Discuss whatever.
If you post a link or quote, express an opinion about it, ask a question, say something. Also, if you think something is bad and are posting it for criticism, say so – the default expectation is you agree with, and have a positive opinion of, whatever you post. Or if it seems good to you but you're sharing it because you have doubts and want to find out if people have criticism, say that.
Messages (544)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/dsp9n7/china_to_implement_new_regulation_regarding/
> China to implement new regulation regarding gaming, will "ban users younger than 18 from playing games between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. They are not permitted to play more than 90 minutes on weekdays and three hours on weekends and holidays" (nytimes.com)
Strict, national screen time limits. *Not a free country.* Sucks for the kids.
Free Hong Kong!
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Life
> "Three days after his GSL semifinals, Life competed in the Iron Squid – Chapter II Korean qualifier, where he made his way to the finals at the expense of Sting, Polt and HyuN, but had to all-ined his games in the last match against Brown because he was about to be forced shutdown (in Korea, the law for the compulsory shutdown forbids the children under 16 years of age to play online from midnight to six in the morning).[28] The runner-up place still awarded a spot in the Iron Squid Chapter II though, making him the only player to attend both seasons of the French league by mean of qualifiers.
"All-ined" means playing very aggressive strategies to get the game over with fast – do a quick attack that sacrifices any chance to win later if it doesn't work. This is risky at best, and pretty much game-losing if your opponent knows in advance that you're going to do it.
NASA to send robot into space to re-fuel satellite
In December 2022 or later, NASA plans to send a robot into space to re-fuel a 20-year old satellite that was not designed for re-fueling.
Landsat 7, the satellite in question, was launched in 1999. It takes color pictures of Earth, many of which can be seen in Google Earth and other products.
Here's the plan. First, the robot will approach the satellite and, autonomously, grab onto it. Then, guided remotely by human operators, the robot will drill a hole in the satellite's fuel tank and inject over 100 kg of hydrazine. Finally, the robot will seal the hole, cover the satellite with a space blanket, and fly off into its own orbit.
#14224 How much harder is it to do that compared with refueling a satellite that has a built in refueling mechanism?
#14225
It looks like drilling and re-sealing are the main steps that are harder (but I don't know *how much harder*) when a satellite hasn't been designed for re-fueling. According to Brent Robertson, NASA’s project manager for the mission (from the same article):
> "Cutting things and unscrewing caps and refueling, that's difficult. But the actual capture of a satellite and relocation—we have the capability to do that for a much wider spectrum of satellites."
The harder steps would be easier if the satellite had robot-friendly valves for re-fueling, but apparently no satellite has ever had those:
> "It's almost like a chicken or the egg thing," says Robertson. "Nobody has done robotic servicing, so until it's demonstrated, operators are reluctant to invest in servicing until they see that it's possible. I think when we actually demonstrate this on Landsat 7, you'll see [the] industry becoming more aware that there's an opportunity here."
Math Problem
Flip a fair coin until you get heads twice (doesn't have to be in a row). What is the average number of tails you flipped?
#14250 I think it's 2 because if you flip until 1 heads, the average number of tails is 1. And I think flipping until 2 heads is like doing the 1 heads thing twice in a row, so sum the number of tails from each. Doing it twice will change the distribution of results but not the mean.
Telling the Story of Jordan Peterson
https://youtu.be/CZC9byuBjXA
Filmmaker Patricia Marcoccia was midway through a film with psychology professor Jordan Peterson when he suddenly became an international superstar, and one of the most controversial and polarising figures on the planet.
Now her film, The Rise of Jordan Peterson, has itself been subject to controversy and cancellations.
David Fuller caught up with Patricia and the film's producer Maziar Ghaderi to ask what they make of the reception for their film, and how their views changed over two years making the film, right at the centre of the culture wars.
You can purchase the film online: https://www.holdingspacefilms.com/rise
1st newsletter: Sept 18, 2016.
100th newsletter: Nov 13, 2019.
That's 1151 days. One newsletter per 11.5 days.
I think the minimum time between newsletters has been 7 days. The max is probably around 21, maybe a few more. I've been consistent with no big gaps. I aim for around 10-17 days between newsletters. Early on I did them a bit more frequently.
https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1194740450101465088?s=20
#14305 The paper he means https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf
#14305 Please say what links are. In this case, it's Taleb being a unintellectual jerk to someone on Twitter. The underlying issue is that Taleb is a rotten bastard who opposes GMOs like golden rice. The paper linked in #14306 is epistemologically naive conservatism contrary to CR and David Deutsch in particular (it's also an anti-liberal attack on freedom which assumes it's the government's job to make decide things and control people's lives).
#14308 I call bull shit that you actually read the paper that fast.
What's your refutation?
#14309 Never said I read it. I read some of the beginning before commenting. The paper is refuted by the book *The Beginning of Infinity* which Taleb is aware of but doesn't address. His paper simply ignores existing literature about the issues. You can see the same issue on Twitter where he was referred to DD's arguments and his response was to flame someone and also to direct them to a paper that ignores DD.
#14310 If you did not read it how do you know BOI refutes it?
You're doing exactly what he's doing lol.
#14311 BoI covers the precautionary principle. Taleb ignores BoI and advocates the precautionary principle. What do you not get.?Are you just unfamiliar with the stuff you're flaming about?
Different precautionary principle than the one argued against in BOI.
Which you would know if you had read the paper, you illiterate buffoon. Bet you lied about reading BOI too.
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/dvueei/terminationmy_beloved_channel_is_gone_after_12
Example of how YouTube fucks with and bans users with no warning or explanation
#14314 sucks. But that's the power of unfettered Capitalism. Your livelihood can be taken away in the name of profits. There is no getting around it.
#14315 What capitalism? YouTube false advertises about their policies. In a free market country they'd be sued heavily over stuff like this. It's government protection and favors that let them get away with their initiations of force.
#14316 Let's be real.
The algorithm is not a result of government intervention. It is simple dollar signs.
It is not meant to pander to the woke crowd, or to the government. Don't be naive.
It is meant to do one thing, and one thing only. M-A-X-I-M-I-Z-E P-R-O-F-I-T.
They don't give a fuck about you or me.
#14318 Free market capitalism is a system in which initiation of force is prohibited. YouTube initiates force (e.g. via fradulent public statements about their products). They violate capitalism. They get away with it due to *lack of* capitalism in our society.
You didn't listen, didn't engage, and seem unserious. If I'm wrong, see https://elliottemple.com/debate-policy
You libertarians and your utopian dreams.
And you call me unserious. Get a PhD in economics and then we'll debate.
Re: Math Problem
#14250
> Math Problem
> Flip a fair coin until you get heads twice (doesn't have to be in a row). What is the average number of tails you flipped?
#14251
> #14250 I think it's 2 because if you flip until 1 heads, the average number of tails is 1...
It was not obvious to me that if you flip until 1 heads, the average number of tails is 1. I practiced my internet search skills and found these two discussions of the problem:
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1196452/expected-value-of-the-number-of-flips-until-the-first-head
https://diego.assencio.com/?index=6c1cfa313064329046317358d2aa22c0
I didn't fully understand the math but I didn't see anything obviously wrong with it.
Now I'm practicing my skills at replying to blog comments without messing up the formatting of links and quotations.
#14342
> It was not obvious to me that if you flip until 1 heads, the average number of tails is 1.
My explanation of this is below. It is similar to Ryan's answer on the stackexchange page you linked.
Suppose you have a (possibly-biased) coin that comes up heads with probability h. If you flip the coin until it comes up heads, the expected number of flips is 1/h.
To see this, let f be the expected number of flips remaining. You must flip at least once in order to know whether to stop. With probability h, that flip comes up heads, in which case you are done: you make zero more flips. Otherwise, with probability 1-h, it comes up tails, and you will have to flip again. Coins have no memory, so the expected number of remaining flips in that case is the same as it was before you flipped the coin, namely: f. Therefore, by expected value, f = 1 + 0h +(1−h)f. Using algebra to solve for f yields f = 1/h.
By definition, a fair coin comes up heads with probability 1/2. If you flip until you get heads, then stop, you will make 2 flips on average. You stop when you get heads, so all but the last of those flips will have been tails. Therefore, the average number of tails is 1.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/
Really long article with some criticism of feminism. Some interesting parts. I didn't finish it.
Mises Institute promotion psychiatry, one of the major enemies of liberty:
https://twitter.com/mises/status/1196216448726773760
I checked the blog of the show guest and he's anti-Szasz.
https://graphics.chicagotribune.com/illinois-seclusion/
School children being locked in rooms, like solitary confinement at jails, often illegally.
There are 20,000 records of "seclusion" in Illinois in one school year.
People like the academic format and style b/c it dramatically reduces the need or scope for thinking.
example from someone i like more than most
E.g.
> Sunk costs seem especially common in groups, as has been noticed since the beginning of sunk cost research7; Khan et al 2000 found that culture influenced how much managers were willing to engage in hypothetical sunk costs (South & East Asian more so than North American), and a 2005 meta-analysis that sunk cost was an issue, especially in software-related projects8, agreeing with a 2009 meta-analysis, Desai & Chulkov.
cites let you make assertions with no arguments or reasons.
assuming the correctness of some cites is easier than thinking about the issues or giving reasons or arguments. and people don't retract their papers because one of their cites was wrong. they don't actually take responsibility for the crap they cite.
PIA's no-log claims verified in court
privateinternetaccess.com claims:
> [W]e do not log. Ever.
That claim has been verified in court, twice.
In 2016, the FBI submitted a criminal complaint in the Southern District of Florida against Preston Alexander McWaters for making fake bomb threats. The complaint states (re-typed from PDF w/out OCR):
> All of the responses from 1&1, Facebook, Twitter, and Tracfone have been traced by IP address back to a company named London Trust Media dba privateinternetaccess.com. This company is an anonymizing company whose purpose is to allow users of the internet to mask their original IP address where they are sending messages from. A subpoena was sent to London Trust Media and the only information they could provide is that the cluster of IP addresses being used was from the east coast of the United States.
In 2018, privateinternetaccess.com was subpoenaed again, this time in connection with a case dealing with a person accused of hacking a news website. According to Palo Alto Online:
> John Allan Arsenault, general counsel for London Trust Media, a VPN company, testified about how many VPN companies, including his, intentionally *don’t retain logs of internet activity of their clients so that they cannot be produced in response to subpoenas from law enforcement or others*. London Trust Media operates the brand Private Internet Access (PIA), which owns several IP addresses used to hack Embarcadero Media.
> *Private Internet Access does not log user activity, such as what files they accessed or changes they made to a website*.
> The company accepts many kinds of payment methods, including cryptocurrency, but it doesn’t keep records of the individual’s name and address. *The only record of the customer maintained is the email address provided when signing up for the service*.
Seems legit.
#14487 The emphasis was mine in the quotes from Palo Alto Online.
PIA purchased by Kape Technologies, Reddit unhappy
#14487 PIA has been purchased by a company called Kape Technologies. I don't know the details, but a bunch of Redditors in r/privateinternetaccess are upset about the purchase and are switching to other VPNs. Mullvad seems to be a popular choice.
A close reading of a study's introduction
I commented on an HN link to a study titled "Teacher Effects on Student Achievement and Height: A Cautionary Tale":
> 1 Introduction
> The increased availability of data linking students to teachers has made it possible to estimate the contribution teachers make to student achievement.
There was some data available before (or the sentence would not have used the word "increased"). Why wasn't it possible to estimate with that?
> By nearly all accounts, this contribution is large.
It goes on to talk about what "large" means:
> Estimates of the impact of a one standard deviation (σ) increase in teacher “value-added” on math and reading achievement typically range from 0.10 to 0.30σ, which suggest that a student assigned to a more effective teacher will experience nearly a year's more learning than a student assigned to an less effective teacher (Hanushek & Rivkin 2010;...).
(Typo: "an less effective" should be "a less effective".)
A "range from 0.10 to 0.30σ" doesn't make sense. A Greek lowercase sigma (σ) is used to represent one standard deviation, but the sigma is used only on the upper end of the range. Should it have been from 0.10σ to 0.30σ?
And how are they measuring the impact on achievement of an increase in teacher "value-added", anyway? It says that estimates of the impact "typically range from 0.10 to 0.30σ", but it doesn't say what units those figures are in.
The sentence goes on to say that those unit-less estimates "suggest" that "a student assigned to a more effective teacher will experience nearly a year's more learning than a student assigned to an less effective teacher". Over what time period? That is, how long does a student have to study under a "more effective teacher" to get "a year's more learning"? 1 week? 12 years? It doesn't say.
And finally, how do those unit-less estimates "suggest" an impact measured in learning time? It doesn't say.
#14603
>> By nearly all accounts, this contribution is large.
If teachers have a large affect on student outcomes, it doesn't imply they *contribute* anything. The range of the effect could be from mildly negative to very negative.
Casually comparing schools to prisons:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IntellectualDarkWeb/comments/e2i598/i_really_wish_id_never_found_the_idw/
> **I really wish I’d never found the IDW**
> I’ve always considered myself liberal but I feel so disowned now. I feel like the mainstream left and right are both so ideologically driven that they refuse to acknowledge truth in anything that hurts their position, whether it’s true or not.
...
> I feel like I get incredibly anxious and depressed by the state of the world and hypocritical views of almost everybody. I wish I could just bury my head in the sand and enjoy blissful ignorance. Please tell me you guys are all feeling the same.
That's an unusually open admission of wanting to evade, not think, not know ... not live (ok he didn't admit that last one). The second-handed last sentence is strong (in a bad way) ending that I wasn't expecting.
I replied (expecting nothing good to come of this from him or others on reddit):
You're upset because you think other people are irrational and don't seek the truth. How rational and curious are you? Will you debate anything?
https://curi.us/2238-potential-debate-topics
https://elliottemple.com/debate-policy
Amazon deletes jrockway's useful review
On 2019-11-28, HN user jrockway wrote:
> I bought some LEDs on Amazon and uploaded charts showing the wavelength distribution. The LEDs were awful and the charts made it very clear why. Amazon deleted my review and the item currently has 5 stars.
Sucks that Amazon deleted his review.
People often think they are good enough and turn off the learning. Common story with KP, DD, AR, FI. This is already addressed in mainstream self help lit, e.g.:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/e4hugt/doing_your_best_in_competitive_games_is_not/
Convicted terrorist, released from prison early, stabs 2 people to death at London Bridge
In 2018, an Islamic terrorist in Britain was released from prison early. On 29 Nov 2019, he stabbed 2 people to death and wounded 3 others in a terrorist attack at London Bridge. According to the AP:
> Usman Khan was convicted on terrorism charges but let out of prison early. He attended a “Learning Together” conference for ex-offenders, and used the event to launch a bloody attack, stabbing two people to death and wounding three others.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/e5bap8/is_this_allowed_on_twitch/
Twitch streamer with 25 viewer average – but no one talking in chat even though he tried to talk with chat periodically – makes fake account, writes 200 questions, has his alt account automatically ask one random question every few minutes. Then he answers those questions he covertly asked himself.
Result: other people start talking in chat.
Thoughts on what people are like?
Formatting test:
*italic sentence **bold (and italic) in the middle** more italics*
I closed 3 websites:
https://rationalessays
https://freeliberalism
https://reasonandmorality
The content is all moved to:
https://elliottemple.com/essays/
I mass updated comments and blog post URLs to point to the new locations. Please let me know if you notice a broken link.
London Bridge terrorist only served *half* of his sentence for terrorism
#14658 Daniel Horowitz points out that the London Bridge terrorist only served half of his sentence for terrorism.
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/terrorist-behind-london-bridge-attack-released-early-prison/ (4 Dec 2019):
> Khan had been convicted on terrorism charges as part of a plot to attack the London Stock Exchange in 2010. However, much as in America, the trend of de-incarceration is very much in vogue in Great Britain, so even a violent terrorist like Khan was only sentenced to 16 years. And much as in America, where early release programs are placed ahead of public safety, Khan was released last year after serving just eight years.
Ugh.
> Last Friday, Khan, as a prison release “success story,” was invited to a conference of Learning Together, a Cambridge University Initiative dedicated to promoting these rehabilitation programs over incarceration. Tragically, Khan had other ideas. He showed up armed with two knives and a fake suicide vest and killed two members of Learning Together and wounded three others before he was shot dead by police near London Bridge.
If Ayn Rand wrote that in one of her fiction books, people would call it unrealistic.
#14694 Our civilization is inadequate in many ways. I like some of Yudkowsky's comments on that, in Hero Licensing, linked in https://curi.us/2253-academias-inadequacy
And find comments on Hero Licensing at http://curi.us/2065-open-letter-to-machine-intelligence-research-institute#9282
In defense of Peer review vs Blogs
https://youtu.be/GXHNzNxV6RM
This video, I think, Applies to this blog.
Debunking the Vegan Documentary "Game Changers" - https://youtu.be/Dq4Apc2Xk7Q
Comments on first half hour. I expect to have a similar opinion of the rest, if I watch it.
this Chris Kresser guy is ok. he's sharing some decent info like about DIAS. he's pretty mainstream, i don't agree with all his claims, but most seem fine.
i didn't like his vegan honeymoon comments: that ppl feel great in short term on vegan diet cuz they stop eating normal diet of a bunch of crap.
i don't think that's scientific. i suspect there's a huge placebo effect b/c ppl think regular food is crap that makes u low energy and unhealthy, but he didn't actually argue those claims or give any evidence.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/6808840-the-works-of-h-beam-piper
> Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization, and wouldn’t like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing and don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and all they need do is enjoy what they can understand of it—luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?
— H. Beam Piper, Space Viking pp. 190-191 (1963)
RIP Noble Soul?
https://www.noblesoul.com
Site down. Don't know when it went down. Has lots of good Objectivism info. If it doesn't come back up, I'll put up a mirror (hopefully if it's not too hard, but I've got a saved copy now that looks likely to work OK).
