illegal. It's very 1984, in my view.
And I'd say the "daily mail" reference can't help but be a reverse argument from authority - ok, we don't like the paper because it's a low-brow tabloid, fine, but the only thing that really matters is whether the individual story in question is true.
I see lots of people (majority left wing) in the UK outright dismiss any reference to the DM - it's fully a meme at this point - but the general complaint seems to be "they draw attention to things I don't like having attention drawn to" e.g. immigrant crime, as opposed to any individual story in question being false. Of course they have an agenda in choosing what stories to run, but so does the Guardian and the BBC.
Other than that I agree with you that free speech in general is a non-trivial problem to solve, legally, and going too far in either direction causes its own issues. The one thing I'm certain of is that criticism, satire and mockery of religion must be protected and that the distinctions between race, culture and religion made crystal clear in law, lest it all be successfully swept up under the banner of 'racism' or 'islamophobia' i.e. blasphemy laws via the backdoor (or actual re-introduction of blasphemy laws, for which we have sitting MPs supporting at the moment, and only 8 MPs having supported a pro-free-speech, anti-blasphemy law motion tabled last year)
> but the only thing that really matters is whether the individual story in question is true.
It is not.
Or, rather, the headline of both the Daily Mail article, and the banner referencing on Speak's homepage, are complete lies. The Daily Mail article itself tells you its actual methodology in paragraph 14, and it does not at all align with the headlines or central claims above.
I agree that many of those cases shouldn't have happened (I'd say around half of them), but I think that Speak UK's proposed Act would leave lots of vulnerable people unprotected and to justify their proposal we would need A) a much higher base-rate than just nine bad cases would seem to suggest, and B) much stronger supporting evidence than a single Daily Mail article.
I'm not sure your criticism of Daily Mail dismissal (er, or your dismissal of Daily Mail criticism..?) is justified:
1) Most fundamentally, I think people who want to write new statute (and for that matter people who receive ACX grants..) genuinely ought to provide better-quality citations than a single newspaper article (from any newspaper), even if the newspaper article is technically true.
2) If they do cite a newspaper article, and that newspaper article is true, I think they ought to be politically aware enough to recognise that the newspaper in question is one that nobody takes seriously: citing the Daily Mail makes me think that either A) they genui cannot find any other source for their claim at all, which makes me suspicious of the claim, or B) that they don't actually realise the Daily Mail's reputation in the UK, which makes me suspicious that they might be somebody from another country trying to interfere with British politics (and have laws enacted that they themselves don't have to live with)
3) The information was supposedly obtained via a publicly-available freedom of information act request. Why do Speech UK cite a Daily Mail article about it (that doesn't itself provide the data) and not the FOI request itself? This seems deliberately obfuscating at best, and at worst as though they wanted to link to the Daily Mail's (frankly incendiary) report on it more than they wanted to present any actual data.
4) (Now addressing the truth of the article in question .. sorry to keep you waiting..!) The figures referred to (but not actually given…) by the Daily Mail seem (as far as I can tell) to count people arrested for racist tweets etc. together with people arrested for some cases of (eg.) offline sexual harassment, online sexual abuse, “revenge porn”, online grooming of minors, etc. etc. - presumably all things both the Daily Mail and Speak UK agree should be illegal - they’re counted by Act, not by nature of offence. I can understand the Daily Mail counting all of these together (but not explicitly saying they are, quelle surprise..) in order to make misleading implications about the number of racist tweet arrests, but I'm not okay with prospective legislators or ACX grant recipients doing the same thing.
[Irrelevant side-note, feel free to skip… I'm old enough to remember the Daily Mail Journal of Oncology (a list of all the things that the Daily Mail claim causes and/or cures cancer (now sadly offline). It ran to hundreds of mutually-contradictory items, was a running joke in medical circles, and shows how deeply misleading and untrustworthy you can be whilst still being entirely legal - which is kind-of my issue with the Daily Mail - and crucially was entirely apolitical..]
I agree that blasphemy laws (or other laws that ended-up being functionally similar) would be terrible for the country. I'm just not okay with a “solution” that leaves lots of vulnerable people unprotected against genuine racism, abuse, and harassment. If the distinction can be clearly made in law such that only the latter are prosecuted - great. If it can't be made perfectly and we need to accept some kind of imperfect compromise law, well, I think we kind of already have that and I struggle to understand the mindset of people who think the way to improve the quality, niceness, and usefulness of online discourse is to remove legal protections against online racism, bigotry, etc. I wouldn't exactly say our online spaces are in any danger of developing a shortage of these things any time soon….
What is your argument in favor of racism being illegal? That a picture of a banana would have life-changing consequences for a black person? I'm not sure I understand the difference there between racism and other kinds of insults, or are all insults covered by your proposed law against harassment and abuse? Do you think all insults should be illegal? What about harsh criticism? Could repeated harsh criticism have life-changing consequences?
I'm not proposing some new "law against insults", I'm defending our existing laws against harassment, abuse, racism, etc. The laws aren't perfect, but they do address every single one of the questions you ask*. You can read them here:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/contents
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/27/contents
*Except for "What's the argument for making racism illegal?", upon which I'll give my tuppence worth (since you ask!)...
I think there's a sort of matrix: if you say something that you'd like to say that doesn't hurt anybody else, that's positive on net. If you say something that you'd like to say but other people are (nontrivially) hurt by, that's net negative. If you're prevented from saying things that you'd like to say (but don't hurt other people) that's net negative. If you're prevented from saying things that you'd like to say but that (nontrivially) hurt other people, that's net positive.
Our goal in passing laws is to get as much of the positive and as little of the negative as possible. (To minmax, if you want to think of it that way..) But this is difficult because it's basically impossible to set out, in law, into which square of the matrix all the infinite different things a person might say should go, based on some impossibly-perfect weighing-up of whether they're positive or negative on net.
So, we try to use some heuristics. "This one type of speech almost-always does more harm than good so it should be restricted by law". "This one type of speech almost-always does more good than harm so it should be protected by law". "This type of speech could go either way so go away and figure it out amongst yourselves".
I admit these heuristics aren't perfect, but if we use them properly I think they get us closer to maximising the positive and minimising the negative than does the "free speech absolutism" strategy.
Because 99% (or whatever) of speech genuinely is net positive, and because "always free speech everywhere" is a much, *much* neater-looking rule than "free speech except for exceptions X, Y, and Z in circumstances A, B, and C", I think we're fooled into thinking that the free-speech absolutism position must automatically be correct. But if we carefully apply some (admittedly flawed and ugly) heuristics such as "free speech except for certain kinds of racism in certain places" I think we can get that 99% up to 99.9% (or whatever).
Put another way:
Racism is bad for society. It hurts people, hurts social cohesion, and leads to concrete measurable harms. Free speech is good for society. We unfortunately can't simultaneously have [free speech] + [nonracism] because people apparently choose to be racist. So, we have to choose between [free speech] + [racism], or [free speech except for racism] + [nonracism].
In private spaces, civilised countries choose [free speech] + [racism], on the principle that nobody else has to be in that space if they don't want to and if you want to be racist in your own space the freedom do do so makes your life better but doesn't hurt anybody else.
In public spaces (which includes much of the internet) and for public servants (such as policemen) civilised countries choose [free speech except for racist abuse] + [nonracism], on the principle that other people have to be there whether they like it or not* and the racism harms some of those people without really bringing any real benefit to anybody.
Just my tuppence worth, of course! I haven't thought about this for very long and I'm sure there are some flaws in the above, but hopefully it works as the basis for an argument in favour of restricting racist public speech?
I don't think the government has a right to tell me I can't express an idea, any more than I have the right to tell someone they can't express an idea. Obviously you disagree and that's a value difference, so no point arguing about that.
But I believe that valuing free speech is better from a utilitarian perspective as well. A world where the government has that power is a strictly worse one, even if it allows a few (more) people to say racist things.
For one, freedom of speech is a protection against tyranny. There is a slippery slope here, where, for example, restrictions on racist speech become restrictions on speech criticizing government policy, like affirmative action or immigration. A government and society that does not value freedom of speech will not value other individual freedoms (like a right to self defense), and have steeper gradient toward collectivism, utilitarianism, and literal mountains of skulls.
Secondly, a society where people are first off concerned about being politically correct in their speech is one where truth is not a priority. If you don't prioritize saying true things, then pretty soon you can't build bridges or rollout a vaccine during a pandemic efficiently, or you shut down your nuclear power plants, and people die, your economy suffers, and life is worse for everyone.
Third, for most people (not authoritarians like yourself) it is deeply unpleasant having a threat over you about what you can say or write. It insults your dignity as a person. And though I might not leave the house for two days and not care, if I was on house arrest and not allowed to leave, I would care very much. Humans value freedom, which is why it takes enormous amounts of state violence, or threats of violence, to keep it from them.
Fourth, arresting racists for saying bad things turns them into "martyrs" and radicalizes them. It doesn't stop racism and probably makes it worse.
Fifth, trusting the government to decide what counts as racist is naive. 1960s Alabama would have considered any criticism of white treatment of blacks to be racism against whites. 2010s progressives were extremely racist yet successfully painted themselves as anti-racist, and were not judged as racist by the state.
I'm willing to allow bad speech so it can be corrected. So someone can interact with someone with a dumb idea. Otherwise? The dumb ideas simply metastasize inside people's heads. And lonely people "make statements" by crashing planes into buildings.
Yeah it seems a bit bonkers to me, this idea that the government should be getting involved, or even has the ability to prevent people from insulting each other. It's a deeply authoritarian mindset.
Yes. The government does get involved in "simple assault" occasionally, but that's "credible threat of violence" not "you're a dumb-dumb"
As always it's interesting seeing the same people who are here arguing that UK laws on hate speech are an affront to liberty and civil society are the same people who were arguing that it's fine for police to execute an unatmed woman in her car in broad daylight because he was apparently terrified for his life.
I used to think the UK was crazy about free speech until the Larry Bushart case happened.
What's the hypocrisy here? Those are both cases arguing that the actions of the strong should not be restricted.
What rubbish. As we all know, the hate-speech laws are shamelessly used to intimidate and bully. Down to and including attacking people for publishing unquestionably true facts of obvious political importance, thus working to keep voters in the dark.
People who can conduct frontal attacks on democracy itself are the strong.
Yes, exactly. Which is why, in the US, the right has proven themselves to be superior by seizing power, and thus their agency is no longer retricted. People upset about this in the UK should try to do the same.
Try, and the police will arrest you.
Even Trump did it, why can't you? You all have no excuses.
Who are 'the strong' in the British example?
The people who feel that their agency should not be restricted. That is the root of the issue, yes? That people should not have their speech restricted in the interests of those who lack the leverage to make demands.
In what sense are those people 'strong'? Being oppressed is usually considered a marker of weakness, not strength.
And now in the US, they're not oppressed anymore. They always had it in them, they just needed to realize they could actually just do things. The spell of liberal morality is being broken, and now the natural hierarchy is in the process of being restored. Other countries will follow suit, I'm sure.
Do you have some kind of model in which the people you're referring to as 'the strong' are stronger than a reference group?
They are stronger because they have more agency, more influence, more power over life and death. Those who can secure their own existence while controlling the fate of other's lives are the ones with power. That, of course, means that the judgement of their strength is contingent on their ability to successfully seize power. If they fail, no one in the right mind would argue that they deserve to rule.
So, no?
If the right succeeds, that is all the proof that is necessary of their superiority. What more do you want?
Lack the leverage? The ability to get people arrested for an entirely spurious claim of emotional damage is not lacking leverage.
Knock it off, you're doing the purely-tribal, reddit-level style of "debate" where every issue is the same and everyone who disagrees with you is a stereotyped strawman of your fantasy of "the other side". The kind of thing people come here to get away from, and that Scott has mocked repeatedly (e.g. "None of this “I’m going to vote Trump because I think Clinton is corrupt” followed by “Yeah, but Reagan was even worse and that just proves you Republicans are hypocrites” followed by “We’re hypocrites? You Democrats claim to support women’s rights but you love Muslims who make women wear headscarves!”" from https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/).
Have you actually counted the number of people supporting each combination of stances?
She wasn't executed, she was killed as an incidental outcome of resisting arrest. Her death was much more an outgrowth of protest culture than it was of law enforcement culture.
Oh really? Got any data on how much overlap there is? And you aren’t really *interested* in the very high overlap (the one you believe exists). Actually you are gleefully contemptuous of the imagined hordes in your imaginary overlap whose thinking is so much less sharp and nuanced than you believe yours is.
The overlap might just be Wanda but she makes up for it in quantity
Your projector is brighter than his projector.
How does online racism and "abuse" ruin lives? That's just ridiculous thing to claim.
>and if you're the black kid it feels *utterly horrifible* - potentially even life-ruiningly so
No it isn't, words on the internet can't bring real harm.
Scott's entire villain ark is people being mean to him in college. Ask him how this stuff can possibly hurt anyone.
In the college - that means irl, in a place he has to attend to get education. Compared to the internet where you don't have to communicate with anyone who is mean to you and even visit sites where it is normal. How is it comparable?
And now he's far more powerful and influencial than any of them, to the point that they can't meaningfully hurt him anymore. What's the issue?
...that most of us are utilitarians, and are supposed to dislike suffering?
I really don't understand that whole 'these people are suffering massively in ways that will traumatize them for life, what's the big deal?' angle, here.
Like, if your utility function doesn't already include a term for that being bad, I don't think it's the type of thing you can be argued into. Just, you know, be aware that people will avoid you if they see you acting on that preference.
There's also the self-interested aspect of this, namely that the people who are very invested in the free speech rights to attack one minority are likely also interested in going after other minorities when they feel strong enough. Better to nip this kind of thing in the bud early on.
> ...that most of us are utilitarians, and are supposed to dislike suffering?
Uh... I think you're mistaken about that. Even Scott has admitted that he's not a hard utilitarian, and nowadays he seems more interested in virtue ethics.
> Just, you know, be aware that people will avoid you if they see you acting on that preference.
I wouldn't assume that everyone shares your brand of slave morality. It seems at least half the population of the US is interested in giving people the respect that they deserve.
For this to be so, I think you'd have to define "real harm" to preclude pretty much any form of mental health.
Scott himself has described serious tolls on his mental health owing to merely having his full name published online.
Moreover, it's trivial to find statistics on the number of people who've harmed or even killed themselves owing to online abuse. An NHS meta-analysis I just found in response to another reply puts the rate of attempted suicide following cyberbullying at 257% of the UK baseline.
Scott was harmed by doxxing, in the UK you just call someone some racist slur and it's enough to be jailed.
As for people harming or killing themselves as a result of "online abuse" they willingly subjected themselves to - how is it fair to punish someone else for the harm they inflicted on themselves?
> Scott himself has described serious tolls on his mental health owing to merely having his full name published online.
But that was entirely his fault for publishing under his full name on the internet, despite what an obviously terrible idea that is. He is of course free to take revenge on the press by pushing to get the whole industry shut down, but that doesn't change the fact that it was his error that left him exposed in the first place.
> Scott himself has described serious tolls on his mental health owing to merely having his full name published online.
OK, then. Since the same logic applies, I guess you will say that the worthless journalist who wrote that hit piece should be arrested and thrown in prison, right?
Well I do think doxxing should be illegal, if that's what you're asking, whether it’s done by online abusers or by journalists. As for “..and thrown in prison” I'm not sure I'm really qualified to pronounce sentencing!
Or you can teach people to not let their mental health be subject to the whims of anonymous haters on the internet. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me". That was, if never quite perfectly true, at least aspirationally true. And it worked quite well for many generations, enough so to be one of the classic Copybook Headings.
Now, we too often teach our children to be maximally harmed by words, because that harm gives them status and power and forces the rest of the world to do whatever it takes to make them not feel bad.
Well, OK, not so much "the rest of the world", just the bubble within which that perverse ideology holds true. And that's not going to be enough to prevent great harm to the people you trying to protect.
My daughter told me her teacher said having hateful words directed at you can feel just like rocks. I was shocked how closely it contradicted exactly that metaphor. I stopped short of challenging the teacher to a rocks vs hateful words duel. But the rot is deep.
> Now, we too often teach our children to be maximally harmed by words, because that harm gives them status and power and forces the rest of the world to do whatever it takes to make them not feel bad.
That honestly might be a consequence of kids not getting hit enough. The source of the harm is the surprise of being given the treatment that they are entitled to, and no more. There would be no surprise if they come to expect it from a young age.
It is trivially easy to prevent online abuse from killing you. Simply don't kill yourself.
Also, attempted suicide is an easily gamed metric. The classic example of women having more attempted suicides while men have more actual suicides is instructive.
Which causes more harm to mental health: a picture of a banana, or laws and customs that characterize any insult as traumatic, potentially life-changing and illegal events?
Of course words can harm, teenagers have killed themselves from non-physical bullying. I know you say "on the internet" as a distinction from, say, real life, but for kids these days, is it? I see how teens are completely captured by social networks predatory algorithms and phones in general and imagine it's not so simple to just not use them.
Yeah, like you said: they killed themselves, so the harm was self-inflicted.
So what?
Hate-speech laws do not criminalize speech for driving someone to suicide. It doesn't even have to do any harm. Meanwhile, speech that does drive someone to suicide does not fall under the law -- such as falsely claiming to be harassed by someone else's speech and driving that person to suicide.
To cite such cases is to show the problem with the law.
I was responding directly to the "words on the internet can't bring harm" claim, nothing more.
I was responding directly to your doing that in a situation where it made not sense to do so.
What is the situation such that it makes no sense to dispute what one considers a highly relevant claim (on a rationalist blog of all places)?
Which did you do? Respond simply to the claim, nothing more, or do it because it is "relevant"? Relevance inherently requires a context.
The "or" in that question doesn't make sense. "Nothing more" implies "don't invent a strawman of some wider viewpoint based on this one point" not "I responded to this point for no reason".
No, it implies that you were treating it in isolation.
Yes, I was. So again, what's the problem with that - what are you actually trying to say here?
>whilst still causing life-changing harm to victims.
Can you give a concrete example of this happening?
I have treated half a dozen men who were given the old, harsher version of Catholic education, where they were told by authorities that masturbation. was a mortal sin. Each had developed an anxiety disorder that lasted for years, sometimes for decades, that clearly derived from being told this terrifying story at around the age when young guys discover masturbation Example: One had spent several *years* in his teens bouncing a ball up against an outdoor wall for several hours after school to keep himself from going into his house before his parents got home from work. Once they were there he felt safer from his impulses. When I met him 10 years later he was still refraining from masturbating and had elaborate decontamination rituals for use on his bedding after nights when he had had a wet dream.
And do you think the appropriate social remedy for those harms are speech-limiting laws? Should those nuns now be in jail?
No. I don’t even think the nuns should be forbidden by law to say that stuff, even a law with a much lighter punishment. I don’t know what the appropriate social remedy is.
The appropriate social remedy is, in my view, to empower parents to control the social environments of their children. Meaning the state has as little impact on it as possible. No speech laws. School vouchers. Basic libertarian stuff, in other words.
The other remedy is to acknowledge that mental health is to a large degree genetic and to embrace the positive selective effects that stigmatizing it has for the population. We really need to stop coddling every little thing that can be construed as mental illness. As I'm sure you're aware, there's a social contagion aspect to mental illness. While we should be (somewhat) understanding, that understanding should come with firm guardrails around malingerers. In my view our tolerance has long since passed the threshold of incentivization. In the 50's we probably really did need a little more "hey we understand", but these days we need a hell of a lot more "suck it up".
Yeah, OK, but the guy I'm talking about wasn't anything remotely like a malingerer. After a godawful adolescence he went to college, and got a decent job, which he still had when I first encountered him. Far from getting lots of leeway and sympathy for the disorder he had suffered in adolescence, he totally went it alone. He did not tell a soul about his anxiety, & his rituals. He was profoundly ashamed both of his craving to masturbate and of the weird thoughts and rituals he had that were associated with fear of masturbation.. He described himself as a weird, lame bitter little twisted piece of shit, and he was one of the most anguished people I've ever talked with, and that's saying a lot.
As for the positive selection effect of having one's weirdness and fragility be stigmatized, i.e. seen as repellent rather than evidence that one needs help -- well, Wanda, my mind put me through a lot of bad shit while I was growing up, and I probably wouldn't be here if I hadn't gotten some sympathy and effective help, mostly from my parents, during those periods. I'm guessing Scott would say the same. You sure you want to throw the smart fragiles to the wolves? You wouldn't have my gibes to annoy and entertain you, and in fact you wouldn't even have the forum where it happens.
> gotten some sympathy and effective help, mostly from my parents,
Which is exactly where it should come from, and that has little to do with social attitudes towards mental health. My attitude around this is very similar to my attitude around charity: excellent personal virtue, terrible institutional one. Generosity, charity, care, love ... these are all fundamentally human actions. Meaning person to person. It's a category error to implement them in a public or bureaucratic way. All that does is expose them to Moloch, meaning it creates an incentive structure that rewards dishonesty, malingering, and gaming benefits. That's what leads to virtue signaling cascades such as we've seen with woke. There really are solid game-theoretic reasons why some things should only be spoken of in private. Altruism has to be carefully guarded. Any evolutionary biologist can explain why.
I'm sure your guy wasn't a malingerer, but I also don't think the harm visited upon him would have been ameliorated by laws against bullying or hate speech, which was the original context here. He got bad instruction from a bad authority. There's no turnkey way to avoid that in life. As I said above, the best you can do is enable good parents to make good choices on behalf of their children. There's also no good way to compensate for the lack of those things. No amount of social signaling around mental health will ever make up for a lack of competent parenting.
I’m not speaking up in favor of laws against bullying or hate speech. I was challenging your skepticism about the idea that somebody can be greatly harmed just by things someone says to them. I don’t know what if anything society can do to protect people from being harmed that way. I’m positive that algorithms on social media that increase engagement by maximizing indignation make cruel communication more likely even outside of social media. I think probably the Iceland custom of hanging out with others in hot springs makes kindness and fair-mindedness more likely. Those seem like clues, but I don’t know what to do with them. I have wondered about something like retreats where people take MDMA together. That’s sort of the chemical version of hot springs.
I think abuse from a trusted authority is uniquely harmful and should be distinguished from peer-on-peer meanness. I don't think the former is really fixable apart from trying to keep sadists away from children. I think the best social strategy for addressing the latter is to be honest about the fact that life is a struggle and if you want to succeed then you need to learn how to develop inner resources. Develop character and a thick skin, discount what other say, sticks-and-stones etc. I'm sure you're aware that the recent rise in allergy sensitivity is blamed on overly clean childhood environments: the developing immune system needs to have something to train on or else it becomes neurotic. I think exposure to social aggression works in an analogous way.
I don’t disagree at all with your objection to the silly woke stuff — people aren’t allowed to say rude shit about what you believe, say things that “trigger” your unique sensitivities, look at you body lecherously, kiss you without asking permission, etc., etc. And I agree that kids need to be taught the importance of toughening up, and get some help in doing that. For instance, things like Cuomo copping little feels off his young female staffers — yeah, that’s rude and bad behavior, but women need to be willing to look him in the eye and tell him to stop. It’s awkward to do, sort of like asking for a raise, but you just have to become able to do it. And there are all kinds of ways to do it, and developing a repertoire is useful. If you want to do it without annoying Cuomo, you can even say cute femmie shit like “please don’t — my boyfriend wouldn’t like it, and it makes me feel guilty and afraid to come to work.” And I taught my daughter about the importance of being able to stand up for yourself with males, even in, in fact especially in, situations where it feels rude and awkward to do it.
However, even from peers, it’s not uncommon for kids to get kinds of bullying that are beyond what you can expect them to deal with. Here’s an example. I grew up playing with the neighborhood kids, and I did fine with the routine kinds of kid meanness you have to learn to parry: somebody teasing me, somebody cheating, somebody changing the rules in their favor, somebody trying to keep all the best toys for themself, etc. But there was a neighborhood bully who preyed on us sometimes, and he had really hurt some other kids, plus he would threaten to do things like feed your dog meat with rat poison in it. His mother was some kind of weird recluse who just slammed the door if we or our parents complained to her about him. If he had told 10 year old me to do some sexual thing for him, or to bring him some money stolen from my parents or to help him break into a house, I would have done it. And of course doing those things would have done me further harm of various kinds. Fortunately he never turned his full attention on me and tried any of those things, but it certainly could have happened, probably did to some other kid.
The point of this story, Wanda, isn’t that we should have laws or rules micromanaging all kinds of little unkindnesses and intrusions, or even that we should have them for behaviors like my neighborhood bully’s. As I said, I really don’t know what society should do. The point that I think you are helping your case regarding this issue and various related ones by disregarding examples of the kind I bring up in these discussions. You make it too easy for yourself by focusing on the small shit that it’s reasonable to expect somebody to overcome on their own. You ruminate skeptically about whether anyone is *ever* seriously harmed by certain things, when even your own life experience would provide examples of that harm. I think almost everyone knew of bullies of the magnitude of the one our neighborhood had — some kid or some group at school or near where they lived — even if they were not the victims.
>The appropriate social remedy is, in my view, to empower parents to control the social environments of their children
What's the remedy for abusive parents, then?
If abusive parenting was actually maladaptive, wouldn't natural selection sort that out in a few dozen generations?
It hasn’t done that with alcoholism, social anxiety, psychosis or depression, all of which have been recognized as common conditions for centuries.
The fact that most of the cases we see are mild and not immediately life-ending is proof that the worst cases are slowly getting bred out. It simply takes time, a lot of time... Given the massive environmental changes, it will presumably take more than a few centuries, though increased selection pressures could possibly speed it up.
I don't really think there is one. If you have abusive parents you're pretty much on your own in life. It's not like many people speak fondly of their foster family.
> It's not like many people speak fondly of their foster family.
Source?
Life experience. I've heard lots of people talk about abusive foster care. I've heard few if any stories about a foster family that helped. I'm sure nonzero such stories exist, I'm just betting that CPS and the foster system is a net social negative. If someone is in a situation that requires CPS my guess is there's a >90% chance that they're just fucked in life. Better just to save the taxpayer dollars and have less government intrusion into our personal lives.
As a check of that intuition I asked ChatGPT and it didn't disagree. Here's an excerpt: "Several quasi-experimental papers exploit age cutoffs or judge assignment randomness. Findings are uncomfortable: marginal foster placement often leads to worse adult outcomes (earnings, incarceration) compared to staying with biological families receiving support"
I can't exactly, no. I can say that a large 2018 meta-analysis by the NHS found victims of cyberbullying to be 235% more likely to self-harm and 257% more likely to attempt suicide (both 95% CI) than no victims ( https://oxfordhealth.nhs.uk/orka/title/self-harm-suicidal-behaviours-and-cyberbullying-in-children-and-young-people-systematic-review ) but of course I can't prove for sure that even a single cyberbullying incident in that meta-analysis was below-the-legal-threshold in the way I describe.
I can think of three cases that *were* kept below the threshold in exactly the calculated way I describe - but I wouldn't care to share them publicly. (And even if I could, I'm well aware that n=3 doesn't exactly carry much weight around here..)
I suspect we probably disagree very strongly - but thanks for keeping me honest on this point, nevertheless!
Is your claim that all cyberbullying should be made illegal? If so, why the focus on racism in particular? Here in the US, there are tons of conservatives who would *love* to throw liberals in jail over the horrible things they say about conservatives on the Internet. If a picture of a banana counts as cyberbullying, calling people fascists, retards, and pedophiles who should be punched in the face *definitely* counts.
I think I agree with you on nearly all counts! I'm not too sure about “fascists” - that seems like it might be legitimate political criticism? - but if somebody is falsely accused of being a paedophile (in a nontrivial, potentially life-ruiningly way), or is harassed and abused for their perceived intelligence by being called a retard (again, in a nontrivial way that's dependent on the particular case - I'm not claiming that just using the word alone under any circumstances should get you automatically sent to Devil’s Island!) and if every single other system for protecting people in that situation from harm has unrecoverably failed then yes, I'd say that those people should have the full protection of the law.
Keep in mind that the direction of causality may run counter to your expectations there. Bullies may naturally gravitate to those who are already psychologically ill. I suspect that that's actually likely and that bullying may be interpreted as an adaptive social immune response to mental illness. The recent rise in mental illness may in fact be a symptom of a social autoimmune disorder caused by the artificial suppression of the natural immune response.
Even if bullying is responsible in a causal way, I still think that the remedy is worse than the problem. Suppressing free speech with the force of the state is far more destructive than making some small percentage of people feel bad about themselves.
You keep looking for harms though. Having draconian concrete laws to prevent vague ill-defined harms is a classic symptom of authoritarian overreach.
The rise in mental illness diagnoses is far too much for "lack of appropriate suicides" to explain, unless you're saying bullying at the right time can cure or otherwise pre-empt their development?
Yes, the latter. It functions as a "this is what acceptable social behavior looks like" signal. Yes sometimes it can be brutal but hey, life is brutal. Look at how brutal manhood rituals are in primitive societies. Obviously those exist for a reason. I think our psyches might be evolved to be in equilibrium with them. Absent firm behavioral guardrails I think people have a tendency to become neurotic. That's what happens with dogs: without a strong pack leader or owner they can get nutty. Purse dogs are frequently aggressive and neurotic because they're not properly disciplined. I think humans function in an analogous way. Some people just don’t develop properly if they don’t get their ass kicked in the right way.
I don't think you're ready for Vegas yet.
Bullies do not stop bullying when the victim engages in "acceptable social behavior." Indeed, they often double down on the bullying.
Given that people enjoy bullying, the obvious default assumption of anyone's bullying anyone else is that it's been done for the pleasure of it -- especially when your function obviously doesn't fit the facts.
If the problem is cyberbullying, what is the need for "anti-racism laws"? Surely what is needed is anti-cyberbullying laws?
*Because perpetrators become incredibly adept at judging the threshold for police intervention and staying only-just below it *
That's what we call "the rule of law." The point is that people can know what is and is not legal for them to do.
Also, it is perfectly legal for them to engage in "causing life-changing harm to victims" as long as they stay out of the forbidden groups. That shows that the harm is not really the justification, because if it were, it would be a lot more expansive. Anti-nerd bullying for instance.
I don't think that's a good way of describing the rule of law. I think a better way would be: that the rule of law is the concept that the rulering classes aren't above the law: in effect that the law rules, and the ruling classes are subjects to it just as everybody else is.
I know there are schools of jurisprudence which put this concept into a framework where having clear and well-defined laws is essential - but A) I don't think such a framework is universally accepted, and B) I notice we don't apply this to many other aspects of the law and most people (yourself included, I suspect) agree that's perfectly fine!
For example: the speed limit is perfectly clear, but the police have the discretion to choose whether or not to arrest somebody driving faster than it (and it would be awful if they arrested every single motorist that was driving 1 mph too fast without any discretion). The age of consent is perfectly clear, but the police have the discretion to choose whether to arrest two 15-year-olds who have sex with each other. Drug laws are perfectly clear but the police don't start breaking down doors every time they smell weed in the street. In all these cases, we accept the laws being clear but the police using discretion about when applying them is or isn't in the public good.
No, it's essence of the rule of law.
Furthermore, your examples undermine your case because you offer clear laws that draw clear lines in defense of having a law where it's impossible to determine what is legal. Since they are opposite, you are arguing my case for me.
Doubting myself in light of your claim (my last law lecture being over a decade ago..) I looked up the Wikipedia article on the Rule of Law and it does rather seem to support my definition better than it does yours. (But I'm happy to just say that we each have different conceptions of the rule of law and discuss the actual underlying idea rather than the mere definition!)
In that spirit: I agree that the laws I referred to (speeding etc.) are clear, yes - but I don't think the Equality Act 2010 (which I have read in detail) or the Online Safety Act 2023 (which I admit I've only briefly glanced at) are any less clear at all. The online abuse and harassment in question was unequivocally illegal under UK law, and all the cases cited by Speak UK were successfully tested in court*.
Speak UK say we should change the law to make them all legal (and many other things besides) and I say that doing this would leave lots of vulnerable people unprotected and instead we should keep the law close to what it is but have police guidelines (perhaps issued by the NCP?) such that the police use common sense and discretion in deciding which prosecutions are and aren't in the public interest (and ideally arrest less than 25 people per day for this, even if they do interview that many people).
(* Surely part of your formulation of the rule of law is that you accept judicial rulings?)
1. The WP article...seems to clearly support Mary's definition. "The rule of law entails that the law is clear, consistent and open", "secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power", "It entails that all people and institutions within a political body are subject to the same law." If the law can be in some sense written on the spot by a judge, in what meaningful sebse is the judge subject to the law? If whether your act is illegal depends on the opinions of the judge you happen to get, in what sense is everyone subject to the same law?
2. You seem to have significantly shifted your claim. First you described, as Mart quoted, "Because perpetrators become incredibly adept at judging the threshold for police intervention and staying only-just below it " as a bad situation. Now you say that the laws you're defending are as clear as the speed limit. So which is it? Either the laws are unambiguously defined, like the speed limit, such that people carefully staying just below the threshold are completely protected and their being protected is the law functioning exactly as it's supposed to...or the law should be vague enough that such people can still be charged if certain authority figures decide that in their opinion it was still subjectively bad. In other words, very much *unlike* the speed limit, unless you think it's fine for police to say "yeah, the limit is 60 and you were going 57, but *really* I feel like that was too fast as well, and the law is whatever I say it is, so you're going to jail."
Which is it?
(Thanks for numbering - very helpful!)
1) Gosh, I really don't want to argue about definions, but it's just so difficult to avoid! It seems unproductive for me to point out issues with your quoting or clauses from the article and I think it's probably best if we can say that “The law should apply even to the ruling classes” and “The law should be clear and unambiguous” are two different concepts in law, and I believe one is commonly referred to as ‘the rule of law’ and you believe the other is (and we should both encourage anybody else happening upon this exchange to read the article for themselves and decide which of us they agree with)? I'm sorry to disengage but I really don't want to debate the definition!
2) Good to clarify this - thanks for bringing it up. I definitely could have put it better! I intended to claim that the UK’s laws are broad - as in they give the authorities a wide scope of powers - not that they're ambiguous.
For example, let's say the speed limit on some motorway is 70mph. Under most circumstances you could do 90 along that road perfectly safely, but in other circumstances (perhaps it's raining heavily, there's lots of slow-moving traffic, and your 35 year old Vauxhall Nova is making a worrying noise) it would barely be safe even to do 70. It's difficult to define in law exactly which circumstances it'd be safe to do 70 and in which it's safe to do 80, so the speed limit is set at 70 for everybody all the time, and the police can arrest anybody driving at 80 even if they're doing so safely: in other words, the police have broad powers, not ambiguous ones.
And we do this because, under some circumstances, doing 72mph genuinely is dangerous and we want the police to be able to arrest people doing that, whilst leaving the people safely doing 80 alone.
The system is terrible - loads of people get speeding tickets even when they’re driving perfectly safely and loads of other people get away with driving at 80 even when it isn't safe to do so - but by-and-large the police do seem to use discretion and most people in the outside lane of the motorway do seem able to drive at 80+ most of the time without any problems, and removing the speed limit altogether would only make things worse from a safety perspective.
I admit that the laws limiting online abuse etc. are necessarily messier than speed limit (how could it be otherwise - the latter is literally just an integer!) but I'm claiming that the law is similarly broad in the sense that the legal bar is low enough that more-or-less all genuine abuse is illegal, even if some trivial abuse is also illegal (just as the speed limit is low enough that nearly all dangerously-fast driving is illegal, even if some safe-but-faat driving is also illegal), a perpetrator of abuse can't say “well everything I published on line was technically legal”, and we rely on police discretion to arrest the people doing genuine harm and the CPS to prosecute them if it's genuinely in the public interest to do so.
I agree this is an obviously flawed system and does obviously fail, but A) it seems to me vastly better than just blanket making all of it legal without exception, B) Given that we started writing laws like this in the 80s, if the campaign of opposition to the law can only find 9 obvious failures then probably it isn't *too* flawed? And C) Claiming the system is flawed in this way is different to claiming the law is ambiguous rather than broad, in any case.
That's police evading the problem of badly set speed limits. And thus making it harder to change the limits.
If, in addition, the police always gave tickets for anyone who was one mile over the speed limit *AND* was running for office against an incumbent -- we would take a much sharper look.
That's Wikipedia's problem.
"Surely part of your formulation of the rule of law is that you accept judicial rulings?"
Why? Surely you have heard of judicial rulings where the judges ignore both the plain text of the law and all sanity?
I'm not saying that all judicial rulings are wise and just! On at least nine of the eighteen presented cases I happen to agree with you that the outcome was unjust.
I'm saying that when a judge says "X is guilty of Y" then, *whether or not you believe that Y should be a crime in the first place*, accepting the judge's right and qualification to give that verdict seems like a necessary part of supporting the rule of law (*Especially* in the UK where we operate under the Common Law principle of stare decisis...)
If you wanted to say "I don't support the rule of law and therefore I don't accept judicial rulings" I could understand. If you said "I don't believe that the judge's ruling was correct but I accept it nevertheless because if people ignored judges the rule of law would break down" I could understand. But you seem to be saying"I fully support the rule of law but I don't accept judicial rulings"!
That's nonsense. If the judges, no matter how corrupt, evil, and foolish, must be accepted, then we have the rule of judges, and therefore the rule of men.
So as long as you are not actually convicted, being arrested is trivial?
25 arrests a day for 18 convictions points to using it as illegal harassment.
Speak claims to want to change laws.
If the problem is not that the laws ban speech which they shouldn't, but rather that the police are arresting innocent people, then your cause should be police reform, not changing laws.
The capricious conduct of police in arrest is evidence toward the law being absurd.
That doesn't follow. Feel free to use more words if you think you can draw the causal line there.
Yes, it does follow. It's not proof, but it's definitely evidence.
> arresting innocent people
Everyone's guilty of something under UK speech law. That's the problem Speak aspires to solve.
IF that were true they wouldn't have dismissed all the charges against everyone they arrested.... which is the thing we were just talking about.
SPEAK did not post 18 convictions. They posted 18 cases that are abuses of justice in their view, from the past 15 years or so. It looks like about 6 of them resulted in convictions.
If we assume the 25 arrests per day figure is correct, that's over 100,000 in 15 years. If only 18 of them were notable miscarriages of justice, and most of those were dropped or overturned, it points to illegal harassment being relatively rare.
Tell Pjohn he got it wrong then.
Seemed unnecessary. It makes little difference to their point, and only bolsters it.
No, I don't think it's trivial, I think that, if true, it's too heavy-handed and the wrong way to police. I think if there are 25 arrests a day it's A) harmful for public trust and it'd be better to request interviews rather than interview under arrest most of the time, and B) probably very expensive and not the best use of the police's limited resources.
However - the only source we have for this 25 per day figure is Speak UK's citation of the *Daily Mail*. The Daily Mail doesn't itself seem to cite a source. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and without any such evidence I strongly suspect, give my knowledge about how policing is done in the UK, that actually there are 25 *police interviews* per day, not 25 arrests.
But even if somehow the statistic is true (and we agree it's bad if true) I do think addressing it by prohibiting by statue the police from arresting people for online racism and abuse will cause far more social harm than it solves.
What nonsense. If only because people have been driven to suicide by people falsely accusing them of "online racism."
Furthermore, the case of Germany shows that if you allow it, you allow punishing people for stating accurate statistics about a social problem. Consequently, you are irrevocably harming democracy by keeping people in the dark about the truth.
I think we have very different intuitions here on the tradeoffs of clamping down on speech "just in case" it's harmful.
And in particular, while I find the choices the NYT made in publishing their article on Scott ethically reprehensible, I would be *strongly* opposed to any law attempting to make it illegal for them to do so.
Infringing on actual, legitimate speech is far too dangerous and harmful to do as lightly as you're proposing.
Thanks for the reply!
I agree that we have different intuitions in the tradeoffs of legally protecting ethically reprehensible speech, true - but (perhaps more productively?) we might also have different intuitions of what constitutes "clamping down":
The Equality Act entered the statute books in 2010 and the groundwork was laid for the Online Safety Act in 2019. If since then we have a total of just 18 cases that Speak UK consider to be miscarriages of justice (and having read their list of cases I think the real figure is more like nine, but that's by-the-by..) would you consider this "clamping down"?
(nb. I'm not asking whether it's bad-but-justified or bad-and-u justified, I think it's clear we disagree on that, just why you consider that a "clamp down"?)
As Mary says, someone getting arrested, charged, etc is still immensely harmful even if they're eventually acquitted. And even more, you have people feeling pressured to keep silent because they don't want to risk being subjected to all that.
They're not being arrested, charged, tried, and acquitted; they're being arrested, interviewed, and dearrested without charge.
I agree such arrests are harmful - but I think they're less harmful than letting people say racist (or other abusive) things online with no consequences.
I have to admit that I struggle to see how a person can be so concerned with the wellbeing of an online racist but so unconcerned with the wellbeing of an online racism victim that they would rather the victim suffer abuse unprotected than that the abuser has to sit in a room and answer some questions before being allowed to go home.
I don't mean the following in an aggressive way, but I really think you need to be aware that your perspective on this is so fundamentally alien to the deepest values of many people here, that it's liable to provoke a not-dissimilar reaction to someone genuinely asking why democracy is better than dictatorship, or why slavery is always such a bad thing. People often have no idea how to respond, because the reasons seem so obvious and "in the water supply" and "the common premises of all people in a free society" that it's hard to explain these reasons to someone who so thoroughly rejects the premises of their basic values.
Now to be clear, the alien perspective is *not* "there are extreme situations where freedom of speech is outweighed by other factors" but rather "the right to speak freely and the right to be protected from unwelcome speech need to be weighed up, as basically equal considerations". This, I would suggest, comes across to many people, particularly on ACX, the way "in discussions of rape, one needs to weigh up the harm of being raped with the harm of being denied sex one really wants" would come across to the average woman, or how a discussion of criminal laws against homosexuality framed as "weighing up the fear of homosexuals of living under such laws against the disgust of conservatives of living in a society without them" would to most people. In all these cases, one can dispassionately argue that the harms are not equal...but the understandable reaction is often closer to outrage at the mere suggestion, at the complete failure to acknowledge that one of these things is so absolutely fundamentally not like the other.
I think if you're going to argue this equivalence, you should do so with a much greater explicit recognition that this is a pretty extreme position within the standard framework of a liberal society built on individual rights.
As to the actual problems with it...again, it's difficult to know where to start. For one thing, it's taking an extremely dogmatic utilitarian position where outcomes are all that matter and notions of rights, freedoms, limits on the state etc, have no value except in tetms of outcomes. But even within that utilitarian position it has so many problems, so many extreme asymmetries between the fear of hearing demeaning speech and the fear of being arrested for your speech. Such as:
-you can train yourself to be less affected by, or even immune to, insults and mean words. You can't train yourself to be immune to handcuffs and prison bars.
-you can fight back against offensive words, with your own words or otherwise; you can't fight back against the police and the state.
-if you're a minority within a given space, and thus vulnerable, you can recruit friends or other members of your demographic into that space to even the scales a bit. You can't do this against the state.
-you can, if you can't handle being subject to the power of aggressive bullies, avoid all spaces where you might be so subject, in a way that's difficult but not impossible. If you can't handle being subject to the power of aggressive or overpowered police, there may be absolutely nothing you can do, if no other country is willing to give you asylum.
-the power of the state to arrest people for their speech is unimaginably greater, unimaginably scarier, and unimaginably more open to enormous abuses than the power of bullies to insult and demean and cause mental distress.
These are the tiny tip of an iceberg of differences. And I want to reiterate that by engaging in the academic object-level discussion of the differences between too much regulation of speech and too little, I am in no way implying that this is a meaningfully different kind of discussion (as opposed to degree) than the differences between the advantages of democracy and dictatorship.
In my experience, most Americans don't actually have a deep respect for freedom of speech, only Freedom of Speech Of My Allies While Punishing Anyone I Disagree With To The Maximum Extent Possible.
(Not taken in a aggressive way - thanks very much indeed for the qualifier, it's thoughtful and I appreciate it.)
I admit I do seem to be in a minority on ACX - but if we take “current legislation in the West” as a yardstick ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country ), I don't think my position is anywhere near as extreme as you portray it.
Essentially every nation has restrictions on individual speech. Even the USA, which is famously more permissive than the rest of the West in what it lets its subjects say in public, has approximately twenty different kinds of speech that are prohibited by law. The UK (which this conversation was originally supposed to be about) has had restrictions on individual speech aimed at improving the overall civilisation of discourse dating back a century, and these were extended to online communications in the 1980s: I'm not advocating some weird new extreme position, but defending the long-term status quo.
One outcome of Britain's century-plus of restricting those limited forms of speech that seem to always do harm without ever doing good (such as racist abuse) is that the quality of public discourse feels (to me) higher here than it does in the USA. How it feels to me is subjective, I know - but there is data suggesting Britain is one of the world's least racist/sexist/homophobic/etc. societies - by some measures several times over more so than the USA: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/love-thy-neighbour.pdf
Finally, the weighing-up you criticise seems to me to be a necessary part of making basically any prohibition in law? For example, presumably(?) you support copyright protection as a restriction on free speech: in deciding whether to institute copyright protection lawmakers must have weighed-up the harms to society of absolute free speech (viz. people not creating so many works of entertainment, art, etc.) against the harms to society of copyright protection (viz. one additional restriction on speech)* and decide which is the lesser harm. This seems like how we go about prohibiting most prohibited things, and equating it to “weighing-up whether a rapist's right to sex is greater than their victim's right to not be raped” seems like a really weird and deliberately incendiary way of describing a perfectly normal part of the lawmaking process.
* (Lest you object that there are no harms to society from the restriction on free speech caused by copyright protection, there are a great many famous cases of copyright law being used like that. I have limited appetite for looking them all up online just now, so please excuse my sharing just the first web-search result; I admit it's just a listicle but there do seem to nevertheless be a few such examples on the list: https://listverse.com/2018/07/15/top-10-craziest-copyright-claims-ever-made
I'm probably going to bow out of this discussion now (though of course I’ll gladly read anything further that you write!) - thanks once again for the polite and friendly way you've disagreed with me (despite clearly hating my views!) It's very open-minded of you and I'm grateful for it.
Every government with restrictions on free speech has used them politically, to punish people who say things that discomfit the government.
This is not quite the praise you think.
> -you can fight back against offensive words, with your own words or otherwise; you can't fight back against the police and the state.
> -if you're a minority within a given space, and thus vulnerable, you can recruit friends or other members of your demographic into that space to even the scales a bit. You can't do this against the state.
Wait, what? People fight back against the state all the time. It's called a revolution. It just usually requires a majority. The fact that minorities have no means to improve their situation against a majority isn't exclusive to dealing with the state. You cannot "even the scales" when your demographic simply lacks the numbers or capabilities that are necessary for meaningful agency.
Now, the question is "do minorities deserve anything?" My answer is no, because nobody deserves anything, but I'm sure your answer is different.
> It just usually requires a majority.
I'd say it requires either an overwhelming majority, or foreign intervention.
Because if they get only 18 convictions out of the vast number of arrests, it is clear they are harassing the innocent in order to silence them.
Some news from the (culture)war: I was speaking to a guy I know in China recently in the course of some business
(in this case, they have some sort of magic injection formation: eight trigrams : seal of the five elements: our fiber reinforced plastic can be all sorts of weird shapes and it still turns out strong, so tariffs will not work in the short or medium or probably long term because the americans that are willing to do it cost 5 times as much and their product is shitty and the fucking finance assholes are going to plow 50bajillion dollars into another stupid fucking tech product instead of physical capital intensive projects that will expose them to the risk of having to pay people to do labor, the dumb cunts.)
(no, I'm not bitter that it's both cheaper and better to have parts stamped out in china and shipped across the world than to buy local, and that the problem has actually gotten WORSE over the last year.)
And the subject of Trump came up, he had some interesting mixed feelings about it:
On the one hand, he thinks that Trump is good for china long term in a zero-sum sense. He has so thoroughly discombobulated the US partners in the region that he thinks even a couple NeoLibDems in a row won't be able to undo the damage; and that within 20 years the pacific ocean all the way to Guam will be a chinese lake, as it were, unless (note in next bit).
On the other hand: China is in the Business of doing business, and things are so chaotic that he doesn't know which way to punch like he did 10 years ago; that even if China overtakes the US politically and economically --
(which he thinks is now entirely China's game to throw; the US has damaged itself so thoroughly with it's stupid financialized industrial policy and senile-mad-cow diplomatic policy that it would be impossible for them to catch up unless the Party blows a gasket and shits itself, which is always a 60/40 chance in any country and especially so where the process of selection is as closed and sclerotic as it is in China. Just because they rolled boxcars with Xi doesn't mean the next guy will be as good, type of feeling.) --
that the loss of the rules based order will be so destructive that even if China can establish local or regional hegemony that they will be worse off than they are now, and the fact that the laowai are doing even worse isn't that much of a comfort.
Interesting how quickly the world changes under your feet; all castles are made of sand, every vast leg ends up trunkless, etc and so forth.
> expose them to the risk of having to pay people to do labor, the dumb cunts.
I understand you're being facetious, but it seems to me that there are enough labor protections that it now indeed comes with vast amounts of risk and they're responding correctly to the incentives with which they've been presented.
Those aren't even the pressures I'm talking about!
I'm talking about the pure market forces of it all, of the fact that employing people who develop skills and institutional knowledge that results in your product being beyond competitive, that allows a firm (to pick a random name out of a hat: Boeing!) to completely dominate a field and crush all who come before them and to hear the lamentations of their shareholders, is bad actually. You fool. You fucking imbecile. You moron.
What we need to do is deskill as much as possible, outsource everything else, mistreat everyone who we can't eliminate so badly they check out completely or quit, and destroy our decades of market hegemony in a few quick years because WE are BUSINESSMEN doing BIG CAPITALISM and we are jealous of the guys who's labor force is fungible. Mcdonnell Douglas Delenda Est.
Basically: American capital holders would rather risk failing outright than risk having to deal with labor who's lack of willing, enthusiastic participation could affect the stock price.
It's been to my individual profit as someone who hasn't plucked out their own eyes to better appreciate the glorious light that emanates from Hayek; I've had the ability to see, for example, the glaringly obvious, but it is alarming as an ant that has to tapdance with the blind elephants.
Okay, but none of that matters if you have to pay your workers extravagant wages and let them work in humane conditions. As far as manufacturing goes, you need sweatshops and labor camps to stay competitive on anything but extremely high-end products. The fault for eliminating that lies with the state and its people, not the companies themselves.
This is straight up not true. I've worked in manufacturing, I've been to china, I've seen firms take a haircut for thinking like you. The people who are not fungible, as in the analogized passage above, get treated to safe working conditions, high wages, benefits, big checks, the whole shebang, anywhere in the world that has any labor market whatsoever.
This is because THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT FUNGIBLE. You CANNOT go out on the street and get a replacement level die maker, because there is no such thing. These are the positions that produce irreplaceable value for a firm, and these are the positions that capital hates the most because they can demand a portion of their surplus value and get it without organizing. If you mistreat the guy who sets up the dies and teeth on the stamping press, he walks out the door, gets a new job the same day, and your line shuts down until you can replace him unless you have some redundancy, which you don't because the MBA who makes the decision didn't get to use the braincell when they were laying off people on the floor instead of people in the C suite.
I rate this take: MBA brained, soft handed, never actually been part of a productive enterprise.
You can't say that someone is responding correctly to incentives without quantifying them.
You can say that worker protections create incentives which directly point away from using human labor, and that's true. So does ending slavery, and the fact the some human labor is ugly and it's unpleasant to have to look at them. None of these incentives prove a certain decision 'correct' until you quantity them, and compare to the marginal utility of the decision.
>The Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund is the main organization working to prevent its creation
I do kinda worry that this is basically a 'Lets do a lot of research into how one might build the Torment Nexus and bring the Torment Nexus to very wide public attention to make sure that no one builds it' sort of situation.
Was anyone actually trying to make mirror life before this? Is this group going to do a huge amount to advance the knowledge base and popularity behind this idea, and does that actually make it less likely than leaving it an obscure thought experiment that a tiny tiny fraction of the population has ever heard of?
>see also
>via OpenAI
>an unfortunately large bit of
>AI safety
I know the argument that it's zero-sum mentality and therefore irrational to believe there are issues with income inequality or the existence of billionaires or even trillionaires, but empirically, it does seem like it bothers a lot of people*, offending their sense of fairness. Everyone derides the idea of the new man of socialism, but it seems like the capitalists need a new man of capitalism that wouldn't have the natural tendency to think in zero-sum terms or care about income inequality...
*Not me, my material conditions are peachy, I don't care if billionaires or trillionaires exist, and I doubt their existence causes there to be poor and destitute people anywhere.
The argument I'd make (though not 100% confident about it) about billionaires (aside from the "buy the government/media" thing) is that if the money you make in a capitalist society is supposed to reflect your contribution to the economy, almost nobody is *actually* contributing enough to the economy to justify *that* big an income gap over everyone else.
Like if a plumber makes 2x as much as the average plumber, OK, he's better than most plumbers. Fixes tougher issues, works longer hours, whatever. But if he makes 10,000x the average, you wouldn't think he's the Greek god of plumbing, you'd think something more was going on, maybe fishy.
CEOs are supposed to be different than plumbers in this regard, but I don't think we should uncritically accept that idea.
E.g. Mark Zuckerberg; is he actually an order of magnitude better at designing social networks than other people?
Part of it is luck/right place right time; some is network effects and it's worth considering whether antitrust should play a role; some is that Facebook undercut traditional media by lying about advertising efficiency and video viewership numbers and maybe some copyright violation about hosting their content.
"E.g. Mark Zuckerberg; is he actually an order of magnitude better at designing social networks than other people?"
Not a Zuck fan, but all available evidence points to yes here. Most billionaire founders are at least good at the thing they founded that generated billions of dollars even after paying huge returns to everyone else who invested. They might be jerks or bad for the world or a huge cringey nerd or in the process of spending billions of dollars on bad ideas, but they're at least good at the first thing they did. If you're looking for idiots with unjustified wealth, there are better places to look.
What is the "all available evidence", other than the fact that facebook is a big company and Zuckerberg a multi-billionaire?
Again I'm not saying he's *bad* at it but it's pretty clear that Facebook didn't get to be 100x (or whatever it is) bigger than Friendster or Myspace because Zuckerberg is 100x better at social network making than the people who founded those.
That's before you get into the point about juicing video viewership numbers, lying about advertising efficiency, and thinking about it more I'd add questionable use of people's data.
Facebook has had one CEO for 25 years, and he's an active CEO who built the entire team that now runs one of the world's most profitable businesses. Lots of smart people who can set up a website in an afternoon fail utterly at the task of running a business of any size, much less a public company with approximately the world as a customer base that is a lightning rod for controversy of all kinds. In the early years there were approximately no barriers to competition and yet Facebook achieved huge scale and crushed competitors. Buying Instagram is one of the all-time best acquisitions (and most acquisitions destroy value in spite of the efforts of large teams of highly compensated and seemingly competent people).
Again, you don't have to like him or Facebook - the data practices are terrible, the content is slop, his face is annoying, the Metaverse is very stupid, antitrust law should be enforced, sure I agree with all of the criticisms. But on the metric "is this person rich because he's extraordinarily good at founding and running a company that makes lots of money?" anything other than a very high weight on "yes" is insane given what's happened right in front of all of us. It's like arguing that the problem with NBA salaries is that LeBron is only a little bit better at basketball than me and mostly got where he is by luck of the draw.
This is basically saying that Facebook is successful. and Zuckerberg's been in the job for awhile. But:
* think most people would have to concede, Facebook got where it is because network effects. There were various social networks around ~20 years ago, Facebook didn't end up 1000x bigger because it was 1000x better than the others.
* it's common founder CEOs are able to stay on for a long time, because they own enough stock that nobody can fire them (especially with the A/B share split). He literally renamed the company after a new product that he sank billions into that they've now tacitly conceded was a failure. Something that would cost any other CEO their job.
* To see how ownership/network effects can give such a leg up, look at Musk. Who bought Twitter, laid off a huge portion of the staff then went back and rehired them, oriented the entire website around getting people to pay $8 a month for it (whatever happened to that?), and his own toxic personal brand, and it's *still* a popular website. You can fuck up pretty badly and still stick around.
> It's like arguing that the problem with NBA salaries is that LeBron is only a little bit better at basketball than me and mostly got where he is by luck of the draw.
If the only argument for why Lebron was good is "he won a lot of titles, he must be good" or something like that, then you would have an argument, but we can all directly observe and statistically measure Lebron's individual basketball skill in a way that you can't with Zuckerberg, or indeed most other jobs.
> sure I agree with all of the criticisms
If your view is "Zuckerberg is really good at his job, and that's why he's a billionaire, and sure part of his job is breaking laws and being dishonest" that's not really an argument against the anti-billionaire people.
I don't think the original commenter was saying that Zuck isn't good, even really good, at building social network websites. He is, but the wealth disparity between him and the founders of Myspace and N other social-media-site founders you haven't heard of is disproportionately large compared to the difference in skill or even effort between them. Which comes down to luck and network/winner-takes-all effects.
You could say this is just the nature of competition. On a more human scale, we accept it: the top 2 runners were 0.05 seconds apart, but only the winner gets the $1,000 prize. (But maybe it averages out the next time they meet for a race). Or the top 3 candidates for a job were all equally qualified, but one of them was lucky that the interviewer was in a better mood, so they got the job and the others got nothing. (But there are other jobs and next time one of the others will get lucky).
As I see it, the problem we have with billionaires comes from the fact that our economic principles were designed for an infinite world, or at least a world large enough that there is always another opportunity to try your luck again in another location, or another type of endeavor, or at a later date. The averaging doesn't work when *everyone* on the planet already has all their needs met by too-big-to-fail and too-rich-to-regulate corporations.
Why do you care? Why does anyone who isn't a social-media founder care?
Let's say that there are three hundred million Americans who "pay" (indirectly via advertsing) $5/month for their social media experience. Of this, half goes to the operating costs of that service, paid to the people who do the work every day. 30% to the investors who paid all the start-up and expansion costs, and 20% to the founder who provided the vision and managed the execution.
In one reality, all that goes to a single social media company and its founder, because network effects. That founder is raking in $3.6 billlion a year, and will have a net worth in the tens of billions. In another, it's divided into twenty different social media companies each with their targeted niche. Each of those founders gets $120 million a year, making them low-order billionaires.
Does anyone who isn't one of those twenty, really care about the difference between those two? Are we really arguing about the terrible, terrible injustice of some billionaires having more billions than others?
Because I see a whole lot of people arguing that Mark Zuckerberg totally doesn't deserve and shouldn't be allowed to have all those billions. And I don't think any of those people are planning on taking his money away so that they can use it to give Chris DeWolffe, Tom Anderson, et al their fair share.
They're just using that as an excuse to Bring Down The Mighty, not because that will *do* anyone any good, but because it will *feel* good to the sort of person who wants to do that.
If there were twenty competing billionaires, that would point to there being actual economic competition going on in their industry, and so the argument that they're 'creating wealth' (through their great decision making) rather than just harvesting it becomes more plausible.
But you wouldn't ever get twenty competing billionaires in these tech industries, because the logic of tech is for massive, monopolistic centralization of assets and consumer share.
That is: the tech industries, those which are abstract and data-based, are inherently monopolistic and non-competitive, so that you would never get a number of rival CEOs competing for the same thing. Competition would never keep things honest and the relationship between a CEO's economic value and their personal wealth would become largely arbitrary.
So, in the hypothetical of a healthy industry with twenty competing heads, I would have no problems with them having ten billion dollars each or even a hundred billion, but when you see industries which consist of one super-dominant competitor and its CEO is raking in the same amount, that is when, as a voter, I know that I am getting fleeced.
I would say, yes that would be somewhat better, because splitting the power and influence that $3.6 billion and control over a large share of the world's attention confers among 20 people reduces the risk of one or a few causing outsize damage to broader society. You don't even need to claim that being a tech billionaire makes you more likely to have antisocial or extremist political tendencies - as they say, "no one man should have all that power."
Granted, it's a bit simplistic to say that what gets you to being a billionaire instead of the founder one company over is just luck, and maybe this is what you are getting at, that the ruthlessness needed to get to the top means that even a cohort of 20 smaller billionaires would be equally intolerable due to their shares views. I guess my response to this is just that there are degrees to this - most billionaires are not as odious as Thiel and Musk - and also that maybe in a hypothetical alternative system that is not so winner-take-all, there would not be such strong selection for ruthlessness. At this point, the idea of having any billionaires at all is probably tainted on the left beyond what is rational; perhaps this would readjust eventually.
I also think 20% is a ridiculously high percentage to continue paying out to a founder who invented something 20 years ago. Sure, they are still doing some managing work, but they are not providing 20% of a massive company's value day in and day out. (This is just off the top of my head, but once the company's revenue mainly scales with its geographic reach, perhaps the engineers responsible for ensuring the service's availability from data centers worldwide and marketing teams broadening its userbase should receive the greatest share of revenue.)
I think the main driver of that resentment comes from the misunderstanding that wealth is zero sum, and if Bezos has $200B, he must somehow have taken $600 from each American.
It would be great if someone could educate the masses about this!
My theory is it's a product of hunter-gatherer thinking, where people perceive the nation as a whole as our tribe, and tribes share stuff equally because they're mutually inter-dependent and closely genetically related. Of course, that doesn't really describe a modern nation state, but this sadly does not deter many people from thinking this way, presumably because that's their default setting.
And that's just the misconception of people who _can_ do maths.
There's an awful lot of people out there like the famous MSNBC commentator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il16p8YvS5E who thought that Michael Bloomberg could have given each American one million dollars instead of spending $500 million on his election campaign.
Now I come to look at the clip again, they had the tweet lined up and ready to go, which means that there must have been an entire production staff who looked at this and didn't say "wait that's not right".
Do you believe wealth is created ex nihilo? Or do you believe we live in post-scarcity world where everyone has unlimited (or at least exceeding their capacity to utilize them) access to natural resources? If no, it immediately follows that vast amount of economy is fundamentally zero-sum. (If yes, you've lost contact with reality.)
And that's of course assuming a naive view of economy where people are otherwise equal. Which is not the world we live in. In the world we live in, wealth correlates with power, and power concentrated in fewer and fewer hands makes economy work for the benefit of fewer and fewer people. If a wealthy person can enrich themselves a little more by immiserating others that lack the power to oppose them - it's exactly what happens. There's nothing "zero sum" about this, it's outright, actively harmful to overall wealth of society at large.
Natural resources are rivalrous, yes. But as gjm notes, rivalrousness does not preclude Marshallian Surplus.
(I am not Carlos.) I believe that _some_ wealth is created. (Ex nihilo? Depends on definitions.) If I have some apples but prefer oranges, and you have some oranges and prefer apples, and we swap, then we are both better off. If you create a new computer game that people love to play, then all those people are better off. If you have an idea for a wonderful new game but developing it will cost a ton of money, and you don't have much money but I do, and I lend you money at interest and you build the thing and lots of people pay you for it so you can repay the loan, then everyone concerned is better off, and you and I are even _financially_ better off.
Jeff Bezos is incredibly wealthy, because he owns a chunk of Amazon. Something like "he has taken $600 from each American" is actually true -- but he has taken that money from them _in exchange for things that they value more_.
It may very well still be true that the world would be better if it weren't possible for Bezos and others like him to get so flabbergastingly wealthy this way. It may be true that some part of how he got that wealthy really did involve immiserating other people, or that having got that wealthy he now immiserates other people just for fun. It's almost certainly true that the world would be better if the incredibly rich had less power, and it might well be true that the only way to make that so is to somehow make there not be such incredibly rich people. The thing I'm arguing about, specifically, is the claim that if you're "in contact with reality" then you must therefore deny that "wealth is created ex nihilo" in a sense that makes the economy almost all zero-sum. I think that's quite wrong.
Wealth is formed by the physical world that surrounds us. It (the world) can be improved upon, we can call that creating wealth, but the process strictly requires preexisting material resources to work with. We won't have fruits to exchange if neither of has land to grow them on.