Last copy on archive.org is from May. Front page of site says last updated 2009.
I don't know when it went down or whether it will come back up. I don't want to mirror someone else's site over temporary downtime.
#14709 Chris Kresser is a snake oil salesman. E.g. see this page:
https://chriskresser.com/about/
> Conventional medicine doesn’t stand a chance of turning the tide against chronic disease.
> What does? A revolution to reinvent healthcare, reverse chronic disease, and create sustainable practices.
He might be a flu vaccine opponent and accupuncture advocate too:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chris_Kresser
I don't know what info on that page is true. It's not a reliable site and it accuses him of believing everyone should do high fat paleo. But in the podcast he advocates a moderate diet, says what's optimal varies by person, and said low carb is riskier than more standard (might be OK but that's more unknown) because its longterm effects haven't been studied yet.
Anyway Kresser's own site is awful and Rogan is irresponsible for having him on and treating him like a respectable expert.
#14716 Kresser is openly anti technology and anti industry later and Rogan doesn’t disagree. (There were bits and pieces of it throughout but he later made a clear, strong statement about wanting to scale back industry and technology.)
Kresser somehow seems to think of himself as pro science, despite being anti technology. He likes talking about correlation studies about people's diets and the science of nutrition. He positions himself as the sophisticated guy who knows about many flaws in those studies but also ofc science is great so he's clever enough to analyze the flawed studies and reach good conclusion.
https://elliottemple.com/consulting
> What I’ve done differently is put my ideas in public and then address every single criticism from every critic who is willing to discuss. I’ve answered all comers for over 15 years. If any of my ideas are mistaken, either no one knows it, neither of us has managed to find the other, or they aren’t willing to share their knowledge.
>
> My philosophical positions have survived criticism from everyone willing to offer criticism. That’s pretty good! None of the alternative ideas can say that.
What if people have criticisms of your ideas that you’d want to hear, but those people are put off by the atmosphere of the FI world or by how you write elsewhere? What if someone has a valuable idea but they also have bad ideas that cause them to leave FI in a huff or to ban you from their forum when you offer criticism in a non-socially-conforming way?
Yes, that counts as them not being willing to discuss or willing to share their knowledge. But you'd want to hear the good ideas from these people, if they exist. Do you think they don't exist? Do you think they might exist but it's not worth the effort to make it easier to hear from them?
David Deutsch on Brexit and Error Correction
Just started watching this, so I do not have any specific question. Just wanted to share a new DD interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdtssXITXuE&
> Contents:
> 0:00 Introduction and a brief history of the European question
> 3:30 Karl Popper, Error Correction, and the First Past The Post electoral system
> 9:48 What makes the EU bad at error correction?
> 14:12 Political stability in Britain and how the referendum broke our system
> 19:17 Individualism vs Collectivism and the benefits of socialism to Britain
> 22:18 Has the EU prevented war in Europe?
> 25:08 Is the economy more important than sovereignty?
> 27:11 Don't we need top-down control for some things?
> 31:24 Should we have a second referendum? Is taking a political risk worth it?
> 36:25 Was the Leave vote racist? And what does it mean to be a patriot in Britain?
#14723 This is one of the most common criticisms I get, though an unusually friendly and reasonable version of it.
People differ. There is no way to please everyone at once.
I could please a larger proportion but that means targeting stuff more to the mainstream which means having a more conventional audience. I think that'd result in lower quality responses.
I don't want to pander, social climb, be dishonest to manipulate people, etc.
I try to make what I think is good. I think that's the best way to attract readers who I can respect.
If people would *request* to be treated certain ways, I could work with that. But it's hard when people are dishonest, which is super common. They e.g. want less criticism while simultaneously pretending they are receiving max criticism. Usually you have to guess how they want to be treated. If *I* could say "you seem to want simple beginner replies with little criticism", and then provide that, it'd be OK for me, but they usually don't want that even if I've guessed completely right about the best type of reply for them.
I think dishonesty is what's really hard to accommodate. Also passive disinterest, lack of curiosity, that kinda thing where they just don't care or do anything.
#14724 At about 28:50 DD is asked a question and in the course of answering it at 30:20 he sez Britain retained the good things and rejected the bad things about its experiment with socialism. He's endorsing socialist policies.
#14730 That's good! If something works it doesn't matter where it came from. DD is a fallibilist
Thoughts on Psycho Technologies?
https://medium.com/@ChrisPerez1/psychotechnology-and-the-multi-state-future-of-humanity-37a31a506022
#14732 Socialism is rather thoroughly wrong – a claim DD seemed to agree with, and didn't deny, in the past – so this is a sign of error by DD. And it's not like he's come out with some new argument in defense of part of socialism or found some important existing arguments. So the reasonable presumption here is he's mistaken and acting unreasonably by ignoring e.g. Mises.
#14732 What is the standard by which you judge that socialist policies work?
Me, repeatedly: "subjective" is the most confused word in English.
Just saw this, italics added:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/subjective
> c. 1500, "characteristic of one who is submissive or obedient," from Late Latin subiectivus "of the subject, subjective," from subiectus "lying under, below, near bordering on," figuratively "subjected, subdued"(see subject (n.)). In early Modern English as "existing, real;" more restricted meaning "existing in the mind" (the mind as "the thinking subject") is from 1707, *popularized by Kant* and his contemporaries; thus, in art and literature, "personal, idiosyncratic" (1767). Related: Subjectively; subjectiveness.
Notice how it doesn't fit the etymology (submissive, obedient) and then it means "existing, real" and then Kant flips the meaning to "existing in the mind" (meaning: not part of physical/objective reality – which is wrong too, the mind is part of physical reality).
Muhammad makes list of top 10 baby names in the U.S. for first time
SF Gate, Muhammad makes list of top 10 baby names in the U.S. for first time (Dec 4, 2019):
> The parenting website BabyCenter released its annual list of 100 most popular baby names for girls and boys in the United States... Muhammad and Aaliyah made the top 10 for the first time, replacing Mason and Layla.
According to [BBC News]((https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-45638806), if you combine its various spellings, Mohammed would be the most popular boy's name in the U.K.
According to Wikipedia, 6.3% of the U.K.'s total population is Muslim, compared with 1.1% for the U.S.
Infallible certainty about the idea that "There is experience"
Shadow Starshine wrote on the main FI Discord:
> So I'd like to offer up something to criticism here, since you guys are very epistemically focused.
> I don't see how there isn't a certainty about claims that are nothing more than then affirmation of an experience.
> Something as basic as experience is, or to categorize the experience as it occurs.
> I'm not arguing this as a sort of foundationalism, to say that everything can be built off of that
> But I'm asking, by what method could you ever say that is false?
> ...
> If I utter "There is experience" I'm wondering how can it be wrong.
I discussed this with Freeze and Shadow Starshine for a while. I think this message sums up my argument:
> Whether or not there is experience depends on complex, subtle, philosophical issues like what experience even is, what kinds of entities can have experiences, to what extent memory is involved in experience, whether something can be conscious of a thought about having an experience at the same time as the experience itself, and whether thoughts about experience can be simulated (e.g. in a computer or by some one-time quantum accident) -- in other words, can there be a "thought" such as "there is experience" without there actually having been any experience?
> I don't see how someone can be infallibly certain that there is experience without also being infallibly certain that they know, now and forever, (a) what all the relevant questions are and (b) the right answers to all those questions.
#14833 Correctly claiming to have had a particular experience, or correctly claiming there is experience in general, are both dependent on correctly understanding what "experience" means and how to tell whether something is an experience or not (or getting lucky). Experience is a category of thing (I think, though my understanding of categories is fallible). Some things are experiences and some aren't (e.g. a piece of paper). So some criteria are needed for correctly distinguishing what goes in what category. The criteria you use and your application of them are both fallible things (in other words, they could be doubted, criticized, debated. etc.).
A different issue is that brains are *physical objects*, specifically computer systems, and hardware errors happen sometimes.
Reply
The idea of "correctly understanding" what experience is is merely definitional. It represents anything you are experiencing, whether there is any mental events at all. You don't need to categorize anything, all of it is in the same category. A piece of paper is an experience, a thought is an experience, color is an experience, everything is an experience if you are experiencing it.
There's nothing to debate, it's either occuring or it's not. I would highly suggest reading the entire conversation so nothing gets lost.
> A piece of paper is an experience
No it's a piece of paper.
Do you mean *seeing* it, or touching it, or something?
In any case, you're making arguments. You're using reasoning to judge that the text you wrote in your comment is correct. But that thinking is fallible.
> Do you mean *seeing* it, or touching it, or something?
I'm saying, to comment on my experience of a piece of paper, requires an experience of the piece of paper.
I'm also not required to make arguments with inferences here, I could say absolutely nothing and be having an experience. But I have to write something explicit to transmit that information to you. (You, however, have ample reason to doubt I'm having an experience). I'd be having an experience regardless if arguments were a part of my experience or not. Merely to justify it, it just has to be the case, which for me, it is.
#14842 Your brain is a computer. When you have an experience, that refers to certain computational states. You can misunderstand
1) which computational states are experiences
2) what computational state your brain is in
Parallel arguments apply to physical objects and their states in general.
If you deny this, that's again a fallible, debatable claim.
I don't need to deny nor affirm it for my claim to be true, because whatever is the case if it says I'm not having an experience, it is automatically false due to the experience I'm having. There isn't some ontological superseding of this. My brain being a computer my brain not being a computer, whether it is derived from a brain at all, all of this is outside just *having an experience*.
As I said before, it would be true regardless of my belief states *about* it. I merely have to be having an experience, and I am.
#14844 You have an understanding of what having an experience is and why it's infallible. But this understanding is itself a fallible argument.
I've already stated an argument isn't necessary, only to communicate it to you. Given that it's not necessary, and your only refutation is to the argument, then is there any refutation beyond that?
Some entity stating "I'm having an experience of communicating with God" is implicitly making claims about the nature of reality and what entities are in it and what sort of things they can do.
An entity saying "I'm having an experience" is making such claims also, though more limited claims than in the God case, but they are still making such claims.
I just had my iPhone text-to-speech the words "I am an iPhone and I am having an experience." This was a false claim which my iPhone seemed to make (at my direction) in a human voice. Why false? The explanation involves a complex set of assumptions and arguments around what experience is and what sort of entities can have them. So fallibility applies to experience-claims just as it applies to any other claim.
If you reject that something can be claimed infallibly, that doesn't mean you have to doubt that thing is true absent a specific argument for doing so, btw. That is a common misunderstanding. You just have to be open to criticism on the matter *if and when a criticism is raised* (by someone else, or by you thinking of a crit, or by you reading a book with a crit). But if no criticism arises then you can just carry on.
>Some entity stating "I'm having an experience of communicating with God" is implicitly making claims about the nature of reality and what entities are in it and what sort of things they can do.
>An entity saying "I'm having an experience" is making such claims also
This is false. The above state of affairs are an explanation for how things could be. The second statement is, at the base level, how things are.
>I just had my iPhone text-to-speech the words "I am an iPhone and I am having an experience." This was a false claim which my iPhone seemed to make (at my direction) in a human voice. Why false? The explanation involves a complex set of assumptions and arguments around what experience is and what sort of entities can have them. So fallibility applies to experience-claims just as it applies to any other claim.
It's an unverifiable claim, it's not because it's complicated. One can only verify their own experience and one does that by simply having one.
>If you reject that something can be claimed infallibly, that doesn't mean you have to doubt that thing is true absent a specific argument for doing so, btw. That is a common misunderstanding. You just have to be open to criticism on the matter *if and when a criticism is raised* (by someone else, or by you thinking of a crit, or by you reading a book with a crit). But if no criticism arises then you can just carry on.
I'm aware, but that's not the nature of my dispute.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IntellectualDarkWeb/comments/eae326/what_is_the_correct_direction_for_the_left/favu859/?context=3
Evolution Question
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/fallible-ideas/b7YKbP5jUeA
> https://curi.us/code/dungeon.html
> I think there’s a major difference between this software (an “evolutionary” algorithm to generate a map with certain features) and evolution. What exactly is the difference?
> ## Some differences
> Relatively small domain of possible maps.
> There are ways I put my knowledge into the results, rather than the software creating that knowledge. For example, I defined exactly what a map is and every tile type. I also tried out the app, looked at outputs, and tuned the selection algorithm until I got outputs I thought were good.
> ## Ways it’s like evolution
> there is replication with variation (create a new map with some small changes from a previous map) and selection (via an algorithm to calculate a score for how good a map is).
> *but* the maps don’t **cause** their own replication. is that the key difference? the replication is only done because *I* made the app to do it. so **the maps are not replicators**.
> is that the answer? (i thought of that last point while writing this post).
Yes, that is a key difference. Your algorithm controls the copying of the maps, but the maps are incapable of replication by themselves. A replicator has knowledge. In other words, it has information that, when suitably instantiated in a physical environment, tends to cause itself to remain so. Your maps do not have knowledge. They are just information.
Evolution is the evolution of knowledge.
#14879
knowledge = information adapted to a purpose/problem/design-goal, right?
and the maps *do* have some of that, as does e.g. AlphaGo's moves in a game of go or a Roomba's movements around a room.
the output of the program is a map with some adaptation towards the purpose of being a good map.
but the knowledge got there cuz i, the program designer, created the knowledge (in a somewhat indirect form) about what a good map is and how to create one. i'm the source of the adaptation. the program is just a tool, a helper following my directions.
also there are complications re what causing replication is, and how you can imagine a niche where ~any physical object is a replicator (it'll replicate in that niche but many other objects won't) but those issues are covered in FoR.
I watched *Cars 3*. I dislike the theme that you win races by having the right social interactions with others and the right psychological attitudes to not only the race but life (and no they aren't psychological attitudes about how to practice without getting frustrated or something directly relevant).
Wondering if I can chat privately with curi
Can I chat with curi privately somehow? He told me not to comment on the discord chat.
I don't remember. Email me.
replicators and causality
#14879 In BoI (despite the URL, link goes to BoI text), DD says that a replicator is anything that contributes causally to its own copying:
> [Neo-Darwinism] is based on the idea of a *replicator* (anything that contributes causally to its own copying). For instance, a gene conferring the ability to digest a certain type of food *causes* the organism to remain healthy in some situations where it would otherwise weaken or die. Hence it increases the organism's chances of having offspring in the future, and those offspring would inherit, and spread,
*copies* of the gene.
>
> Ideas can be replicators too. For example, a good joke is a replicator: when lodged in a person's mind, it has a tendency to cause that person to tell it to other people, thus copying it into their minds. Dawkins coined the term *memes* (rhymes with 'dreams') for ideas that are replicators. Most ideas are not replicators: they do not cause us to convey them to other people. Nearly all long-lasting ideas, however, such as languages, scientific theories and religious beliefs, and the ineffable states of mind that constitute cultures such as being British, or the skill of performing classical music, are memes (or 'memeplexes' -- collections of interacting memes).
Do the maps in Elliot's map generator contribute causally to their own copying? Regarding causality, DD wrote in FoR:
> In general we may say that an event X causes an event Y in our universe if both X and Y occur in our universe, but in most variants of our universe in which X does
not happen, Y does not happen either.
Let X represent the occurrence of a particular map in some generation, and let Y represent the occurrence of a similar map in a later generation. Then, I think, in most variants of our universe in which X does not happen, Y does not happen either. But does the earlier occurrence *cause* the later occurrence?
> Let X represent the occurrence of a particular map in some generation, and let Y represent the occurrence of a similar map in a later generation. Then, I think, in most variants of our universe in which X does not happen, Y does not happen either. But does the earlier occurrence *cause* the later occurrence?
I think the answer is:
Suppose X happens in gen N when the program is started with some initial set of maps. In variant universes, X will still happen in gen N if the program is the same and the initial set of maps are the same (and assuming that curi's computer does not get hit by cosmic rays or something). If X does not happen that means the program has been changed in some way. In this case, Y may or may not happen. It depends on how the program was changed. So X is not causing Y.
#14880
> knowledge = information adapted to a purpose/problem/design-goal, right?
> and the maps *do* have some of that, as does e.g. AlphaGo's moves in a game of go or a Roomba's movements around a room.
I shouldn't have said the maps have no knowledge. They have knowledge in the sense you said. And that knowledge causes the maps to remain so. Eg, it caused you to write a program to instantiate them.
#14890 To get the same output you have to start the program with the same rng seed, not the same initial map(s).
#14894 Yes. I'm assuming the same initial config.
#14890
> Suppose X happens in gen N when the program is started with some initial set of maps.
What do you mean by "started with some initial set of maps"?
IIUC, in curi's program, the initial map/maps is/are randomly generated except for the walls (see line 189). The pseudo-random number seed commonly depends on the time the program is started, so executions of the program started at even slightly different times would likely have different initial conditions.
#14890
> In variant universes, X will still happen in gen N if the program is the same and the initial set of maps are the same (and assuming that curi's computer does not get hit by cosmic rays or something).
That's an unrealistic "if" condition. The random number seed, and hence the program's initial conditions, would likely *not* be the same in variant universes. (See my comment #14897.)
#14898
I think the argument is still basically the same though. If you change the seed and X does not happen, can Y still happen? I imagine there are other trajectories that give rise to Y even though X didn't happen. It may be rare to get Y without X though. But that's assuming the rest of the program is the same in variant universes. Which is also unrealistic. In variant universes, there are also variants of the program as well as seed variants and I don't think you can say that in most variant universes Y doesn't happen when X doesn't happen (modulo cases where the program is not even written or is something different entirely).
#14899
> I imagine there are other trajectories that give rise to Y even though X didn't happen.
Sure. Is that meaningfully different from the possibility of genetic evolution producing some species without going through a particular intermediate species?
> Sure. Is that meaningfully different from the possibility of genetic evolution producing some species without going through a particular intermediate species?
In curi's maps, it doesn't matter if it is rare or common that Y happens without X. In either case, X doesn't cause Y, as I explained. In biological evolution, if species A leads to species B there will be virtually no universes where you get B without A. And in biological evolution, A has the program for its own replication. And B its own different program. There is no overarching program that can be varied as in curi's maps.
If you vary the program in A you will tend not to get B because A is adapated for its niche and variations will generally be bad. So when A doesn't happen B tends not to. A causes B.
Hope that makes sense :)
#14879 One big difference between curi's dungeon map generator and evolution in nature is that the map generator only evolves one map at a time, while in nature, entire populations of replicators are evolving.
[8:20 PM] curi: to understand yourself better you need more analysis skills. understanding other ppl's public statements is broadly easier than introspection. to do that you need to be able to e.g. figure out sentences in detail and think logically and literally. if you practice these things enough it's automatic and super easy and clear to you, it gets harder to lie to yourself about.
[8:21 PM] curi: this is the kind of thing that was already explained to kate multiple times, but which she refused to engage with
[8:23 PM] curi: learning these things effectively, as well as introspection, requires understanding, coming up with and using objective tests for ideas instead of just relying on your own unaided judgment. another thing kate is evading.
[8:24 PM] curi: these are not laws of physics requirements but it's unrealistic to do anything else that's currently known and expect it to work
[8:25 PM] curi: you need to find things that are hard to lie to yourself about and make some other things harder to lie to yourself about
[8:35 PM] curi:
> [7:39 PM] TheRat: Well all I can gather based on the interactions is that
the sloppiness of the "all" there is basically incompatible with introspection beyond a certain limited effectiveness. finding a better introspection method is possible but harder and a less reliable place to start learning.
[8:36 PM] curi: explicit/inexplicit is not nearly the big deal ppl think. conscious learning leads to unconscious knowledge like how to walk. if it's problematic u do more conscious learning about the same topic.
[8:37 PM] curi: it's not that hard to take conscious control over tons of things and relearn them better. ppl don't want to.
[8:38 PM] curi: e.g. ppl could take conscious control over the words they write. i think ~everyone will agree that's possible. you can consciously choose every word. but ppl won't do it.
introspection difficulties are basically the same issue as overreaching. it means ur skipping steps and getting ahead of your knowledge, then u get lost and confused. understanding what ur doing in life basically equals not overreaching and also equals successful introspection / self-understanding.
[8:47 PM] curi: ppl build up the overreaching for decades and then it's hard to untangle but there's nothing fundamentally special about the untangling process, just gotta start learning stuff successfully. ppl get stuck b/c e.g. they learn unsuccessfully and incorrectly evaluate it as successful. kate does that a lot.
[8:48 PM] curi: need to exponentially (literally) back off to simpler stuff with much clearer, easier to objectively measure criteria for success.
[8:48 PM] curi: but ppl would rather lie to themselves.
A partial answer to a yes/no question? Huh...
David Deutsch's comments on *The Fabric of Reality* audio book, from audible, transcribed by http://otter.ai
> As I was proof listening to this audio version, it was the first time in 21 years that I'd read the whole book sequentially. It was fun. I still stand by virtually everything I wrote there. But there are few things that I put differently today. And a couple of things are out of date. If I were writing this book today, I would avoid the words justification and justified because they are so easily misunderstood. In this book, particularly in chapter seven, something being justified always means that it is the right thing, morally or methodologically. Not that it's justified as being true or probably true, because nothing ever is justified as true or probably true. So it is indeed morally and methodologically the right thing not to jump off the Eiffel Tower unsupervised and expect to survive. And the reason is, indeed, because of the arguments, as I say there. But I would say today, that only by using very bad explanations, could you argue that jumping would be safe? One place where I've changed my mind at all, is in regard to counter factual statements such as I could have chosen otherwise. It's true as I say in chapter 11, that whenever you could have chosen otherwise, you did choose otherwise in some other universes. But it's no longer my view that this fact is necessary to make sense of counterfactuals and hence of free will, I now see Free Will in terms of knowledge creation. cosmology has moved on a bit since 1997. We are now more perplexed about it than we were then. But tipless omega point cosmology does seem to have been ruled out by observations of the accelerated expansion of the universe. But meanwhile, new possibilities have opened up for an unlimited amount of computation in the future. So I still think the bottom line of chapter 14 is true.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/07/21/America-s-300-Million-Scrap-Metal-War-Afghanistan
> Say it’s Saturday night in Kabul and you’re a $200-a-month Afghan soldier who’s a little short on cash. What to do?
> One easy way to raise a few Afghanis, the local currency, is to jam a clip into your M16 or AK-47, blow off a bunch of rounds and sell the cartridge casings to a scrap metal dealer.
...
> A Reuters story today suggests that the cash-for-ammo-trash business is one reason why the U.S. spent more than $300 million on ammo for Afghan Security Forces last year.
> Afghan Defense Ministry officials denied that there was a problem, but a commander in Helmand province said troops can fire off 10,000-20,000 rounds in a single night with no Taliban casualties to be found.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-ammunition-idUSKCN100312
> pays about 175 Afghani ($2.55) per kilo of spent cartridge casings
So inefficient :(
The cost for those rounds might be $1000 (wild guess).
Fortnite is such trash as a competitive game due to the FFA design.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KH7GUi6gwI
Gamer celeb gossip:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC90sC4LSYkEPkeSeL9F4WIQ/videos
Justin Mallone on religious tolerance and the threat of Islam
On Mon, 21 Jan 2019, Justin Mallone wrote to FI list:
> One issue is that people are blind to the threat of Islam. They are thinking of stuff through a “freedom of religion/pluralism is good” concept, but that concept arose in the context of a broadly Judeo-Christian culture. Pretty mainstream/reasonable Judeo-Christian religious sects with some respect for things like the separation of church and state are the implied context there. Having to deal — in everyday, civilian life —with the adherents of a hostile theocratic warrior religion bent on conquest was not part of the context in which we adopted religious tolerance.
Ayn Rand: Meritocracy is an anti-concept
https://courses.aynrand.org/works/an-untitled-letter/ :
> “Meritocracy” is an old anti-concept and one of the most contemptible package-deals. By means of nothing more than its last five letters, that word obliterates the difference between mind and force: it equates the men of ability with political rulers, and the power of their creative achievements with political power. There is no difference, the word suggests, between freedom and tyranny: an “aristocracy” is tyranny by a politically established elite, a “democracy” is tyranny by the majority — and when a government protects individual rights, the result is tyranny by talent or “merit” (and since “to merit” means “to deserve,” a free society is ruled by the tyranny of justice).
TCS
What authors re TCS are consistently good to read, curi, besides you and DD?
E.g. here you say that Kristen McCord is not especially good re TCS:
https://youtu.be/lOG2z-xpuQc?t=15910
Richard Feynman: a tiny change to a theory's consequences can require enormous changes to the theory
Richard Feynman said (transcript mine):
> The philosophy, or the ideas, around a theory — you say, there is a space-time, or something like that... These ideas change enormously when there are very tiny changes in the theory. In other words, for instance, Newton's ideas about space and time agree with experiment very well. But in order to get the correct motion of the orbit of Mercury, which was a tiny, tiny difference, the difference in the *character* of the theory with which you started was enormous. Reason is, these [theories] are so simple and so perfect. They produce definite results. In order to get something that produces a little different result, it has to be completely different. You can't [fix] imperfections on a perfect thing — you have to have *another* perfect thing. So the philosophical differences between Newton's theory of gravitation and Einstein's theory of gravitation are enormous.
gradualism: does evolution in nature try to do reversible steps first?
http://fallibleideas.com/gradualism :
> Gradualism also has to do with preferring to do *reversible steps first*. Try a few things that are less risky before making more permanent changes. Gradualism involves making it easier to back out of your changes if they're mistaken. That's a good thing to pay attention to and place value on.
In what way(s), if any, does the process of evolution in nature "try" to do reversible steps first?
#15023 In case it wasn't clear, "try" was my word. I put it in quotes because I was iffy about the idea of nature *trying* to do anything, but I couldn't think of a better word at the moment and I hoped my meaning was clear enough.
https://curi.us/discord
is expired by the way
Tucker on violence against Trump supporters
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/28/exclusive-decade-in-review-tucker-carlson-details-how-gop-changing-under-trump-but-not-fast-enough/ :
> Carlson pointed to the violence that has occurred against Trump supporters in many places across the country, too, noting that if this happened to supporters of then-President Barack Obama when Obama was in the White House, it would have been shut down.
> “Ask yourself if five years ago, if anyone who wore an Obama for president shirt got punched in the face, or attacked by mobs or had the hat pulled off his head and had a milkshake poured on him, do you think Barack Obama would sit in the White House and be like ‘there’s nothing I can do about that. Anytime somebody wears some of my campaign tee-shirts into public he gets attacked, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ Are you joking?” Carlson said. “Are you fricking kidding? No he would have marshaled like the entire Justice Department like tonight, like right now, on behalf of his people—his voters—they voted for Obama, and saying that in public is getting them hurt. No, not acceptable. Not for one second. He would have made certain that they were free to wear clothing with his name on it. That’s just one example. But, go wear a Trump hat in Brooklyn—you will get hit. How is that ok? Really? And the Justice Department is doing nothing about this because why? People are just so crazy, I just don’t understand. And I’m not, like I don’t—I’m not exactly sure whose fault it is, but Obama never would have put up with this. He was man enough to just be like ‘no, that’s not allowed.’”
Tucker on how the left controls what people are allowed to say
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/28/exclusive-decade-in-review-tucker-carlson-details-how-gop-changing-under-trump-but-not-fast-enough/
> “So some leftwing activist group will show up and say ‘you’re no longer allowed to say X.’ I don’t know what it is, just pick something. Out with ‘the Orient,’ in with ‘Asia.’ Maybe that’s okay, maybe it’s not okay. Maybe it’s a good change, or maybe it’s a bad change. But the fact is they [the left] decide unilaterally what the changes are and then everyone else kind of has to go along with it. There’s no vote. It’s like the left decides what you’re allowed to say... It’s especially, it’s almost like the left is trying to see how ludicrous they can make it. You send out a tweet saying ‘men can menstruate too.’ Anyone who laughs is punished. When that happens, they’re challenging us. They’re basically saying ‘we can make you,’ this is 1984, this is Winston Smith, ‘we can make you say this. And then we can make you believe it. Watch us.’ ‘Repeat after me: Men can menstruate too.’ Then after a while you’re like ‘yeah, men can menstruate too, for sure.’ That’s when you’re a zombie. That’s when your soul is gone. That’s when they’re fully in charge of you. You’re just hunk of flesh, and you’re like a ventriloquist dummy at that point. That’s what happens.”
Ami Horowitz does man on street interviews asking about why Jews are getting attacked in Brooklyn and the responses he gets are awful https://youtu.be/Kvw4_boUOi0
https://twitter.com/lzsthw/status/1212284566431576069
Criticism of code bootcamps.
#15023 Nothing comes to mind. I don't think genetic evolution plans ahead re steps being reversible. However DNA is pretty good at having reversible steps. If an A and T get swapped, they could get swapped back. Though that isn't likely. If it's a bad change, what usually happens is the unchanged species members outcompeted the mutant. That's the main way changes get reversed: the mutant is less successful.
you'll enjoy this Veritas legal-related vid Justin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULePRxbXck8
#15052
Good vid thx 👍
In April 2007, the eastbound I-580 connector ramp in Oakland's Maze collapsed in a fire. It was reconstructed by C. C. Meyers, Inc. in 25 days, much faster than transportation officials expected.
https://www.tradelineinc.com/reports/2007-10/unprecedented-teamwork-repairs-collapsed-freeway-record-time :
> At first, reporters were astonished by Myers’ bid, just $867,075. Caltrans had estimated the cost of the project to be about $5.2 million. How on earth could Myers build the new ramp for less than a million? The steel itself would cost at least that much.
> Director Kempton explains, “The contract called for a work schedule of fifty days. However, for every day the project finished early, the contractor would earn a bonus of $200,000, with a cap of $5 million.”
> Myers confidently told the press he intended to earn every cent of the $5 million. So confident, in fact, that he began moving people and equipment into place even before the contract was awarded. His bid of $867,075 was simply the remainder of the price.
There's an interesting video on the reconstruction. The video has clips of Meyers, who looks and talks like one of the effective businessmen from Atlas Shrugged. Here's my transcript, starting from around 10m10s:
> C. C. Meyers (C. C. Meyers, Inc.): I come to work and there's a fax there from Stinger Steel out of Arizona. I don't know who Stinger Steel is, right? But it was very interesting. He says, "I want $3/pound for the steel and I want 25% of the bonus."
> Carl Douglas (President, Stinger Welding): "We had several contractors call us and laugh at us and say we were crazy and they weren't going to participate in paying us a bonus, they just wanted a hard dollar bid from us."
> Meyers: I've never had a proposal sent to me in my whole life like that. So I called the guy. "First of all, who the hell are you?"
> Douglas: Mr. Meyers asked me basically who we were and I believe he made one phone call and called me back within 3 or 4 minutes, says, "Hey look, we're gonna deal with you, let's go."
> Meyers: I said, "I know I can make that bonus. And your 25% of that -- I don't have a problem with that. I want this thing built in record time."
Variance Math Problems
a±b + c±d = ?
And the same problem but replacing addition with multiplication, subtraction, division, exponentiation, modulo.
I took an interest in this because variance scales up hugely with a single multiplication.
I have elegant solutions for the first four, an inelegant solution for exponentiation (not awful and has some nice genericness), and I went through some examples to get a better understanding of what's going on with modulo but I didn't make a formula.
My formulas all assume a>=b, c>=d and all numbers >= 0. Otherwise you run into complications in some cases that I haven't dealt with. You may want to use those simplifying assumptions when not doing addition or subtraction.
Edmund Burke
Is this a fair assessment of Burke's ideas or is there any criticism of this short intro on Burke's ideas regarding the French revolution?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYUaGsUY8BQ
#15089 from the description:
> Edmund Burke is considered one of the first modern conservatives and a critic of the French Revolution, particularly for his Reflections on the Revolution in France.
But he was a classical liberal. He was in the whig party. He was a reformer seeking progress a bit overly aggressively.
#15090 It seems hard to find good stuff representing Burke. I did try reading "Reflections on the Revolution in France" a while back but gave up due to the old tone it was written in.
Do you recommend anything other than "Reflections on the Revolution in France" by Burke himself to get a fair understanding of his view and criticism of the French revolution? Preferably something in more modern tongue or a summary if you know of any.
#15091 http://fallibleideas.com/books#burke
#15091 http://fallibleliving.com/thinkers/burke
#15092 & #15091
Thank you.
Leffen compares WR and TAS for smash melee break the targets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDTJTj1BSxU
https://mises.org/wire/why-marx-hated-individualism
topic in url. good stuff
Archives of Yahoo Groups
Elliot, thanks a lot for publishing the archives of the FoR Yahoo group. Thanks for including the original "txt" version as well as the PDF. Would it be possible for you to make the Autonomy Respecting Relationships posts available too?
ARR is planned next.
https://youtu.be/t0x46-enxsA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSwEOTqKqN4
from the youtube transcript:
> so I think the rules and social reality
34:34
> are win-lose like there are conflicts of
34:37
> interest in social reality because
34:38
> you're competing you climb in the status
34:41
> hierarchy but in real reality it's more
34:43
> like physicists physicists collaborating
34:47
> where they can just all work together
34:49
> and win like Einstein discovering more
34:51
> stuff than you does not make you lose if
34:53
> you're a physicist you're gonna be happy
34:55
> it helps you understand physics better
How do socially friendly behaviors and relationships fit into this? Can they be win/win?
Talking with Rucka a bit on his video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKuOn9yuQNE
Rucka replied:
>> curi I meant “forgive” in the legal sense, like forgiving debt. I should have used the word “pardon.”
>> So if a murderer shows full remorse, or it was a special one-time murder (eg he killed the man who used to abuse him as a child) he can walk free? The purpose of criminal courts is to punish crime. There’s civil courts for restitutions. I think I’m aligned with Objectivism on this, for what it’s worth.
I replied:
> Rucka Reacts No he can't walk free. You don't know he's safe now. The courts don't know. He doesn't know. Introspection ain't perfect. Believing things are special-case one-time murders is not a reliable way to predict future aggression. I think the reason we should have e.g. 10 year jail sentences is to protect us given our imperfect knowledge. People's actions are hard to be predict and psychologists have huge disagreements with each other, it's not much of a science, but we do know that people who have committed crimes have shown they are willing to commit crimes so there's a danger there which merits defense (plus the policy of jail sentences deters some people from committing crimes in the first place, so it has two defensive purposes). If we were omniscient and knew a guy would never hurt a fly again, then yes let him go free, why not, it's harmless (he must not be allowed to gloat or anything like that, just go about his own business productively) – but if we're omniscient, we'd prevent his first crime too, presumably by teaching him good philosophy so he wouldn't want to be a criminal. I'm not trying to get anyone out of jail, I'm not a leftist, and I'd be fine with longer jail terms for lots of stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A1aBe0C1jc
> Physics students react to 1888 exam
Alan in particular may be interested.
Tangentially, the *group* seemed dumb, mocking and social, while the repeat *individual* guy said smart, substantive stuff.
Due to harassment and trolling, I've enabled heightened security. There is a small chance you may try to post a comment and have it blocked. If so, turn off your VPN and try again, or contact me. Try to keep a copy of your comment, especially if it's long, but if you lose it I can probably find it in server logs.
I also enabled phone number verification on the FI Discord. FYI I cannot access your email or phone number. You just verify them with Discord and then, essentially, Discord tells the FI server that you are verified, and that's all we know.
https://twitter.com/anildash/status/1222154812428640256
Wrong re "force fed" but some good points and concerns.
#15285 He apparently thinks learning to use the term "SJW" is radicalization, so maybe he actually is aware of zero examples, not two.