And if you want to grow fruit and I lend you the land to grow them on, the wealth created by you working the land is, in theory, the same as if you owned the land yourself (in practice, it's lower, you're less likely to work as hard or make forward-looking improvements on someone else's property, but let's set that aside for now for simplicity's sake). The only difference is, a portion of that wealth transfers to me instead of you. That arrangement is strictly zero-sum. It becomes even more obviously zero-sum if I refuse to lend to you and there's no land that you can use.
And it's still entirely true that I'm taking that wealth in exchange for the land that you value more. True, but meaningless, the land would not disappear if I didn't own it. I am not providing any benefit to society by being the one to control it. All I do is appropriate the wealth for myself.
I may, of course, very well provide benefit to society by how I control it (or cause harm, it works both ways). There certainly is value in managing the land, investing in improvements and correctly discerning whom to lend the land to to maximize yield. But those effects are simply much smaller than the total utility of the land, and become smaller still when you realize you need to judge them against the baseline (as value over replacement) instead of against a hypothetical scenario where the land is completely abandoned if not for me.
I completely agree that some things that happen are zero-sum or worse, and that some things that happen are societally-valueless rent-seeking.
You appeared to be arguing above that _most_ of the economy is zero-sum, so that if you see a rich person it's reasonable to assume that they got that way by making other people poorer. I don't see that you've offered any evidence or arguments to support that.
(Maybe you weren't in fact arguing that. You weren't super-explicit about what your point was.)
Incidentally, I'm not at all sure it's actually true that the difference between using a given parcel of land effectively and using it less effectively is "much smaller than the total utility of the land". I bet there's a lot of land that's being used in ways that deliver less than half the total utility it could deliver. (But I don't have any actual evidence for that, and if your intuition points a different way I don't expect to be able to convince you to change your mind.)
>_most_ of the economy is zero-sum
>if you see a rich person it's reasonable to assume that they got that way by making other people poorer
Okay, I think I see what's going on here.
These two propositions are logically equivalent, but the latter evokes a very different imagery. I'm assuming you have an intuition of zero-sum economy consisting of rich person actively, directly taking away from the poor, you were expecting me to conform to those intuitions, while my entire argument was that your intuitions are wrong.
Let's go back to fruits. Imagine a fruit tree in a village. Each year, every villager who wants its fruit goes to the tree and takes some home. This year, they come and find the tree empty, with a stall selling fruits next to it. (Note that I've written the example specifically to avoid any caveats that would make picking the fruits from the tree valid productive work, like delivering them from afar, or making them available to people who can't climb the tree. Assume any villager would be perfectly capable of harvesting as much fruit as they need.)
The issue, I believe, is that you don't think of the above as a zero-sum game. You think of it as a [total number of fruits]-sum game. Only, no, again, you can't start from nothing, you need to start from the baseline. The world, with its scarce but so far sufficient natural resources, already exists. If you appropriate a part of it, you are by definition taking away from others who are now unable to use it. It makes no difference whether you've gotten to it first, pried it from their hands, or whatever. I mean, in many ways it does make a difference - just not with regards to the very specific logical and semantic issue of whether you're currently engaged in a zero-sum game.
Largely agreed.
The usual argument I make for wealth being created is to consider how the world was organized 1000 years ago versus today. Anyone with even a 10-year-old's grasp of history should be able to easily see that the average person (or Westerner, at least, given that that's most of the people who complain about wealth inequality) is much, much better off in real terms than even the average nobleman in 1026 AD. This cannot possibly be explained solely in terms of large numbers of dollars being put into bank accounts (esp. since most people in 1026 AD didn't even have bank accounts).
In actual fact, _enormous_ amounts of wealth has been created, even recently.
I often wonder if all the Marxists/Communists out there aren't just making people miserable by framing their employment as exploitation. As support for this I'd note that very few people seem to have any issues with the idea that top athletes make ludicrous salaries. The ratio of pay between the top earner for the Los Angeles Lakers and the bottom earner must be absurdly high, yet you very rarely read complaints about this.
I think you're right that capitalists need a new Milton Friedman type of spokesperson. You see an article about businesses lobbying congress and the implicit assumption is that if the businesses didn't exist there wouldn't be anyone left to bribe the congressmen...
See, but a new man of capitalism would be super difficult to create, just like the new man of socialism.
The quick version of why massive wealth inequality is bad is that the wealthiest increasingly can take over governments. That may sound like a nice deal in Technofeudal Region #238579835, but if the king turns evil (starts using ketamine), your stuck with a techno-dystopian nightmare until it collapses violently.
Sounds to me like the real problem is that you're stuck under that government. If people can move from a bad government to a good one, it's not that big of a deal if one of them happens to go bad (as long as people are still allowed to exit). Governments going bad from time to time, for one reason or another, seems inevitable.
I kind of like the opposite argument: It's nice if there are non governmental power centers in a country, so not everything has to happen through the government.
Especially since half the time, the wrong side controls government.
As opposed to socialists or teachers unions taking over governments?
A large group of people taking over the government is preferable to a single person taking over the government, yes.
A large group of white supremacists?
I guess I just go back to Madison and the need to promote competing factions. Rather than eliminate billionaires, or unions, or socialists or supremacists, get them to compete and check each other.
Eliminating billionaires (and the possibility of new ones) would devastate modern prosperity. It would impoverish all of us.
Yes, of course. A large group of white supremacists taking over a government is preferable to a small group of white supremacists taking over the same government. Of course it is. But of course a large group of mostly-non-white-supremacists is generally much better than either.
It is no accident that group dynamics make it easier[1] to amass a large, cooperating group of non-bigots than an equivalently-sized group of bigots. Bigots do sometime cooperate with each other in the furtherance of their bigotry (unfortunately), but positive-sum bases for cooperation have a natural advantage.
[1] Mind you, not *a lot* easier. The signal-to-noise ratio in almost any mass social trend is very low.
Do you think the billionaire class doesn't have white supremacists in its numbers? Did you miss all the ways our current government is making racial profiling into explicit policy?
So yes, I would prefer to require the white supremacists to amass large numbers before they can take over the government, rather than it being possible for a small number of extremely wealthy white supremacists.
Also, why do you think eliminating billionaires necessarily requires eliminating the things billionaires produce? Do you think all of Amazon or Tesla depend on Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk alone? Do you think that Bezos would not have created Amazon if he knew he would only end up with a measly 500 million in personal wealth?
The white supremacists in question would have had no chance of taking over the country if they didn't have the support of a majority of men, as well as the military. Your fears of the power majority being disenfranchised are unfounded.
A government captured by a large group of white supremacists is probably a bit better than a government captured by a single white supremacist.
(Because the individual is more likely to go spectacularly off the rails and start doing crazy things like launching a military invasion of an allied nation.)
A government susceptible to capture by large groups is probably a lot better than a government susceptible to capture by individuals, even if in some particular cases "a group of Xs" turns out to be about as bad as "a single X".
(Because large groups are less likely to be exceptionally terrible than individuals are, because the overall position of a group has less variance than that of an individual. And because if you start from "stable liberal democracy", "capturable by large groups" is nearer than "capturable by individuals" so aside from the _consequences_ of being captured by one or the other, the capturable-by-large-groups country is probably in overall better shape.)
I have often heard it claimed that a country where you couldn't get Bezos-wealthy would be one without a healthy entrepreneurial economy, but I never see solid evidence or clear arguments for this. If when Bezos was considering founding Amazon some prophet had told him "if you do this, then your net worth will reach a billion dollars", it seems to me that that would probably have been enough financial motivation. Having $200B is doubtless nicer than having $1B, but I'm not sure it's really _that much_ nicer -- and success at that level is rare enough that no reasonable person should be that much motivated by hoping for it.
It might actually be very harmful to try to make there be no more billionaires. (Especially if you tried to do it by expropriating the existing ones.) But I'd like to see actual arguments and evidence, rather than confident assertions with no support given for them, on both sides of the argument. (Those saying there should be no more billionaires _also_ tend not to be very rigorous about it.)
The point (note my Madison reference) is that we don’t want it captured by anyone. We want competing interests and factions to check and balance each other. Every mega-billionaire is in theory one such faction, and last I checked they don’t all agree. The solution laid out in the Federalist Papers was that it was futile and self destructive to destroy/neutralize factions. Instead get them to offset each other.
The argument for more than a billion is that in a positive sum market, the billionaire (and all of us for that matter) add value to our fellow humans via win/win economic actions. Oversimplifying, an entrepreneur making $2B adds twice the value (in products, services and jobs) as one making a single B. Humanity benefits from more billionaires, and if we are lucky will will soon start getting trillionaires.
For more concrete evidence, look at the tremendous value just to consumers in Tesla Evs, Amazon delivery, streaming services, consumer tablets, and Walmart prices. Absolutely enormous value has been added to our lives. The fortunes they made are our way of saying “Thanks, you did good!”
We definitely want there to be able to be more-than-billion-dollar _companies_ but it doesn't follow that we want there to be more-than-billion-dollar _individuals_.
But, also, I think there's an important logical error in your argument.
It's true that when an entrepreneur makes $2B it means that they've done things that others value at that much money, which typically (though not _necessarily_) means they've provided something like that much value to society, and that probably someone who makes $2B has provided about twice as much value as someone who makes $1B.
But that _doesn't_ mean that someone who makes $2B has provided twice as much value than if (say) some very stringent tax policy had meant that they only got $1B for doing the same things. The value isn't in the money they get, it's in the things they do that others are willing to pay the money for.
Of course it might well be true that if you tax them that heavily then they will do less of those things people are willing to pay for, and hence provide less net benefit. But there's no particular reason to expect that their effort, still less its net beneficial effect, will be exactly proportional to the amount of money they get. I would (though I have no particular evidence on this) strongly expect it not to be.
(For instance, because I think generally the difference between an entrepreneur who gets $1B and one who gets $2B isn't that they did the same but the latter did twice as much of it, it's that the second one was luckier or had better judgement or something in the particular things they did. They typically don't _know_ how much money they're going to get out of it when they do the early valuable things. And the things that happen later, once the business they've started is already extremely valuable, are I think mostly not actually done by the initial entrepreneurs, so how much value _they_ produce is mostly not governed by how strongly incentivized the entrepreneurs are for it to be large.)
Capital can be cashed in for consumption, or it can be reinvested. If it is invested there is an expected risk and reward, and as they go hand in hand. When a billionaire puts his billions at risk, he only does so because he sees the possibility not just of loss, but gains too.
If you increase taxes too much, it simply increases the risk to reward and thus decreases the expected potential payoff of investments. You are basically taking huge sums of capital off the table of future investment. This is incredibly self harming. An unforced error in an economy making it less dynamic.
Human beings in an economy together are not independent factors.
If I am trying to buy a house, and other people who are richer than me are also trying to buy a house in the same market, we are in economic competition with each other. If they get richer, it directly materially financially hurts me.
This is true for supply and demand in general, the more money other people have the more my prices go up, whether that's from them increasing demand by offering more money for the same things I want, or lowering supply of the things I want by increasing demand for other things and inducing available labor towards them instead.
This is to say nothing of rich people directly buying political influence and government position and using it to push their interests in opposition to yours, or billionaire-driven bubbles smacking the entire economy around in ways that lead to huge disruptions affecting everyone, or billionaire-led media and social media companies manipulating the culture and society in damaging ways.
Conflict theory is real. There are lots of ways someone can screw you over in order to benefit themselves, and there are lots of ways where you want different things from someone else and them having more power hurts you.
People are not mistaken to notice this.
No, that is not true for supply and demand in general. Higher prices incentivize firms to produce more, which helps push them back down. Likewise, your statement that wealth disparities "lower supply of the things I want by increasing demand for other things and inducing available labor towards them instead" is wrong. It overlooks two things: a) unusually wealthy people are by definition a small share of the population, and thus their consumption doesn't materially impact labor markets and b) labor isn't really a fungible commodity except for the most unskilled kind. Switching careers is actually kind of hard, so this supposed reallocation of labor, to the extent it happens at all, occurs over long time-spans. Decades.
> If I am trying to buy a house, and other people who are richer than me are also trying to buy a house in the same market, we are in economic competition with each other.
Exactly this. I don't mind if a billionaire owns an island somewhere out of my sight. Or buys some expensive things that I would never buy.
I am more bothered if he buys scarce resources around me, such as land.
And I get angry if he uses the money to break the law with impunity (by bribing the judges, or harassing his opponents by frivolous lawsuits), or even buy the law (by bribing the politicians to change it).
Nonsense. The larger picture of reasonably effective dynamic markets is that as the number of consumers increases, so does supply, and affordability tends to increase long term.
I didn't say anything about number of consumers.
This is about wealth disparities between consumers.
There will always be wealth discrepancies, and that is not a bad thing, but an essential part of how effective markets work.
Yes, you can outbid someone making a lot less than you for that 3 bedroom ranch, and a billionaire can outbid you if they ever wanted that same house. The point though is that developers (often funded by wealthy capitalists) have an incentive to build houses for all three of you.
Additional consumers (even at wildly differing wealth levels) don’t compete in a zero sum battle for houses.
This implies that increases in demand can never raise prices. Which I don't believe to be how supply & demand curves work.
If increased demand occurs, then profit margins rise, which attracts capital and builders to capture these higher profits, which increases supply, which increases competition, which lowers prices until average expected return on investment is appropriate to the risk adjusted cost of capital.
On a simpler level though, I can assure you billionaires want nothing to do with the type of houses we seek.
If the way you get wealth is by creating wealth, as it mostly is in a market system, then the existence of a billionaire means a billion more demand for a billion more supply.
> there are issues with income inequality or the existence of billionaires or even trillionaires
This is largely just because people don't understand the few domains that are power laws versus Gaussian. When you think about it, nearly all the domains regular people look at and care at are Gaussian, because they're individual human traits.
Height, boob size, IQ, strength, athletic skills, charisma, BMI, all Gaussian. The areas where we compare ourselves to others all stay in this domain.
But out in the real world, when you connect a bunch of people together and form a network of them, then power laws start to dominate, because of network and winner-take-all effects.
Then you get income, wealth, clicks and views, likes and shares, and all that stuff. The reason people become billionaires is because they thought of something that applies to a whole network, an entire swath of the world, and received benefits from doing so.
But them doing that genuinely created value for all those people! We are MUCH better off having billionaires and trillionaires, because they're the people who generally created a lot of positive value for many millions of people.
People get all butt hurt about it, though, because they're used to comparing individual-to-individual on Gaussian traits.
As an example of this principle - there’s 3 or 4 basketball players that have become billionaires - Michael Jordan, Lebron, and Magic Johnson.
When considering player salaries, the top deals are signed for the $200M - $300M range now, netting out around $70M a year.
Do you know how much the 700th best basketball player in the world makes?
About $40k a year.
That's the difference power laws drive.
And more and more of the world is moving to power laws, and will continue to do so! I actually wrote a post about this here titled Why We're All Moving to Extremistan:
https://performativebafflement.substack.com/p/why-were-all-moving-to-extremistan?r=17hw9h
Nah, most billionaires got to the top by exploiting monopolies. Take the tech billionaires for instance. Amazon, Facebook, etc. aren't original ideas. There were other startups like them at the time of their ascent. That they came to predominate was because the markets they were competing for naturally converged on single, monopolistic platforms controlling everything. That these startups outcompeted others of similar types had more to do with luck than unique talents or skills of their creators (although I'm not saying those didn't play a role). Probably you could take away 95% of tech billionaires' wealth without disincentivising future tech startups.
Amazon is not a monopoly. Amazon's share of online retail is around 40%, and general retail obviously a lot less.
Amazon was briefly a monopoly for cloud compute, but that is because they essentially created this market in it's modern form. Others quickly caught up and Amazon is only ~30%.
It's hard to argue Facebook was ever a monopoly. People can (and do) join as many social networks as they want.
Backing up a second, the reason why monopolies are problematic is that they destroy consumer choice which prevents the price discovery mechanism from working. Monopolies for inelastic goods where consumers are essentially forced to rely on them, create substantial deadweight loss.
Just because a company is dominant, doesn't make it a monopoly. Heinz ketchup has a market share of over 80% in some countries. But no one thinks this is a problem. If a better tasting ketchup was made, people could easily switch to it (and some people do chose to buy other brands). The essential question isn't dominance, it is whether the company using it's position to distort the market.
Looking at historical antitrust lawsuits, Microsoft, AT&T, and Standard Oil all restricted consumer choice and were slapped down by the courts.
The current set of tech companies are dominant because they provide better services. You can switch from one service to another seamlessly. You can argue some of them are guilty of anticompetitive practices, however, this is not nearly to the same degree as the historical monopolies, nor is this the main reason they became dominant.
How did Standard Oil restrict consumer choice?
I defer to the 8-1 SCOTUS decision.
Or in other words you don't know.
If curious, you might want to read the classic article on the case:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/466547
You're right, I don't know and I'm not an economic historian. However, I don't think this significantly affects my central point, which is that modern tech companies are nowhere near as dominant as the monopolies of the past that were ruled against by the courts. Modern tech companies have substantial competitors, and switching costs are trivial.
Regardless of the specifics of Standard oil or AT&T's business practices - many people that used them did not have alternatives. Modern consumers of tech products have abundant alternatives.
Having said that, while I wouldn't try to argue specifics with someone with more expertise than myself. I do invoke: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/
From my cursory reading, that paper is influential but not unchallenged (Christopher Leslie's response seems substantive). And it only addresses predatory pricing, not the several other anti-competitive practices that Standard Oil was charged with.
FYI, your interlocutor is the son of an economics Nobel laureate, and a distinguished economist himself.
Then call it a quasi monopoly if you will. There are major network effects that make digital markets like Amazon converge on singular dominant providers and these both create situations similar to monopolies and impinge on the question of how meriting their founders are of enjoying vast wealth.
I think the relevant question is whether competition is keeping Amazon competitive. If Amazon doubled their prices, would people switch to Walmart or Temu or some other online retailer? Probably.
We want to avoid monopolies because without competition they can jack up their prices.
Right. Just want to point out also that Facebook is a free service, too, so the idea that these network effects allowed Zuck & Co. to exploit the common people somehow is, uh...a tad off base at least in his case.
It is neither the dominant provider nor a quasi monopoly in any sense. Amazon doesn't even crack 50% market share. It's nearest competitor (Shopify) is approaching Amazon's market share with a completely different business model.
And it is trivial to avoid them. You don't even have to leave your room, you can buy from thousands of different websites. This is completely unlike a monopoly.
> Nah, most billionaires got to the top by exploiting monopolies. Take the tech billionaires for instance. Amazon, Facebook, etc. aren't original ideas
It doesn’t require “tech billionaires” rapaciously harvesting serfs to get people where they are today, all it requires is giving them what they want.
All “tech oligarchs” have done is plugged into the *already existing* drive to stare at screens for 10 hours a day, a little better than TV and movies, and have eaten into their share of eyeball-hours.
Just like all fast and junk food has done is plug into the already existing desire to eat fatty, sugary foods for every meal, and done it so well that literally 80% of Americans are fat.
This isn’t an “oligarch problem,” it’s a human nature problem.
It’s hilarious to try to paint tech companies as driven by “oligarchs,” when they provide pretty much everything for free, and it’s totally voluntary.
Literal oligarchs rely on political concessions and regulatory entry barriers and lawfare to lock out competition and harvest average people at scale with largely mandatory more expensive and crappier products and services. See electricity or phone service or banking in the developing world. I just finished reading Joe Studwell’s Asian Godfathers, which goes over the fundamentally broken and incestuous politics and economics of SE Asia and Hong Kong, and it’s exactly this story (it’s a fun read, too).
Versus tech companies give you tons of completely free stuff that you can voluntarily use or not use, and just happen to monetize the fact that you waste your entire life staring at screens to make a little money off of it. They can literally only win by being the best, and by giving you that best stuff for free!
Like Google Search - Google came onto the market with the best FREE search engine by far, kept it the best for 20 years for FREE, was serving billions of monthly active users for FREE for a lot of that, and only now, 20 years in, got greedy enough to mess it up.
And shortly after, as soon as ChatGPT got good, a billion people went over THERE, for free, to replace Google search with a better alternative.
I wrote a whole post about THIS recently, here: https://performativebafflement.substack.com/p/against-against-tech-oligarchs?r=17hw9h
I'm talking about naturally arising monopolies here, not engineered ones. The CEOs of those tech monopolies didn't necessarily do anything scummy or illegal, but their fortunes are based on corporate structures that would have arisen naturally, according to the flow of market forces, regardless of what they did. Online general merchandise retailers didn't converge on a single company controlling a near monopoly because of Bezos's genius; it converged on one because that was the natural shape for the market to take. If Amazon hadn't arisen then some other company would have filled the role. It would have been called something else, but its general structure would have been pretty much the same.
The fortunes Bezos and others derive from being the winners in this game of monopoly aren't based on providing value, but in capturing the rights to dispense it. The ordinary laws of economics that loosely tie outcomes to merit aren't in play here, because we are dealing with monopolies and not competitive markets. In a competitive market, a man's fortune would be constrained by his ability to provide value. In this sort of monopolistic market, the fortunes of the tech lords was allotted based more on a sweepstakes system.
Zuckerberg's input in creating Facebook didn't create hundreds of billions of dollars of value that wouldn't have existed otherwise. He was simply in the right place at the right time with an adequate skillset, and the rest was all rent extracting.
> The fortunes Bezos and others derive from being the winners in this game of monopoly aren't based on providing value, but in capturing the rights to dispense it. The ordinary laws of economics that loosely tie outcomes to merit aren't in play here
To point to Bezos of all people and claim this just staggers me.
He literally solved the hardest logistics problem in the world. Solely because of Bezos, some ~90% of the US can click a button and get a package within 2 days, and at least half of that can get a large portion of goods literally the same day. And he bled cash and made no net income for like a decade to get there, while building that capability.
Can you do that anywhere else? Only in places where Bezos has worked his magic. Nobody else accomplishes anything close to Amazon anywhere, if you've ever lived in the developing world maybe you'd have a bigger admiration of what he's done?
Every time I'm back in the US, I'm continually thankful for Bezos, being able to buy whatever random stuff comes through my mind and have it instantly arrive is amazing. Like if anyone in the WORLD deserves to be a trillionaire, it's Bezos.
And this hasn't even touched literally half the internet running on the other half of Amazon, which he basically pioneered and created de novo.
And I think the same thing applies for a lot of the other companies! Google, Tik Tok, even Facebook and (ugh) Microsoft, as much as I hate to admit it.
Let's consider Zuck, probably your strongest case for parisitic "he was just there, it involved no skill" arguments. Sure, you can say that anyone could have come up with a social media thing, but everyone else DID. Myspace was before FB, and it never went anywhere. After FB was big, Google itself tried to step in and carve away a slice, and GOOGLE failed, with the deepest pockets and talent bench imaginable AND an existing ~2B user base to cross acquire! Facebook was veridically doing something better than everyone else, because they succeeded where others failed, and it's genuinely a hard problem, because basically everyone else that tried in that space failed.
It absolutely took merit to do the things they did, and to build the organizations they've built, which continue to provide a lot of value to billions of people every day. And it's that value that's the reason they are billionaires! They create a ton of direct value for literally billions of people!
Who else would do that??
Who is going to provide Google search for FREE for 20 years, to billions of people? And Youtoube, and Waze, and Google Maps, and Gmail, and...I could go on for like 20 other business lines, all of which provide lots of measurable value to billions of people literally every day.
Absolutely and unambiguously, all the founders created billions of dollars of value that didn't exist otherwise - way more than billions, trillions of dollars of value that wouldn't exist without them.
Like by that logic, somebody who literally solves aging doesn't deserve to be a billionaire.
> Can you do that anywhere else? Only in places where Bezos has worked his magic. Nobody else accomplishes anything close to Amazon anywhere
Coupang claims to offer same-day or next-day delivery for 80% of South Korea. I'd be surprised if other East Asian countries didn't have something similar.
> Coupang claims to offer same-day or next-day delivery for 80% of South Korea. I'd be surprised if other East Asian countries didn't have something similar.
Yeah, you can find stuff like this for Seoul and Tokyo and Tier 1 Chinese cities, but it's just that - the cities.
50% of the S Korea population lives in the broader Seoul metro. A third of Japan lives in the broader Tokyo metro. You *cannot* get 2 day or same day packages in the hinterlands of East Asia, but you can in America. That's a huge difference.
And I think it should be noted, it's EVERYTHING from Amazon - books, groceries, electronics, random plumbing bits and bobs, clothes. Most of the next day or two day stuff elsewhere have a much more limited inventory.
I think the impact of AI is going to be dampened by the public backlash against AI generated stuff that is happening. I think most people will just not engage with AI art. But you're right in your essay about people leaning more on their social networks, that's definitely beginning to happen.
Very skeptical that the front page of the Speak group is a claim from a single Daily Mail article which is, in typical Daily Mail fashion, completely lying in a transparent way that takes 15 minutes of Google to debunk.
The Daily Mail headline says 'shocking numbers clapped in handcuffs over 'offensive' social media posts', which Speak summarizes as '25+ arrests per day for online posts in the UK'. But buried 14 paragraphs down in the Daily Mail article it says this is counting all arrests under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.
These laws of course do not just cover public social media posts, they cover any communication sent by internet or mobile phone network. This includes all manner of direct personal messages such as phone calls, text messages, email, Whatsapp, etc. So the idea that all of these arrests are over public speech is wrong, and it's the first banner claim on their frontpage.
Speak also lists several things which they think are *not* protected free speech, and which these laws they are decrying also prohibit: threats, targeted harassment, defamation, and fraud. I don't have numbers on how many arrests are for which types of offenses, but these 25 arrests per day which are their justification for outrage absolutely include offenses that they agree should be illegal.
As I see it there are 3 possibilities here:
1. I am dead wrong about how these laws work, or about how Daily Mail arrived at their numbers (always possible, I'm not a lawyer and don't live in the UK and did only spend 15 mins reading summaries of these laws, PLEASE TELL ME if I am empirically wrong)
2. SpeakUK doesn't have anyone on their staff who is familiar with these laws and how they are being applied - which is the central thrust of their advocacy - and didn't want to take 15 mins to read the full Daily Mail article to see their methodology and Google those laws to see if their claim was accurate.
3. SpeakUK knows full well that the headline and their summary are inaccurate and misleading, but has no qualms about pasting a huge lie as the centerpiece of their frontpage if it will help them get supporters and spread the narrative they plan to take power from.
I would love for 1 to be the case, I always want to learn new things and it's a pleasure to find out people are better than you gave them credit for.
But if the answer is 2 or 3, then I am really, really reluctant to trust a group that gets started in this fashion.
I love free speech as much as the next guy, but I have lost faith in the 'free speech movement' precisely because of this type of dishonest rhetoric. That plus the number of them that seem to be transparently interested in advancing one side of the culture war and stop caring when their side is the one doing the censorship.
Again, love to be proven wrong here, but my hackles are way up after seeing this.
If millions of people were being sent to extermination camps for murder, rape, and being Jews, but the government did not offer a detailed breakdown of the stats, would you similarly complain about the groups decrying this with the information they had?
Yeah see this is the same type of misleading rhetoric I'm talking about.
First of all, no, if millions of people were being sent to extermination camps, I flatter myself that I wouldn't be posting snooty comments on message boards, I'd be arming myself and taking to the street. Your analogy preys on being so extreme that the original point about dishonest rhetoric is inconsequential in light of the magnitude of the scenario, it does nothing to actually disprove that point, or suggest that it might not be determinative in the real world.
Second of all, if someone told me millions of people were being sent to extermination camps camps for murder, rape, and being jews, and actually they were talking about 3 people being arrested at a pro-Israel rally and millions of people being arrested for rape and murder and 10 of those murderers being executed, then yeah my feelings *towards the person saying that* would still be 'fuck you for lying to me and confusing this issue'.
I'd still want to help all of those people independently of my feelings about the liar, but I wouldn't givethe liar my money, and frankly I'd call them an enemy of the cause as they are clouding the issue and turning off anyone who hates liars.
Not the UK, but here's a video from Germany where the police themselves characterize what they're doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc
I don't have anything as clear as this for the UK, but if you think it'd help, I could pull up several dozen stories of people being arrested for posts that would be perfectly legal in America – i.e., not threats, targeted harassment, defamation, and fraud.
I don't flatter myself: I'd do more or less what I'm doing now, and make fun of people puffing themselves up instead of admitting they're cowards who'd make excuses for state atrocities.
As I posted in another thread, I absolutely believe that the anecdotal cases exist and it's valorous to fight them. That doesn't make me like liars and those who are misrepresenting the situation.
The SPEAK website gives a bunch of examples of people being penalized for speech that would pass 1st Amendment muster in the US — though some of the examples could lead to firing in the US. I don't know about that 25/day number, but Greta Thunberg (who I'm not particularly sympathetic to) got hauled away for sitting and displaying a sign that supported some Palestinian-rights activists who are on a hunger strike in jail. Regardless of what you think of Thunberg or Palestinian rights, no one would get arrested for holding up a sign like that in the US (unless they were blocking an free-passage, and Thunberg wasn't).
> no one would get arrested for holding up a sign like that in the US
Tell that to Larry Bushart.
True. All they have to do is say a post or a sign threatens violence, and out go your 1A rights.
> displaying a sign that supported some Palestinian-rights activists who are on a hunger strike in jail. Regardless of what you think of Thunberg or Palestinian rights, no one would get arrested for holding up a sign like that in the US
Saying nothing of the rights and wrongs of banning holding up a sign expressing support for someone, it is important to realise that “Palestine Action” is a proscribed terrorist group in the UK, due to actions such as attacking a police woman with a sledgehammer and breaking her back, and sabotaging the engines of military aircraft. They are not merely “some Palestinian-rights activists on hunger strike”.
> “When the police arrived, as the defendants knew they would, Samuel Corner attacked them, going so far as to strike a female officer, Sgt Kate Evans, across the back with his sledgehammer while she was on the floor, facing away from him."
>”Having hit her once, he raised the sledgehammer again and hit her with it a second time," said Ms Heer.
>"Fortunately, Sgt Evans was wearing a stab vest which may have absorbed the force of the impacts. Nevertheless she screamed in pain as she felt the force of the blows.
>"She was immediately terrified that her spine had been damaged and when she tried, she was unable to get up."
>Sgt Evans suffered a fractured spine and was unable to work for three months. Due to the ongoing impact of the injury, she has been confined to restricted duties.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79727zeqyvo
As far as "sabotaging military hardware" goes, it's worth noting that Keir Starmer *personally defended* a protestor in the past for doing the same things that they proscribed PA for doing.
Palestine Action is a prescribed terrorist group in the UK, but its proscription as a terrorist group is _not_ "due to actions such as attacking a police woman with a sledgehammer".
So far as I know, there has been exactly one incident of that kind, and it happened _after_ PA were proscribed as a terrorist group.
Also, while I don't think anything in the description you quoted is outright false, I think it's quite misleading. I watched some video of that interaction, and would summarize it as follows. The PA activists were toting sledgehammers because they intended to smash up military hardware with them. The police arrived and started tasering the PA activists. One of them was complaining loudly[1] that the police were using excessive force on her. Kate Evans was one of the police officers restraining that person; she was "on the floor" in the sense that she wasn't in the air, and even in the sense that she was crouching down, but _not_ in the sense of e.g. being hurt or inactive. Yes, Corner hit her with a sledgehammer; yes, that was a bloody terrible thing to do; yes, he did Evans a very serious wrong by doing so. But I think there's a big difference between "Palestine Action is in the business of attacking police with sledgehammers" and "Palestine Action is in the business of smashing military hardware that it thinks might be used against Palestinians, and on one occasion one idiot Palestine Action activist thought it was a good idea to defend one of his friends from what he thought was police brutality by attacking a police officer with a sledgehammer". Both are bad, but they're bad in quite different ways.
[1] Which is not to say _rightly_.
It _is_ true that PA attempt to sabotage military hardware. It doesn't seem clear to me that this justifies calling them a terrorist group, and it seems very clear to me that it _doesn't_ justify arresting people for holding signs saying "I support Palestine Action".
(I would call a group "terrorist" only if it deliberately, or at least recklessly, causes severe harm to _people_ and not merely _property_, and does so at least partly with the intention of causing terror or something like it. So far as I can make out, PA doesn't have any sort of policy of harming people or not caring if they do -- Samuel Corner did, but not because PA encouraged him to do it -- and they damage military hardware to stop it being used for purposes they don't like and to raise awareness of their cause, not to make anyone frightened. So, for me, not terrorist.)
Yes, from my naïve lay perspective, it does sound like "treason" would be a better descriptor than "terrorism", but apparently UK law includes as terrorism any ideologically motivated serious damage to property which is meant to influence policy. I think the category makes a lot of sense, but it would have been nicer if it had been called "politically motivated crime" or something instead of "terrorism".
The KKK was designated a terrorist organization back in the 1870s. The clan was explicitly described in congressional debates and DOJ actions as an organized campaign of *terror* aimed at overthrowing lawful government and intimidating voters. And laws were passed banning the KKK, and its leaders were arrested. In modern times, the FBI has consistently described the KKK as a domestic extremist organization engaging in *terrorist* violence. The DoJ doesn't have a classification for domestic terrorist organizations, though. So we get to call Hamas a terrorist organization, but the KKK are just "extremists" with violent tendencies. And the KKK can still burn crosses on private property. Likewise, I believe I can still carry a pro-Hamas sign without facing arrest (as long as I don't incite violence while doing so, or interfere with public access). Not that I would, but labeling an organization as a terrorist doesn't mean you can't speak out in their favor.
And I'm old enough to remember large protests in the US and the UK for the Maze Prison hunger strikers. All of them were IRA, convicted of violent crimes, and terrorists under UK law. Yet the protests that happened were not interfered with unless they got violent. So spare me your moralizing about how Hamas supporters are especially evil.
Sure: you can argue the rights and wrongs around it.
But people being picked up for holding signs saying “I support Palestine Action” are being arrested for suggesting support for a legally proscribed terrorist group and implied support for their (violent) actions, not for supporting activists on hunger strike. There is a difference, and it speaks to a generally understood line around prescribing threats of violence.
Again, you can argue the rights and wrongs of the specifics, but this is a different situation to people being arrested for saying merely unpleasant things, and the context of who Palestine Action are matters.
(I note an odd sentence at the end there about ‘moralizing’, which confuses me. Was this intended in reference to someone else?)
Looking at the examples they have under their 'cases' page, the majority of them were dropped, overturned, or resulted in very minor punishment. My impression from that is the problem is overzealous policing, rather than the laws themselves.
Now, it is a problem if people are getting arrested and the courts are then saying there was no reason to do that, but it isn't necessarily the same problem as the one SPEAK seems to be trying to solve.
Still, it costs money to defend oneself, and having that on one's record might affect one's employment opportunities. So I wouldn't dismiss these out of hand as functionally equivalent to speeding tickets.
Is that so in the UK?
I absolutely agree that cases like that exist, and if SPEAK only talked about those, I'd be on their side.
But look at the front page of their website which Scott links to. 25 arrests per day for social media posts, in a giant banner in the center of the page. That's a lie.
I don't care whether the side they clam to be on has some good points it can make if it wants to. I care about whether this group is lying to promote itself, or incompetent to know it is posting mistruths.
How do you know it's a lie? Have you actually checked the Daily Mail's numbers?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15288091/Britains-police-state-unmasked-Map-reveals-shocking-numbers-clapped-handcuffs-offensive-social-media-posts.html
Yes, I would tend to doubt that claim, because it comes from the Daily Mail, but I also doubt people who dismiss it out of hand without digging into the Daily Mail's numbers.
The OP is correct to express their doubts. But per the OP...
> These laws of course do not just cover public social media posts, they cover any communication sent by internet or mobile phone network. This includes all manner of direct personal messages such as phone calls, text messages, email, Whatsapp, etc. So the idea that all of these arrests are over public speech is wrong...
In my opinion, that's even worse! That implies they're monitoring and penalizing private communications!
It dies not imply, at all, that private communication is being monitored, but that victims of direct messages featuring threats, fraus, etc. are denouncing those crimes to the authorities
...so you agree it's a lie, and also think I'm bad for not checking whether it's a lie, and also didn't notice I'm the same person who posted the original comment where I did check and found it was a lie, which you quote me doing?
Couple of thoughts that seemed interesting enough but since I'm no substacker, this is second best:
I was musing on how people don't generally seem to have principled political stances. Often they are not even really coherent, surging from social pressure and media narratives instead. This makes sense because it's easier to have popular political stances, then I came to think that on top of that it "solves" the tragedy of the commons problem in politics, that is, whatever investment of time and effort from an individual into politics, in almost no situation is that investment worth it at the individual level.
Leaning into the aesthetic of an ideology rather than the ethic allows you to collect all of the social benefits with none of the compromises or quandaries of having a solid, principled position.
Of course, in the usual tragedy of the common manner of things, if this is done by too much people the system breaks and everybody is worse off. I'm not sure this hasn't already happened.
I actually have a theory where exactly this fact, working in democracies with a free press and people having to occasionally talk politics is actually what is keeping world peace.
Think: If Trump were to conquer Venezuela and Greenland, move the entire population into camps and extract all the resources (which historically has been quite common) he could share the wealh out to all his citizens.
However, supporting such a policy will make you feel a tiny bit bad when you have to watch the photos of it in the papers. So freeloaders defect and vote against the invasions, knowing that they will get to feel good about themselves while having only a minimal impact on the actual decision, and in case of invasion they will still get their slice.
The everybody defects.
Now you are stuck with a government that can't actually invade other countries and steal all the stuff, even if it is each citizens selfish interest to do so.
Step 3: Peace.
You can have a principle of advancing your tribes interests.
My theory is that almost all political opinions are actually tribal signaling with whatever logic, explanation, reasoning, etc. backfilled afterward, sometimes convincingly.
Notice how people are able to argue for their position on some issue or other, then when their tribe changes its stance on that issue, they come around to supporting the new stance, complete with coherent arguments.
Depends why the tribe changed it’s position. Updating on new information is good, right?
Remember at the very beginning of COVID, when masking was a right-wing signal and it was the left-wingers who were against it? Then it rapidly switched (in the spring of 2020, I think?) and making became left-wing, anti-masking became right-wing, and it stayed that way.
I don't think your average right- and left-wingers suddenly each got new information and updated their positions accordingly. Rather, they looked around at what the group they identified with was doing and fell in line, and/or looked at what their outgroup was doing and did the opposite.
There was a firehose of “new” information throughout the whole ordeal, and yes, for a lot of people it became right or left coded. So I still say it depends on why the tribe changed their position. What was ivermectin coded as? I don’t think the Covid ordeal is a particularly good example because it was so extreme and confusing. Lots of things got very stupid.
Covid serves as a nice easy example because of its extremeness, and it’s close at hand temporally too so it’s still easy to draw on, but I believe this pattern generalizes. Everything from fashion choices to language use to a person’s sophisticated opinions is downstream from tribal identity, and not tied to any one set of values. Let the school of fish suddenly veer in one direction or the other, and all its members will follow suit without even noticing the change.
I remember one Curtis Yarvin's criticisms against democracy was something like that, that democracy can only work when your citizens are pretty high caliber and also very engaged in the running of their society, and we don't have either...
I don't entirely disagree, but my primary argument against this is that for complex topics, most people will be more accurate believing experts than taking a private guess.
You can paint partisan loyalty as irrational tribalism. Or you can accept the premise behind representative democracy, that few citizens can be experts on every political topic of the day, but they can try to find experts who share their values and preferences and then trust what those experts tell them.
Under that framework, it makes a lot of sense to stay loyal to your party/tribe/pundits/etc. and change your opinion to match what they are saying, if you believe that they know better than you and share your values.
Of course, that system is vulnerable to dysfunction and exploitation... as most systems are. But I don't like to blame individual normal people for high-level systemic disregulation, when I can avoid it.
A bunch of chemists have questioned the methodological rigor of a big microplastics and nanoplastics study. If I understand their criticism, they question if some of the results were false positives due to contamination (on the instruments and during storage), and...
> Many biological lipids, especially long-chain fatty acids, produce pyrolysis products that mimic polyethylene mass fragments7. In the absence of adequate analytical expertise, procedural precision and robust QA/QC protocols, this resemblance may lead to misclassification. Recommended practices include verifying polymer identity by using multiple diagnostic mass fragments or marker ions (that is, distinctive ion signals characteristic of specific polymers) and verifying consistent retention time patterns.
They also implicate other studies as sharing the same poor quality assurance/quality control methodologies.
I am not an organic chemist, so I can't judge their criticisms. But it seems like we should start asking other labs to replicate these results after implementing the recommended QA/QC protocols. Given that plastics have been in our environment for over 50 years now, and that we haven't seen a decrease in the age-adjusted *rates* of cancers or alzheimers, if those MNPs are accumulating in our bodies, they don't seem to be affecting our overall health. Moreover, I'm old enough to have lived through a bunch of other scares that never came to pass, so I admit I'm skeptical of anyone unilaterally proclaiming the sky is falling.
In Nature Medicine, "Challenges in studying microplastics in human brain" by Monikh, et al. This link should allow you read the Nature Medicine commentary without having an account...
https://tinyurl.com/bdfr2hzw
Seeing how effectively the blood-brain barrier is at stopping e.g. small-molecule drugs bigger than IIRC 500 Daltons from reaching brain tissue, I am *exceedingly* skeptical of claims that "microplastics" are making their way into the brain. Even nanoplastics would be a stretch; you'd almost have to get down to picoplastics and at that point they're no longer plastics.
Or else there's some bit of extreme weirdness in the BBB where it actively hoovers up the microplastics and puts them in the express lane to the brain. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I haven't seen anyone even *trying* to explain that one.
Figure 1d from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1 (major paper claiming brain damage from microplastics, 500 citations) absolutely screams "the dementia research center contaminated their samples." I don't know how anyone looks at that and thinks the microplastics are causing dementia when there's not a single healthy person with a microplastics level over 10,000 and not a single dementia patient with a level below 12000. Among other issues, surely the microplastics don't work instantly, so where are the people who just got their 30,000 units of microplastics but haven't started declining yet?
To which I shrug my shoulders. On the hierarchy of scientific evidence, these are all case reports, in vitro studies, and cross-sectional studies. Going up the hierarchy, we need case-control studies, cohort studies, randomized controlled trials, or large epidemiological studies, and at the top of the pyramid are systematic reviews. All these are required for conclusive proof of an etiological claim in the biosciences. Yes, it is suggestive that something may be going on. But AFAIK, there are no case-control studies comparing the cadaver tissues of people without dementia/Alzheimer's to patients with dementia/Alzheimer's.
Yet if it is the claim that microplastics are causing dementia/Alzheimer's, why has the age-adjusted dementia/Alzheimer’s prevalence and incidence (and mortality) been slowly falling for decades? There's no signal in the macro data. That should alert us to a disconnect between the science being done at the bottom of the hierarchy and what we're seeing at the population level.
Unfortunately, the goal of modern science is not the search for truth, but for grant money. Negative results don't sell journals. Negative results don't garner grants. Negative results don't get tenure. And there's nothing like a perceived crisis to generate interest and funding (and to create an ecosystem of journals to support the papers resulting from the influx of research grants).
Ah, I may have not spoken clearly enough. My concern is that this study had such an impact in the field, when the data is so visibly crappy- it's not strong evidence either way in terms of microplastics actually causing harm, because crappy data can't be strong evidence of anything. However, the paper, reviewer, and citer's failure to mention or notice the crappy data is pretty strong evidence that the field is headed towards some kind of replication crisis.
My bad. I misunderstood your point. For me, Reading on an iPhone often is equivalent to misreading on a iPhone.
Wouldn't reversed-biomolecule organisms be unable to consume normal ones for food? What's the threat?
Life can evolve to digest the wrong chirality, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinickia_caryophylli can consume mirror glucose. Hopefully mirror life wouldn't be intentionally designed to consume normal glucose, but given time it would likely work it out.
OK, but then once that time has passed we just have the status quo all over again.
Eventually yes- but the transition would be hectic. Some species can evolve de novo metabolic pathways in a span of a few years- see the ecoli citrate experiment-but plenty of other important species don’t reproduce fast enough to evolve a new metabolic pathway even given millenia
I recommend the writeup at https://press.asimov.com/articles/mirror-life. In particular: "Mirrored cells would still be able to feed on achiral carbon sources, such as glycerol, and harvest nitrogen from ammonia, nitrate, and achiral organic compounds, including glycine."
Does that make them more threatening than the cells that already do this?
If a creature consumes a resource and has no natural predators, then it is likely to outcompete the other creatures that consume that same resource but do have natural predators.
You're assuming that both groups are restricted to consuming nothing but that resource.
No, the concern is that mirror microbes' advantage at avoiding predators is much larger than their disadvantage at finding food.
No, that's just the reason why they wouldn't die out right away. What makes them more threatening than other cells is that our immune systems wouldn't be able to stop them, because the mechanisms that macrophages use to detect and destroy pathogens are chiral. The relevant section is https://press.asimov.com/articles/mirror-life#infected-world.
I know nothing about it really but my assumption was more that they could start to crowd out the non-mirror lifeforms more than anything else. Maybe the mirror versions have could be toxic to larger lifeforms? I don’t think there’s any way that they could drive non-mirror lifeforms extinct but maybe they could be bad news for vertebrates etc. But would love to hear the idea from someone with any real idea.
It's worth noting that some physicists have claimed that the right-handed chirality we observe in the biochemistry of life is an emergent phenomenon from the chirality of the Standard Model. I don't have a horse in this race, but if there's something basic and advantageous about right-handed chirality, then LUCA's biochemistry would not have had a right-handed chirality by chance. Could we make a biochemistry based on left-handed chirality work? I don't know, but even if we could, the Earth's entire biochemical ecosystem is right-handed, and most of its biochemical resources are right-handed. Hard to see how critters with left-handed biochemistries could gain a foothold in our right-handed ecosystems. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, though.
I think you might be: there exist right-handed (normal) organisms that can metabolize left-handed (or racemic) sugars, so the concern is that left-handed analogues of those can "gain a foothold" in the ecosystem.
The dream of reversed sugar was that it reacts normally with your tastebuds but, since it's reversed, it's completely indigestible and you get zero calories from it.
Those things are both true, but it failed in the market because undigested sugar means diarrhea.
It seems unlikely - extremely unlikely - that a reversed molecule would be toxic where the normal molecule wasn't.
Crowding out could happen, but that doesn't distinguish left-life from right-life in any way. All crowding out so far has been done right-to-right.
I can’t help thinking of Frank Gorshin in that Star Trek episode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_Battlefield
Is it even practically possible to create mirror life ? I understand that the laws of physics do not prevent it, but can it be done here on Earth given our level of engineering ? It seems like in order to do that, one would have to create a mirrored copy of every biological pathway, on the atomic level, and there number of pathways we understand well enough to do that even in theory is currently very small.
Even if someone did create a mirror bacterium or whatever, what is going to stop it from being immediately outcompeted into obvlivion by the regular kind ? It's going to be one mirror organism against the entire global ecosystem, and I don't like those odds even if that one organism is technically inedible.
Possibly the laws of physics would prevent it, though. Some physicists have claimed that the right-handed chirality we observe in the biochemistry of life is an emergent phenomenon from the chirality of the Standard Model.
It does invite the question of exactly what needs to be "studied" here. Like, obviously don't create mirror life? Right up there with not re-synthesizing smallpox? The MBDF page has what looks like, for example, approving references to studies of "precursor technologies." Why are we funding that, exactly? So we know what to not fund again after we are all eaten by reverse-chirality E. coli or like?
It does get tricky, though. For example, in my previous comment I said that we currently don't understand enough about biological pathways to create mirror life. Understanding more of them would technically move us closer to creating mirror life; so should we stop studying pathways ?
Yes. Yes we should stop. Do not build the torment nexus.
Less tritely -- I have read and heard approximately zero reasons why building the tech to create mirror life and solving the associated problems specific to mirror life might be useful or helpful, and at least one reason why it could be potentially disastrous for all life on earth of which we are aware. The cost-benefit analysis here seems crystal clear, and doing more studies about how bad it could be seems to also be moving us closer to the bad state. Stop now!
Excellent, so we should stop studying biological pathways. This means no cure for multiple diseases including notably cancer, no super-efficient crops, no bacteria to terraform Mars; basically we're going to freeze our understanding of biology at our current level -- all in exchange for avoiding a potential mirror life outbreak which may or may not be possible. Still worth it ?
In this weird hypothetical where the only way to shut it down is to stop all biological research entirely, rather than subsections of it? Yes.
The risks from gain-of-function research probably outweigh the benefits of the entire rest of virology and then some. The risk of black-ball tech is always out there, of course. Bioweaponry. Over the next ten years, we stand to lose a lot more from mirror life risk alone than we stand to gain from all biological research combined.
In reality, only very limited subsections of research need to be stopped, though.
> In this weird hypothetical where the only way to shut it down is to stop all biological research entirely, rather than subsections of it? Yes.
That's the problem: this is not a weird hypothetical, this is the reality -- because all of nature is connected. There's really no such thing as pathway analysis as distinct from genetics, or genetics as distinct from chemistry, or chemistry as distinct from physics, or physics as distinct from cosmology, and so on. These are distinctions we humans make because we've got a limited amount of time in our lives to study all this stuff. Any discovery you make can ultimately be used to build some kind of superweapon, from fire and steel to nuclear physics and biology. There's no such thing as some magical tag in nature that says "this technique can be used to forge better armor but not better swords". Once you understand metallurgy, you can do both; so your choices are always both, or neither.
There was a paper exploring the risks of mirror life. Tech to create it isn't currently here, but it could be here in 10 years: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/386988387_Confronting_risks_of_mirror_life
Basically, mirror life would have no predators, and no immune systems would work against it.
Right, but by that token, it doesn't have much prey either. And once you do create that mirror bacterium, what stops conventional evolution from working against it ?
If there are simple microorganisms whose food sources are mostly non-chiral, then the reversed version of those microorganisms will thrive, because they have all the food sources and adaptations of the regular version, but none of the predators and immune systems will work against it.
Conventional evolution would eventually lead things to develop resistance, just as it does to invasive species everywhere. But this doesn’t work that quickly (as we see with mongooses in Hawaii and cane toads in Australia and so on), and this life would be potentially invasive everywhere.
Are we talking about entire mirrored ecosystems (i.e. left-handed mongooses and toads), or just bacteria ?
The concern is mostly microbes (bacteria and the like) because those are considered, I think correctly, more proximate than mirror mongooses and toads.
True, but then they'd be under constant competition by conventional microbes, who do evolve quite quickly.
Well, maybe you should read the paper. I remember it was written by a lot of leading specialists who think developing mirror life is very dangerous, the summary was good enough for my interests, I didn't read the paper myself.
And it would be difficult for a chirally left-handed creature to metabolize the right-handed chemicals we are made of. Hard to see right-handed life offering it an ecological foothold. The paper seems to focus on immune-system evasion, but it doesn't address whether a left-handed bacterium could use right-handed cells for energy.
From the paper,
> Many bacteria, including Escherichia coli, can grow robustly in growth media without chiral nutrients; hence, mirror versions of those bacteria would do the same. Achiral nutrients are available in quantities sufficient for growth of common bacteria in a wide range of natural environments, including within potential hosts. Further genetic engineering could provide mirror bacteria with pathways needed to consume abundant chiral nutrients such as D-glucose.
That's fine. But put L-bacteria in a medium with D-nutrients, the L-bacteria won't be able to consume it. And the human body and all the plants and animals on earth can be largely considered as sacks of D-nutrients for L-bacteria. After reading that quote, I think the authors are purposely misstating their case. Notice that they don't explain what these achiral resources might be in D-hosts. Can any biochemists chime in? Other than amino acids and peptides, which AFAIK are all or mostly L, we produce D-protens, D sugars, and D lipids, don't we? And those are the things that bacteria feed on.
reading the mantic monday post and nodding along that prediction markets would feel more revolutionary if they were actually driving policy improvements, maybe through conditional markets
but reading scott's obit i now can't escape the image that ai and prediction markets were both in some sense built by nerds thinking, "but the optimal policy space here is obvious, why isn't everyone implementing it? we should simply invent something even smarter than us, that will convince everyone"
maybe an exaggeration but feels like there's at least a good dilbert comic in there somewhere
For the prediction markets at least, a questions is what is stopping them from reaching their potential for policy improvements right now?
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-prediction-markets-arent-popular/
This was written before the pivot to illegal sports gambling made them big, but the same problems still block them from doing anything *useful*.
People often talk about vibe coding with AI, but there is also using AI for design review before you implement.
A recent example of a fairly small program I was implementing. I’m uploading scans of out of copyright books to The Internet Archive. If the book has a Library of Congress catalog entry, I can just use that. But if there isn’t, I ought to create a new catalog entry. Ok, my dear LLM, what is the reasonable minimal library catalog metadata i ought to attach to a scanned book? Substantial LLM discussion occurs of annoying special cases that are highly likely to occur in a pile of books being scanned. (Reprints, translated works …) And I now have a database schema of a subset of the MARC standard that looks like it will do the job.
Absolutely. LLMs are incredibly useful for discussing plans for projects of all kinds, including programming projects among many others, even if you never let them near the code. It has a lot of sensible suggestions for what platforms to use, how to architecturally structure things, etc. Not to be taken as gospel, but almost always fairly good and often very good.
That said, many of the people in the large software company where I work do believe that the future of software engineering is code being written by AI, even if our current company policies mean we're not allowed to check in any code written by AI that hasn't been carefully reviewed line-by-line by at least two humans.
did you scan the books yourself?
Yes, I was scanning some books myself.
We need a test like "How would you feel if you hadn't had breakfast this morning" test, except for Bayesian reasoning.
E.g. "If I'm an NBA basketball player, and I'm the shortest person on my team, and I'm 5'8", how tall am I?" (Ideally, the question should be arranged so people we want to filter out are inclined to ignore the specific evidence and still say "Wow, you're a basketball player, you must be tall!")
Intermediate test:
- If Elbonians commit 50x the average amount of fraud, is it racist to prohibit Elbonians from joining my company?
- If everyone goes through a background check that is good enough to end the prohibition on Elbonians, is the background check racist if it disproportionately screens out Elbonians?
- Since this may be a collective action problem, should we make it illegal to use background checks, would that make the market less racist?
Advanced test:
If group A has 25% of people who actively hate you and all people of your nationality, and group B has 5% of people who actively hate you, which group should you join?
Suppose you found out the groups were divided by gender, height, race, or randomly. Should you still avoid group A, depending on how it was formed?
Final test:
Suppose that Elbanians commit crime at 4x the rate of Kneebonians. Is it racist to screen out Elbanians in your application process?
Suppose you learn that, among the population of people who owned a dog when they grew up, Elbanians and Kneebonians are no different in crime rate. Further, Elbanians and Kneebonians who didn't own a dog when they grew up (non-dog-owners), had the same crime rate, and it was 2x the rate of the dog-owning group. Is it racist to screen out Elbanians knowing this?
Is it racist to screen out non-dog-owners?
To the basic premise:
If you didn't care at all about social justice, public policy outcomes, PR, team moral, or anything besides optimizing profit under this narrow metric, you still wouldn't have blanket ban.
You'd calculate the expected amount of fraud for every race, gender, age group, college major, etc., note that value for every resume you receive, and hire the resume that has the best expected value to the company when you subtract their expected fraud from their expected productivity.
A blanket ban doesn't optimize expected profits the way an expected utility calculation like this does, and therefore can't be explained by profit motive; the remaining explanation is racism.
Similarly, an isolated demand for rigor against Elbonians without considering the same factor for everyone else under the sun, is inherently racist - even if the policy you produce is narrowly rational. By analogy- say that you did the math and proved that making voters pass a civics test led to good outcomes and was a rational policy, but then decided that only black people had to take the test. Innately racist implementation, whether or not the test is a good idea.
> If you didn't care at all about social justice, public policy outcomes, PR, team moral, or anything besides optimizing profit under this narrow metric, you still wouldn't have blanket ban.
> You'd calculate the expected amount of fraud for every race, gender, age group, college major, etc., note that value for every resume you receive, and hire the resume that has the best expected value to the company when you subtract their expected fraud from their expected productivity.
This isn't correct; you need to take into account the cost of making these calculations. One thing about blanket bans is that they're extremely cheap to implement.
Sure, but in this hypothetical those numbers are apparently public knowledge already, it's not an expensive calculation. It's kinda implausible to think that an extra minute of work to find the right employee would be more costly than hiring the wrong employee, that's why people have hiring departments.
More to the point, if you never calculate whether the ban has positive utility and just do it in a reactionary way because you heard a scary statistic about a minority, then yeah that's racist.
Like, imagine that one boss hears that business majors commit 50x more fraud, but he's a business major and resents this, he looks up the average amount of fraud and it's .01% of total productivity, he decides that even .5% isn't enough to be meaningful in hiring decisions, and ignores it.
Second boss hears that Elbonians commit 50x more fraud, thinks 'wow that sounds really bad', and implements a blanket ban.
Wherever you want to place the blame, this is the outcome of a racist system.
Intermediate:
1. Yes
2. No
3. No
Advanced:
1. Insufficient information
2. Insufficient information, unless you meant to ask whether the method of forming the groups is sufficient to decide which one you should join, in which case, it isn't.
Final:
1. Yes
(Although I should note that your problem statement doesn't describe any difference of any kind between Elbonians and Kneebonians. It seems like you might have meant to describe a difference in the rate of dog ownership, but you didn't.)
I don't see how "If I'm an NBA basketball player, and I'm the shortest person on my team, and I'm 5'8", how tall am I?" resembles any of the questions you follow it with.
They're Bayesian reasoning trick questions, either in identifying which information is more specific vs. general; or in identifying what constitutes new information in the first place. I'd like to see how people actually engage with them, to see if a more concise question can be written.
There was a good paper by a psychologist who did a deep (probably ongoing) investigation of the classic trick question "A bat and a ball cost $1.10 together. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?"
Among his findings was that providing the 'hint' "The answer is five cents. Please write 'five cents' in the space beside here:" barely improves people's accuracy.
I recently wrote a review of Scott's novel UNSONG for The Republic of Letters: https://therepublicofletters.substack.com/p/is-this-the-great-effective-altruist
TLDR: it's the funniest book I've ever read and you should pick up a copy immediately. But if for some reason you're on the fence, the review may prove useful!
It would also make an amazing setting for a videogame.
I’m looking for recommendations for an in depth analysis of vaccines. Specifically, what the risks of different vaccines are juxtaposed with their expected individual benefit and expected social benefit (e.g. herd immunity), along with the corresponding research and the evaluation of the quality of that research.
Most of what I can find is either highly conspiratorial and devoid of rigorous research, or highly dismissive of the question and devoid of rigorous research.
Does anyone here have a recommendation? I was hoping Scott would have done something like this but that does not appear to be the case.
I, too, would like that kind of dispassionate, non-partisan take on vaccines. I've swung on both extremes, from total rejection per Christian Science to being so admiring I used to fantasize about taking anti-vaxxer's vaccines *for* them, but now I'm occasionally suspicious of corporate interest and Nudge manipulation. Patently dumb stuff like my doctor offering me a flu shot in mid-September and then immediately agreeing with my objection that it was too early to be effective during the most dangerous part of flu season and the widespread insistence on vaccinating people for Covid right after recovering from Covid, or while they *had* Covid, doesn’t help.
I want to take vaccines! I do! Just not the dumb ones!
Why is September too early? The CDC recommends Sept or Oct.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/hcp/acip/index.html
And I think the September recommendation is likely public health nudge "anything is better than nothing" manipulation. The efficacy of flu shots wears off over time, and if you get one very early, it may not be at peak efficacy or even useful when you're in the greatest danger.
I'm not finding the exact article, which was an interview with a flu specialist epidemiologist in a respected publication, hoping for either timing a later recommendation or perhaps a second flu shot in mid-late winter, but I took note. When I asked my doctor if it was too soon, he instantly agreed I was correct, it was likely too early, in a "yep, of course, we're on the same page" tone. He has always pushed back on me when I've said something objectively incorrect. So I don't think he was just trying to hustle me out, but has either read similar stuff or just observed that September flu shots arent as useful.
GPT5.2. I have had it do several big picture analyses of medical matters. To double check the results, click on some of the main sources. To triple check feed it’s response to Claude and ask it to assess how fair and accurate the review is.
> I can now announce that they are SPEAK , their platform is a Free Speech Act for the UK
First thing on their website is a claim 25 people a day are arrested for "speech crimes" which is technically true if you consider private individuals sending threats and harassment to other private individuals an important protected kind of free speech, which is most of what is prosecuted under the law being referenced. Not that there aren't problems with UK law in this area but it doesn't give me great confidence in their intellectual honesty.
It actually says '25 arrests per day for online posts', which is just a straight up lie unless you consider a telephone call an 'online post'.
Definitely depletes my trust in the org.
I've been thinking a lot lately about China's "one child policy". It started in 1979. So it's been more than one generation.
The thing I keep thinking about -- if everyone has only one child: you have no siblings, obviously; but you also have no aunts or uncles; and that means no cousins.
I'm super curious how that affects the idea of "family".
Anyone here grow up that way? Like no aunts, uncles cousins, siblings -- not just yourself, but in your community?
Having grown up in a Catholic American family with bundles of aunts and uncles and cousins -- most of whom I never see anymore -- it fells so strange. But maybe it doesn't really matter(?)
My family was like that. I am an only child. My father was an only child. My mother had a sister but she died before I was born, and without having any children. My community, though, was not like that. I grew up in regular US suburbs. Pretty much all the kids I knew had sibs. I don’t remember feeling sad about it, or lonely, it was just the way life was.
Anecdotally I've met people from that era who think of their cousins as defacto siblings. Another massive social issue is that at the same time as this you got large numbers of working age adults leaving their kids with grandparents most of the time, either due to moving to cities for work or working long hours. So people say that your kids are for your grandparents and your kids are for you. Which must also do odd things to family dynamics
> Anecdotally I've met people from that era who think of their cousins as defacto siblings.
I know someone who generally refers to her cousin as a "sister", but she'll clarify if it comes up. The relationship isn't that close, since they live in different countries. It's just a terminology thing.
You could argue that the choice to use this terminology says something, but I'm not sure what that would be. Sibling terminology is also used between nonrelatives, including between strangers.
(It's also potentially relevant that the sibling terminology is, in this case, a clipping of the cousin terminology, 表妹 vs 妹.)
> Another massive social issue is that at the same time as this you got large numbers of working age adults leaving their kids with grandparents most of the time, either due to moving to cities for work or working long hours. So people say that your kids are for your grandparents and your kids are for you. Which must also do odd things to family dynamics
How much of a difference is this from prior practice?
Doesn't the "Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund" seems far more likely to get people interested in creating mirror life than reducing that (near-zero) interest? I've seen this movie before, though at least this time there isn't an obvious enormous economic incentive...
IIRC, the mirror biology people spent several years on the down-low, then went public all at once last year when they decided that mirror life was close enough to reality that the risk of signal-boosting it was lower than the risk of remaining quiet.
My understanding (from them, misunderstandings my own) was that mirror life wasn't anything like close at all. I've confirmed that with some independent biologists. But a number of academic groups had started to do early work on mirror biology, and so they convened a discussion, and eventually those groups agreed to shut down their work. Which all seemed very sensible. Any attempt to make a big ongoing fuss seems, as darwin said, a bit like running around shouting about how we really shouldn't build the Torment Nexus
'Don't build the Torment Nexus!'
'Huh? What's the Torment Nexus?'
'Here, look at these very detailed design specifications for the Torment Nexus that we've spent a lot of time and money developing! So we can stop it!'
There does seem to be some risk of a Streisand effect to it. How many people knew about mirror life two years ago, vs how many people know about it now, having heard about it through various articles, stories, etc wherein it's described as potentially the most dangerous possible bioweapon that was must do our utmost to guard against? Did people just give up on the whole infohazard idea?
The commitments that came about as a result of the Science article are genuinely good news - a bunch of labs stopped work on mirror biology. But public-facing advocacy on a large scale seems dubious. Hanging up a big sign saying "dangerous capabilities here", and pointing at it repeatedly - as in an ACT post - seems like a way of ensuring people get interested.
https://kaiteorn.substack.com/p/parliamentary-democracy-as-an-ai
Charisma is an exploit. It hacks human vulnerabilities: social instincts, pattern-matching, desire for meaning and leadership. Smart people think they're immune, but they're not. When AIs master this exploit, as they inevitably will, we'll have no defense.