I still liked the concept of using specific non-standard terms where the google and youtube search results are all stuff that fits your agenda because only your group uses it. I thought that was an interesting (bad) tactic.
His general concepts are ok but I now think the confusing wording about racism/sexism meant something bad (i didn't know what he meant there), that he may have zero examples, and that his actual concept of what is radical is probably ridiculous.
But I'm sure antifa does this stuff as he described. See e.g. https://curi.us/1965-by-any-means-necessary-a-violent-marxist-cult
Jewish culture
Does anyone know/have an idea or explanation about why so many great scientists are Jewish? I have read that Jewish culture places a large emphasis on knowledge/learning/reflection/contemplation as a reason for their intellectual success. I was wondering if anyone had some other interesting ideas about it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/evv207/psa_do_not_spam_emotes_in_the_owl_youtube_stream/
Because Google links all your accounts and the Overwatch League will now be on YouTube, you can be banned from your gmail account and be seriously fucked because you posted some emotes in an Overwatch game chat.
“data errors” on the front pages of several publications
Article that looks for instances of “data errors” on the front pages of several publications:
> Data errors are so pervasive that I came up with a hypothesis today and put it to the test. My hypothesis was this: 100% of “reputable” publications will have at least one data error on their front page.
> Method
> I wrote down 10 reputable sources off the top of my head: the WSJ, the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, the Economist, the New Yorker, Al Jazeera, Harvard Business Review, Google News: Science, the FDA, and the NIH.
> For each source, I went to their website and took a single screenshot of their homepage, above the fold, and skimmed their top stories for data errors.
I like how the article describes the methodology that was used.
> Results
> In the screenshots above, you can see that 10/10 of these publications had data errors front and center.
Nice way to summarize the results: a combined screenshot of all the front pages with the “data errors” highlighted.
> A good rule of thumb is anything you read that includes p-values to explain why it is significant is not significant.
Fair.
#15343 Misleading article. I don't think the headline "Tensions Rise in the Middle East" is anything like what people would normally call a "data error". People rightly interpret that headline as not being about data. Yet it's condemned for the "Lack of Dataset" error. It's also condemned for the "Lack of Definitions" error, but no one thought it was a precise statement. Yes there are objectionable things about that headline but it isn't clear misuse of data and it isn't getting basic facts or data points wrong. That headline doesn't purport to be science. The "data error" here seems to be failing to follow a certain empiricist methodology for every claim and statement, but that same methodology is consistently followed by nothing and no one, including the data errors article, and the methodology is refuted by CR/BoI/etc.
Coronavirus
Has anyone found any good material on the steps, if any, that individuals and families should consider taking to protect themselves from the effects of the 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak? Should we sell stocks? Move to the country? Stock up on N95 masks? Just proceed as we normally would during a flu season?
https://twitter.com/joelengel/status/1224725474649071616
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/02/decision-theory-remains-neglected.html
> I say that their motives are more political: execs and their allies gain more by using other more flexible decision making frameworks for key decisions, frameworks with more wiggle room to help them justify whatever decision happens to favor them politically. Decision theory, in contrast, threatens to more strongly recommend a particular hard-to-predict decision in each case. As execs gain when the orgs under them are more efficient, they don’t mind decision theory being used down there. But they don’t want it up at their level and above, for decisions that say if they and their allies win or lose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA-W1BJMH-E
> BREAKING: Twitter LOCKS DOWN James O’Keefe’s Account
https://quillette.com/2019/10/12/male-bodied-rapists-are-being-imprisoned-with-women-why-do-so-few-people-care/
> Male-Bodied Rapists Are Being Imprisoned With Women. Why Do so Few People Care
> The idea that many male offenders would opt to serve their sentences in women’s correctional facilities is not something that should shock a thinking person. But it appears that common sense is forgotten once the words “gender identity” are invoked. Male offenders, including violent offenders and sex offenders, currently are incarcerated in women’s prisons in various western jurisdictions. This policy has been adopted in numerous countries under the guise of tolerance. Recently, Ireland had its first transfer, when a fully intact male sex offender was placed in a women’s prison in Limerick. The California Senate also recently voted in favour of such accommodations. This policy often is referred to as “self ID.” It means that your status as a male or female is determined by your belief (or claim) about your sex and not by your actual biology.
Verbal messages cause misunderstanding and delays (please put them in writing)
Rudy Behlmer, *Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951)* (1987), p. XI:
> Printed at the bottom of each sheet of [all Warner Bros.] interoffice correspondence was the reminder "Verbal messages cause misunderstanding and delays (please put them in writing)."
A wise policy (legally-sensitive communications excepted).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(2006_video_game)
> In 2010, Sega delisted Sonic the Hedgehog from retailers, following its decision to remove all Sonic games with below-average Metacritic scores to increase the value of the brand.
I've been setting up a Debian install in VMware Fusion. One of the things I did is set up Samba so I can access the debian files from my Mac (the host OS) with Finder. I primarily want this so I can edit stuff in Mac text editing software like Textmate 2.
Samba did not work on the first few tries. Here is a picture with some info about my troubleshooting process:
I think a lot of people fail at stuff by trying way too little. I have years of professional experience at similar tasks. That doesn't mean I can automatically do it right or get it to work right away. People without that kind of background should expect *way more* web searches, more reading, more tinkering, etc.
Dan Luu: 95%-ile isn't that good
https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ :
> Reaching 95%-ile isn't very impressive because it's not that hard to do... when stated nakedly, that sounds elitist. But I think it's just the opposite: most people can become (relatively) good at most things.
> Personally, in every activity I've participated in where it's possible to get a rough percentile ranking, people who are 95%-ile constantly make mistakes that seem like they should be easy to observe and correct. "Real world" activities typically can't be reduced to a percentile rating, but achieving what appears to be a similar level of proficiency seems similarly easy.
> We'll start by looking at Overwatch (a video game) in detail because it's an activity I'm familiar with where it's easy to get ranking information and observe what's happening, and then we'll look at some "real world" examples where we can observe the same phenomena, although we won't be able to get ranking information for real world examples.
This is an interesting read. It ties in with some stuff Elliot [wrote on FI list in 2015]( https://groups.google.com/g/fallible-ideas/c/2Ypha-S_CQc/m/es0eSBYsbRsJ) :
> ... it’s not that hard to be like top 10% successful. if your parents destroy your mind only 80% as much as the typical amount, that should do it.
> if you look at the people playing any popular online computer game, there are tons of really really terrible and stupid players. and being in the top 10% of players is easy for most games.
> you have to suck at life quite badly to be in the bottom 90%. i do a hell of a lot better than top 10% at stuff, you aren’t competing with me to get there.
> you maybe shouldn’t base your life plan on being top 0.01% at stuff, but it’s completely reasonable to expect to be top 10% and plan accordingly.
#15347 https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/conference-call-coronavirus-expert :
> Overnight in Asia, we hosted a call with professor John Nicholls a clinical professor in pathology at the University of Hong Kong and expert on coronaviruses. He was a key member of the research team at the University of Hong Kong which isolated and characterized the novel SARS coronavirus in 2003. He’s been studying coronaviruses for 25 years (full bio here). The recording of the call can be found on our website HERE. Below are my notes transcribing the call. The first 30m are worth listening to.
> Quick summary: look at the fatality rate outside of Wuhan - it’s below 1%. The correct comparison is not SARS or MERS but a bad cold which kills people who already have other health issues. This virus will burn itself out in May when temperatures rise. Wash your hands.
Washing hands sounds like good advice.
> [Q:] What is the actual scale of the outbreak? How much larger is it compared to the official “confirmed” cases?
> [A:] People are saying a 2.2 to 2.4% fatality rate total. However recent information is very worthy - if you look at the cases outside of China the mortality rate is <1%. [Only 2 fatalities outside of mainland China]. 2 potential reasons 1) either china’s healthcare isn’t as good – that’s probably not the case 2) What is probably right is that just as with SARS there’s probably much stricter guidelines in mainland China for a case to be considered positive. So the 20,000 cases in China is probably only the severe cases; the folks that actually went to the hospital and got tested. The Chinese healthcare system is very overwhelmed with all the tests going through. So my thinking is this is actually not as severe a disease as is being suggested. The fatality rate is probably only 0.8%-1%. There’s a vast underreporting of cases in China. Compared to Sars and Mers we are talking about a coronavirus that has a mortality rate of 8 to 10 times less deadly to Sars to Mers. So a correct comparison is not Sars or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold.
I had heard about underreporting of deaths, but hadn't thought about the likelihood of underreporting the number of people with the virus.
a story about learning
> To: takingchildrenseriously@yahoogroups.com
> From: Elliot Temple
> Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:22:28 -0700
> Subject: a story about learning
> little relevant knowledge + interest + dedication + a year = world class knowledge of x264 video encoding + lucrative job offers
> he got started cause he was recording clips of an online fantasy game he played.
> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=320102
Good story. ☝️
In 2010, the author, Jason Glasser, a.k.a. Dark Shikari, wrote a blog post analyzing the VP8 codec. That post was cited by Steve Jobs in a single-line response to a reporter's question about Google's announcement that the codec would be open-sourced.
Jason Glaser changed his name to Fiona Glasser around 2014.
Correction: the name is "Glaser", not "Glasser".
#15428
https://web.archive.org/web/20100603015319/http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377
> Before I go into specific components, a general note on code quality. The code quality is much better than VP3, though there’s still tons of typos in the comments. They also appear to be using comments as a form of version control system, which is a bit bizarre. The assembly code is much worse, with staggering levels of copy-paste coding, some completely useless instructions that do nothing at all, unaligned loads/stores to what-should-be aligned data structures, and a few functions that are simply written in unfathomably roundabout (and slower) ways. While the C code isn’t half bad, *the assembly is clearly written by retarded monkeys*. But I’m being unfair: this is way better than with VP3.
Emphasis added.
I've recently been attacked for having said diaf. I've also said wtf, jfc, retarded, and more. Should Glaser be attacked too? Should his comments on VP8 be dismissed? Is it a random coincidence that many productive people, like Popper, Rand and Steve Jobs too, have been attacked in a similar manner?
Some people use expressions like this because they are trying to speak accurately (bluntly) about reality instead of sugar coating things and obscuring and downplaying their opinions. This is a good trait.
There are, of course, also people who use expressions like these thoughtlessly, dishonestly, maliciously, and so on. But one can do that with any words. The issue isn't the words, it's the quality of the judgment offered.
Why not simply avoid everything that would offend anyone? Because that lowest common denominator vernacular is widely considered boring and disliked, and because people are more offended by content rather than words anyway, and why should the mob control the self-expression of intelligent men in a hypocritical way (the complainers generally say plenty of rude things and have no idea how to live up to the ivory tower standard of perfection they demand but can't clearly specify).
They want to take all the color and flavor out of speech, but mostly selectively apply these style complaints to a few people whose content they have an issue with. I already write in a particularly bland and simple way to be clear. I will readily rgrant that terms like diaf, retarded monkey and many others do not maximize clarity, but I don't think one is required to maximize clarity at all times and have no other goals in life, and I think the complainers spend far less of their time and effort attempting clarity and are much worse at achieving it.
#15428
petercooper on Oct 1, 2008 [-]
> That within a year you've become extremely proficient with a non-trivial, math-heavy video compression standard says a lot for your baseline intelligence. Congratulations for sticking at it, although I doubt most of us in the lower 95% could have done the same! :)
DarkShikari on Oct 1, 2008 [-]
> I doubt most people on HN are in the lower 95% ;)
> I'd say its more a matter of dedication and the sheer amount of time I've spent on it, plus the fact that I > was able to skip a whole lot of it by basing my earlier insights off those of others rather than trying the (utterly hopeless) strategy of learning it all myself from the spec.
> I'd also say the "math-heavy" is rather exaggerating it; the entire spec has not an ounce of math in it. All the numerical computations are written in pseudocode, not formulas; its basically written as if a computer was reading it instead of a human. Personally I have found this to be a rather terrible attribute, as it makes some of it nearly completely incomprehensible.
> I also find this approach is often the kind of thing that leads people to assume they cannot do something; they think that only "really smart" people can possibly do some particular thing, and refuse to try as a result. Of course, it can also go the other way--because someone does something hard, they insist that they must be really smart, or else they couldn't have done it. This only reinforces the problem.
> There also seems to be the rather misleading assumption that younger people are somehow less smart on average, and thus if a younger person does something hard, they must be even smarter than they would be assumed to be otherwise. I find this to be completely false; I don't think I've gotten one ounce better at math than I was in middle school, for example. People get more experienced, wiser and more knowledgeable, but I don't think they get much smarter.
> Though, ironically, I don't actually think I am that smart; if grades are any indication, my last semester is clear proof that I'm not ;)
i like he corrected someone that it wasnt just his baseline intelligence that allowed him to do this, and that it was his dedication and effort.
#15421 Video on coronavirus. Has some basic science info on viruses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEPi1KYanh4
Tons of complaints about Overwatch League production values for the opening weekend. With good reason. Poor video resolution on YouTube (and for their green screen based desk footage they have apparently been re-encoding in-game video clips at least twice, lowering quality), having the wrong screen up in the middle of gameplay multiple times so you couldn't see the game, getting a team name wrong, and many more errors.
Hundreds of millions of dollars invested in this league and they are grossly incompetent at basic stuff in their third year. (Yeah it's not their LA studio anymore and they just switched to YouTube but still. YT paid a ton of money to outbid Twitch and broadcast these games btw.)
#15430 Rucka calls Tew a pussy (among other things) in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znffb6iZmsM
Why? Because it invokes some culturally-meaningful concepts which are relevant and hard to talk about without being rude.
As with many communications, not everyone gets it. But many people do. I didn't mind or object.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5fnNIGvMAg
Ocarina of Time any% speedrun has gotten really fast with stale reference manipulation enabling arbitrary code execution enabling credits warp.
https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1228031105439158273
@visakanv writes:
> very much so! I think most moderately thoughtful and well-read people are 99% aware of all of the information they need, and it's unlikely that the last 1% makes the difference anyway. It's all about implementation
This is horribly wrong. Most such people are unaware of the basic ideas of Objectivism, Critical Rationalism, Szasz, Godwin, TCS, ARR, Goldratt, FI, Mises, etc.
Second, setting that aside, how does one do implementation better? What does one need for implementation other than information about implementation..? Trying to separate errors from information is wrong. If it's not working, you need better ideas, not an unspecified Something Else (like willpower without reason because reasons involve information).
#15452 It's telling people not to seek out new ideas. It means, as one consequence, that other cultures don't have value and don't know anything you don't. It's saying don't be curious and don't explore because there's no value there.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22329872
> - Each [Amazon] review is worth a lot of money, often times multiples of the product itself, and especially if you're just starting out.
And some other info re amazon reviewing.
Used Overcast for iOS to listen to several eps of the new Ted Cruz podcast. Podcast was OK.
App was very good. I rejected Overcast before due to 2x max speed even though it had some silence removal. It now can do 3x + auto silence removal, so actual speed varies and can go up as high as around 3.5x but it still didn't seem that hard for me to listen to. I liked it a lot.
The problem with the app is it only does podcasts. Want to listen to an mp3 you have?
Pay $10/yr to be able to upload it to their website:
https://thesweetsetup.com/upload-mp3-files-overcast/
And:
> Overcast has a limit of 2GB per account, and each file can be up to 1 GB in overall size.
So you have to clear stuff out to stay under the limit. A lot. You can't just leave a bunch of books in the app. E.g. Human Action is 600 megs, which is no problem to leave on your phone to listen to whenever, but will fill up a third of the Overcast limit.
Alternatively you could make a podcast for the sole purpose of sharing stuff with yourself.
Or just keep using stuff like VLC or Speedup Player. But the Smart Speed feature in Overcast is nice.
> Used Overcast for iOS to listen to several eps of the new Ted Cruz podcast. Podcast was OK.
> App was very good. I rejected Overcast before due to 2x max speed even though it had some silence removal. It now can do 3x + auto silence removal, so actual speed varies and can go up as high as around 3.5x but it still didn't seem that hard for me to listen to. I liked it a lot.
Interesting. I use iCatcher! It does 3X but I don't think it has auto silence removal. I don't really listen to casts that have lots of silence tho so I dunno how much that would help
me
Ancient history educational videos:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv_vLHiWVBh_FR9vbeuiY-A/featured
Zed Shaw criticizes Lambda School for operating illegally in CA
#15037
Zed Shaw wrote, criticizing code bootcamps:
> If you are contemplating joining a coding bootcamp in 2020 then let me give you a list of the top scams they use to steal your money (yes, even with an ISA, the #1 scam):
> ...
> #5: Not being registered as a real school in their state and not following the laws regarding refunds. Flatiron did this for years and got sued for $350k then had to be rescued by crazy Adam Nuemann and WeWork. Lambda Schools is also operating illegally in CA.
Shaw doesn't say what a "real school" is or why Lambda should have to register as one. (Here's a Twitter thread by someone else with some info that I only skimmed.) CA's education regulations allow shit shows like UC Berkeley to operate with *public funding*. If those regulations also forbid Lambda from running its for-profit coding bootcamps, it may be the regulations that are at fault, not Lambda.