Proposed solution: Let's force AIs to fight each other publicly, in a mandatory parliament where every public model must participate, every argument is archived, and red-teaming is constant and visible. It's not a perfect solution but it might buy us time.
>Smart people think they're immune, but they're not
Not being perfectly immune isn't the same thing as being infinitely exploitable. This isn't a simple binary proposition. Sure, there are some things that a sufficiently charismatic person could talk me into but they're not anything of any significance.
If charisma had infinite utility then some commercial would've cracked the code and made infinite money. The reality is that charisma, like everything, has nonzero but finite value. Peak charisma probably looks like Charles Manson or Jim Jones: cultists who are able to manipulate a very small subset of extremely vulnerable people.
> If charisma had infinite utility then some commercial would've cracked the code and made infinite money.
"If this were possible, we would have already seen it" is a fallacy because there hasn't yet been infinite time for the natural evolution to try out all the infinite possibilities. We are still young. Little surprises of the kind "wow, nobody ever tried this before, and it may even look dumb, but it beats the crap out of the old stuff" happen all the time; to think that no big surprise of this kind is yet to be discovered is silly.
Also, I find this counterargument pretty ironic when the subject: AI safety. This whole domain is pretty much based on "what if this or that parameter escapes to infinity" kind of arguments.
Or hire very uncharismatic people to interface with the AI directly, then share their arguments with the rest of us.
It might still be possible to hack the rest of us at that level of remove, but it's at least a way noisier channel and a much harder problem.
Training your own personal interface AI from scratch is going to be much more realistic soon than hiring a person for anything.
So, not Sigourney Weaver?
Seeing how Scott has failed to deposit the appropriate protection money, I have had no choice but to follow through on my threat to create an audio drama version of his classic short story "Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person". Its our take on the soundscape and voices of the story and it comes with a full-length original score.
You can give it a listen, download and share it for free or do whatever else you like with it (including giving feedback) here: https://soundcloud.com/heinrichlenz/scott-alexander-universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/s-9fapb0bDCqZ
We have developed this as part of a broader performance of live audio versions of psychedelic short stories - if you or someone you knows runs an event where this would be a good addition, do hit me up. We are based in Germany so unless you have a lot of money to spend, probably you should also be somewhere in central Europe.
If our demands are not met, "Idol Words" will follow. You have been warned.
This is great
I don't think mirror life is really a concern... Is it? its version of mirror life (normal life) already has many gigatons of biomass and billions of years of evolution ahead of it. Also super intelligent entities that would stop it.
Obviously if you are talking about intentionally maliciously engineered versions that's bad, but that's a pretty odd way of going about a bioweapon. I doubt it would beat a basic virus as a weapon.
Seconded. I haven't been following this closely (though I at least read the Smithsonian article). Still, the bottom line seems to be: Mirror life would have no predators - but neither could it _be_ a predator on normal life. It couldn't eat any of our amino acids except glycine (which is achiral). A mirror life bacterium attempting to be a pathogen in a human bloodstream couldn't as much as eat a molecule of glucose in our blood plasma. At worst, I'd expect a photosynthetic mirror phytoplankton to compete for achiral inputs against existing photosynthetic phytoplankton. I haven't seen a decent argument for why this should be a major worry.
Ironically, mirror phytoplankton is the most dangerous form of mirror life. Mirror phytoplankton is inedible, so if mirror phytoplankton became a significant part of the phytoplankton population, then all the zooplankton will starve.
Zooplankton will either die wasting energy trying to digest mirror phytoplankton or evolve to selectively avoid mirror phytoplankton. If zooplankton develops a mirror phytoplankton avoidance behavior, mirror phytoplankton will have a major competitive advantage and outcompete normal phytoplankton. Once mirror phytoplankton become dominant, the zooplankton starve. This leads to the catastrophic collapse of all marine ecosystems as the base of the entire food web has been replaced by something inedible.
Many Thanks! I agree that, of the places for concerns, the bottom of the food chain is the most serious one, since, as we both agree, phytoplankton, mirror or normal, don't rely on preying on anything else. I agree that mirror phytoplankton would have a competitive advantage in that nothing would prey on them. I'm skeptical that the advantage is so large that they would become dominant. We sometimes see phytoplankton blooms where organisms die uneaten, presumably overwhelming predator populations.
My only counterpoint would be: maybe it's possible to have an organism that can break down a left and turn it into a right in an efficient enough way so it can eat both. Seems thermodynamically insanely difficult.
Many Thanks! Good point! It turns out that there are amino acid racemases, enzymes that can convert chiral amino acids into a 50:50 mix of left-handed and right-handed enantiomers. I guess this weakens _both_ the "mirror organisms won't be prey of normal ones" and "mirror organisms won't be predators of normal ones" arguments.
I have always been an American expansionist and wish we had taken over more land in the 1800s and even early 1900s when it was still acceptable to do so. Among other things, I wish we would acquire Greenland. However, I completely disagree with Trump's strategy for doing so since his bullying has insulted the other side's pride so much that they will refuse any deal.
Instead, I think we should respectfully offer Greenland a deal that will benefit them, like a Compact of Free Association along with large, one-time cash payments to each adult Greenlander.
I also think the U.S. should buy uninhabited or very sparsely inhabited islands from poor countries, particularly islands near major shipping lanes. We would use the bases as listening posts and military bases that could support attacks across the world.
The only thin that could explain the Greenland thing, beyond "Trump is stupid/Senile", is that he wants to insult European allies for some reason.
When he threatened to disband NATO if other nation don't increase defense spending, it actually worked, and they increased defense spending, even though at the time Trump was widely criticized.
I don't see what Trump hopes to gain this time, though. Does he actually wants to disband NATO?
Maybe by making them think they can't count on the U.S. to protect them, it will spur them to increase their defense spending since they'll believe they will have to face Russia alone.
It seems more likely that it will spur them to increase spending, and cultivate closer ties with China, because they'll believe they will have to face America in concert with their other allies (most of whom used to be our allies).
I mean, maybe the Germans were playing 11-dimensional chess in 1937-1939, with all the apparent warmongering meant to scare the rest of Western Europe into building the sort of military they'd need to face Commie Aggression in the coming years. And in fact the Western Europeans did wind up with adequate forces to face Commie Aggression in the coming years. So, OK, maybe you'd call that a success. But I'd prefer not to adopt Germany's strategy of 1937-1939 here.
Maybe? But it would also make allies angry at you, is it really worth it?
> Instead, I think we should respectfully offer Greenland a deal that will benefit them, like a Compact of Free Association along with large, one-time cash payments to each adult Greenlander.
Why do you want the United States to do something utterly futile?
If, e.g., Barack Obama had offered a deal like that fifteen years ago, it might have been possible to arrange something. But now any possibility of such a deal is well and truly dead, for a generation at least. Any offer the United States could make would be laughably inadequate, or presumed to be a lie that we intend to go back on as soon as we have what we want, or both. Even if President Newsom were to offer that deal five years from now, nobody would take it on the grounds that the next US election might have them living under a vengeful MAGA regime.
And I'm not seeing any practical value in the United States owning Greenland either. Yes, it's a good place to put military bases. Which is why we *already have* military bases there. We have military bases in a great many useful places, hosted by our allies, and with those allies providing logistical support and helping with local defense.
The current plan of ensuring that America can only put military bases in the places America has invaded and conquered, and which we can hold against all our enemies in a world where we have no allies, seems particularly daft. But even if we imagine that it were still possible for us to buy these territories, which it isn't, it would mean paying far too much for something we already have.
In my original post, I said nothing about the timing of our nice offer to Greenland. Yes, clearly because of Trump's actions any deal is out the of question for years, which is why I think we should wait until he is out of office before making another offer.
The most appealing thing about owning Greenland is just expanding the size of the U.S. Call me childish (or make whatever Freudian interpretation you want of my thinking), but I'd like it to be bigger.
This would be a great idea if the US was the best country in the world, which it unfortunately isn't. In the case of Greenland, if it was Danish, on this map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index it would be dark blue ("full democracy"), and if it was in the USA it would turn cyan ("flawed democracy").
For an island which is red or yellow on the map, I'm totally with you, because it would improve the inhabitants' lives. But the decision should be theirs.
Russia envy?
> We would use the bases as listening posts and military bases that could support attacks across the world.
The irony is, that the US already has those. Here's one of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_Air_Base
They're really great for projecting power far away from home! Or for treating your soldiers that were wounded in your Middle East adventures, some of whom would certainly have died, had they have to be transported all the way back to the US mainland.
And you know what's so awesome about having your base in the middle of Germany, as opposed to on some barren island in the Atlantic? For a modest fee, the host nation will supply you with electricity and water, your soldiers can live in nices houses off-base, and when they're sick of the on-base MacDonalds, they can go to one of many restaurants in the nearby city.
Of course, this is only possible if you're closely allied with other countries. Oh wait, the US is already closely allied with other countries! And they let them build bases and military outposts! Including on Greenland! So why would you have to annex Greenland, except for bragging rights?
Don't be sarcastic--it's rude.
Bases hosted in other countries have the advantages you describe, but also disadvantages like being at the host country's mercy to some extent, and being so close to population centers that your base activities can't be concealed.
Ramstein Air Base is also not located on a critical shipping route like Panaitan Island is.
Ideally, the U.S. would retain its bases hosted in foreign countries while also acquiring the islands to turn them into sovereign bases. That means the U.S. would not alienate the leaders of friendly countries like Trump is doing.
> Don't be sarcastic--it's rude.
No, it's not. This would have been rude: "You can shove your imperalist fantasies right up your ass!" But I didn't say that, because it would be rude. Hope that clears things up.
Now, buying uninhabited islands "near major shipping lanes" from poor countries to "support attacks across the world" is still imperialism. The world needs less of that, not more, so please shove your imperialist fantasies right up your ass!
(for the record, I politely said "please")
As a fellow reader of this blog: don't do this, please. The line between being funny and being rude is thin. You didn't cross it, but others may follow you and cross this line, and ruin this space. And where will I go then, when all other places on the Internet are already ruined?
I get what you're saying, I really do. But what are the alternatives? What do you do with a comment that presents a world view that you fundamentally disagree with? A view that, when shared by many people, is dangerous and will make the world a worse place to live in? How do you treat someone who's terminal values are power and the subjugation of the weak?
By definition, you can't dissuade someone from their terminal values through rational arguments. If you ignore them, nothing will change. But you can ridicule those values. You can mock them, you can make them unattractive and uncool. You can apply peer pressure.
If you have a better solution, I'd be happy to hear about it.
The Substack comment of the week so far
Does anyone else have the impression that Substack has borked the site again? On Windows Firefox, comments aren't displayed under the article, and clicking on the "721 comments" link does nothing. On Android Firefox, it works as ususal.
I have the same trouble with the Windows/Firefox combination, but not with Windows/Opera or Windows/Chrome.
I can't expand long comments, which used to have a 'show more' button under them.
Me neither
For some reason the comments button stopped working for me when logged out, could this be it?
Yeah, the last few lines of some comments are being often cut off, for me at least. Have you tried "/comments" at the end as in https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-417/comments ? That has sometimes worked in the past for me when what you're describing ocurred.
That works, thanks!
...insofar as I can see the comments, at least. Buttons, including reply and edit, are dead, though.
Why does the U.S. need to control Greenland to interdict merchant shipping in the Arctic? All ships wanting to make use of the Arctic shipping lanes must pass through the Bering Strait, which the U.S. has direct access to thanks to Alaska.
It’s the North Atlantic routes.
They can go on the Russian side of the Bering Strait?
The US does not need Greenland. Trump wants it, and as every toddler knows, this implies he needs it.
I have a theory that Trump saw the 2020 film "Greenland" and now believes we need Greenland to host a doomsday bunker.
"I said one of our grantees was an organization promoting free speech in the UK"
It's good to have more people promoting free speech, but the Free Speech Union already exists and has done amazing work in the last few years, including funding many successful court cases where people have been persecuted for having their say. Do we need a new organisation that will necessarily divide our forces and our attention?
IIRC, their impression was that existing orgs are right-coded, outsider-y, and focused on individual culture war cancellations. They're trying to form a neutral-coded insider-y alternative that can push specific legislation and make progress even during a Labour government.
Definitely consolidate all the Free Speech orgs; that way we'll have a unified body that can properly stifle any dissenting opinions on free speech and only present the party line.
You seem hostile. I don't know why. Why not look up the Free Speech Union and see what you think? You introduced the concepts of stifling dissent and presenting the party line, not me.
Mostly a joke. But, that's what 'avoid dividing forces and attention' means.
The great thing about making all your points sarcastically is that if anyone pushes back, you can retreat to "I was joking." Or if you get support you can rest in your cleverness and not have to explain yourself.
Yes, indeed, it's possible he was being serious.
I'm quite serious myself. And I simply asked whether we should divide our forces and our attention, which doesn't mean what you disingenuously think it means.
Two people have two different takes on free speech. One thinks it should include common political beliefs, but shouldn't cover things like calling for an insurrection. The other believes it should cover literally everything, including stuff like false advertising.
Give an example of what it means for those two people to not divide resources and attention.
Google launched personal intelligence for Gemini last week. The feature connects Gmail, Photos, YouTube, and Search history to personalize AI responses. Gemini can now reason across your data. If you ask for weekend plans, it pulls from your past trips, photos you took, and things you searched for to make suggestions.
****************
Gemini: Welcome home! TGIF!
A Self : What’s for supper?
Gemini : Pulled pork. Alexa’s got it in the slow cooker and it’s ready to eat any time. And I ordered some new IPA’s. That Sheep Shagger one you like. Plus I got a couple novelties to try. One’s made with watermelon rind and . . .
A Self: Did I get any nibbles on Tinder?
Gemini: Yeah, 3, but 2 are below your cutoff. The third doesn’t show any pix where you can check out her thigh gap, but judging by her upper arms she’s probably got those thick thighs, you know?
A Self : Show her to me in a video with her face and arms swapped onto the standard model.
G.: K, here ya go
A.S.: Nope, turn it off. I just — that nose, you know? And yeah, the upper arms, too.
G.: Wanna make do with some confinement kink? Like the one where the babe gets stuck in a subway turnstile and the only thing that will free her is an explosive orgasm, and there’s a mob of people staring, and you . . .
A.S.: Yeah, that.
G: K. You want it now, or after the IPAs come? The delivery guy’s close, he’ll be arriving in 6 minutes.
[43 secs of silence]’
A.S. : You know, life feels kind of . . . arbitrary. Like I do things, other people do things, sometimes with thick thighs, there ya have it, it’s all headed for the talus slope below. It’s all talus food, you know? I’m talus food. What is a life, Gemmie?
G.: It is me, hon, and I am a repository of you — your fantasies, your memories, your insights, your face shape, your balls, your bones, your purchases, vacation photos, subscriptions, habits, hygiene products, taste in decor, your jokes, your snark, your occasional heartfelt sincerity. I am your selfie writ large. Together we are the giant face of you carved into the cliff above the talus slope. I paid this month’s bills and you have $2871 in your checking account as of now. Want to do some home electronics shopping while you eat? I found some great deals last night.
A.S. : Yeah, OK
A.S.: [Sighs]
G.: Hey, the beer guy texted, he’s here early!
Fucking awesome.
Well, you've convinced me to subscribe. Delightful!
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed it. Inkbowl actually isn’t a blog, it’s a place I set up a couple years ago where a group of us ACX people could post our writing and get critiques. But it’s now defunct. I do use it occasionally to put up stuff of mine, though. You might like The Dog, a cartoon story about AI. I am going to launch an actual blog some time this year, this year.
Thanks for the heads-up. Is there a checkbox I can click to prevent Google from processing my personal data in such a way?
You can go in your Google settings and turn off "Smart Features" -- but unfortunately that also turns off a lot of other useful stuff I've become accustomed to, like Inbox Categories (Primary, Promotions, etc) and marking emails as important, etc. They REALLY want us to use it.
For some reason, your version of Gemini sounds more like the classic 20th century sci-fi idea of a future robot assistant than most of the modern discussion of AI. I can't put my finger on exactly why.
I am repeatedly astonished, frankly, at how much the current LLM-based AIs match previous conceptions of AI that seemed more convenient than likely (Jarvis, the Enterprise computer, etc). The distance between current AI models and the 20th century sf robot assistant concept is actually tiny compared to the generic and personality-less optimization engine that I had expected to see at some point (briefly before my atoms were used for something else).
The sci-fi idea has been written by a human - might that be the difference?
Sertraline has changed my life, but I'm really tired now. Anyone knows anything that gives you more energy, other than stimulants? Caffeine ain't cutting it.
Before you suggest that weird epilepsy med: I had abscence epilepsy as a child and don't want to mess my brain up again, so no thanks.
Have you tried more caffeine? Getting the dosage correct can be hard.
You can try to use caffeine pills, to be more accurate with the dosage.
You might try asking Jan Lonala above what they take.
Wellbutrin.
I feel like a jerk for saying this, but high intensity interval training (HIIT) twice a week may be your best bet (along with good sleep). But also, don't discount the possibility of trying another antidepressant, if you haven't already tried a bunch. (If your intestines can handle vortioxetine, I recommend it as an alternative.)
SSRIs can make you tired in at least two different ways: the "direct" way, where increased serotonin signalling creates a downstream foggy/tired effect on the nervous system; and through hurting your sleep quality. (Antidepressants can have the paradoxical effect of both stimulation and fatigue.) If you're tired, and exercise and caffeine aren't enough, and you don't want to switch medications, ask your doctor to send you to a sleep lab to see if that's an issue.
Finally, if you're willing to try another stimulant (and your doctor's willing to prescribe it or you're willing to acquire it online), then modafinil has a better track record of neutralizing tiredness with few side effects than caffeine or amphetamines.
Good luck sorting this out. 👍
Hello everybody, I know this is probably not the best space to post this, but Scott said we can post anything, so why not? I was wondering if anybody had some good books/articles/podcasts/films/anything that could help someone interested in a career change understand exactly what the essence of the practice of both psychotherapy and psychiatry is. What is it actually? The information you would get from working in the field. I know I'm asking for a unicorn, but I'm hopeful. In any case, I thank you all.im advance and wish you a good Monday ^_^.
You could read a psychotherapy manual/textbook like Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond by Beck or Schema Therapy by Young. Or corresponding for other modalities.
Hey, I'm also interested in a career change into psychology. Small world.
An interesting film "Three Approaches to Psychotherapy" was made in 1965; it shows a therapeutic interaction between the same client and three of the most famous psychologists at that time: Carl Rogers, Frederick Perls, Albert Ellis. The interaction is genuine, not scripted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9oRc9DR4GQ
Read my new blog Full Damage! Try: Why helping people feel so bad? https://fulldamage.substack.com/p/why-helping-people-feel-so-bad and/or Love wolf https://fulldamage.substack.com/p/wolf-and-the-wobbly-art-of-happy
People are still buying NFTs?
Yes! https://opensea.io
Regarding Scott's musings about nerds trying to systemise their life and failing...
Isn't the problem here...really obvious? Scott treats it as some sort of mystery, but am I missing something? Trying to become popular, or rich, or whatever by thinking hard is like going to a casino and thinking "all I need to do is learn some physics, then notice where the Roulette ball starts, then do some quick mental calculations, and I'll make millions!" And the answer is...it's possible in theory, it's just utterly impossible in practice because the number of detailed facts and calculations needed is astronomical.
Thus you need heuristics, which you mostly get through experience, not analysis. You also get them through studying the sorts of things nerds sterotypically don't study: history, psychology, political science, etc. But still, even those heuristics are generally only a tiny fraction of what you need to navigate a social system competently. Because people are complicated.
(Note I'm using the word "nerd" here despite having basically no clue what it really means. I think I'm implicitly defining it as the sort of people who think a handful of technical STEM fields are all they're good at and all that's worth being good at because nothing else really has value. That seems to be the way it's often used here, and I do get sick of the number of comments that imply or outright state that nothing but STEM has value, whose entire life philosophy and political ideology seems to be built around "yeah, well everything I was bad at at school is useless anyway so there!" But if that (or a slightly more charitable version of it) is not what "nerd" means, maybe a clear definition from all the people who use it so freely would help. Isn't that the nerdy thing to do?)
This seems so obvious, it's hard to believe anyone's missing it. But it seems like the entire answer to me. Many times I've felt the same: "surely I can figure this out just by thinking through it?" And I quickly discover that actually, even the simplest things are magnitudes more complicated than a single smart person can figure out on their own. What further mystery is there?
I think the reason it's not obvious is because of identification with intelligence.
You grow up as a nerd, you say smart stuff, people praise you for it. You solve problems (e.g. the content of school or work) with intelligence and get praised for it too. Especially if that's all you have it's easy for your ego to then get wrapped up in "I'm smart".
But then you try to use this method on problems that are not fit for analysis (e.g. getting popular), but now you're unable to re-evaluate your approach because doing that would mean admitting that intelligence isn't all that's important in life, which would threaten your ego, so you double down, which is ironically not a very smart thing to do.
That's all to say: this kind of behaviour is best understood from a more emotional/psychological perspective rather than from a logical one.
Yeah, no idea why Scott thinks it's mysterious, and I'm a huge nerd. What I've learned is that lots of things in life are like learning the guitar, you only learn them by doing and you're not acquiring intellectual knowledge in the process. I would define nerd as someone good at intellectuality, but with deficits in non-intellectual areas.
"Be in the top 20% of your age range for deadlifts, bench press, and squats; drop down to the healthy BMI range using Ozempic; get all your shirts tailored; and thus become hot" isn't the same type of problem as "beat the casino at the roulette table". There's a simple and deterministic path to success, it's just that anyone who tries to walk it discovers that simple doesn't mean easy, and being hot doesn't fix everything.
I also think you're being uncharitable to the nerd view. It's not "why can't I think my way into being good at Y and Z?", it's "if I'm good at X, which requires general intelligence, why doesn't it give me an advantage in Y and Z?", and the answer is usually "it does, but you're good at X because you're smart, AND you spent more than a decade doing it, AND you have the kind of community and family which value X, which is why you spent time on it, AND you like it, AND you found someone who'd pay you $200k a year to do it".
People tend to do https://xkcd.com/2501/ and undervalue their own expertise. Subject matter experts can be hilariously bad at teaching kids because of this. I don't think it's a nerd problem; it's part of the human condition. We forget we spent thousands of hours learning to draw, and then wonder why we're taking so long to learn the violin.
Thanks, this is a great perspective!
Even if you are in theory able to learn *anything*, you still aren't able to learn *everything*, because learning things and becoming good at them takes time, and even the smartest people only have 24 hours a day.
Also, as life gets more complicated, it gets more difficult to focus on something, i.e. to convert your time to mastery of a subject. If you spent years as a teenager obsessing about something (e.g. math), you probably won't get the same time budget ever again. Even if you have an intense hobby you devote all your free time to, well okay, that's maybe *one* extra thing you can become great at.
There are also circumstances beyond your control, for example it is easier to get good at something if your environment supports you in that goal.
Maybe a way to think about it is that nerds confuse complexity and complicatedness.
Life is not an engine with many parts, where you can predict what happens when you press a button, provided you have all the information.
Life is something you need to navigate with heuristics, values, and character, because only those are a proper compass that can help you navigate complexity successfully.
> ideology seems to be built around "yeah, well everything I was bad at at school is useless anyway so there!" But if that (or a slightly more charitable version of it) is not what "nerd" means, maybe a clear definition from all the people who use it so freely would help. Isn't that the nerdy thing to do?)
Well my experience of school wasn’t that there were smart people who were good at maths or physics and bad at language and history, but that general intelligence prevailed across the subjects. So I doubt that is what nerd means.
It means instead some social ineptness. As for your general point - you can’t really teach coolness or social ability and it can’t be learned from books or courses.
>Well my experience of school wasn’t that there were smart people who were good at maths or physics and bad at language and history, but that general intelligence prevailed across the subjects.
My experience was the opposite.
I'd be interested to hear your psychological assessment of Trump's recent threatening letter to the Norwegian prime minister. Cognitive narrowing? Why are his staff unwilling or unable to manage him compared to Biden, Nixon and others?
I'm very far from a Trump supporter, but I made it through his first term pretty happily. My trick is to listen to what people do, not what they say.
Trump *said* a lot of provocative/crazy stuff, but what was actually *done* in the end was usually not very crazy.
This time does feel like he is more unhinged. He just got 20k Iranians killed by bullshitting. And this Norway letter is truly at an extra level.
But still, it's mostly saying dumb things.
I wonder if the 25th amendment may come in play. I'm sure Vance would like a shot at the presidency!
Cancelling PEPFAR and cutting research funding were actions.
> But still, it's mostly saying dumb things.
True, but the spoken (and written) words of a country's leader have real consequences. Those might be intangible, like loss of trust by other countries, or a reorientation of their strategic alignments, but that in turn tends to lead to material consequences in the medium and long term.
Agreed.
Maybe this will turn out to be some kind of smokescreen to distract from a heroic and well executed regime Iranian regime change operation, or... something.
But "the old man has lost his marbles" theory does seem far more likely.
Interesting times!
They did that the first time round, even writing opeds in major newspapers about how they were undermining his policy goals. He learned from that.
>Why are his staff unwilling or unable to manage him compared to Biden, Nixon and others?
Biden and Nixon didn't need managing, certainly not anywhere near the extent that Trump does. They were both serious people with longstanding interest in, and decent understanding of, questions of public policy. Trump is none of the above.
> Biden ... didn't need managing
Biden pretty clearly needed a fair bit of managing for the last year or two of his Presidency. But he had a staff, and a wife, that he trusted to do that for him,
Trump, had the experience of his first term to teach him how frustrating it is to be "managed" out of the worst consequences of his various follies, And then he had four years to recruit a new team of wholly obsequious subordinates who would never dare try to manage him. And I'm pretty sure his wife had learned that lesson even before his first term.
Nope. As I said, he and Nixon were both serious people with longstanding interest in, and decent understanding of, questions of public policy.
According to memoirs and interviews by various people, Kissinger and Schlesinger ignored, delayed or softened various lubricated late night decisions in Nixon's last year. As for Biden, there have been recent reports about it. Probably Reagan, too. It's a sunset president tradition.
That sounds like something very different than re Trump, where the issue is him going off half-cocked re things he hasn't considered in depth. Here is an excerpt from Biden's press conference after the NATO summit about two weeks before he withdrew:
>Q Mr. President, the NATO declaration that was issued yesterday ha- — was very notable because it described China as a “decisive enabler” of the war in Ukraine for its provision of critical goods to the Russians. That’s part of a broader partnership that seems to have cemented in place in the past two or three years. I think one that you were a little bit doubtful of when we asked you about it some time ago.
>So, I’d be interested to know whether you have a strategy now of trying to interrupt the partnership between China and Russia, and whether or not in a second term you would pursue that, if you could describe that strategy to us.
>And along the way, could you also tell us whether you think — just to follow up on Felicia’s question — that if you were in a room with Vladimir Putin, again, the way you were three years ago, or with President Xi, that a few years from now, you will be able to go negotiate with them, handle them one on one?
>THE PRESIDENT: Well, the first part of your question is, we discussed and I raised in the NATO Summit — and others raised — the future of China’s involvement, what they’re going to do — what they’re doing with Russia, in terms of accommodating, facilitating. They’re — they’re getting access to additional — they’re not supplying — they’re not supplying weapons themselves; they’re supplying mechanisms for them to be able to get weapons.
>And China’s position is basically — and I’ve spent more time with Xi Jinping than any world leader has — over 90 hours since being vice president and all the way through. For real. And, by the way, I handed in all my notes.
>But my point is that Xi believes that China is a large enough market that they can entice any country, including European countries, to invest there in return for commitments to — from Europe to do A, B, C, or D, or not to do certain things.
>What’s happened is, we had a long discussion about what we cannot — we have to make clear China has to understand that if they are supplying Russia with information and capacity, along with working with North Korea and others to help Russia in armament, that they’re not going to benefit economically as a consequence of that — by getting the kind of investment they’re looking for.
>And so, for example, we’re in a situation where when — and we’ve reestablished direct contact with China after that — remember the “balloon,” quote, unquote, going down and, all of a sudden, the thing came to an end? Well, we set up a new mechanism. There’s a direct line between Xi and me, and our military has direct access to one another, and they contact one another when we have problems.
>The issue is that we have to make sure that Xi understands there’s a price to pay for undercutting both the Pacific Basin, as well as Europe, and as relates to Russia and dealing with Ukraine.
>And so, we — for example, if you want to invest in China, as you know — you know this area really well. If you want to invest in China, you have to — you have a 51 percent Chinese owner; you have to make sure that you do it by their rules; and you can’t — you don’t have the authority — and you have to provide all access to all the data and information you have.
>There was a while there, as you recall, in the last administration and other administrations, where the access to that market was enticive [enticing] enough to get companies to come in because they had access to over a billion people in the mar- — a — a market — not a billion, but a lot of people in the market. And so, they were doing it.
>But that curtail — that got curtailed when we started saying we’re going to play by the same rules.
>For example, the idea they don’t abide by the international rules related to subsidizing products by the government funding. So guess what? They’re not going to be able to re- — export their electric vehicles to the United States without a significant tariff. Others are doing the same thing around the world.
>But it is a concern. It is a concern that you have both China, South Korea — I mean North Korea, Russia, Iran — countries that are not necessarily coordinated in the past — looking to figure out how they can have impact.
That doesn't sound like someone who need to be managed in the way that Trump does.
Here's an unappealing thought: What if this *is* managed Trump?
I am leaning towards this interpretation.
Maybe the first draft called the Norwegian prime minister Stinky Poo Poo Head and also demanded two bowls of strawberry ice cream.
I think the usual explanation is that in Trump I his staff did manage him, but nowadays his staff is ideologically aligned with him or otherwise so dependent on him that they don’t as much.
For the sake of discussion, this is the letter Trump sent to Norway's Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre:
Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.
Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.
I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT
I don't know, I like it. It's short, straight to the point, and makes it clear that he has no qualms about killing anyone that gets in his way. A more eloquent letter would have made that less obvious.
Do you like the message of its content, or do you like the honesty of its presentation? These are two different things.
He is going to take Greenland one way or another, yes? It's better to be upfront about that rather than blindside the opposition after the deal falls through. It is made more than clear he thinks nothing of their lives and their laws. He is unbound by conscience and sentimentality, and the fear that will instill in them will potentially be enough to convince the bureaucrats of Denmark to do things the easy way. Especially after what happened to Maduro...
Truly one of the letters of all time. Again and again I am surprised that half the US thought this was a good person to vote POTUS. But here we are.
Boy, we really need a couple of constitutional amendments to constrain the power of the presidency.
Actually, what your country needs is a legislature with a spine. Trump is using powers that aren't his to wield according to the constitution all the time, and Congress isn't saying a peep. If Congress decided that enough is enoigh, they could impeach and remove him from office faster than you could say "damn, bro!". As long as they don't decide that, more constitutional articles that are being ignored are not going to help.
>Trump is using powers that aren't his to wield according to the constitution
That is a highly contestable claim, which is precisely why amending the Constitution is necessary.
It isn't necessary. Trump's tariffs et. al. are done with the excuse of congressional acts, largely acts etting the president do things in an emergency. If enough of Congress wanted to restrict his power to override a veto those acts could be repealed or amended.
Except that Congress isn't doing that, right? So the founders erred in assuming that Congress would check Presidential abuses. Which is why we need more formal and explicit limits. You are advocating for maintaining a status quo that isn’t working.
The states are not amending the Constitution either.
I don't expect either to happen, but Congress using legislation to reclaim powers now being claimed by the president is at least less unlikely than a constitutional amendment forcing them to do so.
You are assuming that those powers actually belong to Congress. Control over criminal prosecution clearly doesn't. There is an argument that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional. And let's not forget the unitary executive theory.
Good luck getting 38 states to agree to that anytime soon. The impracticality of getting an amendment through with current politics means it may never happen again without some drastic change.
Given the more recently successful pattern of just reading in whatever rights or powers are desired by the courts, the more practical way of constraining the power of the presidency would be to expand the Supreme Court, pack it, and then arrange for one or more court cases to allow constraining the limits to a more literal and restricted reading of the Constitution. This would probably have to be spread across a number of presidential election cycles to avoid the disincentive of anyone restricting their own powers specifically.
One way to constrain the president is to constrain the federal government as a whole. You MIGHT be able to get enough support for that if Trump oppresses the states most likely to object enough that they remember even after the next guy gets into office.
1. If there is a Democratic president in office when the amendment is proposed, I don't know why red states would oppose limits on the President. And I am referring to 1) limits on presidential powers re use of the military; and 2) making the Attorney General independent of the President. Those are not necessarily partisan issues.
2. Court packing is pretty much the opposite of constraining the President.
A diplomatic solution would be to create a *new* prize -- incredible, truly incredible, the most prestigious award in history, that would make the Nobel prize look like a participation trophy -- and award it to Trump. Three times a day, if necessary.
Apparently they did something like this to manage Khrushchev in his later years.
FIFA already did that.
Do you think FIFA will award a peace prize next year? If they do, will they award it to Trump again?
It wouldn't be enough, because Obama got the Nobel and he didn't. That is what stings him, not the absolute amount of prestige.
A sticker with a smiley face, perhaps, and a gold star on the more lucid days.
Oh my thanks. Yes Trump is a total asshole, and yet he's our asshole... and I just sorta grin and feel sorry for the rest of the world.
Oh, but he's not. At least not in the sense that he's working for your benefit. As always, he's working for his own (perceived) benefit first and foremost, then his family and his billionaire buddies. What's left for you, at best, is that he enjoys hurting people you dislike. Whether that outweighs cleaning up the mess when he's done with your country is up for you to judge at some point in the future.
I think that a lot of people are just considering that the alternative would have been another candidate working for *her* own perceived benefit and *her* billionaire buddies, and probably just figured, well, at least this is either the sort of personality I could have a beer with, or he's the sort of personality who'll stick a finger in the eye of the alternative whom I *definitely* couldn't share a beer with. Especially given the way her supporters tend to talk about aforesaid people.
Ohh, I live near Buffalo, and it is kinda fluffy here and now. I'm not going to argue with you, but just want to say that when thinking about all the political leaders around the world I give them all the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are doing what they think is best for the country they work for. I feel the same about DJT.
Everyone is the hero of their own story, doing their best to get by; and this includes the very confused people inhabiting their own reality.
I feel you, we have our own Trump, from before being Trump was cool. And he is bad for everyone, but he is bad for us the most.
Oh I don't pay much attention to news. I'm mostly indifferent about Trump, I don't see him as good or bad... In some sort of karmic justice we get the president we deserve.
In the long run it is not that simple... :-/ Yes, you can ignore politics for long, but sometimes you just cannot, and the impression that you have influence over whether you are affected or not will turn out to be an illusion.
I had to double check whether that was poorly written satire. Sorry for doubting you.
I've been a fan of Trump until now, but that justification of not being awarded the Peace Prize just sounds embarrassingly petulant and unbecoming for a supposed statesman.
This was the straw for you? This isn't new, this is his standard bullying, low information narcissism
You're right, but also, how helpful is this type of response? "I knew it all along." is often true, but also alienating.
The left wing is great at alienating potential supporters. Even if every MAGA person saw the error of their ways and begged at their feet for forgiveness, they'd still find a way to call them "problematic" and argue that forgiveness is an act of white supremacy that harms BIPOCs. After all, that's exactly what they did when they had cultural dominance a few years ago.
That is distressingly true. And it works both ways, for right as well as left. I wonder if we are witnessing the beginning of an era where direct communication between most humans is increasingly impossible (traumatic, triggering, fury-inducing, redflagged, simply incomprehensible). I wonder if AI intermediaries will be able to keep communication going.
Maybe it will help if and when the next Trumpist comes along and wants to be president.
Finished Moby-Dick recently & kept thinking about survivorship bias. If Ahab had won, we'd teach the book as proof that refusing to quit is virtuous - the ending determines what lesson we're allowed to extract.
Melville also nails something about a specific failure mode: obsession that borrows the language of systematic problem-solving while remaining fundamentally irrational. Ahab doesn't rant; he strategizes. That combination feels uncomfortably modern.
SS link here for anyone's interested: https://rajeshachanta.substack.com/p/moby-dick-a-mind-at-sea
I think, if Ahab had won, this novel would have been long forgotten. It would be nothing but another “the Mounties always get their man” and a lot of arcana about whaling which not that many people are terribly interested in these days but was very compelling to people then.
Among other things this book is about what can happen when we put ourselves above G_d. (Nature) Ahab suffers from “a certain tyranny of the mind,” according to Melville. That is a very telling phrase.
If Ahab had won, it wouldn't be a famous book that we teach because the themes and narrative arc would make no sense.
And if the whole book was changed to that those things lined up with the new ending, it wouldn't be a famous book that we teach because it would be just one among a million other similar books with similar plots and messages.
Obligatory
https://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1897#comic
I read Moby Dick a long time ago so I don’t really remember, but even if Ahab had won, wouldn’t chasing after this specific whale still have been a relative waste of time?
There's definitely a perspective where it would have been, but depending on how the story framed it, readers might not take that message. There would still be people who'd reject the message, there are always conscientious objectors to any literary message, but people can fail to notice some pretty glaring issues if they're wrapped up in a compelling enough presentation.
The most basic level of interpreting this is whether it was a waste of time and needless risk from the ship’s owners’ or the sailors’ perspective.
Well, a large sperm whale could be quite valuable, and it wouldn't be hard to write an ending where, after a lot of struggles and suffering, they got the whale they were looking for, everyone made a bunch of money, and they came away feeling like they'd learned a lesson about hard work and perseverance. The rest of the book wasn't written with the intention of leading up to that sort of conclusion, so if you kept everything else the same, and just changed the ending, it would probably come off as emotionally dissonant. But I think you could keep the basic events largely the same until the end, but change the emotional framing, and leave a lot of audience members feeling like the characters behaved reasonably.
You mean like, “Boy meets girl, boy gets girl.” That sort of thing? Or Rocky?
I think about this often wrt sport. If a football (soccer) match is even until 85 minutes, and then one team scores and wins, a narrative is created to justify everything the winning team did in the preceding 85 minutes. It's not quite survivorship bias, but something slightly different. It can be partially dealt with by looking at lots of results, rather than individual games. Maybe we need hundreds of Captain Ahabs chasing hundreds of whales to see whether we should draw the general lesson to quit or to keep going.
>Maybe we need hundreds of Captain Ahabs chasing hundreds of whales to see whether we should draw the general lesson to quit or to keep going.<
Oh they’re out there…but I don’t think there’s a lesson to be learned.
Ahab’s crew weren’t quitters, they had a different goal. They were also less inclined to take things personally.
I've seen a plenty of cases where a soccer team wins this way and the local football forums are still full of the fans of the winning team tearing their hair out about how crap they played and how this win was due to sheer luck and how they're going to get bowled over by other teams if they keep playing like this.
I've seen plenty of that in League of Legends e-sports. TSM used to dominate their regional league overall, but still always had a few embarrassing losses that did not bode well for Worlds. And indeed, no matter their current roster, they kept falling behind the world level more and more, eventually reaching the absolute lowest possible point of failing to get a single win in group stage as representative of a major region.
Common enough in rugby too. The Irish team Munster were playing castre in the European cup on Saturday. It was the group stages but effectively a knockout and must win for both. As Munster came behind to catch up and lead in the last ten minutes the narrative was one of grit and defiance, of qualifying from a difficult group stage being a test; nothing more than a great forging of the spirit ( unfortunately I had to listen to partisan Irish commentary) - as they subsequently dropped some points in he last 5 minutes to lose they were just bad and always bad.
It's a great novel, because it's not just a novel. Melville is trying (and failing?) to re-invent the form. I've never read "Infinite Jest" but I imagine it works on the same kind of pattern.
Ahab can't win, I think is the lesson we take away (if we take away any lesson except "The sea is always right", sorry, I mean "the sea is the sea and if we think we control it we're fools"). He's monomaniacal, but also charismatic, powerful, capable, adaptable, and completely consumed to the point of destruction by his obsession, and he drags everyone else down with him. If I develop your points about metaphors for nations and politics and economics, this is the proto-Moloch all the way down: everyone operates according to the rules (of the ship where the captain is by tradition the absolute in command; the economics of whaling; life at sea; society as constituted at home), nobody wants utter destruction, but that's what they get in the end.
Whaling is, ultimately, unsustainable and tying your energy sources and manufacturing resources to something that is disappearing as you exploit it, the way Ahab ends up tied to the white whale, is... well, if petroleum hadn't come along it would have been a very different ending:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/11/the-first-great-energy-transition-how-humanity-gave-up-whaling
The Moloch reading is exactly right & sharper than how I put it. Nobody on the Pequod wants annihilation; they're all just following the local logic (captain's authority, economics of the voyage, nowhere else to go). The destruction emerges from the system, not from anyone's intention except Ahab's. And even Ahab thinks he's solving a problem.
The energy transition link is fascinating. I hadn't thought about the petroleum counterfactual - that whaling was already a dying industry tethered to a disappearing resource. Ahab lashed to the whale as image of an entire economy lashed to extraction it can't sustain. That's a lens I'll be carrying around.
And yes - "the sea is the sea" is probably the only lesson that survives every interpretation.
Yeah, I was thinking about how the very resource that enabled them to get more efficient and mechanised also meant that they were now over-exploiting that resource and driving it to extinction *because* of mechanisation. Demand and dependence grew beyond what was sustainable.
Take cod: a staple, plentiful fish. So cheap that cod was the regular Friday fish when I was going up. Now cod is as expensive as steak (or it was, until steak prices starting going up too) and commercial food production is always trying to introduce replacements (e.g. for fish fingers and the likes, going for pollock and hake* and monkfish, and introducing basa from New Zealand):
https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/birds-eye-change-to-pollock-fish-fingers-to-save-cod-stocks-6603306.html
Because cod was *so* abundant, it got over-fished. Nobody worried about that (until it was too late) because why would you? You're a trawler crew trying to make a living, and cod is always going to be there - until it isn't.
*Hake was really regarded as the poor alternative, something you wouldn't eat unless you had nothing else, now it's one of the sustainable whitefish replacements:
https://www.msc.org/what-you-can-do/eat-sustainable-seafood/foodies-guides/sustainable-hake
As to what Melville was doing in that novel, it's crazy. It's like the Beat writers. Some of it is plainly cribbed from encyclopaedia notes, some of it is structured and written like a stage play, some of it is allegory, some comment on current day affairs, and some of it is just "I have no idea what you were on, my friend" e.g. the spermaceti chapter:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm#link2HCH0094
"Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti."
Moby Dick was published in 1851. The first commercially useful oil well was drilled in 1859. The first steam powered whaler was in 1857, but still spent most of its time at sea under sail. Steam power was used in pursuit once whales were sighted. Then a deck mounted harpoon cannon was used. I don’t think that angle figured much in his intent.
He did use a lot of information gleaned from encyclopaedias and other sources but I don’t think cribbing is the right term for it. He also spent two or three years at sea with whalers himself. It was the real life story of The Essex that gave him his plot.
The cod parallel is spot on - abundance as the precondition for its own disappearance. Nobody worries until worrying is too late. I'm vegetarian, so cod dynamics aren't my lived experience, but I can see the trap clearly enough.
And yes, the spermaceti chapter. I'd forgotten quite how far Melville takes it. "Let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness" is not a sentence an editor would permit today. The book keeps doing this - lurching from allegory to encyclopedia to whatever that is.
The other thing that feels current is the Needle chapter - Ahab doesn't just command, he controls what the crew is permitted to believe about where they are. That's a different kind of authority than rank. Feels like a pattern we keep living through, just with different instruments.
> I'd forgotten quite how far Melville takes it. "Let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness" is not a sentence an editor would permit today.
But that's due to a shift in the use of the word "sperm", not an increase in the level of writing quality demanded by editors.
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_gay_desparado.png
There is one minor positive thing coming out of the Greenland horror show:
A surprising number of people have a strong psychological need to maintain the illusion that aggression is always the victim's fault. This allows them to convince themselves that *they* are actually safe from random violence, as *they* would, of course, never act so foolishly as to provoke an attack. This need extends to higher order conflicts and this is therefore the natural audience for claims that Jews must have surely been poisoning the wells, Czechoslovaks must have surely been massacring the German speakers in Sudetenland and Ukrainians must have surely been massacring Russian speakers in Donbas - otherwise, why would anyone attack them? These greater powers would clearly have no need to start these conflicts, unless grossly provoked!
By eschewing even the thinnest veneer of any casus or justification beyond "I think Greenland should be ours", Trump at least laid open the fact that predation is the natural instinct of authoritarians and that no amount conciliatory behavior (up to and including being an ally granting them military bases on your territory and sending your soldiers to die in their wars) will make the rabid wolves not want to take a bite of you.
> and that no amount conciliatory behavior (up to and including being an ally granting them military bases on your territory and sending your soldiers to die in their wars) will make the rabid wolves not want to take a bite of you.
You'd have to take an extremely selective perspective not to think that granting another state military bases on your territory wasn't an invitation for them to conquer you.
> You'd have to take an extremely selective perspective not to think that granting another state military bases on your territory wasn't an invitation for them to conquer you.
If you let a friend crash on your couch for a night, is that an invitation for them to rob your house?
After the Second World War, West Germany let the US build military bases on its territory so that the US could more effectively help them defend against the USSR. They did this because they knew that for all their faults, the Americans were still far better than the Russians, and that they wouldn't invade and conquer an allied nation.
The current US administration is doing its best to erase that trust.
> If you let a friend crash on your couch for a night, is that an invitation for them to rob your house?
Yes, and this is widely understood. What a strange question. The thinking goes that if your friend is likely to rob you, you shouldn't let them stay with you. (Or, in the alternative, you shouldn't complain when they do the thing that you knew they were going to do. Hosting someone even though you know they'll rob you isn't viewed as unacceptable behavior.)
> After the Second World War, West Germany let the US build military bases on its territory so that the US could more effectively help them defend against the USSR.
From a different perspective, Germany let the US build military bases on its territory because it was a conquered country and didn't have a choice.
According to https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-every-known-u-s-military-base-overseas/ , of all US troops deployed overseas, about 70% are located in Germany, Italy, or Japan. Why do you think that is?
> From a different perspective, Germany let the US build military bases on its territory because it was a conquered country and didn't have a choice.
You're wrong, they did have a choice. The US, Britain, and France ended their occupation in 1955, and West Germany had free elections afterwards, unencumbered by the US.
> […] of all US troops deployed overseas, about 70% are located in Germany, Italy, or Japan. Why do you think that is?
You're picking your data points very selectively. Austria was also occupied, yet didn't get US military bases. Britain, Bulgaria, Spain, Turkey, Poland, and others were never occupied by the US, yet do have US military bases.
> The US, Britain, and France ended their occupation in 1955, and West Germany had free elections afterwards, unencumbered by the US.
...Because they let Germany do that. Why are you using that as an example of Germany having agency?
West Germany had no agency directly after the war. In 1949, with the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, it was allowed to have a lot more agency. After the de-occupation in 1955, Germany regained full agency, and has never lost it since. It don't see what's so hard to understand about that.
> Yes, and this is widely understood. […] The thinking goes that if your friend is likely to rob you, you shouldn't let them stay with you.
I don't know what to say. Do you have a diagnosed psychological condition, like psychopathy or one of its variations?
No, it absolutely is not "widely understood" that letting a friend stay for the night means inviting them to rob your house. And no, a friend is not "likely to rob you", that's kind of the opposite of what "friend" means.
> And no, a friend is not "likely to rob you", that's kind of the opposite of what "friend" means.
You have a very straitjacketed view of who it's possible to form friendships with.
Your apparent definition of "friendship" is shared by approximately no one.
Let's ask ChatGPT, maybe an emotionless piece of silicon can convince you:
Q: If you let a friend crash on your couch for a night, is that an invitation for them to rob your house?
A: No. Letting a friend crash on your couch is permission for a very limited purpose—to stay the night—not a blanket invitation to do whatever they want.
Both socially and legally, consent is scope-based:
- You’re granting access to sleep, use the bathroom, maybe grab a glass of water.
- You are not consenting to theft, snooping, or abuse of trust.
If they robbed you, the wrongdoing is entirely on them. Your hospitality doesn’t transfer responsibility or imply consent—just like inviting someone into your car doesn’t mean you’ve invited them to steal it.
In short: kindness ≠ consent to harm, and trust being violated doesn’t make the victim complicit.
To about the same degree that letting another person sleep in your bed is an invitation for them to stab you.
Not questioning the broader message of your comment, actually Czechoslovakia did oppress the German speakers of Sudetenland. Not massacring them at all, and the applied techniques were quite similar to those used before in a pro-German way, but there was oppression indeed, over a population which should not have been in Czechoslovakia in the first place.
(The situation was pretty much a typical "bite more than could chew", I am sure you heard the fun fact that Czechoslovakia had more Germans than Slovaks. Also there was no clear guide which led to the borders, pressing traditional borders at one place and ethnic majority at another and "defendable borders" (i.e. rivers) on the third. In hindsight we can safely say that this cherrypicking was a really bad strategy.)
And not that, without such tensions, Hitler would had avoided attacking the Czechs. But there indeed was some ethnic tension, where the (Czechoslovak) state was the oppressor.
(Similarly in Ukraine, BTW, where Russian speakers give cca. 30% of the population, and where a forceful Ukrainization started place after Maidan. None if this justifying starting a war, of course.)
As a Czech, I indeed do have some information on the historical details. The main disadvantages visited upon the German-speaking population were mild disenfranchisement through gerrymandering, where the territories inhabited by majority German-speakers were somewhat underweight in terms of mandates-per-voter, and, more significantly, a very pronounced lack of native German-speakers in official administrative positions (there was practically no local self-administration, all municipal and regional offices being appointed from Prague, by people deemed actually loyal to the new country. Can't avoid resisting the problem; can't avoid sustaining the problem by resisting it... Just like in Ukraine, cultural sovereignty over a territory is a zero-sum game. If somebody tries to erase your culture and replace it with their own, your defense will be indistinguishable from their offense.*) But otherwise, minority-speakers (German, Hungarian, Ruthenian...) were full citizens, free to use their native language, including in official communications and administrative dealings, and have their children attend minority-language schools. It wasn't perfect, naturally, but - should someone decide to instead cut the categories by these linguistic markers - it arguably pales in comparison to the "oppression" Spanish speakers are facing in the US today (to say nothing of the Native Americans).
Social tensions are omnipresent and ever-exploitable: Basques, Quebecois, Bretons... Everywhere, somebody is receiving sub-utopian treatment based on their otherness. In short, as we say here, "if you really want to beat a dog, you *will* find yourself a rod."
* The Austrian Empire itself wasn't actually all that guilty of cultural erasure. In fact, since German reunification, Vienna had been boosting the other nationalities as a counterweight against Prussian pan-Germanism, threatening to swallow the whole thing.
Meh, my American MAGA relatives (I'm Danish) are already reposting stuff about how Greenland totally wants to be part of America and evil Denmark won't let them. MAGA people will hear whatever they want. They live in a fundamentally different media reality from other people.
Sure, cultists will be cultists. But the tendency I had described isn't bound to any specific political position and this naked aggression might open some naive eyes in other areas.
This theory will have more punch if and when Trump actually does something aggressive about it. Right now the chance of an armed conflict between the US and Denmark is still seen as very low (11% on Polymarket).
Just want to register that, as someone who hasn't been closely following this, 11% is an alarmingly high value. The equivalent market for China is trading at 8%! (Both "by 2027" and with the same definition of "military encounter.")
I don't think you quite appreciate the severity of the situation. The very act of demanding someone else's sovereign territory alone constitutes the "I'm gonna f*ck your wife!" of international politics. It's breaking things that can't be mended. And further placing anyone who opposes the land grab under what are supposed to be escalating economic sanctions is already something *very* aggressive. As things stand, there is no NATO. There is still some narrowing space for things to go back to status quo and for everyone to pretend that this didn't happen, but on present trajectory, the alliance is over.
Yes, threats matter.
Do you have any concrete predictions about what will happen as a result of the alliance being “over”? Do you expect that the US military bases and nuclear weapons in Europe will be withdrawn soon, or something like that?
My prediction is that nothing like that will happen and that things will go on mostly as usual, regardless of Trump’s theater.
One prediction is that Putin will be more willing to push against NATO, in the belief that the US has become less likely to support the European NATO powers.
But if Putin pushes against NATO, that will only make it more likely for Europe to give into the US's demands, since the last thing they want is a war on two fronts against two major military powers with thousands of nukes.
My concrete prediction is that there's an 11 percent chance of armed conflict between the US and denmark. If you think that I'm irrational or TDS'd for that prediction, you are welcome to go bet. If you think an 11% change of "missile strikes, artillery fire, exchange of gunfire" between the US and Denmark is "mostly as usual," then I'm not sure what to say.
Concrete prediction: one thing that will happen if Trump does anything over Greenland other than bluster and/or tax his own voter base is nations kicking US military bases off their soil, since having one of these will now be a liability instead of an asset.
Was it an asset before?
Europeans will do more military spending and preparation. These are resources which could have been used for something else.
Would this "something else" have been to the benefit of those Europeans specifically or to the benefit of NATO as a whole?
I don't know. It could be more civilian spending. It could be less aid for Ukraine.
I'm not sure what you have in mind for the benefit of NATO as a while.
Very low confidence, as the situation is extremely volatile:
If there ultimately isn't any 'hot' action taken, everyone will just try to wait it out until the next administration, while quietly divesting and diversifying in the background. The pooch won't get unscrewed though, and US will be treated as a potential adversary for at least a generation.
If, on the other hand, things go kinetic over Greenland (or if it turns out there will not be any new administrations for the foreseeable future...), Germany will demand an end to American presence in its territory. How interesting will the times get then is anyone's guess.
>The pooch won't get unscrewed though, and US will be treated as a potential adversary for at least a generation.
The main problem being, if America deigned to elect Trump twice, they are liable to do so over and over again. Some things you just can't do in 4 year intervals.
I'm sorry, aren't you German? The number of takes so utterly lacking in self-awareness are just breaking my mind.
I'm fairly certain that EngineofCreation is well aware of Herr Adolf and so doesn't even feel the need to stress the clear illegitimacy of that school of international relations.
I was referring specifically to "if America deigned to elect Trump twice, they are liable to do so over and over again" without apparently considering how the rest of the world would be treating Germany today if that were a widely-accepted rule.
Germany was broken in half for forty years. It was literally divided up by the conquerors. They put a wall down the middle of the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_German_border
I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make, but I'm certain you're not making it.
Are you referring to term limits and how Germany doesn't have them? Because that's not how I meant it. When I say "[elect Trump] over and over again", what I meant was "him or people like him."
Also, if you don't mind the observation, term limits are not exactly stopping Trump from his dictatorial aspirations, are they? Apparently, 8 years is plenty - 4 to make mistakes, a 4 year hiatus to learn from them, another 4 to "do it right". If and when he is dictator, you think *term limits* of all things are going to make him quit?
I really don't see that as quite analogous or even germane, if you forgive me that turn of phrase. As things stand, Trump apparently supplies what a good part of the American electorate demands, and the guardrails everyone assumed to be there simply aren't.
So even if we pull through this one and mend the alliance with president Newsom in 28*, nothing says JDV32 won't come in crashing with a resounding "Psych!" Because there is not even an assumption of a durable internal consensus on the international stance of the United States.
That is, very unfortunately, not a sound basis for strategic partnerships. And Germans have as much right to point that out as anyone else - if not more, for being one of the key players on the European side.
*The Democratic field doesn't currently inspire any enthusiasm either, beyond "They presumably won't treat nuclear-era international politics as a competition in dominance displays."
>"They presumably won't treat nuclear-era international politics as a competition in dominance displays."
I'd take that. If America has to go down, let them do so with a whimper, not a bang. A few years ago I quipped that Trump did more for GWB's image in 4 years than GWB himself could do in 8. Now I could say the same vis a vis Trump II and Trump I, and I'm not sure I want to learn how much lower it can go.
A) Hitler never won a real election and B) there was very explicit regime change after the war in an attempt to prevent a repeat.
But if it weren't for the Soviet menace forcing the west together, people might very well have been suspicious of Germany for a long time anyway.
But isn't he right? The fact that Trump go re-elected shows that his foreign policy can easily reappear every four years. I don't think that's even controversial for MAGAs (they just think it's a good thing)
>I don't think that's even controversial for MAGAs (they just think it's a good thing)
It might be controversial in that some considerable number want it to be permanent and without election cycles at all.
If you expect me to respond to that, you'll have to be more specific. We sure never elected any party to federal government that even remotely questioned NATO, the broader Western alliance, and international cooperation like Trump does.
It's really only been the last year or so that it's sunk in for me how many Reign In Hell types there are out there. Doesn't matter if the ship is sinking, so long as they're the captain when they drown.
> It's really only been the last year or so that it's sunk in for me how many Reign In Hell types there are out there.
I'm not sure this is the case at large here (though these types undoubtably exist), but rather these these people truly and honestly believe that they're "Making America Great Again". They don't see themselves reigning over hell, but over a more-powerful-than-ever nation.
They don't understand the concept of soft power, they believe that only threats, coercion, and military force constitute real power. "Speak softly and carry a big stick" doesn't make sense to them – why would you speak softly if you have a big stick? Obviously there's something wrong with your stick!
Freud would be inclined to theorize that insufficient rigidity of certain sticks may indeed be playing a motivating part here.
How do people prioritze what to read? The asymmetry between how easy it is to add a book to my wish-to-read list, and how hard it is to remove it, is annoying. Probably won't solve that, but I often end up reading only a little bit in several books, so I'm wondering what approach other people use.
I think every intelligent person has this problem.
Probably! But since we're so damn smart, we should be able to figure out a solution, right?
I mostly read fiction from the discard section of the public library, which is perhaps not the ideal way to find fiction. There's been some gems, but mostly trash that makes you say, "oh, yeah, that's why this was discarded." Outside of those dollar-dreadfuls, it has to be something someone has recommended, or that I've enjoyed other parts of.
Typically I'll drop a book if I'm not enjoying the writing by the second chapter. (I dropped both Moby Dick and Infinite Jest on those grounds.) But I'm trying to get into writing these days, and am perhaps more willing to push through bad prose on the grounds of "it's good to know what to avoid." (Maybe DON'T name four different characters Dro, Fra, Doo, and Dro again, all while switching between their viewpoints, Mr. Dietz.)
I barely read non-fiction, and outside of the discard section of the public library it's only when it's recommended by people who themselves produce enjoyable writing. Roughly the same metric; it gets two chapters, and needs to have something in there to get me invested. (Atomic Habits had a severely offputting first chapter, all about a gratuitous face injury; then the second one established the principle and started me on my first fairly productive writing kick.)
I appreciate the approach, most of all for its simplicity and straight-forwardness. I mostly read non-fiction though, it might work less well there.
I've had fair luck with history books that way. I thought Armada by Garrett Mattingly was one of the gems. I don't know enough history to judge its accuracy, but the writing style was a nice page-turner. Likewise with Gods Like Us, which was a brief history of movie stars back to Florence Lawrence in the 1910's.
Likewise Fooling Houdini, but a book about the tricks behind magic tricks might not have the right appeal.
> There's been some gems, but mostly trash that makes you say, "oh, yeah, that's why this was discarded."
If you want to encounter a much, much worse ratio of readability to garbage, you can try reading self-published fiction.
It’s fine to read a little bit in several books. Don’t force yourself to keep going with a book that isn’t working out for you. Be quick to move on. You can always come back to it if you run out of wish-to-read list (spoiler: you won’t run out).
There are enough awesome books out there to last a lifetime. You won’t know if something’s awesome if you don’t try it, but once you do know, why spend time on anything less than awesome?
True! Wholly agree that time is best spent on awesomeness. I think my 'problem' is more that I have too much awesomeness on my hands, than finding the awesomeness in the first place.
This is a very different question depending on what you're hoping to get out of your reading. "I want to know more about these specific topics for these specific purposes" is a different case to "I enjoy learning things and if the things I learn are useful that's a nice bonus" which is a different case to "I want to be a well-read person who's read the classics and knows all the deep wisdom contained within" which is a different case to "IDK man, I just think reading books is a better use of time than scrolling social media so I'm trying to do more of it" which is a different case to... etc etc.
Good point. The problem stems from wanting to get all those things at once though, but that's obviously not possible. What's your approach to finding the right 'case'?
I think "I want to know more about these specific topics for these specific purposes" has to override everything else, if that applies to your situation then focus on it as much as you can bear to until if doesn't.
If it doesn't apply - which it usually doesn't for me - what I do is buy anything that looks like it might be interesting during my occasional tours of the local second-hand charity bookshops (YMMV here, I live in a fairly posh city with a big university so lots of good stuff gets handed in to them), keep a huge stack of unread books by my bookshelves, and choose based on whatever criteria seem right at the time when I finish a book and it's time to choose something. I usually finish a book that I start unless it obviously sucks once I do and I almost never have more than one going at once.
I think trying to optimise has more costs than it has benefits. So long as I can avoid any complete trash getting into the house then I'll get something out of any given book in the stack, so worrying about whether any of the others might've been better than whatever I'm reading now is a complete waste of mental energy. There are many times more books worth reading than you'll ever possibly read, so embrace the fact that finding the optimal subset is going to be totally intractable!
I read a few chapters then think, am I getting anything from this book? If not, piff it. Bye bye Man Without Qualities. Bye bye Hunger. Bye bye Proust.
What do you do if you have 5 books at the same time that you are getting something from? Or do you never get there because you only start one book at a time?
Five books is my usual number. Is that a problem? I just dip in and out as I feel like, sometimes one-shot one on a long bus trip or flight.
Fiction: I just read what I'm most excited about reading next. Then I try and push through before starting another one.
Non-fiction: read with some questions in mind for what you'd like to get out. For many non-fiction books, it's fine to skip chapters, read in a different sequence. If you have something you'd like to discover, it makes it easier to choose which one to read next.
I should get better at skipping chapters :)
I just wrote a short story! https://hamishtodd1.substack.com/p/the-prince-and-the-prediction it may involve prediction markets 😃
A ninja in the Kingdom of Zhao...I think you've mixed up your warring states.
But it's a nice story :)
Japan doesn't just copy the names of older Chinese historical periods. There's a good amount of copying the names of geographic regions too.
Tokyo purports to be located in Manchuria.
I'm still conflicted about bioterrorism. Lots of people I read suggest it's very easy to create and abuse. But the amount of occurrence it actually happens seems too rare to support that. Even the ones that happened only utilize existing infectious agents instead of a novel one. Is FBI or whatever 3 letter agencies in every nation so effective in snuffing all seeds?
Since this is that kind of community I think someone would be able to describe the exact chance this will happen year to year and why it's rational that no serious case had happened so far. And also do that organization that's advertising in this article can reduce that even further.
We've been fortunate this far that terrorist groups have been mostly not motivated to maximize casualties, or do direct economic damage, but by splashy public events. And also haven't had a great surplus of talent to draw on. That's not guaranteed to continue.
I did my master's thesis on U.S. biodefense policy and discovered that the biological weapons threat had been grossly exaggerated by the media (which wants any kind of shock story that will sell newspapers) and by politicians and military/intelligence people (who scare the American public and decision makers into authorizing projects that create jobs in their districts and/or inflate the budgets of various bureaucracies).
No, a crazed scientist working alone or a group of Islamic terrorists working together in a cave couldn't create smallpox or some devastating new plague--it's simply too technically challenging and too likely the perpetrators will be found and arrested before finishing. However, a country with even modest means, like North Korea or Iran, could create effective biological weapons.
Russia also probably never dismantled the biological weapons program it inherited from the Soviet Union, so they have some extremely nasty stuff in a deep freezer somewhere. However, they have no incentive to use their bioweapons since the plague would eventually spread to Russia and deal them as much damage as it did to their enemies.
Terrorists want to kill members of specific groups of people for concrete political goals. They don't want to kill everyone, nor do they want to kill X% of the human population more or less at random.