The argument below, tweeted by Matt Gilliland in reply to Shaw's point #5, makes sense to me:
> Not being an accredited school doesn't make a bootcamp a scam -- in fact, in some cases it may be a signal that you're actually innovating. And again, what's the comparison? Many accredited schools are scams, and many are bad without being a scam.
baleful — sinister
chasuble — priestly vestment
Cimmerian — very dark
circean — referring to beauty of a dangerous kind
contumacious — rebellious
contumelius — insolently abusive and humiliating
cynosure — the center of attraction
eschar — scab or burned layer of skin
flagellum — long, thin appendages
flagitious — villainous
funereal — dark, gloomy
internecine — referring to a conflict within a group
lares — household gods (also penates)
lorn — forsaken
maladroit — inept
malefactor — evil doer
maleficent — working evil
malefic — malicious
malison — curse
mammon — material wealth having a debasing influence
necrology — list of the recently dead
necrosis — decay of body tissue
propitiation — offering to a god
rive — to break apart
saccate — shaped like a pouch or sac
sacristy — place in a church where sacred vessels are kept
salience — pronounced feature
sallet — light helmet with a brim flaring in the back
sphenic — shaped like a wedge
surplice — loose-fitting priestly garment with wide sleeves
syrinx — vocal organ of a bird
tabard — short, heavy cape or tunic (worn over armor)
tenebrific-causing gloom or darkness
tenebrous — shut out from the light, obscure
teredines — tiny worms that ruin ships and wharfs
tutelary — guardian spirit or god
umbra — darkest part of a shadow
vapid — lacking spirit
venal — capable of being bribed, mercenary
welter — to wallow; turmoil
wizened — shriveled
wormwood — anything bitter or grievous
xiphoid — shaped like a sword
yamen — office or home of an official (Chinese)
ylem — universal matter to have existed before the big bang
zygodactyl — having two toes pointing backward, two forward
https://twitter.com/natematias/status/1210610099015815169
> For the first few years of interaction with social scientists, I marveled at how often people brought theory into what seemed like water-cooler chat. I would sometimes come away with a vague feeling that I had been tested & found wanting for not improvising hypotheses on the spot
The whole series of tweets is disturbing. He doesn't want science/ideas to be part of his life all the time. He wants people to warn him when it's a real discussion and he should put on his thinking cap. He wants prep time before being evaluated because he can't quickly think or share opinions.
> I wonder sometimes how to train students. Where should I scaffold scholarly discussions so they can anticipate them & prep great work? How do I prepare them to put forward their best selves in scientific cultures that privilege fast talkers who are always at work in their minds?
> And how can I prepare students for academic cultures that reinforce the anxiety of always being evaluated–while limiting how much I perpetuate those pressures?
He wants time off. He wants to be an intellectual who isn't at work most of the time, and just says any old shit just like a non-intellectual, even when talking about topics related to his career. He wants to clock out, just like a factory worker.
https://www.1-hp.org/blog/healthy-movement/how-to-stretch-hands-back-neck-secrets-of-console-gaming/
> How to Stretch (Hands, Back, Neck) – Secrets of Console Gaming
Computer and video game use injuries are common and can make life a lot worse. People don't take this seriously enough.
http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2017/09/peer-review-is-younger-than-you-think.html
> "Peer review" is younger than you think. Does that mean it can go away?
https://www.girlschase.com/content/day-life-21st-century-woman
> A Day in the Life of the 21st Century Woman
Short story.
https://twitter.com/jordancurve/status/989538777738735616
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/27/17761466/psychology-replication-crisis-nature-social-science
> More social science studies just failed to replicate. Here’s why this is good.
Vox headline. lol sigh.
https://www.sciencealert.com/fruits-vegetables-before-domestication-photos-genetically-modified-food-natural
> Here's What Fruits And Vegetables Looked Like Before We Domesticated Them
Interesting. More seeds, less edible. Nice pictures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCLOJ9j1k2Y
> Japan in 8K 60fps
8K is the resolution. More than 4k which is more than HD.
The horrible truth about Apple's repeated engineering failures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8
*The horrible truth about Apple's repeated engineering failures.*
I am a Mac user. I like the user experience and have not had many issues with Apple products.
Is Apple getting better or worst re engineering and why do they not learn better from their mistakes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRV185XaMIM
> Caesar in Gaul - Roman History DOCUMENTARY
#15532 That anti-Apple propagandist has been discussed on Discord. Here's a link to somewhere in the conversation.
https://discordapp.com/channels/304082867384745994/304082867384745994/634243114936172554
The anti-Apple side of the debate broadly didn't answer arguments and then stopped responding entirely.
https://latacora.singles/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted.html
> Stop Using Encrypted Email
Summary: Email encryption doesn't work well enough. It's insecure. Don't pretend it works. If you really need encryption, use something else.
With sections like "Every archived message will eventually leak." and "Every long term secret will eventually leak." it also has some relevance to people who expect privacy when emailing strangers in plain text (which came up in some recent FI debates).
Guy reports massive bias of female professors and TAs to give higher grades to feminine handwriting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/dasfp/is_it_just_me_or_do_95_of_girls_have_handwriting/c0ytcpk/
#15534 Thx.
Google and YouTube suck
The Stadia Disaster
Youtubes COPPA Policy is GARBAGE
The Cesspool of Quid Pro Quo Journalism
Get offered all-expenses-paid travel to parties/events, in return you're expected to give positive coverage to the new game/movie/product/whatever (if you don't, you don't get invited to similar events by anyone).
#15557 Google Stadia is Increasingly Garbage - Backwards Innovation
Twitch - Elitist and Inconsistent - Why I Dont Stream There
He quit Twitch, explains why. A lot of the video is complaining about softcore porn camgirls and Twitch's new (2018) Terms of Service where they say no harassment like ever calling anyone a camgirl and they actually ban people for saying stuff like that once.
Watch Vids Fast!
I posted a bunch of YouTube links today. Something worth noting: I've been watching them at 2.7x speed. And that is not my max, I could go faster, that is a reasonably comfortable speed where I don't miss much.
I've built up to this speed for years.
It's a *huge* time saver. You should start working on it. If you watch at 1x, you can probably go up to 1.25x without much trouble. It'll probably be easy. Then you just keep gradually increasing. Start now because it takes time to get used to watching faster so it's not just something you can do, but actually easy/relaxed/comfortable. If you go up gradually enough, it never ruins the fun or stresses you out.
YT's speed controls don't give you enough flexibility and the max speed, 2x, is too low. By flexibility I mean it's better to control the speed in smaller increments like 0.1x
Video Speed Controller is a free Chrome extension to do this. It works well. You can also download stuff (e.g. with youtube-dl for command line or many other choices) and watch it fast with VLC.
Oh also, dear god, *get an ad blocker which blocks YouTube ads!* I use uBlock Origin in Chrome (warning: the non-origin version of ublock is different and shitty).
You can also get these extensions for Firefox.
I don't know what's available for Internet Explorer, I mean Edge.
They are *not* available for Mac Safari (uBlock Origin worked before Catalina). If you know/find good options for Safari (my preferred browser), please let me know.
#15533
Nice vid thanks
Google Cloud Vision API will no longer classify images of people as male or female
According to a letter sent to customers, the Google Cloud Vision API will no longer classify images of people as male or female:
> Hello Google Cloud Vision API customer,
> We are writing to let you know that starting February 19, 2020, the Cloud Vision API will no longer return gendered labels such as 'man' and 'woman' that describe persons in an image when using the ‘LABEL_DETECTION’ feature.
Speedrunning & respecting traditions in ancient Rome
On Feb 9, 2010, HN user AngryParsley asked HN user xenophanes this question:
> You seem to respect tradition quite a bit compared to myself. I have a question: If we lived in ancient Rome, would you have a similar respect for their traditions?
On Feb 10, 2010, xenophanes replied:
> That's a good question. I would take the same attitude in Roman times. Their traditions had a lot of flaws, but they were (in most respects) the best knowledge available at the time. I don't think people could have improved from Roman times by ignoring or disrespecting what they already did know then.
Good answer.
This is similar to how speedrunners collectively build up knowledge about the best known ways to speedrun a game. If you got sent back in time, it'd still be better to build on the speedrun knowledge of that time, rather than starting over from scratch.
> I think you've misunderstood a bit because I am not saying our current traditions are the best possible traditions. (That wouldn't even make much sense because they contradict each other frequently.) I am in favor of changing traditions in a gradualist, piecemeal fashion because I think that's the most effective way to make progress.
Knowledge about how to speedrun a game mostly grows in increments that each save a relatively small fraction of the total time.
> You might compare it to updating big, messy legacy code systems. You want to do one thing at a time and then run the code or the tests to make sure you didn't break anything and the change works as intended. If you add a bunch of stuff at once, and then there's a problem, it's harder to figure out which change was behind it.
Good analogy.
The Mainstream Idiots Ruin Things!?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/diminishing-returns-science/575665/
Science broke due to mainstreaming. It was just a few early adopters and really interested people. Now it's far, far more people, but most of them suck.
Anything would break with a chart like that. Maybe, hopefully, the real scientists still exist and are doing good work, but the massive influx is making it harder not easier. You can't onboard so many people so fast. It takes more time to teach people what to do in a thorough way instead of just giving them a superficial university degree or PhD.
It's the same problem as gaming, which got far worse as it opened up to the mainstream and started designing for the masses instead of the experts and early adopters.
It's the same problem as the internet. Usenet (basically similar to Google Groups) was a little like FI list for everyone, everywhere, but then we had Eternal September and things gradually declined to today with Facebook, Twitter, etc. which are so much worse than Usenet and PHPBB forums.
I don't think this is fully, exactly what's going on but I think it's an idea worth sharing and considering.
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/02/25/ntsb-apple-employees-distracted-driving/
> NTSB Criticizes Apple After Fatal Tesla Autopilot Crash for Not Banning Employee Smartphone Use While Driving
> The NTSB called Tesla's Autosteer feature "completely inadequate" and said that Tesla's forward collision warning system did not provide an alert, nor did the automatic emergency braking system activate, but the board also had some choice words for Apple.
AOPS Intro to Algebra provides incomplete answer to exercise 1.7.4
In AOPS Introduction to Algebra, exercise 1.7.4 asks:
> Is there a positive or negative number that equals 4^(1/4)?
The answer given is:
> Yes. There is a nonnegative number whose fourth power is 4, but it is not a whole number. Since 1.4^4 ≈ 3.84 and 1.5^4 ≈ 5.06, it appears that the number equal to 4^(1/4) is between 1.4 and 1.5, and probably is closer to 1.4. Using a calculator, we can find that the number whose fourth power is 4 is approximately 1.414.
(−1.414)^4 is also approximately equal to 4. The question asks for a positive or negative solution, but the answer only mentions a "*nonnegative* number whose fourth power is 4" (emphasis mine). It doesn't mention the negative solution.
#15625 Can you express 4^(1/4) *exactly* as a finite length decimal number? Decimal with an infinitely repeating pattern on the end?
The square root of 2 is irrational
#15626
> Can you express 4^(1/4) *exactly* as a finite length decimal number? Decimal with an infinitely repeating pattern on the end?
No.
I will start my explanation with a few preliminaries (each of which can be expanded upon request):
1. Note that 4^(1/4) = (2^2)^(1/4) = 2^(2/4) = 2^(1/2). So the problem is asking about the square root of 2.
2. Any finite-length decimal number is equivalent to an infinitely-repeating decimal number that ends with an infinite string of 0s. For example, 1.23 = 1.2300000000.... So we need only talk of infinitely-repeating decimal numbers.
3. Any infinitely repeating decimal number is equivalent to a fraction, i.e., x/y where x and y are integers.
4. Any fraction can be written in lowest terms, i.e., any fraction is equivalent to some fraction x/y where the greatest common divisor of x and y is 1.
Now for the main explanation, which will be a "proof by contradiction". I will start by assuming something, and then, via some correct reasoning steps, I will derive a contradiction. Unless I made a mistake in my reasoning, the contradiction will imply that the assumption is false.
Here's the assumption: Suppose that there exists an infinitely repeating decimal number that is equal to the square root of 2. By (3) and (4) above, this decimal number is equal to some fraction in lowest terms. Let x/y be that fraction. In other words, suppose there exist integers x and y such that:
x/y = 2^(1/2)
Squaring both sides, we obtain:
x^2/y^2 = 2
Multiplying both sides by y^2 yields:
x^2 = 2⋅y^2
Since both x and y are integers, the above equation implies that x^2 is divisible by 2. Hence we can write x = 2⋅z for some integer z. Making this substitution, we obtain:
(2⋅z)^2 = 2⋅y^2
That simplifies to:
2⋅2⋅z^2 = 2⋅y^2
Canceling one pair of 2s yields:
2·z^2 = y^2
The above equation implies that y^2 is also divisible by 2. Hence, the greatest common divisor of x and y is at least 2. This contradicts the earlier stipulation that x/y was in lowest terms. Hence, the original assumption (i.e., that there exists an infinitely repeating decimal equal to the square root of 2) is false.
#15627 I noticed a couple of typos:
> In other words, suppose there exist integers x and y such that:
This should be: "In other words, suppose there exist integers x and y such that gcd(x,y) = 1 and:" (add the gcd part)
> Hence we can write x = 2⋅z for some integer z.
This should be: "Hence we can write x^2 = 2⋅z for some integer z." (I meant to write x^2, not x.)
#15628 was by me.
Another mistake
#15628
>> Since both x and y are integers, the above equation implies that x^2 is divisible by 2. Hence we can write x = 2⋅z for some integer z.
> This should be: "Hence we can write x^2 = 2⋅z for some integer z." (I meant to write x^2, not x.)
No, that's wrong.
Both original sentences were correct, but there was a missing step between them. I should have added the sentence "If x^2 is divisible by 2, then so is x." between them.
Press coverage of Assange extradition hearings
The UK is considering extraditing Wikileaks' Julian Assange to the US. Assange's lawyers are opposing extradition. The article below says, among other things, that the press is not reporting significant events that happen during the extradition hearings.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-1/ :
> [Prosecution attorney] Lewis had thus just flat out contradicted his entire opening statement to the media stating that they need not worry as the Assange charges could never be applied to them. And he did so straight after the adjournment, immediately after his team had handed out copies of the argument he had now just completely contradicted. I cannot think it has often happened in court that a senior lawyer has proven himself so absolutely and so immediately to be an unmitigated and ill-motivated liar. This was undoubtedly the most breathtaking moment in today’s court hearing.
> Yet remarkably I cannot find any mention anywhere in the mainstream media that this happened at all. What I can find, everywhere, is the mainstream media reporting, via cut and paste, Lewis’s first part of his statement on why the prosecution of Assange is not a threat to press freedom; but nobody seems to have reported that he totally abandoned his own argument five minutes later...
Postmortem: incorrect spelling/capitalization of proper nouns
#15632 It should be "WikiLeaks" not "Wikileaks".
Incorrectly capitalizing or misspelling proper nouns is one of my more common posting mistakes. Examples:
- writing "Glasser" instead of "Glaser" (#15429)
- writing "Elliott" instead of "Elliot" (FI list)
- writing "Alissa" instead of "Alisa" (#13535)
Proper nouns are like variable names in programming. They can have arbitrary spelling and capitalization. Messing them up is not acceptable.
One possible fix, then, would be to copy/paste *all* proper nouns. That seems like a lot of work, though. Maybe I should only copy/paste *some* of them, but I don't know where to draw the line. At first, I was going to say that simple names like "John" and "Sarah" wouldn't have to be copy/pasted, but then I remembered that they are sometimes spelled as "Jon" and "Sara".
I can put my proper noun mistakes into two categories:
1. Replacing a proper noun with a proper noun that would be correctly spelled if it were referring to someone or something else. Example: writing "Elliott" instead of "Elliot" or "Alissa" instead of "Alisa".
2. Replacing a proper noun with something that is basically never correct. Example: writing "Wikileaks" instead of "WikiLeaks" or "Curi" instead of "curi".
Category 2 mistakes would, in some instances, be caught by my existing check for words that are used only once in a post. This check wouldn't help if I misspelled the same proper noun in the same way twice in the same post, though, and that wouldn't be too uncommon, because when I misspell a proper noun, it's not a typo, in the sense that the error wasn't caused by my fingers incorrectly carrying out instructions from my brain -- it's caused by me having the wrong idea about how the proper noun should be spelled. At any rate, I wasn't consistently using this check for curi.us comments, only for FI list posts. From now on, I intend to use the check consistently on both forums.
My plan for dealing with category 1 mistakes and category 2 mistakes that happen twice in the same post is to try to treat proper nouns like strings of Chinese characters. They require special care (for me, at least) and they have to be exact.
Dynamo
#15563 You can speed up videos in Safari with Dynamo from the mac app store for $1. Says it works with Netflix, YouTube and more. Tried it on YT and it's worth having, I'll be able to switch to Chrome less. It has fewer features than Video Speed Controller though.
The default hotkeys are stupid. Why would you use F when YT uses that for fullscreen? I changed go faster to D and default speed to R.
Dynamo also has some sort of ad skipping feature I haven't tried yet.
#15627 Argument for point 3? E.g. how do you construct a fraction to get an arbitrary repetition? E.g. make the decimal start with 893247 and then do 190231 repeating. Is there a ~simple method to do that which works with any digit strings for the initial part and the repeating part?
I know the initial non-repeating part alone is easy because you just put it over a power of 10 with 1 more digit. To get 0.893247 you do 893247/1000000 (it's 6 digits so i put 7 digits on the bottom, or another way to see it is i used the first power of 10 larger than the numerator)
Clever argument for the rest.
#15632 One might think this is bias by journalists but the article gives a different explanation. I think it would have been better to quote another paragraph:
> The explanation is very simple. The clarification coming from a question Baraitser asked Lewis, there is no printed or electronic record of Lewis’ reply. His original statement was provided in cut and paste format to the media. His contradiction of it would require a journalist to listen to what was said in court, understand it and write it down. There is no significant percentage of mainstream media journalists who command that elementary ability nowadays. “Journalism” consists of cut and paste of approved sources only. Lewis could have stabbed Assange to death in the courtroom, and it would not be reported unless contained in a government press release.
Of course the real situation could be *both* some of this this *and* some bias.
#15637
Not exactly the same thing but: When I hung out with Libertarian activists many years ago it was well known that to get media coverage you had to have some record from the government. Meaning: a court case number, police report number, document filing number, budget line item, candidacy papers filed with the county recorder, bill introduced in a government board/council/legislature, etc.
This is treated by the media kinda like standing in legal cases. Having a government record associated with some issue didn't guarantee media coverage. But lacking a government record of some sort was a guarantee for the issue to be ignored, no matter how important or objectively newsworthy it was.
The other thing is the media were known to be lazy. So even if they *could* cover something because it has a government record, the best way to insure they *would* cover it is to write most of the story for them as a press release. They will usually copy / paste 90+% of it and only insert a few of their own statements.
So the formula is: write the story the way you want it covered, then go do something that gets a government record of some sort, send both to the media & there's a good chance your story gets out. Otherwise no.
The most blatant example I know of this concerned the personal data on all the registered voters in a state (their names, addresses, party affiliation, whether they voted or not in the last election(s), sometimes phone numbers and last 4 of SSN, etc.). There was nothing in the law protecting this information or keeping it private, other than it was not allowed to be used for business/marketing purposes. It was given by the government to political parties for free. Candidates had to pay per name for it unless the party machines would give it to them internally. It was a means of allowing the party bosses more say over which candidates could fundraise effectively, get enough signatures to get on the ballot, etc. But there was nothing stopping well connected people in the party, or even paper candidates from getting the voter data and giving it to their friends, using it for stalking ex-partners, doxxing enemies, etc.
Once it became clear to the Libertarians what was going on the legislature and the media were contacted and given an explanation of the situation, figuring the legislature would be pressured to fix it and the media would want to cover it as a source of privacy violation or worse. The party wrote up a press release and sent it widely. Nobody bit / ran the story. No response from legislature. Crickets.
One activist (not a party official but a candidate with a copy of the voter data) decided to threaten to post the entire voter database on the open internet at some future date (I think in like 3 or 6 months out) unless someone could show that doing so was illegal. Sent his threat to both the state legislature members and the media.
Still not covered by the media!
But a short time later a legislator introduced a bill to restrict the voter data as private information rather than public record, require technical restrictions to keep it from being copied indiscriminately, and restrict those who had it to only use it for legitimate political purposes. Once there was a government record (the proposed bill), then the issue got pretty wide media play. The activist who made the threat got interviewed lots and made it very clear he didn't want to post the data, had only said he would do so at some future date to force action on the issue. Bill passed in record time, and the voter data was never posted on the internet.
How to convert infinitely repeating decimal numbers to fractions
#15636
> how do you construct a fraction to get an arbitrary repetition? E.g. make the decimal start with 893247 and then do 190231 repeating. Is there a ~simple method to do that which works with any digit strings for the initial part and the repeating part?
Yes. First, I'll show how to convert decimal numbers with only a repeating string (no non-repeating strings), e.g. 0.123123123123.... I will write the repeating string in brackets:
x = 0.[123].
Multiply both sides by 10^n, where n is the number of digits in the repeating string. There are 3 digits in 123, so we multiply both sides by 10^3 = 1000, and get:
1000x = 123.[123]
Now subtract the first equation from the second:
999x = 123
Divide both sides by 999 to solve for x:
x = 123/999
Boom! There's your fraction.
Next, let's consider decimal numbers with an initial string of non-repeating 0s, such as 0.0000[123]. To deal with these, just multiply the decimal by a power of 10 large enough to shift the repeating string all the way over to the decimal point (so it looks like 0.[123]), convert it to a fraction using the previous procedure, and divide the resulting fraction by the same power of 10. Example:
0.0000[123]
= 0.[123]/10000
= (123/999)/10000
= 123/9990000.
Finally, decimal numbers with an initial string of arbitrary non-repeating digits followed by an arbitrary repeating string of digits can be treated as the sum of the non-repeating part and the repeating part. Example:
0.893247[190231]
= 0.893247 + 0.000000[190231]
= 893247/1000000 + (0.[190231)/1000000
= 893247/1000000 + (190231/999999)/1000000
= 893247/1000000 + 190231/999999000000
#15641 Some square brackets in the final example got eaten by the link parser. Here it is without the link:
0.893247[190231]
= 0.893247 + 0.000000[190231]
= 893247/1000000 + (0.[190231)/1000000
= 893247/1000000 + (190231/999999)/1000000
= 893247/1000000 + 190231/999999000000
#15641 Good explanation. Some people might want it to continue to combine the 2 fractions at the end, but I don't need that.
#15636
> Clever argument for the rest.
I agree. It's not original to me; I learned it in the past at some point. (I didn't consult any external math resources while composing the original post and my follow-up corrections.)
#15643 Yeah. I figured that anyone who's interested in fractional equivalents of infinitely-repeating decimals probably already knows about adding fractions.
#15642 I fixed the bug.
Zed Shaw criticizes bootcamp ISAs (income-share agreements)
#15037
Zed Shaw wrote, criticizing code bootcamps:
> If you are contemplating joining a coding bootcamp in 2020 then let me give you a list of the top scams they use to steal your money (yes, even with an ISA, the #1 scam):
> ...
> The Income Share Agreement: This is a legally binding document that will take a giant chunk of your pay, even if you don't make very much at your job, and sometimes even if the job is not programming.
That partially describes ISAs, but it doesn't say why they're a scam.
Lambda School's ISA kicks in once you're making $50k/year; then you pay 17% of your pre-tax income for 24 months with a $30k cap. In lieu of the ISA, Lambda School lets you pay $30k in advance.† Depending on your circumstances, either option could be better for you.
> Also, did you know they can *sell* your ISA to another company?
So? Why is that a scam? If Shaw is suggesting that selling ISAs creates an incentive problem for the bootcamp, I don't see it: if a bootcamp's students don't do well, the prices at which the bootcamp can sell ISAs will drop.
†According to https://lambdaschool.com/faq :
> On the admissions application, there’s a box to check to tell us you’d like to pay upfront, instead of signing an ISA. You can make this election up until the first day of classes.
Twitter is currently broken:
And, worse, is giving wrong data. It should say e.g. "loading error, try again later". The claim there are zero tweets on the list is false.
This issue is very similar to what DF talked about 3 days ago:
https://daringfireball.net/2020/02/what_you_see_in_the_finder_should_be_correct
if Finder hasn't calculated the size of a folder yet, it should say unknown/loading NOT 0kb, which is false.
Good video (I think) on learning to shoot a handgun
I've watched 10 or so videos on learning to shoot a handgun, and this is the best I've seen so far: The Secret to Mastering the Handgun
One of the main points of the video is that incorrect technique is only 10% of the problem; the other 90% is due to what the narrator calls "reactive interference": tensing up in anticipation of the sound and force that result from a controlled explosion ~1.5 feet from your face.
Quoting from the video at around 14:05 (my transcript):
> Mastery of the handgun means eliminating reactive interference. You can override and stop reflexive blinking by concentration and practice. All of the movements involved in reactive interference are subject to voluntary control. We can override them too. It just takes concentration, discipline, and practice.
At 15:00, the video explains the "Silverado Method" for learning to avoid reactive interference. This involves pulling the trigger back slowly until you notice yourself tensing up, at which point you relax and try again. You don't pull the trigger all the way back to fire the gun until you can do so while remaining completely composed. My transcript:
> With the gun loaded, ready to shoot, and on target, you start the trigger pull, slowing down as you approach the break-point. The objective is not to fire the gun, but to find the point at which you lose composure and brace for the shot.
> It's important that the closer you get to the trigger break, the slower you increase the trigger pressure so that you can stop the trigger pull at the instant you become aware of bracing for the shot. Hold the trigger pressure without releasing it at that point, get refocused and recompose before resuming a very gradual trigger pull.
> If you can't get control and stop the bracing response, release the trigger and start over. Put the gun down and rest if you need to.
> Do not, under any circumstances, snap the trigger or allow the animal to fire the gun. Make sure that you go slowly enough with the trigger to ensure complete presence of mind and composure, right up to the point the gun fires. If you can't do this, do not fire the gun at all. Never fire a shot while you're out of composure. Not only is it a wasted round, but you're practicing the wrong thing.
> This practice may sound simple, but it will test the limits of your concentration and self-discipline. It can mean standing in the firing position without taking a shot for several minutes or more. It doesn't matter if you ever fire the gun at all, as long as you work on pulling the trigger back as far as you can, and holding it, without bracing for the shot.
> Once you can bring the trigger all the way back without bracing for the shot, it's just a matter of repeating this while being consistent until you can do it faster. Your speed is limited by how fast you can go without losing focus or bracing for the shot.
> You should be able to completely train yourself with one box of 50 rounds. If it takes you more than that, you're not following the discipline of this method.
> Conventional handgun training won't teach you this. Aiming a loaded handgun without firing it doesn't fit the common mindset of handgun training. It's quite literally *meditation with a loaded gun*.
This advice has some similarities to the "How To Change Emotions" section of fallibleideas.com/emotions.
Replacing handshakes with Vulcan salutes?
I saw an article suggesting that, as long as the Wuhan coronavirus is a threat, we should replace handshakes with Spock's Vulcan salute. If this idea caught on, it would solve the problem of using a gesture to safely greet and take leave of someone. Handshakes and fist bumps do not solve that problem, because they involve touching, which can transmit viruses and other types of disease.
Other gestures that would solve the problem, if they caught on, include:
- waving
- raising one's palm in the normal way with fingers together (i.e, *without* making a V)
Here are what I regard as the main problems with the Vulcan salute:
- some people might not be able to easily form a V with their hand
- it might be considered too playful for solemn events such as funerals
DuckDuckGo may be better than Google for info about contentious topics
It seems that, for queries about contentious issues, DuckDuckGo's (DDG's) search results may better reflect the division in public opinion than Google's. I did two tests.
First, I searched for [transgender children]. On DDG, the sixth† (non-ad) result was a DailySignal article titled "I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse." The eighth result was "Transgender kids: Have we gone too far?". On Google, I didn't see any result with an overtly critical perspective on the first *3 pages* of results.
Second, I searched for [immigration nationalism]. DDG's fourth result was "Donald Trump on Immigration: Pros, Cons, Impact". The page's *Summary* section says:
> President Trump’s “America First” policy and national security concerns are bent on tightening the noose around both illegal and legal immigration. Whether the new policies are good or bad for the country is really up for debate.
Not terrible for an overview article. DDG's fifth result was a lewrockwell.com article criticizing birthright citizenship, among other things. On Google, by comparison, I didn't see anything critical of immigration in the first *3 pages* of results.
† *DDG seems to shuffle its search results a bit, so your results may vary.*
#15774 The Vulcan salute thing is a star trek meme. It's not practical. It's sub-culture specific. Certain people like it because it's subculture signaling, just like people who share pro-coffee articles or wear t-shirts for a band.
The goal of the article wasn't seriously to help with the coronavirus problem. They're making things worse by treating it as a joke to clickbait about.
What's a good way to say "double down" but literally, no metaphor?
#15794
Affirm, confirm, insist, maintain, avow, reiterate, persist, restate, renew, repeat
Of these I think persist or insist are the best.
#15794 According to Oxford lexicographers, the non-blackjack use *is* literal.
https://www.lexico.com/definition/double_down :
> double down
> PHRASAL VERB
> US
> Strengthen one's commitment to a particular strategy or course of action, typically one that is potentially risky.
> · ‘he decided to double down and escalate the war’
> · ‘the third quarter of the year saw central banks doubling down on the quantitative easing approach’
https://www.lexico.com/about :
> 5. Who writes the definitions?
> All definitions and translations are written by Oxford lexicographers. You can read how dictionary content is created by visiting Oxford University Press.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6Tok9KUjTw
> Don't Talk Into This Mic and Win $10
people are bad at following directions. one reason is they find it socially awkward not to answer direct questions.
> one reason is they find it socially awkward not to answer direct questions.
Are they prioritizing social metaphysics over reality!?
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-airlines-run-empty-ghost-flights-planes-passengers-outbreak-covid-2020-3
> Airlines are burning thousands of gallons of fuel flying empty 'ghost' planes so they can keep their flight slots during the coronavirus outbreak
Zed Shaw on looking at people who failed out of coding bootcamps
#15037
Zed Shaw wrote, criticizing code bootcamps:
> ... I want you to research what Survivorship Bias is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias … Then go find people who *failed* out of a bootcamp, not success stories.
Looking at people who “failed out of” a school is kind of like looking at 1-star product reviews. It gives you some idea of what problems people run into and, sometimes, what kind of people have those problems. The idea makes sense, and not just for Lambda School: one could also look at people who “failed out of” traditional universities.
As an aside, most schools, including Lambda School, could reduce their failure rate by being more selective about whom they admit.
An unclear remark in Zed Shaw's criticism of code bootcamps
#15037
Zed Shaw wrote, criticizing code bootcamps:
> Bootcamps that accept people who can't afford the degree are committing two vile sins: 1. Using the poor as a human shield for their fraud. 2. Exploiting the poor because they can't fight back with lawyers and are too desperate to "rock the boat".
This is unclear.
A few notes from firearms safety class
I attended a firearms safety and handling course today.
One of the main rules of gun safety is something like: Never point a gun at anything you are not prepared to see destroyed. The instructor had an analogy for this: Pretend the gun's barrel is a light saber that extends a long distance like a laser pointer. When the instructor turns or moves around, he points the gun straight up or down.
Another thing he said that I liked was: “We don’t call it an accidental shooting. We call it *negligent*.” That emphasizes the shooter's responsibility.
Memory
Answered a Discord question about improving memory:
1) flashcards and other practice can help, especially if you revisit them with exponentially decaying timings. like anki (haven't used it myself).
2) in general you remember stuff you use a lot. so my big advice is get better at searching for stuff with google, in books, in your own notes (and take more notes, write more stuff down), etc. get better at looking stuff up and finding info fast and rereading efficiently (skimming, looking for key parts, etc.) the more you do that the better you get at the general skill and also will start remembering the things you look up the most.
3) it's hard to remember a bunch of facts and numbers and sentences that you don't understand. easier to remember when you understand the concepts and explanations enough to recreate the answer yourself (figuring it out again is even better for memory than looking up).
Screenshots
Tip: hotkey ctrl-S to screenshot a screen region to clipboard. (Related: change caps lock to be control).
Tip 2: automate posting images on curi.us
After screenshotting to clipboard, i press *one hotkey* to get the image uploaded and the markdown typed out (just where my cursor currently is – i select the comment box myself).
see https://curi.us/2123-improvements-to-comments
there are command line tools to upload to imgur if you don't want to use your own server or use puush. no doubt various other options too.
Interesting idea about insulin and artificial sweeteners
HN user abainbridge writes:
> ... when I taste something sweet, my body starts putting insulin in my blood [*]. Over time it learns how much to put in based on how sweet the food tasted. If that's true, I'd expect too much insulin for food with aspartame, BUT ALSO too little when food has real sugar, because of the long term learning.
> [*] "Tasting sweet food elicits insulin release prior to increasing plasma glucose levels, known as cephalic phase insulin release" https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/biomedres/28/2/28_2_79/_pdf
Seems plausible to me.
Some advantages of forums like FI and curi over chatrooms and IMs:
https://basecamp.com/guides/group-chat-problems
https://basecamp.com/guides/how-we-communicate
Learn stuff from the FI discord chat from today:
https://discordapp.com/channels/304082867384745994/482766203983626255/694214352076668938
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W0B2Qg3r2k
> This is How China Beat the Corona Virus - should we copy?
Some info about Chinese actions and oppression.
https://twitter.com/curi42/status/1247543206616526849
> Focusing on evidence that would change one's conclusions implicitly de-emphasizes the possibility of new interpretations of evidence that would change one's conclusions. Often we incorrectly (pre-)interpret potential new evidence as well as existing evidence.
Blinkist (book summaries app) is another way for people to get information filtered through gatekeepers.
If you are trying to change your own ideas, you have to be able to figure out *why you think your current behaviours/ideas are good*
and people cut that process off all the time, aren't able to introspect that
They will literally just deny that they have ANY reasons that they think their current behaviour is good
They will say they already know it is bad and *no part of them* thinks it is good
But then they will continue doing it
So that makes it difficult
Some part of them DOES think it's good
But they aren't going to be able to come up with counter-arguments to convince that part of themselves if they literally won't admit what the arguments in favour of their current behaviour are
https://discordapp.com/channels/304082867384745994/482766203983626255/698662294657302549
#15346 I agree with what you wrote about empiricist methodology. And I agree that doesn’t make sense to criticize something that’s not about data for lacking a dataset. What’s next — criticizing a claim that coercion hurts people because it lacks a dataset?
Is there a solution? My brain can’t handle this type of problem.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/farmers-deal-with-glut-of-food-as-coronavirus-closes-restaurants-11586439722
I was thinking maybe places with massive kitchens could buy from farmers and make small meals to ship out. Maybe school district kitchens, although they are already cooking meals for kids and low income families. A non-profit organization I suppose. Food banks don’t seem to be a solution here. Is there a business opportunity here? Not that I want to start one. In StarTrek, the solution requires advanced technology that we haven’t yet realized.
If this topic isn’t interesting to anyone here, or is inappropriate to this blog, I can move along too.
#16426 what is the problem? im guessing you would say food waste or something, but why is that a problem?
#16426 #16436 The topic is fine here.
I think food waste is bad. This isn't an individual who buys food or puts it on his plate for the *option value* to eat it, and isn't 100% accurate with his forecasts of future eating.
This is industrial scale quantities of perfectly good food being destroyed. It's just as bad as if a TV factory had to throw out thousands of brand new TVs they'd just produced. Or if an oil company had to pay people money to take vast quantities of oil because they ran out of storage space due to selling less than normal.
http://fallibleideas.com/discussion/guidelines
"> And a second parent of the parent post."
"second parent" should be "second *part*"
Math puzzle: most common number of flips to get heads with a biased coin
Say you have a biased coin that comes up heads 5% of the time. Let a single “trial” refer to the act of flipping the coin until it comes up heads and recording the number of flips it took. For example, if you flip tails, tails, tails, and then heads, you would record that it took 4 flips. If you make a large number of trials, what number of flips would you expect to record most often? In other words, *what is the modal number of flips*?