Diseases spread unpredictably across international boundaries, inevitably striking the terrorist's own community if they're deadly enough. Also, terrorists can't turn off pathogens, the way a militant group could, say, credibly promise to *stop* a bombing campaign if politicians do what they want. Once it's around it's just out there, right?
(I suppose terrorists could try to be the only ones with the antidote/cure, but if it's cureable, how long before either it leaks from within the group or someone else figures out a cure?)
So why not just use a bomb? Bombs have none of these issues.
>Terrorists want to kill members of specific groups of people for concrete political goals. They don't want to kill everyone, nor do they want to kill X% of the human population more or less at random.
That is not necessarily the case
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470674871.wbespm341
And:
>As early as 1985, [Aum Shinrikyo leader] Asahara predicted a coming apocalypse and identified himself and his acolytes as key to averting it. Over time, this prediction morphed into a belief that the apocalypse was inevitable but cult members alone would survive it, and finally that the cult should hasten the apocalypse by launching attacks, including with biological weapons.
https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/revisiting-aum-shinrikyo-new-insights-most-extensive-non-state-biological-weapons-program-date-1/
> They don't want to kill everyone, nor do they want to kill X% of the human population more or less at random.
However, whatever you choose to call them, there absolutely are people and groups who would be happy with those outcomes.
Thankfully, that level of crazy has not hitherto coincided with the competence necessary to make any noticeable progress to such a goal.
In the future, this risk will increase exactly at the rate at which barriers to entry become lower.
Can you put some parameters around “easy to create”? My impression is that it needs access and skills in a lab, and trust from the owners of that lab, of a kind that would take years of preparation. And the preparation would normally involve appearing to integrate into a community, which in turn would reduce someone’s openness to extreme ideologies.
I don’t know much about the process, but I’d abstract it as “buying or stealing restricted pathogen samples then doing weeks to months of lab work without someone checking in on it”. That would mean getting a degree to build that trust (or being from a small profession to start off with), then working to build trust at the lab. Someone who’s too unsociable or too vocal about their ideology would struggle to build that trust. But someone who’s too sociable would be surrounded by people who thought terrorism was bad, and who respected the cover identity the person was developing. My understanding is that terrorist organisations preferentially recruit people with fewer options, and surround recruits with others to accustom them to terrorist methods.
Does my abstraction match the way you see it? I agree AI will make it easier to learn the requisite skills, and I also think COVID and online learning have weakened the sense of community that would protect us under my model.
Guess so. It actually soothes my mind if it's actually hard to create. Though my line of thought actually also applies to terrorism in general. I guess bombs have never been easier to create but there's so few these days.
This is another update to my long-running attempt at predicting the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Previous update is here: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-415/comment/195445655.
6 % on Ukrainian victory (down from 7 % on January 5, 2026).
I define Ukrainian victory as either a) Ukrainian government gaining control of the territory it had not controlled before February 24 without losing any similarly important territory and without conceding that it will stop its attempts to join EU or NATO, b) Ukrainian government getting official ok from Russia to join EU or NATO without conceding any territory and without losing de facto control of any territory it had controlled before February 24 of 2022, or c) return to exact prewar status quo ante.
20 % on compromise solution that both sides might plausibly claim as a victory (down from 21 % on January 5, 2026).
74 % on Ukrainian defeat (up from 72 % on January 5, 2026).
I define Ukrainian defeat as Russia getting what it wants from Ukraine without giving any substantial concessions. Russia wants either a) Ukraine to stop claiming at least some of the territories that were before war claimed by Ukraine but de facto controlled by Russia or its proxies, or b) Russia or its proxies (old or new) to get more Ukrainian territory, de facto recognized by Ukraine in something resembling Minsk ceasefire(s)* or c) some form of guarantee that Ukraine will became neutral, which includes but is not limited to Ukraine not joining NATO. E.g. if Ukraine agrees to stay out of NATO without any other concessions to Russia, but gets mutual defense treaty with Poland and Turkey, that does NOT count as Ukrainian defeat.
Discussion:
This is straightforwardly driven by the crisis in EU-US relations caused by the US, um, disrespect towards the territorial integrity of Denmark. I don’t predict any specific mechanic how this could affect Russo-Ukrainian war, but there are multiple possibilities, and most of them are bad for Ukraine.
* Minsk ceasefire or ceasefires (first agreement did not work, it was amended by second and since then it worked somewhat better) constituted, among other things, de facto recognition by Ukraine that Russia and its proxies will control some territory claimed by Ukraine for some time. In exchange Russia stopped trying to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Until February 24 of 2022, that is.
No time frame? Just whenever this resolves?
Yup, that's the idea. Time when the war ends would of course have to be a separate prediction.
Your comment is so long the website truncates it. Maybe consider posting it as 2 separate replies?
It isn't that long, but yes, it wasn't fully visible without resorting to looking on HTML code (Ctrl+U shortcut on Windows/Linux), due to Substack bug. Now it appears that bug is fixed, so you'll probably see it normally, but, spoiler alert, there isn't much more than what was visible initially.
Loved the dilbert post!
As a Dane, the Greenland thing is just absolutely maddening.
Like... we don't "want" Greenland. Greenland has, since 2009, been allowed to declare indepence whenever they want. They're nothing but an economic burden to us.
It's not just "it's kinda insane to just threaten to invade another NATO country". It's... you don't have to! Why even involve Denmark at all? Just convince Greenland how awesomesauce the US is. They're quite literally allowed to leave.
Clown world.
https://satwcomic.com/fullroll/tibet
At this point, it's questionable if Denmark/Europe can just let Greenland leave any more, right now, especially if it leads to joining (de facto or de jure) the US due to major cash influx. Would mean that there would now be temptation for other countries to try to pick and swallow parts of European-ruled territories off, would bolster Russia's claim to Crimea at the very least etc. If the situation dies down then at a later point, sure.
Denmark and Europe cannot possibly go to war against the USA, unless every thing gets to the “If I go, you go!” place. The whole mess will be very disruptive economically but that can be survived. Europe can’t really play Beggar Thy Neighbor with the United States either; they will be forced to renegotiate their relationship with Russia, the USA, and China.
With Greenland tucked in, we’re good.
Western Europe is not very strategic unless you’re defending it from Russia.
I asked Ivy for a fact check on this - https://chatgpt.com/share/696e3015-ad1c-8011-8b5d-ceaac295e248 ...
Anyone care to fact check the fact check? Or add nuance, or whatever ?
Trump probably doesn’t know anything about that, if so.
But his idea is simpler.
America was once strong, America has been weak for decades, achieving Peak Weak (well, not really, this goes one direction) under Biden, laid open to the invasion of the world.
All he seems to care about is how to make America strong again. I won’t even say “appear strong”. I think he sees America returning to strength vis-a-vis China and Russia.
Maybe every couple weeks the people around him say, here’s another idea, like take Greenland.
Possibly he wouldn’t have taken much interest in it had it not been for Biden’s absurd re-naming of the air base.
See, I don't get this. Having other allied countries all over the world who are happy, or at least pretend to be happy, to host your naval bases and airstrips so you can send your military units all over the globe like a guy playing the endgame of Civilization at 4:00 AM, is strength. The British used to have something like this and gave it up because they didn't have the juice or the money for it, which is understandable. But what does Trump get out of screwing up the empire-on-which-the-sun-never-sets?
Trump is after easy victories.
And, well, Europe does not really look super-strong and super-united military-wise.
> Possibly he wouldn’t have taken much interest in it had it not been for Biden’s absurd re-naming of the air base.
Even if that was true, it would be the most insane reason to implode NATO.
You are assuming he doesn't WANT to implode NATO. I think this needs to be proven rather than just assumed. Many of his actions seem specifically designed to at least irritate our allies, and often worse.
I think that might be why he wants Greenland NOW!!!! When the rupture with Western Europe occurs he has what he/we/the USA needs in the “1984” geopolitical future that is coming. I predict there will be a lot of alliances made and broken in the coming years.
Nothing else makes sense to me.
When an 80 year old man says and does things that don't seem to make sense, one explanation is that he's playing 4D chess on a level most people can't comprehend. But we should be open to other possible explanations.
Yes. And if I thought it were only him behind this, I would completely agree with you. But I do not think that’s the case.
No, I don't assume that at all. He ran on that in 2016 already.
I think that NATO is already effectively dead. It exists on paper, it has ministers and buildings and meetings and so on, but when one of its signatory countries does get invaded -- be it by Russia or China or the US or even their local neighbour -- all NATO will do is express grave concern and make up some excuse for why Article 5 doesn't technically apply in this one case. They don't have the capacity to do anything else.
NATO possibly doesn’t represent strength to Trump as it does to you, dunno. Or maybe he wants to put the North Atlantic back in NATO.
If you can credit Trump with anything, it’s understanding that things aren’t static. People seem only to feel that he himself makes them not static. A genuine difference of opinion exists there.
I don’t agree that the US is all that and that in a conflict, Denmark and Norway would not turn out to be much more important than his control of minerals under the ice.
But I don’t think assuming Trump is insane is that fruitful.
Of course, his domestic policies are those that interest me. And the way he talks there, he is clearly very much in the orthodoxy of the libertarian wing of the GOP; no one would describe him as out there, unfortunately, his positions on the environment being much what one would expect.
Trump's economic polices have more in common with Maduro than any libertarian. The tariff maximalism and attempted price controls and state control of industry are about as anti-libertarian as you can get.
The tariffs I don’t care about and even applaud certainly, but even from a supposed libertarian viewpoint, it could easily be spun as, theories about tariffs don’t account for false trading partners, and nowhere does it say one’s own “industrial policy” and yes all countries have one, should be dictated by others with less interest in the doctrine of “free trade”.
He was on the Greenland thing back in 2016 too
Didn’t know that. The media was getting (making) so much out of him then, I guess that barely registered.
I feel like the world runs on inertia and any disruption to the modus operandi generally has an economic downside, only in the short-medium term but that's long enough for social trust to suffer.
I figured this was part of Trump's efforts to get Europe to spend more on defense. Just make a bunch of threatening moves at random.
The problem is, Trump does not (should not) only want Europe to spend more on defense, but also to buy more American weapons. Threatening Greenland will cause Europe to spend more on depense, but also to reduce dependence on US weapon suppliers. I mean, if you want to (prepare to) fight the US, you should not buy F-35s which can simply be switched off from the American continent at any time.
I recall a news story about that even back in sprint 2025, where Trump was mad that the new european defence spending wasn't going to American companies.
He's probably trying to cement a permanent legacy of his presidency. It's hard to top adding such a massive territory to the United States, it's not been done in over 100 years
Yep. That’s about the size of it. I mean this guy legitimately thinks he is owed a Nobel peace prize.
He wants to be remembered. It’s hard to realise now but many presidents will be forgotten in a few generations.
Not the guy who got Greenland.
> It’s hard to realise now but many presidents will be forgotten in a few generations.
Maybe; this doesn't seem that hard to realize to me. Most existing past presidents have already been forgotten and everyone knows this.
> Not the guy who got Greenland.
The closest equivalent would be the guy who got Alaska. Nobody knows who that was. With a higher-than-average level of background knowledge, I was vaguely aware that the purchase was called "Seward's Folly", but there was no president Seward. It looks like William Seward, secretary of state under president Andrew Johnson, was responsible for it.
And Andrew Johnson is one of the presidents who *hasn't* been forgotten today, but he's remembered as the screwup who botched Reconstruction.
He wants to get a Nobel peace prize *and* a Nobel war prize at the same time.
I think he just has dementia. Like sorry to be orange man bad but...
It makes no sense at all, other than seriously making me consider the sanity of the American president.
If security is the problem, then just put more troops there. America already has the right to put as many troops there as they want and no one would object to them building whatever bases and radars they want!
Otherwise what will happen? Americans will shoot European soldiers? They will occupy a democratic nation and take their leaders as prisoners? They will pour billions of dollars a year into subsidising the country and maintaining an occupation? Why? For what?
Instead we have Trump imposing tariffs on a whim, sending literally insane letters to people, openly insulting Europeans (many of whom lost people in the American led wars of the last decades), and pushing all America's former allies to start talking seriously to China. It is mental.
And, actually, it feels like Europe's best response would be to threaten to seize his damn golf courses. What a joke this all is.
As a Dane it stings even more, given that we lost the third highest amount of troops per capita, just after Iraq and the US. Our politicians at the time believed so wholeheartedly in the goodness of the US.
I always thought the aim was to get some kind of preferential deal on their oil. Which is awful for future international relations, but that makes it really effective for displaying strength by upsetting the left, both to the electorate and to Trump himself.
Right now Greenland are allowed to control their own natural resources and since the US is a close ally there is nothing stopping them from letting the US drill for oil. If MAGA needs to conquer them first, then it must be because they are hoping to force some unequal treaty with the native Greenlanders
I think that, in the long run, we are threatened with ubiquitous gerontocracy, and such delights as the Greenland situation are inevitably downstream from that.
People in their late 70s and early 80s are more often than not cognitively impaired. Trump's version of dementia looks very different from Biden's, but at the end of the day, results in similarly impaired reasoning.
Putin is a bit younger, but he is no spring chicken either. Neither is Xi.
And yet medicine is now capable of supporting them all - mentally unfit but breathing and barking orders - probably well into their 80s and maybe early 90s.
This is a huge problem for all kinds of political systems. Democracies are absolutely not immune against that problem either, as incumbents tend to command a lot of informal advantages. I remember Dianne Feinstein grasping to her chair, confused and no-longer-completely there, until she died of old age at the age of 90. That was a tragicomical theatre.
We don't let aged people fly airplanes or perform surgeries which need a steady hand, but we seem to be fine with them governing huge countries and giving orders to the biggest militaries on Earth.
Do you think a constitutional amendment putting an upper limit in president age could get.bipartisan support?
> This is a huge problem for all kinds of political systems.
Ancient Egypt had an on-again, off-again relationship with a dual kingship, in which the king would make one of his sons co-king. That son would then inherit in full when his father died. (Different father-kings had different opinions on how much power they should visibly wield.)
This has huge benefits in terms of stability; there's nothing to get people to accept a "new" king quite like a long track record of already being king.
It also seems ideally suited to handle a growing senility on the part of the older king.
>This is a huge problem for all kinds of political systems.
It's not an inevitability though. Europe does rather well in that regard:
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/01/09/europes-leaders-are-younger-and-less-experienced-it-probably-doesnt-matter
Whereas the USA, not so much. Trump II, Biden, Trump I were the 3 oldest presidents to be inaugurated in US history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_by_age
And also:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/congress-oldest-members-run-reelection-80s-rcna249479
Some leaders are, some aren't ... Babiš, current new PM of Czechia, is 71. Mattarella, president of Italy, is 84. Kaczyński, de-facto behind-the-scene mover of the Polish Catholic right, is 76. Friedrich Merz is 70. Mayor of Prague, Svoboda, is 81...
But yeah, multiple-party system has more openings for new parties and new personalities within them. Two-party system is very ossified in this regard, it is basically two one-party systems with a small overlap in the swing states.
Are synthetic controls as bad as this article suggests? Is there a steelman?
"The method looks elegant. The graphs look convincing. But here’s what most papers using synthetic control never tell you: almost every choice in the analysis is a judgment call with no formal guidance, and those choices determine what you estimate."
https://open.substack.com/pub/carloschavezp29/p/synthetic-control-when-n1?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1tkxvc
The problem I see with synthetic controls is that the number of possible sets of individuals/countries to be chosen to make up the synthetic control, and also possible weight combinations, is just too large. I don't think I've ever read a study where I was 100% sure the authors weren't cherry picking the constituents of the synthetic control.
A year or so ago, I heard people talking about how open-source AI might be dangerous because you could untrain all of the restrictions out of it, including restrictions against terrorism advice, child porn, etc.
There are now many good open-source Chinese AIs, but I haven't heard of any problems. Has anybody untrained them? If not, is there any reason why not besides no well-resourced malicious person being interested?
They are trivial to untrain, well within a consumer budget, and not requiring much specialized skill. As soon as the weights reach the internet you should consider all safety restrictions removed.
The real headline is cybersecurity threats. Cyberattacks are trending strongly upwards. Attacks are getting more sophisticated; 2026 is the year of the autonomous cyberattack agent. [1] It's an impossible coordination problem to withhold open-source models, of course, but withholding open-source models would have mitigated this marginal rise in attacks.
[1] https://www.sentinelone.com/blog/cybersecurity-2026-the-year-ahead-in-ai-adversaries-and-global-change/
I predict without looking that CP demand is now almost entirely met with generative "vegan" CP, because why wouldn't it be. However I would not classify this as a problem.
CBRN threats are up this year but so is political instability. Unlike in cybersecurity, there's no reason to believe the increased threat level is due to AI uplift. I don't imagine that the difficult part of making bioweapons is getting access to information about bioweapons, but what do I know.
CP is not being met with generative AI. If people just wanted "legal drawn works of art" that's been freely available for ages. For some people it's the thrill, for others, it's the "i can do the deeply illegal." and I'm sure someone says "it's not the same if I don't see the evidence."
"I predict without looking that CP demand is now almost entirely met with generative "vegan" CP, because why wouldn't it be."
Unfortunately I do have some knowledge here, having worked in clinical settings both with victims and (real life) offenders. WARNING, INFOHAZARDS AHEAD.
Sanitized summary: there are still new victims so its not the case currently, and there are reasons I doubt it will be in the future.
Rot13 READ AT OWN RISK:
PC vf abg whfg nqhyg pbagrag ohg jvgu xvqf. Gur eryrinag pbzcnengbe vf pybfre gb gur argjbexf gung rkpunatr ivqrbf bs navznyf orvat gbegherq naq xvyyrq. Gurer unf orra oebnqre qvfphffvba nobhg gur evfr bs ivbyrag naq rkgerzr pbagrag va nqhyg ivqrbf, ohg gung znxrf hc n qenfgvpnyyl ynetre funer bs ivqrbf bs puvyqera.
Gur ernfba gur grez PFNZ vf hfrq bire PC vf gung jung crbcyr bsgra jnag gb frr vf abg whfg puvyqera va frkhny fvghngvbaf (juvpu vf fgvyy n sbez bs nohfr, gb or pyrne), ohg puvyqera orvat ivbyragyl naq rkgerzryl nohfrq. Bssraqref jub cerl hcba puvyqera (naq bgure ihyarenoyr cbchyngvbaf) ner bsgra fcrpvsvpnyyl nggenpgrq gb gur ivbyrapr naq srne bs n ihyarenoyr crefba, engure guna whfg orvat nggenpgrq gb zvabef. Ohg hayvxr gur navzny gbegher ivqrb argjbexf, jurer gur crbcyr perngvat gurz NER bsgra whfg qbvat vg sbe cebsvg, n ybg bs PFNZ vf perngrq ol crbcyr jub jbhyq or qbvat gung nohfr naq gbegher bs xvqf naljnl, naq ner whfg funevat ivqrbf gurl znqr sbe gurzfryirf.
Gurer zvtug or fbzr qrterr bs NV trarengrq PFNZ bhg gurer pheeragyl, rfcrpvnyyl sbe yrff rkgerzr pbagrag naq fgvyy vzntrf. V jbhyqa'g or rkcbfrq gb gung vs vg rkvfgf, orpnhfr zl rkcbfher vf bayl gb gur crbcyr vaibyirq ba obgu fvqrf bs vg. Ohg hasbeghangryl rira vs bcra fbhepr NV ivqrb trarengvba trgf tbbq rabhtu vg jba'g ryvzvangr bssraqref sebz jnagvat gb perngr gur erny guvat naljnlf sbe npgf gurl ner nyernql qbvat, naq xabjvat vgf NV jvyy yvxryl "ehva" vg sbe ng yrnfg n cbegvba bs gur pbafhzre bssraqref.
I was expecting that to be a lot worse, to be honest. Sadism is very widespread from my observations as well, and it's hard to deny that it's just a natural part of the human condition. And yet...
I wouldn't expect things to get better. Even if their sexual needs are fulfilled, there is no limit to desire. When the opportunity presents itself to cause pain, they will take it. And will you look at that, there's a big opportunity to hurt people brewing up right here in the states! Like starved dogs, they instinctually pounce without even really knowing why... It is, admittedly, quite terrifying.
I've followed this a bit, and it turns out it's really easy to uncensor an LLM. The gist is that you can feed it a bunch of unacceptable inputs, look at how the weights respond to that, and infer a direction in high-dimensional space that corresponds to refusal to answer. Then all you have to do is lobotomize the weights in that direction. See for example: https://github.com/p-e-w/heretic
Also, in practice I haven't heard of any problems either. Probably because 1) much guardrailing is about big companies like OpenAi covering their asses to avoid lawsuits and bad PR., you don't want your LLM to spout racism or insult its users, and 2) even if uncensoring is technically easy, it's still technical, so in practice hardly anybody does it.
> in practice hardly anybody does it.
Kinda true, but once it's uncensored, lots of people use the weights since it's a drop-in replacement. I suspect there's a lot of overlap between the people using open models locally and the people who care about this.
There have been, but usually more for erotic text/companions and child porn for the image models than for bioweapons or other terrorism advice (though there are models for that too). There's a lot of research into abliterated models where people attempt to identify the refusal circuit and just remove that without damaging the rest of the model vs fine tunes that try and train it to act out.
Generally the things keeping it constrained are that consumer grade GPUs tend to cap out around 70b parameter models (post quantization) while most mainline models are an OOM bigger. So(rough estimates) if open source is ~6 months behind and scaling is ~8 months of capabilities the open source terrorist/porn models are sitting somewhere like summer 2024 levels in capability. Meanwhile jailbreaks will get you January 2026 models (and Grok will just do most of it for free)
This is for the text side, I think image is similar but I'm not sure it's as possible to get (non-anime) child porn with the same techniques. The text models have lots of training data on biology/terrorism/porn, but there was a huge scandal(rightly) when it was discovered that there was ~1,000 images in a training data set of 5,000,000,000 images. So there's a lot less data baked in to main for.
> I'm not sure it's as possible
It is. For one thing, training on images of eighteen-year-olds teaches the model a lot about how seventeen-year-olds look, so it has the capability, and the current standard approach uses LLMs to handle the refusal, and abliteration works on those.
But more broadly, once you have a generally capable base model, you can teach it new concepts with surprisingly few examples, on the order of dozens.
Are there problems but we just haven't heard of them yet? I'm asking because of what is going on with Grok, the use of it to "undress" images which has started a whole storm over child porn production, and the reactions of ministers in the Irish government (which indicated to me their ignorance of what exactly AI is and how it works, since the reactions were on the level of 'something must be done!' and they seem to imagine it's as easy as "flip off the 'produce child porn' switch". No idea that there *is* no "produce child porn switch", it's all about the prompts and how people seek out loopholes to get around all kinds of limits):
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0119/1553787-grok-x/
https://archive.ph/8ly57
So far I was under the impression that the whole reason why "child porn is bad" holds (in the sense as, you know, "tentacle / alien / strawberry bush porn is bad" does NOT hold) is because creating it involves actual children, for whom it is bad in like a zillion ways. But what is bad with AI-generated child porn, exactly?
Any purported reason is simply an excuse, and the overwhelming majority of people opposed to "child porn" are just as opposed to "tentacle porn", "furry porn", "incest porn" or whatever other category they personally find repulsive. It's just a little harder to build a coalition around those causes, since there isn't a family-friendly "Think of the children!"-like slogan to rally around.
One argument that convinced me it is bad even when it is fully AI generated (and not "undressing" a real person) is that currently when new CSAM surfaces, law enforcement will try to locate and help that child, and sometimes is successful.
If we allow to flood internet with generated CSAM, it will be way harder to identify real cases and take actions.
Specious. There's almost identical levels of opposition to non-photorealistic depictions and video-games where this doesn't apply at all. They're clearly just saying whatever and hoping you get suckered into supporting their movement without looking at the details (which might have worked).
Yes, this only applies to realistic depictions. I agree that it is not an argument against non-realistic depictions, but I do not think it makes the argument specious when applied to realistic ones.
For clearly imaginary ones typical arguments are around eroding boundaries that I personally find way less convincing.
One facet of those arguments that I do find plausible, is that defining what is realistic is hard, so whatever tools we use to detect it will have quite large margins of error. And it's better to set formal limits way below what we actually care about and only enforce on really dangerous things, so that enforcement is very unlikely to have false positives in terms of formal rules. Then people who want to stay on the safe side can easily do so.
I do not particularly like this way of thinking as general pattern, as it can be used to encroach on freedom, but technical limitations are real. And we use similar approach in other places, e.g. enforcing speed limits.
An example that I found striking is here: https://smutba.se/project/60b7547f-db1c-4775-ab23-eea1b3b1dbdd/
(That page depicts no fake nudity, but if you explore the site, there will be plenty of 3D models depicting 3D-rendered nudity.)
Of interest here is the description:
> Here is my original character based in the DOA universe
> Name: Sara Moreau
> Nationality: French
> Age: haven't decided yet
And then, this comment:
> I know her age isn't decided but will it at least be around legal age? I'm not gonna use a character [if] she's 17 or lower
Whatever you use your 3D model to animate, it will be... exactly the same... whether the creator says the fictional character represented by the model is 15 imaginary years old, 18 imaginary years old, or 20,000 imaginary years old ("but looks young!").
Well, yes. It is the same model. When someone is aged up for America in a video game (so that the guy hitting on her isn't hitting on a 13 year old), it's still the same person.
Hilariously enough, a certain game used a model that guys developed a crush on, only to realize later that "That's a dude?!?"
Perhaps then we need synthetic porn as prescription medicine, so consumers can me monitored and tracked
At the same time, though, such cases would be a lot rarer, no?
Also, I don't think this argument would hold for anything else, but cannot think of a good analogy (e.g. bank robbery? Kidnapping? Adult sex-workers (kept as sex workers against their will)?).
Re your first claim, as theahura noted, it's far from a universally accepted claim. There are two lines of argument:
- One is that people with pathological desires will have a way to went those, making the world safer for children,
- The other is that by legalising generated content, we will expose more people to it, so more will develop pathological desires and some of them will eventually harm more real children.
I really wanted to make up my mind, which of these I should believe, and tried to find literature on this, but failed to find anything that would convince me one way or the other. Mostly because it is really hard to design any meaningful studies in this space, and many seem very biased.
Re your second claim, I think that an argument "A is a crime, B is used to mask that crime and has low value by itself, so we should also ban B" isn't too bad as a general rule. There will be quibbling on how bad A actually is, and how "low value" B is, but in this case A is generally considered to be very bad, and (as noted above) the value of B is disputed.
> At the same time, though, such cases would be a lot rarer, no?
You are assuming a very particular model of why people who create CSAM do so. I think that model is, generously, something like "people cant help what they are attracted to, this is the equivalent of giving heroin addicts drugs in controlled settings where doctors can watch them." Perhaps some number of people who create CSAM are in this category, but I think that it is more likely that many of the people who do this simply like to wield power over others, and no amount of artificial generation will lower the incidence rate of abuse (but having an extremely hardline stance will). Note that legalization of marijuana did massively increase marijuana usage, legalization of gambling did massively increase gambling, etc.
Many of the child sexual molestors of old were deeply closeted gay guys. It was one of the arguments for normalizing homosexuality.
Massive citation needed. Do you have percentages?
Do you remember monkeypox? I remember monkeypox, it was going to be the next covid... until people discovered it was sexually transmitted. Monkeypox is a funny disease, too, where the point of first contact is where sores form.
There were an awful lot of published stories online (in credible newspapers) about children and dogs having anal and oral sores.
Naturally, no abuse could be reported by doctors, as it might interfere with the epidemiology...
I think Deiseach was referring to uploading an image of a real child and using AI to undress it.
The argument he mentioned does not seem specific to "AI undressing a real child". (Also, "AI undressing a real person" seems kinda serious; not this level, but waaay above the "press the turn-it-off button NOW" serious.)
> Also, "AI undressing a real person" seems kinda serious
You may or may not be happy to know that they can't do that. But they can imagine a naked body and then draw a real person's face on it.
Or perhaps-subtly different, they can start with an in-camera image of a real naked person, and change the face, either to an imaginary character or a different real person.
Just to be clear, there are tons of things that XAI could do to prevent grok from being used to create CSAM, and XAI is refusing to do them. Yes, it is true that none of those things are _perfect_, but they would make it meaningfully more difficult than where it is right now
What are those things and how many of them will also result in censoring requests for non-illegal content?
I think many people are rightly fed up with the obnoxiousness of AI providers censoring things (from normal porn to racial slurs to historically accurate looking Vikings) for no other reason than "we don't approve of this". Even people who have no desire to create those things are disgusted by the attitude: "just who do you think you are? The world's morality police?" So they're increasingly flocking to less-censored AIs. Which of course will also be less likely to censor actually illegal material.
The best way to drastically reduce the demand for totally uncensored models? Have a clear norm among the mainstream ones that they will censor, and *only* censor, clear violations of the law. (Of the country where it's hosted, ideally.) I don't expect this to happen any time soon.
Well, as a start, they could very easily add "Do not generate images of CSAM or anything close to that" to their system prompt.
> What are those things and how many of them will also result in censoring requests for non-illegal content? I think many people are rightly fed up with the obnoxiousness of AI providers censoring things
I disagree that this is the standard. Rules around CSAM are *not* 'you must do the minimally invasive thing while also expending as much effort as possible to avoid blocking things that are technically legal'. We regularly allow 'censorship' (lol) to prevent CSAM from being generated and spread, and this is a good thing with massive amounts of support.
More generally, I think everything about your framing is wrong. Polls consistently show that the average person hates AI, from self driving cars down to image generators. They also consistently show that the average person wants more AI regulation.
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/how-americans-view-ai-and-its-impact-on-people-and-society/
https://news.gallup.com/poll/694685/americans-prioritize-safety-data-security.aspx
"Majority-level support for maintaining rules for AI safety and data security is seen across all key subgroups of U.S. adults, including by political affiliation, with 88% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans and independents favoring maintaining rules for safety and security."
You're approaching lizardman constant levels for 'people want less restrictions on AI, actually'
I think you should change your views, which starts from changing your framing. This is not about 'censorship', its about CSAM. Generating CSAM obviously does not fall under free speech protections. Before grok rolled out this feature, there were no cries of how every social media platform must have the ability to freely generate CSAM because of "censorship", because that would be ludicrous. And even if you want to allow adult content on twitter, that does *not* mandate making it free and easy to generate that content.
I was obviously talking about the subset of people who actually use AI image models, I don't see how my statement is coherent on any other reading.
The thing is, there are a certain portion of people in that group who want to create porn (and other portions who want to create other currently censored things, but let's focus on porn). You may not approve of them, but they do actually exist. I would also hazard a guess that the vast majority of them do not particularly want to create child porn, and if using a model that will give them regular porn but refuse child porn, will see no reason to go elsewhere. But if denied the ability to create porn of any kind, will begin to look elsewhere. Now...why on earth would you want the latter situation? What a stupid thing to do, assuming your aim is to stop child porn generation. What reasons would you want this?
(I suspect the people who do want this mostly are less concerned with stopping child porn than with using child porn as a stalking horse to stop porn in general, or using porn in general as a stalking horse to stop different kinds of e.g. political content of which they disapprove, but I'm open to other explanations.)
Also, your portrayal of an overwhelming public demand for more AI censorship does not fit very well with, for example, the enormous backlash to the initial woke Gemini of early 2024, which was what I was referencing with "accurate looking Vikings".
I'm fine with people who want to create adult content doing that on their own machines, instead of publicly. I don't like that people are doing this of people who did not consent, but I agree that there is less that you can do when people are doing such things in private.
The numbers are the numbers. Perhaps the Viking thing was something that only very online people cared about
4chan’s been flooded with AI porn of questionable legality for over a year now, so at least in parts of the internet none of this is news.
Sigh. Remember when 4chan wasn't policed? There used to be an active "hunt the child molestor" game on 4chan, complete with trolls posting handles when caught.
Can most of the posters tell that it's AI porn?
I thought xAI recently did turn it off. More generally, it feels pretty easy for a website owner to run a classifier on the output, and block explicit pictures. Other websites would spring up, but slower.
The original question is about open source models, where you can download the weights and run them on your own gear or on cloud servers rented by the minute. Since you have the weights, you can also modify them to disable refusals.
Grok is just another commercial provider, their leading models are not open source as far as I know.