#16482
1
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1257364362534301696
The text patio11 put in quotes, and mentioned searching for by exact-match search, is in fact *not a quote*. It's not in the article:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-04/elon-musk-isn-t-sure-about-tesla-stock
There are some similar lines. There's some stuff about a bunker. But patio11's search will turn up zero results.
Should I give him the benefit of the doubt and figure that he was reading the email newsletter (likely I'd guess) and that the web version was edited after the email went out? I doubt it but it's possible.
Twitter thread critiques New Orleans map/geography as if it were a fictional submission made by a freelancer.
https://twitter.com/jameslsutter/status/975550946884268032
xoxo poster writes lengthy list of complaints about marriage track relationship:
i thought it was notable as a long, detailed list of perceived relationship problems where the author is trying to be somewhat honest about his opinions and attitudes. people often try not to think about this stuff too clearly even if they think there are problems in a relationship
Date: May 7th, 2020 4:21 PM
Author: jag
filling out our schedule with thingdoing weeks in advance
allows me no space for my own pursuits or solitude (now imagine with kids..)
expects that household duties should be 50/50 even though i will make >double her income
have to deal with her birdbrained friends
have to accept her family into my life
don't love her, don't have the capacity to "love" anyone
no longer aroused or interested in sex (still have it often out of obligation)
needs dirty talk during sex (i am preferably an autistic mute)
horrifying specter of wife getting fat
drudgery of relationship born out of transactional desire to have kids
tries to change everything about me while having no capacity to better herself
won't let me smoke or do blow or anything fun really
marriage and family will demand at least a 100k/yr lifestyle rather than the 20k/yr i have now (including rent)
shudder at prospect of having a wedding, baby shower, etc etc
makes me pray before eating dinner
makes me pose for photos with her wherever we go
will brainwash children with the gay agenda
never punctual, constantly making us late for flights, plans, etc
decidedly not a scholar
has rather basic interests, not particularly cultured
conversations are mostly about things and people relevant to our lives, never anything substantial or interesting
though not materialistic, too tied to material possessions and mindless GC apparatus
not particularly ambitious (which is fine except it's a product of her laziness and it bleeds into her daily behavior)
has allergies and asthma and shit (poor genes)
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4529102&forum_id=2#40168041)
C.C. Myers finishes SF freeway project early, pockets $8 million
#15076
Phil Matier, Speedy contractor finishes SF freeway project early, pockets $8 million, *San Francisco Chronicle* (2020-05-10):
> Renowned contractor C.C. Myers, of MacArthur Maze repair fame, has done it again — this time making millions for delivering the Alemany overpass rebuild ahead of schedule.
> Myers, now doing business as Myers & Sons, was the prime contractor on the just-completed $37 million rebuild of the Alemany Boulevard overpass on Highway 101 in San Francisco.
> The rebuild was originally scheduled to begin in July, but was moved up to April to take advantage of the drop in traffic brought on by the pandemic. Caltrans offered a bonus of $1 million for every day Myers finished the job ahead of the original 18-day schedule.
> The flip side of the deal was that Myers would have to pay back $1 million for every day the job went beyond 18 days.
> Myers got the work done in nine days.
> “Their quick work scored an $8 million bonus and saved massive backups,” said Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney. (The bonus deal had an $8 million cap.)
> Fast work is something of a specialty for Myers.
> After the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Southern California, Myers fixed four damaged bridges on the Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles in 66 days, a full 74 days ahead of schedule, and earned a $14.8 million bonus.
> When an overturned gasoline tanker explosion destroyed a three-lane overpass section of the MacArthur Maze in Emeryville in 2007, the Myers firm got a $5 million bonus for finishing ahead of schedule.
> “There are costs associated with speed so it’s not all free money, but it does feel good to be able to deliver,” said Clint Myers Jr., C.C.’s son and vice president of the company.
> The company’s motto is to “deliver on the impossible.” Maybe it should add, “and make a good buck doing it.”
What an absolute legend.
#16509 There's other similar material elsewhere in the thread. I responded on xoxo:
Your problem is dating pretty girls. Stop dating pretty girls or girls who dress well/hot.
Being pretty takes a lot of effort. Pretty girls make that effort. This affects their whole personality and lifestyle. They are overly social and social climbing, shallow, spend too much money, etc.
If you try dating girls who don't look pretty or dress well, they won't have all the same flaws. Some will be more tolerable.
Pretty mostly isn't genetics or luck. It's a lifestyle that's highly correlated with lots of your complaints about how women and marriage suck.
Watch before/after makeup videos, look at before/after pictures. Learn what makeup looks like. Study how makeup works and some fashion stuff so you can recognize all the stuff they're doing. Learn to see how fake girls are. Then stop dating the really fake ones. That is why girls suck so much for you. Find girls who put more effort into other areas of life instead and they'll be more reasonable.
Eyelash extensions are a sign of a bad personality. Lip injections correlate to bitchy. Eyebrow microblading is associated with putting stuff on your calendar you don't want. Skirts are a sign of passive-aggressive. Highlights in their hair or bleached blonde are hints they'll be a bad mother. Makeup contouring is a sign someone is very shallow. Learn more about these red flags and act according. You need to be able to see how much work women put into their appearance and judge them negatively for it. Nail polish means you aren't optimizing for dating a girl with a brain, and that's your choice which you can stop choosing if you want to. Even having all nails the same length, if not really short, is something girls put effort into.
There are non-appearance things too like learning to speak sweetly and feminine (partly voice tone, partly word choice) which also correlate with being a bad wife. They're more subtle than then appearance stuff and harder to get a good understanding of.
#16511 That basic idea is old but seems to need to be "re-discovered" periodically.
There was a popular song in the 1960's which advocated against marrying pretty girls. It was vague and got popular before being derided as sexist for emphasizing cooking as a wife role. https://genius.com/Jimmy-soul-if-you-wanna-be-happy-lyrics
The pop song was in turn based on an earlier song from the 1930's which was more explicit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpt8SvvZi9Y
Great info on independent contractors, the IRS, and tech:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1137669
Followup:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1139055
A documentary about incels:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Xx3nESD5yeRL/
Males who compete in women's sports cannot be called 'males' in court, judge says
Tyler O'Neil, Biological Males in Women's Sports Cannot Be Called 'Males' in Court, Must Be Called 'Transgender Females,' Judge Says, *PJ Media* (2020-05-11):
Some female athletes are suing over rules that allow males to compete in women's sports, but their lawyers aren't allowed to say that in court. The judge stated:
> To refer to them as “males,” period, is not accurate, certainly not as accurate, and I think it’s needlessly provocative; and, for me, civility is a very important value, especially in litigation.
This is an example of using the idea of "civility" to suppress dissent.
I wrote a long comment on Alan's blog:
https://conjecturesandrefutations.com/2020/05/06/the-constitution-of-statism/#comment-20646
The context of the DD tweet is that he’s an anarcho-capitalist libertarian. He has major criticisms of the current system and wants better. It’s just an unsolved problem. It’s not an exception means it’s not an unsoluble problem: a system with no taxation is possible and desirable. So his comment about taxation not being an exception is saying taxation is *worse than* people usually view it, not better. It was an anti-tax, not pro-tax, comment. He’s contradicting people who say death and taxes are inevitable. (BTW death, too, is not a special exception. It’s just an unsolved and soluble problem. Like taxation, there’s nothing fundamentally different about it, in a grand philosophical sense, compared to other problems.)
It’s really hard to know how voluntary paying taxes is when people don’t have a choice. It’s similar to people living in China and they say they support the CCP – but they aren’t in a situation to make a voluntary choice, so the real support for the CCP is much lower than it seems to be.
Most people (in countries like USA) voluntarily pay taxes in the sense that no one has to come point a gun at them. It’s similar to many other laws – enforcement is pretty low relative to compliance. People aren’t just doing stuff when directly, overtly made to. That’s notable. You see worse compliance despite much more enforcement in societies like communist China or the USSR.
The IRS does not persecute enough people, with enough vigor, to generate the tax revenue that they do if people really didn’t want to.
I don’t think “voluntary” is a good word for that though. Here’s another distinction that’s relevant: there are many laws that I think are roughly correctly, and tax law isn’t on that list. My compliance with tax law is nevertheless similar to my compliance with a bunch of laws I agree with way more. One reason is I don’t want to devote my time and energy to fighting with the system re taxes even if the personal risk isn’t that bad. And fighting the system involves dishonesty (or else a much much higher chance of IRS action regarding me personally, or a ton of work to find ways to avoid taxes legally, or just having no income), and I have reasons to avoid dishonesty on general principle.
The actual issue under discussion was *proportional* taxation specifically. Hayek was claiming basically that everyone agrees it’s fair that e.g. we all pay 10% of our income in taxes, rather than different people paying different proportions. Note that this isn’t about the unfairness of different income tax brackets (progressive taxation), just about using a flat percentage. I don’t agree that a flat percentage, same for everyone, is fair. The government provides services. Lots of services in general have a flat fee, e.g. $20/month rather than charging a percentage of my income. That’s actually way fairer and makes more sense. If I get the same amount of police protection as someone else, shouldn’t I pay the same number of dollars as him, regardless of my income? So I disagree with Hayek.
DD, by contrast, has actually defended progressive taxation on the theory that in a free society rich people would want to fund science more than poor people, and would devote not only a larger dollar figure to it (justifying proportional taxation) but a larger percentage of their income (justifying progressive taxation). I don’t think the government should fund science and I regard government science in general as harmful. Maybe they spend a billion dollars and the result is a hundred million positive dollars of science, rather than actually negative (doing net harm after ignoring the cost of the billion itself). That’s hard to say. But jesus, as much as I’d like to fund science as a rich person in a free society, that doesn’t translate at all into wanting to fund government science, which is basically a contradiction in terms, as Atlas Shrugged taught us. Science was DD’s main example IIRC. Maybe you could make a similar argument with some better examples and come up with something reasonable but DD never worked that out and wrote it down.
Hubbard's Rule of Five
Douglas W. Hubbard, *How to Measure Anything* (3rd ed.):
> *There is a 93.75% chance that the median of a population is between the smallest and largest values in any random sample of five from that population.*
> It might seem impossible to be 93.75% certain about anything based on a random sample of just five, but it works. To understand why this method works, it is important to note that the Rule of Five estimates only the median of a population. Remember, the median is the point where half the population is above it and half is below it. If we randomly picked five values that were all above the median or all below it, then the median would be outside our range. But what is the chance of that, really?
> The chance of randomly picking a value above the median is, by definition, 50%—the same as a coin flip resulting in “heads.” The chance of randomly selecting five values that happen to be all above the median is like flipping a coin and getting heads five times in a row. The chance of getting heads five times in a row in a random coin flip is 1 in 32, or 3.125%; the same is true with getting five tails in a row. The chance of not getting all heads or all tails is then 100% − 3.125% × 2, or 93.75%. Therefore, the chance of at least one out of a sample of five being above the median and at least one being below is 93.75% (round it down to 93% or even 90% if you want to be conservative).
> The chance of randomly picking a value above the median is, by definition, 50%
No it's not. Consider the set {1,2,3}. The median is 2. What is the chance of picking an element of the set above 2?
Magic the Gathering is complicated
#12370
Magic the Gathering is so complicated that players sometimes make illegal moves in tournament play that are *not noticed at the time by players, judges, or commentators*. Here are two examples:
According to a Reddit post, Rob Pisano played 2 lands in one turn vs Patrick Chapin in Round 7 at Mythic Championship Cleveland (2019). Apparently this was "[n]ot caught by judges, players, or Twitch chat."
During Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir Round 6 Standard (April 10, 2015), Magic the Gathering Hall of Fame member Patrick Chapin illegally played two lands in one turn. (At 13:44, Chapin plays Temple of Silence. During the same turn, at 14:27, Chapin plays Windswept Heath.)
I would be surprised if this kind of thing happens in high-level Chess or Go.
#16555
True. Hubbard should have said (new text added in bold) that the chance of randomly picking a value above the median is *at least* 50%.
That correction affects his conclusion as well (new text added in bold): There is *at least* a 93.75% chance that the median of a population is between the smallest and largest values in any random sample of five from that population.
A Library of Criticism test that could catch this error would be *checking small values* (e.g., 0, 1, and 2). If I had tested the claim with on a set with 1 value, I could have caught the error myself.
#16559 Correction: the new text was added in italics, not bold.
> True. Hubbard should have said (new text added in bold) that the chance of randomly picking a value above the median is *at least* 50%.
What is the chance of picking a value above the median for {1,2,3}?
#16561
The chance of picking a value above the median for {1,2,3} is 1/3. (The median is 2. Out of the three equally likely numbers, only one (3) is above the median.)
My first "at least" should have been "at most". I realized this before I saw your reply, but I was away from my computer until just now.
#16562 His math relied on the exactly 50% claim. If it was "at most" 50%, then the actual result would be the same or better. But because you're now changing it to at least, his argument doesn't work. Did you notice that? He can't claim 93.75% (or better). His conclusion is wrong and it looks non-trivial to salvage some weaker conclusion.
#16563 Wait I didn't reread the problem. You lose if you get 5 values below the median or 5 above. So if the odds are skewed in either direction (even symmetrically, which they aren't) you're worse off. He was relying on *exactly* 50% which is ridiculous.
I think the way to salvage this is to stop claiming the median is in between the top and bottom values randomly picked. Instead, say the medium is likely at least the bottom value and at most the top value. The chance of picking a value that is the median *or higher* (or lower) is >= 50%. So then you can get a > 93.75% conclusion out of it.
Also, according to wikipedia the term "median" isn't even well-defined in general:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median
> If there is an even number of observations, then there is no single middle value; the median is then *usually* defined to be the mean of the two middle values. [my emphasis]
Hubbard's book is a good example of overreaching. He's publishing about issues he's incompetent at thinking through.
excerpt from VDH's "Carnage and Culture" book regarding the greek idea of freedom:
> All that being said, the Greeks who rammed the enemy head-on at Salamis believed that freedom (eleutheria) had proved to be the real key to their victory. Freedom, they believed, had made their warriors qualitatively better fighters than the Persians—or any other unfree tribe, people, or state to the west as well as east—breeding in them a superior morale and greater incentive to kill the enemy. Aeschylus and Herodotus are clear on this. While we are not so interested in their respective descriptions of Persian customs and motivations, which are often secondhand and can be biased, both authors are believable in reflecting what the Greeks believed was at stake at Salamis.
> The moral drawn by Herodotus, for example, is unmistakable: free citizens are better warriors, since they fight for themselves, their families and property, not for kings, aristocrats, or priests. They accept a greater degree of discipline than either coerced or hired soldiers. After Marathon (490 B.C.), Herodotus makes the point that the Athenians fought much better under their newly won democracy than during the long reign of the Peisistratid tyrants: “As long as the Athenians were ruled by a despotic government, they had no better success at war than any of their neighbors. Once the yoke was flung off, they proved the finest fighters in the world.” Herodotus explains why this is so: in the past “they battled less than their best because they were working for a master; but as free men each individual person wanted to achieve something for himself” (5.78).
> When asked why the Greeks did not come to terms with Persia at the outset, the Spartan envoys tell Hydarnes, the military commander of the Western provinces, that the reason is freedom:
> Hydarnes, the advice you give us does not arise from a full knowledge of our situation. You are knowledgeable about only one half of what is involved; the other half is a blank to you. The reason is that you understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or not. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too. (Herodotus 7.135)
bypassing discord message length limit
You asked me for an example of one of your errors (error from my pov), one of the things which is failing tests in my intellectual test suite. I gave the example where you said trees are too linear. When we tried to discuss that example, most of your messages also failed my test suite. The issue hasn’t been resolved (so far) and the secondary test failures (sub issues) mostly haven’t been resolved either.
What should be done about a situation like this (which is commonplace and should be expected)? How can progress be made?
Answer: *Exponential back off in search of common ground.* Try to find some set of standard, basic concepts that we can communicate about with a low test suite failure rate for both of us. Talk about simpler more basic stuff to whatever extent is needed that most of your messages pass my test suite and most of my messages pass your test suite.
Back off towards the lowest common denominator to find common ground.
Note: Only tests relevant to current goals should be run. In this case, the main goal is to understand each other. So you can say something I disagree with, and if I understand it and I think communication is successful, then that’s good, that’s a success. If we’re communicating successfully about what our claims are, that’s a good place to start.
The sort of tests in my suite that are failing are not e.g. “Contradicts a nuance of Popperian epistemology”. I mean, sure there are some test failures like that, but I don’t regard them as relevant so I’m not counting or talking about them. My focus is on tests I think are appropriate, and that’s where the failures I’m talking about are. Appropriate, relevant tests cover issues like clarity, logicalness, responsiveness, and non-ambitious cultural defaults about what is reasonably expected, at minimum, in an intellectual conversation.
Roughly: I’m just running the minimal test suite that I think is needed for a successful conversation. And I’m still getting a barrage of test failures.
We’re not on the same page about our discussion. It’s not close. Discussion is currently failing to the point that we don’t seem to be making progress on one relatively narrow, simple issue.
Some people have different strategies for how to deal with such things. They want to gloss over “pedantic” details and say a bunch of complicated stuff and hope to be e.g. 50% understood and to catch e.g. 50% of what the other guy says. They want to focus more on the stuff they like and expect the other person to do the same. Instead of saying “that message failed 2 of my tests” you say “i like one piece of that message. if i ignore the rest, and transplant it into my worldview, it can be interesting”. I think this approach is common and clashes with the approach of trying to find common ground. Instead of getting on the same page, people communicate in a lossy way and just put up with the vagueness and try to find things they like in it and focus on the positive.
Maybe this strategy is tempting to you? Maybe you agree with it? Maybe you’ve come to partially accept it without realizing what it is? Maybe you agree with the common ground approach and assumed I didn’t. idk.
I think error correction and problem solving are crucial, and the goal needs to be to find a way to get those working and then expand on what works. But most people in general seem to have basically given up on that and try to ignore the errors and problems to focus on some partial successes.