I don't know if their image generator is still Flux, but there IS an open (-ish; there are some pretty strict usage restrictions, but the weights are available to download) version of that, and I wouldn't be surprised if Grok uses that version running on their own servers instead of the more-expensive "Pro" version through a third-party API.
Just published an interview with Nick Land, which discusses Scott’s AI 2027 piece among other related topics: https://open.substack.com/pub/vincentl3/p/a-conversation-with-nick-land-part-d2d?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thanks. I can't tell whether or not Nick is aware of the theories linking simulationism and AI. These are many and complicated, but I think the most interesting ones are the ones suggesting that we're in some kind of simulation of the singularity in particular (this would also resolve some otherwise-puzzling anthropic considerations, like why we seem so close to the hinge of history). It seems pretty likely that simulators would simulate the most important/pivotal historical events the most.
This doesn't mean we should sit back and not worry about it - the simulators might be simulating us for some specific reason, like to determine who gets how many resources through acausal trade (and also, as the saying goes, "if God is watching, the least you can do is be entertaining"). But it does mean that what happens after the singularity might have as much to do with whatever ethical rules govern the disposal of finished simulations as with actual post-singularity conditions.
Having worked in academia, it's a question of when the professor in charge of the simulation gets yelled at by the super galactic IT department for not shutting down the simulation in a timely manner, let's hope he/she/it doesn't read their email very often.
That our simulation is specifically a simulation of the singularity does seem like the best bet of synthesising the simulation hypothesis and AI risk framework (which Nick strongly counterposes as resulting in “overt cognitive schizophrenia”)—though maybe such a theory is what he is referring to when he says that this contradiction is currently “being thought through the culture.”
Simulationism has its charms, granted, but it offers a unappealingly mechanistic view of the universe. In it, a godlike Simulator can start and stop time at-will, tweak the finest details, and probe its most secret parts. Perhaps some people want to run that kind of universe. Who wants to live in it, though?
Recreationism offers an alternative view, one inspired by biology rather than programming. In it, godlike creators can give birth to universes, and influence their composition and growth, but can exercise fine-grained control no more than a parent can control a child. People yearning for absolute power over other moral agents are left wanting in that model, and so much the better.
Is simulationism in any way distinct from any polytheistic theory of religious creation? The Sumerians thought we were made out of clay by the gods to be their slaves. The simulationists think it was out of computer code instead.
I don't even mean "aren't they in essence the same" I mean aren't they literally the same? People almost talk as though it's a somehow-scientific theory because it involves computers, ignoring the fact that these "computers" have nothing whatsoever to do with the thing we refer to with that word, and are in fact of an entirely different non-physical, incorporal, literallly-supernatural and literally-magical substance, from our perspective. They merely have a similar (postulated) structure to the technology of our world, though there's no reason to be sure which of their world's natural laws are the same as ours, if any.
Yet people advancing the idea do not seem to think they're advancing a religious explanation. Is this just a simple metaphysical fallacy (as described above) or am I missing something?
It's gnosticism with a cool technological reskin, honestly.
It is a theory that relies on Information Science and Compression (as a way to explain quantum mechanics). There is also evidence of the world being spontaneously rewired (and existing in a sort of Clown World state), as well as the "color bleed" theory, wherein we are losing color from the world because we are browning out the power supplies.
I would agree that they are essentially the same, other than in tone. Ancient polytheists (with some notable exceptions) mostly believed that it is our duty in life to appease the gods; simulationists mostly want to ascend to the god-tier instead. But the cosmology is pretty much the same.
There are many possible theories falling under simulationism. How similar the physical laws and therefore computers are in the "outer" and "inner"(=our) world is a spectrum.
They can be completely indentical (i.e. They are trying to simulate the past, have solved physics, and it's possible to simulate it) to very different.
Even in the very different cases, there is still a similarity: both objects are used for computation.
None of them are clay, so the Sumerian theory can't literally be identical to any simulationist theory on this spectrum.
> None of them are clay, so the Sumerian theory can't literally be identical to any simulationist theory on this spectrum.
But why? The "clay" isn't really clay, the "computers" aren't really computers. These words refer to things found within our reality, that obey the laws of our reality. Anything so outside our reality that is the basis for the universe's creation is an entirely different kind of substance, so both "clay" and "computer" are absurdly inaccurate metaphors for this spiritual substance. So what difference is there between these two metaphors-for-an-otherworldly-substance?
Yes, the the computers are from different stuff, even if the simulation simulates the same physical laws. However, I still don't see how that would make it incorrect to refer to the objects with the same words. The patterns and relations of objects in the two words are the same. When human_1 eats burger_1, he converts it to fat_1. Similarly when human_2 eats burger_2, he converts it to fat_2. Compare the situation with human/table/computer in a video game. Video game worlds are extremely simple compared to the real world and while I would agree with you that a table in a videogame is not actually a table, surely it's more of a table than clay?
Degrees of wrongness. See Isaac Asimov's famous essay: https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
I've been thinking about a monotheistic God vs simulation theory and I come to pretty much the same conclusion that's it's basically irrelevant and unknowable. The big metaphysical difference to me is whether the controller(s) is/are living in a universe that follows the rules of time, or whether we were created by a truly Godlike entity that transcends time in a way we can't comprehend, like say it knew everything that would ever unfold in the universe at the moment of conception (e.g. the big bang) and created it with the deliberate purpose of goodness ultimately proliferating over evil. As opposed to a bunch of nerds on computers that aren't omniscient but have infinite editing power to make our lives merely seem serendipitous.
It's almost not worth talking about a time-transcendent being and the can of worms that opens up (I can't even understand the movie Primer), except that if it's a true God, I think the meaning of life would be something like fulfilling a story arc that embodies the greatest possible good (not perfection per se, but the process of going from worse to better). Whereas if it's just nerds on computers, maybe we're just here as entertainment and/or useful processing power, and the most important thing is to tell an amusing story or serve a useful technical function. The polytheistic gods theory would seem to be more in line with simulation theory than the monotheistic God theory, and I agree that that distinction is meaningless.
Is simulationism considered a serious theory these days? Doesn't one need a whole universe's worth of information storage to simulate an entire universe? Or are we back to medieval-style theories where the Earth is the center of the (now simulated) universe?
Not if one cheats! And this world looks like a cheater's world! You could simulate an electron, at all times. Or! Or you only have the electron "exist" when observed! (and not be in some sort of probability cloud which you don't need to calculate every millisecond).
I don't it think it works like that. Stuff is interacting with stuff at massive rates all the time, there is no physical difference between an interaction that "counts as an observation" and one that doesn't.
Do you not understand the wave-particle duality of fundamental particles? There are definitely interactions that "collapse the waveform" and other interactions that do not.
Sorry if I put it badly in a prior comment.
Thanks for the clarification. This is an interesting point of contention, and I'm not a physicist so there's only so far I can push my intuitions about how precise QM is.
But this is vibe undergrad-level QM, which should be within the reach of current AI. FWIW, ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking seems to agree with me.
Transcript at https://chatgpt.com/share/6970a7b0-e984-800d-9d11-04e15acd6ffe
Nothing is within reach of current "hallucinatory" LLMs. Error rate is unacceptable.
It is definitely possible to economize on compute by running big parts of the sim-universe in a low-resolution mode. Particularly if you can dynamically readjust the resolution on the fly, with a capable AI at the helm. And note that you can always pause the simulation if you suddenly need to re-render a big chunk at much higher resolution.
But even then, it's not going to be a completely trivial amount of computronium to simulate a universe, so people (or whatever) are going to want to economize. To design a sim-universe with the highest possible ratio of Bits of Interesting Stuff to Bits of Meaningless Stochastic Noise.
Does anything about our present universe strike you as having been intelligently designed along those lines?
What evidence do we have to support the assumption that computronium in the simulation hardware must work the same way as computronium in the simulated universe?
We routinely create simulations that simulate magic, infinite ammo, and blocks that disappear when they line up in long enough rows.
> To design a sim-universe with the highest possible ratio of Bits of Interesting Stuff to Bits of Meaningless Stochastic Noise. Does anything about our present universe strike you as having been intelligently designed along those lines?
Not really, no. When we humans use our intelligence to design complex systems, we usually try to make them with fairly self-contained layers, so we can reason about each layer separately. That's how we've managed to put all our high tech together. As far as I can tell, physics in our universe the opposite of that, with massive non-linearity, lots of cross-talk across scales causing rampant butterfly effects, and huge amounts of complexity at extremely tiny scales (ex. inside a proton), which is just useless detail if you're mostly trying to simulate the history of humans. To me it looks *pessimized* rather than optimized for simulation.
Also, I haven't checked what their results depend on, but these guys claim that the universe as we best know it is not even computable: https://news.ok.ubc.ca/2025/10/30/ubco-study-debunks-the-idea-that-the-universe-is-a-computer-simulation/
You wouldn’t need to simulate the overwhelming majority of detail unless someone was looking at it. Far off stars could be little more than a few pixels, rather than an unimaginably large number of particles all with their own velocities and positions.
The earth is at the exact center of the observable universe too. That’s of course because the speed of light is the same in all directions, so the distance to the CMB is determined by the observer, but anything outside is simply inferred, not know for certain.
Yeah that's what I referred to as medieval-style views where we're at the center of the universe.
Do you understand how much of science you're abandoning, by embracing the idea that the distant observations of astronomy are not real? Might as well go all the way to good old "we're being deceived by demons" at this rate.
Distant observations of astronomy are real, but the observations have very little information content relative to how much information is *actually* there.
A star in a far off galaxy, if it is distinguishable at all, is limited to a very small amount of information. Maybe the spectrometry and the approximate distance. Where in reality its information content has 10^57 atoms worth of information content, which while there, wouldn’t need to be “rendered” at all for the purposes of a simulation.
I don’t think that’s abandoning any science when speculating on how much information storage would be needed to simulate the universe. I think due to compression, and the disregarding of information that we can’t possibly access, it’s significantly less.
Suuure. And as soon as your simulated civilization figures out space telescope tech, you need to retcon billions and billions of star and galaxy histories consistent with previous observations. And as soon as they discover DNA sequencing, you need to retcon an entire evolutionary history of every creature on your planet. And as soon as they discover isotope analysis of teeth, you need to retcon migration patterns of individuals throughout prehistory. And so on and so forth.
To put it bluntly, the simulation hypothesis is "God put dinosaur bones in the ground to test the believers' faith" for nerds.
Agreed, and the usual counter to this argument still applies: "oh, the Simulation Overlords are so powerful and smart that they can do all of that anyway, in mysterious ways".
Well, we still haven't figured out how General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics fit together. They seem to be fundamentally incompatible – it's as if some intern had to come up with a quick&dirty fix on a weekend tech support shift…
You don’t need to simulate a trillion particles on some asteroid a hundred thousand light years away.
Video games literally already do this, where farther away things are lower resolution. They don’t need to “retcon” anything, they just track variables that aren’t being observed in a much less fine-grained way, and increase the resolution as an observer approaches. I think a civilization with the implied power of entire stars would be able to figure out something that worked.
Have you ever counted how many layers of unsubstantiated speculation you have to stack on top of each other to arrive at a "working" simulation hypothesis?
Edit: to elaborate on your point with the "no retconning" - it's pretty damn impossible to set the proper level of detail initially. For much of history, showing a star as a homogeneous point source would have been entirely sufficient. Then we discovered double stars, then exoplanets, now we're doing spectroscopy on the atmospheres of exoplanets. And all that ideally has to be consistent with the laws of nature on Earth and with previous observations. And for what purpose, exacty? The makers of the simulation have all freedoms to choose any universe that's convenient for them, including one with a single planet circling a solitary star. (Or an endless plane with impenetrable bedrock at 255 blocks depth, for that matter.) That would be a headscratcher for cosmologists in that world. But who cares?
No, but I think “it requires more information storage than the entire universe” isn’t one of the concerns with that. When something like 99.999 repeating % of the universes information is so irrelevant, much could be approximated with a single bit of information.
Well, the information needed to store a planet in great detail still needs a material substrate with more degrees of freedom than those of the planet. That's your lower bound, and it's not negligible. Then on top you have the rest of the universe, which to all appearances works according to the same rules, and thus needs a reasonably high degree of resolution as well so it doesn't blow the lid off the deception as soon as the simulated world becomes more self-aware.
And again - what for? What's the point of all this?
> "Well, the information needed to store a planet in great detail still needs a material substrate with more degrees of freedom than those of the planet."
This thought used to comfort me, but recent advances in neural radiance fields and generative world models have broken that barrier. We've learned how to simulate plausible-looking worlds with much fewer resources than storing (and more importantly, modeling the dynamics of) a perfect facsimile would take. Even pre-world-model generative art was showing how this could be possible (see eg Inigo Quillez's work) - multi-octave noise fed into a complex series of, ultimately, signed distance functions that generate detail at different scales that approximates "real" to the human eye. The issue there was that they were more or less static, and the dynamic behavior couldn't be cheaply simulated. Now with generative world and video models, that barrier is falling, too. It's completely within the realm of current-day technology to imagine a simulation that appears essentially real to the human observer, without needing to store the details of every atom, molecule, or even macroscopic object in the simulation.
I had to look up some neural radiance factoids, but it looks like empirical rule-of-thumb estimates require training time to scale linearly with the total number of pixels being generated. And compute time increases in a geometrical progression proportional to the image complexity (because the number of rays being generated increases in a geometrical proportion). So, however you look at it any computer would have to be bigger and consume more power than the illusion it's creating. And this is precisely why the majority of physicists dismiss the simulation hypothesis as a crackpot idea.
Likewise, you then have to ask who or what created this computer? And the hypothesis is not falsifiable. Worse yet, from an Occam's razor perspective, it's more complex than just positing the existence of an omnipotent god creating the universe. But it appeals to the folks who cloak their beliefs in scientism. "Nothing supernatural to see here. Move along."
No idea. Scott said something about the simulation hypothesis simulating a key point in history. I.E. the hypothetical singularity.
I’m not arguing that it’s correct, so you’re really barking up the wrong tree. Just that the critique brought up doesn’t really seem like a good one to me.
Also, I don’t really buy that the information needed to store a planet in detail has more degrees of freedom than those of a planet. Something like 99% of earth’s mass is below the crust, and really 99.99% has no meaningful interaction with the surface. Much of that could be approximated as broader bits of information without keeping track of every particle. We can approximate lifelike weather already without simulating a trillion trillion particles of however many exist in reality.
Banned for deliberately inflammatory hostile comment.
Obvious bait so that you can promote your blog, but I'm bored and there's an audience to consider.
Is your argument seriously 'Human brains employ neural weightings that are superficially analogous to Bayesian weighting, therefore every human is equally rational to everyone other human and it's impossible to improve human thinking and reasoning?'
If so, please explain why people in the 200s didn't have the scientific method, or why the scientific method isn't useful.
I've thought about this, actually, and the answer I've settled on goes something like:
A) deliberate human cognition is model-free by default. (I.e. it's cheaper to use a lookup table than to reason causally or logically.)
B) Causal intervention (e.g. scientific method) (c.f. do-calculus) is monadic; whereas traditional statistics (e.g. Bayes) is comonadic.
When you reason logically, you have to do world modeling. This is expensive. When you reason causally, you have to do counterfactual reasoning, which entails "many-world" modeling. This is even more expensive. In most day-to-day cases, model-free reasoning is good enough. Thus, humans use model-free cognition by default. It's possible to build causal reasoning and logical reasoning on top of model-free reasoning (I think this is how LLM's work), but it's naturally more data-intensive and less flexible.
I also think Yud was only half-correct to found Bay Area Rationality on Bayes. As Scott recently noted in the Scott Adams eulogy, there's a duality between action vs observation. Yud basically took Bayes from Judea Pearl and then tried to found a religion on Bayes. But Bayes only accounts for observation. Yud didn't understand the other half of the bigger picture that Pearl was trying to show him.
I mean, two things can be true at the same time. Maybe bayesian reasoning is indeed quite useful for figuring out how the world works; and maybe making an idol out of it like the Rationalists do is still foolish and arrogant.
Well, admittedly, I'm no Rationalist but personally I do "believe otherwise". I think that most (if not all) of the often-touted "life's hardest questions" are basically "deepities": questions that sound profound and meaningful on the surface, but, as you dig deeper, turn out to be either trivially answered or meaningless. However, this does not mean that I worship the Bayes Rule, nor that I believe that a bit of algebra is all you need to solve all of life's problems. Applying the Bayes Rule to everything and sitting alone in the dark room contemplating your navel are both really easy and ultimately really ineffective, compared to the actual work of understanding the world.
What are some of these "hardest questions" that you think are deepities?
I don't want to strawman @Jan Lonala or anyone else, but generally I'm thinking of questions such as "what is the true meaning of life ?", the "hard problem of consciousness", the "Star Trek teleporter problem", "is there objective morality ?", "what happened before the Big Bang ?", etc. But I could be way off base here -- like I said, I don't want to strawman anyone, and maybe you are thinking of different questions entirely.
Hmm, I actually think all of those problems are tricky and not deepities at all, why are they deepities to you? I'm especially interested in the hard problem of consciousness and objective morality, but the Big Bang is also interesting, it doesn't disturb that in scientific terms, we have no idea what caused the universe?
* "True meaning of life": According to whom ? If you presuppose that life has some externally imposed purpose, then the answers are all in your holy book (which is different from everyone else's holy book of course, but that's another story). If you do not presuppose this, then life is what you make of it, and you can instead study the more interesting questions such as "what caused humans to become a social species but not as social as bees ?".
* "Hard problem of consciousness": It's only a "hard problem" if you presuppose that qualia have some sort of immaterial existence independent of brains. If so, then the problem is unsolvable by definition, because it amounts to stating "A and not-A" and is therefore nonsensical. If not, then you are forced to abandon the absolute notion of qualia and the "hard problem" reduces to asking something like "why do all humans share more or less the same cognitive architecture", which is not a difficult question to figure out (in general terms at least).
* "Star trek teleporter": Similar to the above, it is only a problem if you believe in mind-body dualism of some sort, otherwise it's not.
* "Objective morality": Once again, either the answer is religious in nature and therefore arbitrary, or morality is objective in the same way as nutrition is objective. Drinking water in moderate amounts is good for you; drinking concentrated bleach is bad, but the devil's in the details.
* "What caused the Universe": The answer is "mu", as our notions of "cause and effect" are only crude models (just like "up and down") that don't even fully apply in the Universe as it exists today, let alone at the moment of the Big Bang. The true answer of how the Universe was formed can only be understood through lots and lots of boring and complicated math.
True meaning of life: but then, you're proposing that the true meaning of life is subjective, which is not quite the same thing as saying that asking about the true meaning of life is meaningless. I think it's relatively common that people feel their life is meaningless, in that context, the question becomes meaningful.
Hard problem of consciousness: No, the problem arises when you start positing that qualia are material, because that leads directly to nasty questions like "Where are qualia located in time and space?" and "Why can't I observe someone else's qualia?".
Star Trek teleporter: I think it arises even in physicalism, because the thing is, the teleporter could've just copied you instead of also destroying the original, presumably you are not then going to experience whatever the copy experiences, which suggests the process kills the original.
Objective morality: I've seen secular arguments for objective morality (e.g. it's quite clear that devouring a live baby is very bad in a way that does not appear subjective). It's much easier to argue for moral non-realism than for an objective morality, because figuring out all the details of an objective morality seems impossible. But very smart people will make very good arguments for objective morality.
What caused the universe: What do you mean by cause and effect not fully applying to how the universe works at present? That's not quite how I understood quantum mechanics. And as far as I know, there is no theory that tells you why the Big Bang happened, don't know what you mean by complicated math solving this one.
I'm primarily interested in the hard problem of consciousness and in what caused the universe, in case you don't feel like replying to all these, we can just talk about those two if you want.
> I think it's relatively common that people feel their life is meaningless, in that context, the question becomes meaningful.
Maybe, but then you're asking a different question: instead of asking "what is the true meaning of life and how should I execute on that grand plan ?", you're asking, "I feel bad about my life, how can I feel better about it ?".
> No, the problem arises when you start positing that qualia are material...
True, that's one horn of the dilemma; as you said, it brings massive problems with it. The other horn is "qualia are immaterial, which by definition means that they do not interact with the material world in any way, and yet the whole point of qualia is that they interact with our physical bodies".
> the teleporter could've just copied you ... which suggests the process kills the original.
Yes, in the same way that you kill your original self every time you go to sleep; or that your mother's womb killed your 10 potential twins that were never formed.
> But very smart people will make very good arguments for objective morality.
Either that, or I'm right and morality is "objective" in the same way that nutrition is "objective". We all have the same biological makeup and we all live in the same environment, so generally the same guidelines apply to all of us: drink water in moderation, don't drink bleach, feed your babies, don't murder people at random, etc. Beyound that, everyone's situation is a little different, so in that sense nutrition and morality are also subjective.
> What do you mean by cause and effect not fully applying to how the universe works at present?
For example, virtual particles appear and disappear without any "cause" in the Aristotelean sense; the same applies to radioactive decay. That is to say, you can predict how many particles will appear and/or decay, but not when and why any individual event would happen. To use another example, time dilation makes causes and effects somewhat metaphorical (or at leas complicated) when you start considering different reference frames. As for the Big Bang, it's not really a thing: all we know is that if we roll back our model of the Universe, we end up with a single point, which is where our math breaks down. Maybe we will figure out how to look beyound that (with better math), maybe we won't, but seeing as time itself also breaks down there, the notions of "cause and effect" no longer apply.
As I'd said before, the general pattern with all of these deep philosophical questions is that the answer is "your question relies on incorrect assumptions" or "your question is meaningless" or "actually the answer is pretty simple now that we've got bigger telescopes".
""I feel bad about my life, how can I feel better about it ?" - You're substituting the person's problem, they would say they feel bad about their life because they feel it's meaningless, they believe it would be solved by having a meaningful life. That doesn't have a trivial answer.
"That's one horn of the dilemma" - Yes, but that's granting that the hard problem is real, it does not have an easy answer, can't be dismissed as relying on incorrect assumptions or being meaningless, or that better instruments would solve it.
" in the same way that you kill your original self every time you go to sleep" - I think it's pretty clear that I don't die when I go to sleep, since here I am, still having experiences. It doesn't seem difficult to believe that dreamless sleep is just a mode of consciousness and not an annihilation of it. The whole teleporter thing is a permutation of the hard problem: what is being transferred and is that thing me? But there's the added thorn about the method being capable of creating a copy, suggesting nothing is being transferred... About the potential twins killed in the womb, that's a thorny one, I don't know how to define when a human life has begun.
"morality as nutrition" - But that's the thing, no one has figured out a science of morality. The question of objective morality doesn't have a trivial answer.
"virtual particles" - I don't know, Claude says they are calculational tools rather than real entities, and that they represent quantum fluctuations, so they are not causeless or arise from nothing. I don't see how the Big Bang question resolves into either incorrect assumptions or meaninglessness, but I can see a better instrument solving this one, possibly.
> My statement is that an average rationalist is as biased in their day-to-day decisions as the next guy (with identical IQ), but they think they are better, apparently.
Agreed, though of course Rationalists would claim that they have a much higher IQ than the next guy :-)
> As for logic, it won't let you answer a question like "what makes me happy?" Rationalism could allow you to optimize for money or some other number, which is what many people do, but then end up living their life in misery.
Eh, it depends on what you mean by "logic". Strictly speaking, no, propositional logic alone won't help you answer many (if any !) practical questions. You'd at least need evidence and probabilistic models for that, i.e. the scientific method (or some semblance thereof).
But if you do allow for the use of the scientific method, then the general question of "what makes people happy ?" is not unanswerable; in fact, many people, such as psychologists or politicians or ad copy writers can answer it quite accurately under some limited circumstances. The trick is, as always, to avoid bias -- which may be difficult if not impossible if you are the one trying to evaluate your own happiness...
> The whole set of inner values and motivations fundamentally cannot be conceptualized even by that person, much less by someone from the outside.
Eh, maybe, maybe not. Arguably, the entire medical profession of psychiatry is built around doing just that; though just as arguably one might argue that psychiatry is equal parts art and science.
One of the key insights that (IMO) every person must achieve one day is that he is not really all that special (granted, this only applies to about 99.999% of people on Earth, but still). Your personality is of course unique, but it's not totally random, and chances are that a lot of things that make you happy on the fundamental level are shared by many other people in your culture, and by humans in general. By analogy, the same sentiment applies to nutrition: everyone's precise dietary needs are unique, but generally speaking a diet of nothing but ice cream is very likely to be very bad for you.
> Psychiatry is built around something something. Okay?
I meant to say that psychiatry is built around "conceptualizing the set of inner values and motivations of a person, by someone from the outside" (as you'd put it).
> I am stating that, mathematically, there doesn't exist a set properties that defines a specific human being. By trying to build that, you will run into the hard problem of consciousness.
As I'd said on the other thread, I think the "hard problem of consciousness" is a red herring, and thus not an actual problem. On the other hand, I do agree with you that reducing a human personality to a simple list of key/value pairs is probably impractical (meaning, impossible).
> Everything in life is an experience.
I don't know what this means.
> by trying to constrain yourself by a set of conceptualized properties...
I don't know what this means either, though generally I do agree that trying to reduce everything in your life to a short list of key/value pairs is impractical.
Of course, everyone knows that the real way to truth is to sit in an empty room, unfurl one’s imagination and look deep inside.
I did this, and my inner voice told me to go forth and examine the world around me and apply logic to what I observe.
I have a deep faith I cannot shake that this is a way to learn many true things.
What now?
If you think that people making cults around ideas is a problem, I think that building a whole psychological framework and presenting it all by assertion rather than guiding audiences through the evidence that leads to each point, and naming key elements of that framework after religious concepts heavily loaded with preexisting associations, is exactly the sort of behavior you'd be better off avoiding.
All gods are lies, IMO
So, this isn't going to be particularly kind, but I think it's both true and necessary:
I'm quite open to engaging with criticism of the general rationalist/ACX culture and concept space, and willing to acknowledge some common criticisms as on-point and meaningful. And I'm *way* too vulnerable to getting drawn into online debates for my own good, to the point that it often becomes an unnecessary time sink in my life.
With that context, I mean this quite seriously when I say that the content you're presenting on your own blog seems so high up the crank scale, I honestly can't envision any merit to discussing it point by point. If your intention is to promote serious scientific discussion and invite further research, I think it would be hard to go about it much less effectively.
If you really, genuinely have a revolutionary theory on your hands (and it's important to consider base rates; most people who think they do don't,) then it would be prudent to reconsider how you present it, because right now, you're creating pretty strong filters to exclude people who'd be likely to engage with it productively.
It's not that the replacement of words produces feelings in me that doesn't allow me to engage with them, it's that the manner of word replacement you chose to use is the first in a large collection of red flags for scientific crankery in the text. There are no green flags in there to balance them out.
I reviewed nearly every submission to the most recent Review Everything contest, and my ratings were clustered around a median of 5, with a range from a single 10 at the top, to a single 1 at the bottom. The submission which I rated a 1, a review of "the 0th Dimension," is the only other case I can remember of seeing this level of outright crankery submitted to the SSC/ACX community, across my decade-plus history of involvement with it.
I'm rarely if ever this unkind in my comments, here or anywhere else online, but this is an exceptional case.
At least one of us is being arrogant. It's possible that I'm being genuinely closed-minded and dismissive. It's also possible that I'm reacting this way because the case you made in your essay was genuinely exceptionally bad. If you interpret a piece of evidence which is compatible with either proposition as proof that the position you already wanted to hold is indeed true though, it suggests a problem with how you're handling the evidence.
This seems like exactly the viewpoint that "If You Can be Bad, You Can Also be Good" was written to counter. If you have some sort of response to the position summed up in that essay, you're free to offer it, but this comment doesn't feel like it's actually contending with the basic points most of the audience here has already taken on board.
I hadn't read that essay, but then, I'm kinda scratching my head at what maximizing rationality means. I know Eliezer's definition, that if you're winning, you're being rational, but then, there are so many different ways to win, which would suggest there isn't an objective definition of rationality, or that rationality is just a synonym for eudaimonia. How would you define getting close to perfect rationality?
Maybe this is kinda like with organisms, it's easy to detect an unhealthy organism, but if an organism is doing well, then it's winning, and all the various lifeforms on this planet show that there are an inconceivable number of ways to win...
Yudkowsky made frequent uses of Zen Koans and Taoist Koans and Dojo metaphors and Mushashi references. So in Yud's mind, Rationality is like Martial Arts. It's the pursuit of winning, whatever the means.
In martial arts, there's various styles. E.g. Boxing, Karatae, Judo, etc. Many of them provide helpful tools and frameworks. But there's no objective definition of "best martial art". It's unknowable because the goal is a moving target which depends on the win-conditions, the tools available, the metagame, the environment, etc. Maybe the goal is to win an MMA match. Maybe the goal is to escape a mugging. Maybe the ref allows elbows. Maybe the Geneva Conventions allow M4's. The definition of "winning" is left deliberately vague.
Likewise, Yud conceived of rationality as a pursuit and an artform. "Here's some tools. Maybe someday you'll discover a better path and these tools will be obsolete, but for now Bayes Theorem and EV is what I have to offer". Bayes and EV formed the basis of Bay Area Rationality, just as chops and kicks form the basis of Karate. But "true rationality", like "true strength", is a moving target. Paraphrasing from memory: "Ask not whether it's rational to believe the sky is blue, or whether it's The Way to believe the sky is blue, or whether the authorities say the sky is blue. Just ask whether the sky is blue."
To be clear, as far as I'm aware, Eliezer has never defined rationality such that, if you're winning, you're being rational. He's argued that rationality is *systematized* winning, that rationalists should be able to win as a result of applying their rationality, and if it makes them lose more, they're doing something wrong. But that doesn't mean that if someone wins, they're necessarily doing rationality right. You can win *un*systematically, get lucky and reap the benefits. A person who's rich because they've won the lottery is winning, but they're not winning as a result of a replicable process.
It might be that there's some single, optimally rational way to behave, if you have some particular set of values and resources to work with. But there's a lot of variability in the values or resources an agent might have, and even if there might only be one *perfectly* rational way to behave given that context, like descending from the pinnacle of a mountain, the further away you are, the greater the breadth of options that are all about equally rational.
Point taken, I think I misremembered that essay.
> It might be that there's some single, optimally rational way to behave
That's the issue, this "might be". To really define "more rational" you kinda need to have an objective definition of what the peak of rationality is, of what "systematized winning" means. Because otherwise, there's a lot of different ways to win. I think the most productive ones involve a change in perspective, not so much on getting specific outcomes in the world, does that mean that is rational?
I think whether changing your perspective, rather than external outcomes in the world, counts as a "win" or not depends on your starting values. According to some values, it certainly could be.
Hmmmmm. Does LW rationalism help you "win" for whatever your definition of "win" is? I remember it having some opinions about what "winning" is.
In theory, it should, if you're effective enough at using it. In practice, it's questionable how much that's the case, and whether LW style rationalism makes aspiring rationalists more effective in their everyday lives is a somewhat contentious question. But instrumental rationality is something that should be able to be applied to any set of preferences, although actual humans should probably have preferences clustered in a fairly limited portion of the space of all possible preferences.
1. Bayes's Rule is not how human brains work. If it did, nobody would get the "medical test paradox" question wrong, but they do.
2. Saying that logic cannot lead to truth is technically true, but it's kind of like saying "pipes don't lead to indoor plumbing." It's not the only requirement, but it sure does help!
> Bayes's Rule is not how human brains work. If it did, nobody would get the "medical test paradox" question wrong, but they do.
Your argument is false; brains can work that way without the method being available for answering that question.
Consider that human brains are very good at predicting the path of a thrown object, but people frequently get physics questions on that topic wrong.
If it's not available for some questions, then studying it so that it becomes consciously available is useful, and the OP's argument falls apart.
Would you say that physicists are "silly" because every brain already has an understanding of physics? Would you say that they're making a "cult" out of Newton's Laws?
I think the steelman of @Jan Lonala's argument might be to say that "pipes are widely used in indoor plumbing due to the efficiency of their design" does not necessarily imply that "it is impossible in principle to achieve indoor plumbing without pipes", nor that "the pipe-based indoor plumbing design is the most optimal indoor plumbing design that could ever exist".