This is a reasonably well known issue. I am not alone in advocating the strategy I do (of seeking common ground to build on). Others have written about it in other ways, e.g.: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Inferential_distance
Does the common ground seeking strategy make sense to you? Want to try to do it?
Twitter trend: "BLACK OWNED"
"BLACK OWNED" is trending on Twitter. (Note: I believe Twitter only allows and encourages certain terms to trend). The featured tweets using this phrase seem to consist mainly of people chastising rioters for destroying/looting black-owned businesses. I think the implication is that it's OK to target businesses owned by non-blacks.
https://twitter.com/BukitBF/status/1267319697768357890 (http://archive.is/zfkRt)
Example of left-wing organization successfully raising money to bail rioters out of jail (from 2020-05-31):
> Sat AM we had 6 ppl on waitlist awaiting bail support. We were too depleted $ wise to post bail then. One person had been awaiting support since early May.
> THANKS TO YOU, since then, we’ve posted $20,000, securing freedom for 3 of them (2 @ $5k, 1 @ $10k, below).
> #FreeThemAll
Tucker: Our leaders dither as our cities burn
Tucker Carlson Tonight (2020-06-01): Our leaders dither as our cities burn
Historic monologue by Tucker. At times, it's as if he's addressing all of America; at other times, it's seems as if he's talking directly to President Trump. If Trump follows Tucker's advice - and I pray that he does - it might just save our country.
Sines v. Kessler
Sines v. Kessler is a lawsuit that "targets key organizers and participants" of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, NC. According to VDARE, the rally's peaceful right-wing participants were assaulted by Antifa and endangered by the police.
In the interest of justice, lawsuits should instead be filed against the organizers of the #BlackLivesMatter riots.
A test for "peaceful" protests
Organizers of rallies/protests/demonstrations typically give lip service to intending that the event be peaceful. One test of whether such an event is *actually* peaceful is whether you can freely exercise the rights you would normally have in public without being assaulted by the other participants. These rights include, but are not limited to, filming other participants, representing a conservative media outlet, and wearing a MAGA hat.
#16602 Another right to test: holding an American flag.
#16603 Try holding a sign that says “It’s OK to be white” or “all lives matter”
“Twitter, do your thing”
On 2020-05-05, Paul Joseph Watson published a video stating that the phrase “Twitter, do your thing” is being used as a call to harass & dox minors on Twitter.
On Telegram today, Michelle Malkin linked to a Twitter thread containing multiple examples of that:
> If you’re a teen and you disagree with the riots, they are doxxing you. There’s thousands of us here on telegram btw, many with twitter accounts. Report this to twitter as it violates their rules on doxxing. https://twitter.com/yeojnl/status/1268220755994607617?s=21
The Cultural Revolution: A People's History
On May 5, 2016, Frank Dikotter spoke with NPR about his book "The Cultural Revolution: A People's History". Here are some quotes (Audio + Transcript):
> Students, Red Guards in particular, first turned their attention towards any public display of the so-called old world. They vandalized shops. They turned over street signs with names that come from the past or invoke a feudal culture. They will vandalize churches, tear down temples, overturn tombstones, burn books in public - massive bonfires.
We see similarly targeted vandalism and destruction in the Black Lives Matter riots and the accompanying removal of historic statues.
> But also, bit by bit, they start raiding homes of people suspected of still having sympathies for the old regime - of playing piano, of reading bourgeois literature, of harboring capitalist thoughts.
Maybe raiding individual homes of people with "White Privilege" is next.
> ... very quickly, violence starts assuming quite extraordinary proportions.
Yikes.
> [Mao] relishes a game in which he can change the rules constantly. He improvises bending and breaking millions of people along the way.
Like Mao, the left in the U.S. changes the rules constantly. One example: Due to coronavirus and lockdowns, you can't visit your father who's dying in the hospital and states ban all large gatherings. Simultaneously, thousands can gather in public if they say it's for Black Lives Matter while nurses stand in the streets to cheer them on.
> ... the young people who turned themselves into Red Guards at the height of the summer 1966 probably believed that there was something in communism and something in the Cultural Revolution that was worthwhile pursuing. But I think that for most people who would've lived through the 1950s, they would have been very well aware of the dangers of not going along with the flow. In other words, let me put this simply. If you have to attend an indoctrination class week in, week out from 1949 onwards, it will not take you very long to realize that it is in your own interest to just pretend that you're willing to go along.
> In short, I think that already by the mid-1950s, most people in China - and in other one-party states for that matter - after a couple of years, people become great actors. They know what to say, they know that they have to say it and they know how to say it. It doesn't necessarily mean that they believe it. In other words, I think that even at the height of the Cultural Revolution, with the exception possibly of young students, many ordinary people would've given no more than a sign of outward compliance.
> They would've kept their innermost thoughts to themselves. They'd have been very, very careful to just play the part that they were asked to play without necessarily believing in it.
I bet there's a lot of preference falsification in America these days. For instance, Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, contrary to the predictions of almost every poll. One interpretation of this is that people revealed in the ballot box the pro-Trump preferences they were too afraid to tell the pollsters.
#16614
> > But also, bit by bit, they start raiding homes of people suspected of still having sympathies for the old regime - of playing piano, of reading bourgeois literature, of harboring capitalist thoughts.
>
> Maybe raiding individual homes of people with "White Privilege" is next.
Maybe in a few / isolated cases. But for it to be widespread in USA they'd have to confiscate the guns first.
If the second amendment is successfully repealed (in fact, whether or not in law) then raiding individual homes might become common.
Anarchist video discourages less-violent protestors from stopping more-violent ones
sub.Media, an "anarchist video collective", tweeted a 2 min 20 s video today that discourages "peaceful protestors" from intervening to stop violent ones:
> It seems like every time there are mass protests we have to make a video debunking the #GoodProtester #BadProtester divisiveness that serves to keep us fighting each other instead of those in power. Well here is the latest...
> #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd #ACAB #FUCK12 #BlackLivesMatter
(Note: ACAB stands for *all cops are bastards* and fuck 12 means *fuck the police*.)
The video tries to make violent aggression against police seem morally justified. At 00:02:04, it says:
> THE POLICE DON'T NEED EXCUSES TO MURDER WITH IMPUNITY
> THEY DO IT EVERY DAY.
That text is accompanied by a version of this chart (both versions seem to have the same numbers, but the colors and layout differ):
However, not all killings are murders. The video is dishonest.
excerpt from Victor Davis Hanson's "Carnage and Culture" on Reason and War
> REASON AND WAR
> People from the Stone Age onward have always engaged in some form of scientific activity designed to enhance organized warfare. But beginning with the Greeks, Western culture has shown a singular propensity to think abstractly, to debate knowledge freely apart from religion and politics, and to devise ways of adapting theoretical breakthroughs for practical use, through the marriage of freedom and capitalism. The result has been a constant increase in the technical ability of Western armies to kill their adversaries. Is it not odd that Greek hoplites, Roman legionaries, medieval knights, Byzantine fleets, Renaissance foot soldiers, Mediterranean galleys, and Western harquebusiers were usually equipped with greater destructive power than their adversaries? Even the capture or purchase of Western arms is no guarantee of technological parity—as the Ottomans, Indians, and Chinese learned—inasmuch as European weaponry is an evolving phenomenon, ensuring obsolescence almost simultaneously with the creation of new arms. Creativity has never been a European monopoly, much less intellectual brilliance. Rather, the West’s willingness to craft superior weapons is just as often predicated on its unmatched ability to borrow, adopt, and steal ideas without regard to the social, religious, or political changes that new technology often brings—as the incorporation of and improvement on the trireme, Roman gladius, astrolabe, and gunpowder attest.
> Scholars are correct to point out that Europeans neither invented firearms nor enjoyed a monopoly in their use. But they must acknowledge that the ability to fabricate and distribute firearms on a wide scale and to improve their lethality was unique to Europe. From the introduction of gunpowder in the fourteenth century to the present day, all major improvements in firearms—the matchlock, flintlock, percussion cap, smokeless powder, rifle barrel, minié ball, repeating rifle, and machine gun—have taken place in the West or under Western auspices. As a general rule, Europeans did not employ or import Ottoman or Chinese guns, and they did not pattern their technique of munitions production on Asian or African designs.
> This idea of continual innovation and improvement in the use of technology is embodied in Aristotle’s dictum in his Metaphysics that prior philosophers’ theories contribute to a sort of ongoing aggregate of Greek knowledge. In the Physics (204B) he admits, “In the case of all discoveries, the results of previous labors that have been handed down from others have been advanced bit by bit by those who have taken them on.” Western technological development is largely an outgrowth of empirical research, the acquisition of knowledge through sense perception, the observation and testing of phenomena, and the recording of such data so that factual information itself is timeless, increasing and becoming more accurate through the collective criticism and modification of the ages. That there were an Aristotle, Xenophon, and Aeneas Tacticus at the beginning of Western culture and not anything comparable in the New World explains why centuries later a Cortés could fabricate cannon and gunpowder in the New World, while the Aztecs could not use the Spanish artillery they captured, why for centuries the lethal potential of the land around Tenochtitlán was untapped, but was mined for its gunpowder and ores within months after the Spanish arrival.
> Western technological superiority is not merely a result of the military renaissance of the sixteenth century or an accident of history, much less the result of natural resources, but predicated on an age-old method of investigation, a peculiar mentality that dates back to the Greeks and not earlier. Although the theoretical mathematician Archimedes purportedly snapped that “the whole trade of engineering was sordid and ignoble, and every sort of art that lends itself to mere use and profit,” his machines— cranes and a purported huge reflective glass heat ray—delayed the capture of Syracuse for two years. The Roman navy in the First Punic War not only copied Greek and Carthaginian designs but went on to ensure their victories by the use of innovative improvements such as the corvus, a sort of derrick that lifted enemy ships right out of the water. Long before American B-29s dropped napalm over Tokyo, the Byzantines sprayed through brass tubes compressed blasts of Greek fire, a secret concoction of naphtha, sulfur, and quicklime that like its modern counterpart kept burning even when doused with water.
> Military knowledge was also abstract and published, not just empirical. Western military manuals from Aelian (Taktike theoria) and Vegetius (Epitoma rei militaris) to the great handbooks on ballistics and tactics of the sixteenth century (e.g., Luigi Collado’s Practica manual de artiglierra [1586] or Justus Lipsius’s De militia Romana [1595–96]) incorporate firsthand knowledge and abstract theoretical investigation into practical advice. In contrast, the most brilliant of Chinese and Islamic military works are far more ambitious and holistic texts, and thus less pragmatic as actual blueprints for killing, embedded with religion, politics, or philosophy and replete with illusions and axioms from Allah to the yin and the yang, hot and cold, one and many.
> Courage on the battlefield is a human characteristic. But the ability to craft weapons through mass production to offset such bravery is a cultural phenomenon. Cortés, like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Don Juan of Austria, and other Western captains, often annihilated without mercy their numerically superior foes, not because their own soldiers were necessarily better in war, but because their traditions of free inquiry, rationalism, and science most surely were.
> This idea of continual innovation and improvement in the use of technology is embodied in Aristotle’s dictum in his Metaphysics that prior philosophers’ theories contribute to a sort of ongoing aggregate of Greek knowledge.
This is so foundational to our society and its productive activities, yet so many people think they can be an intellectual without bothering to read and find out what previous intellectuals came up with.
Alan Blog Reply
https://conjecturesandrefutations.com/2020/06/11/private-property-needs-no-justification/#comment-20709
> In the world’s it exists now,
typo, missing “as”
What does Bruenig want? That we vote on all uses of all property every time it’s to be used? But if we assigned property initially by vote, and then had a system of private property, that’d be unacceptable to him, so we have to vote every time, billions of times per day? So maybe temporary property, like vote every year and redistribute everything then?
I mean redistribute whatever’s left of the property you give people while telling them that, no matter how well they take care of it, they can’t keep it next year anyway. Or maybe they will get social credit points for caring well for the property they are voted to be temporary user of, which voters are then encouraged or forcibly required to take into account at the next vote?
Or if not voting, what? Voting seems to be one of the few things people think is fair and not an initiation of force even if a majority may vote to, say, form a police squad that forcibly oppresses some minority. But if even voting is force, and he hates force, what does he want us to do? Nothing, ever? We can’t use anything? Or we can use anything by like first come first serve with some rules about what is a forcible taking and what is just grabbing it when the other guy sets it down (without intending to use it again for some time period?) which is fine?
Smooth Sanchez
Smooth Sanchez is a YouTuber. As a prank, he recently got a number of individual New Yorkers to kneel on camera and apologize for their "white privilege": https://twitter.com/CAPSLOCKHUSTLER/status/1268887315218345985/photo/1 . Ann Coulter follows his Twitter account.
Here's a lightly edited transcript of one of his recent interactions:
> Smooth Sanchez walks up behind woman.
> Sanchez: Excuse me. Hey, I work for Black Lives Matter.
> Woman: [Turns to Sanchez, appears startled.]
> Sanchez: I'm sorry. I work for Black Lives Matter. I'm sorry that I scared you, but since I work for that company, my CEO has told me to come out today and to bring you on your knees, because you have white privilege. So if they see that a white person is getting on their knees, that shows solidarity for the situation.
> Woman kneels.
> Sanchez: And could you just please apologize for your white privilege?
> Woman nods, apparently thinking.
> Sanchez: Just apologize?
> Woman: Yeah, I'm trying to think of the right words to say. It's a big thing... to say.
> Sanchez: It's big.
> Woman: I want it to come from [indicates her heart].
> Sanchez: It's so large in this country.
> Woman: I'm incredibly sorry that...
> Sanchez: You know with this country, we have that president, Donald Duck, that clown, in office? He's brought a lot of bigotry, you know, and you're not a part of it, right?
> Woman: No. [unintelligible]
> Sanchez: And so, you know...
> Woman stands up.
> Woman: Thank you for letting me have a moment [unintelligible].
> Sanchez: Ok. You have a great day.
Sanchez sometimes acts as if Black Lives Matter is a company he works for. Sometimes he talks about George Foreman instead of George Floyd.
I think a big part of why people comply with Sanchez is that they are scared. They are afraid that a mob will cancel them if they do the wrong thing on video.
Anarcho-communists and Black Lives Matter
Anarcho-communists disagree with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) doctrines of *white allies* and *intersectionality*.
Another Word for White Ally is Coward is a communist anarchist critique of the *white ally* concept:
> To be a White Ally is to stop thinking for one’s self, to blindly follow a leader based on no other criteria than their identity. At least this is what is demanded of us by those who would make us into Allies.
> The concept of the White Ally is bankrupt. One cannot be an ally to a category of people. To speak the words “I am a White Ally to people of color” is to commit an act of double speak, to internalize non-sense. There is no singular black voice that can be listened to, no authentic community leadership which to follow. There are only many different people with different ideas, life experiences and perspectives. To think otherwise, to think that all black people share a common opinion is extremely problematic, one might even say racist...
With Allies Like These is a communist anarchist critique of the concept of *intersectionality*:
> Intersectionality is often evoked in a manner that isolates and reifies social categories without adequately drawing attention to common ground. Crucial to its analysis is an emphasis on a politics of difference—it is asserted that our identities and social locations necessarily differentiate us from those who do not share those identities and social locations. So, for example, a working class queer woman will not have the same experiences and by extension, the same interests as an affluent woman who is straight. Similarly, a cis-man of colour will not have the same experiences and by extension the same interests as a trans* man of colour, and so on and so forth. Within this framework, difference is the fundamental unit of analysis and that which proceeds and defines identity. This practice works to isolate and sever connections between people in that it places all of its emphasis on differentiation.
> ... in focusing only on difference we lose sight of the fact that both are exploited under capitalism, and have a shared interest in organizing to challenge Capital.
> As class struggle anarchists then we identify the class struggle as one against this “double dependence” as we struggle against the conditions which are necessary for capitalism to reproduce itself.
> ... we must strive for a class struggle which directs us towards the abolition of the divisions within our class that are necessary to uphold capitalism.
My take: anarcho-communists want to tear down Western civilization. They don't care about BLM per se, though they have some goals in common with BLM, including abolishing the police.
As far as I can tell, the main thing that BLM-related rallies offer anarcho-communists is the opportunity to instigate, encourage, and contribute to chaos and destruction:
- https://itsgoingdown.org/the-world-is-ours-the-minneapolis-uprising-in-five-acts
- https://crimethinc.com/2019/08/09/looting-back-an-account-of-the-ferguson-uprising
Double standards
Tucker Carlson, *Tucker Carlson Tonight* (2020-06-18):
> And then the Black Lives Matter riots started, and we learned that it was all fake. The very same officials who threatened us with arrest for going outside urged their own voters to flood the streets. And they did, and no one was punished. How could this happen? It was such a flagrant double standard. Not even hidden, right in your face. They didn't try to explain it. They didn't bother to justify it. Why? Anyone familiar with totalitarian regimes can tell you exactly why and what's going on…
For some time now, double standards have struck me as a serious issue, and yet it seemed an inappropriately weak kind of moral condemnation to merely state that someone has double standards. After watching the above clip, I now think that double standards:
- are a sign of the *arbitrary exercise of power*
- promote the *rule of man* over of the *rule of law*
- are *totalitarian*
People who promote double standards in public policy are totalitarians.
J. D. Vance, *Tucker Carlson Tonight* (2020-06-18):
> One of the weirdest things, you know, people on the left right now act like they're on the side of the oppressed. They like to think that they're standing up for the little guy, they're standing up for working people, but on every single one of these major issues, you look at the big Supreme Court cases that have come down the line the past few days, you look at what's happening with the protests, you look at the actual goals of the protests as they've been stated, [e.g.] abolish the police — if you look at public policy polling, 70% of black Americans actually like their local police department. How is it that on all of these big debates, the left finds itself on the side of corporate America, finds itself on the side of international businesses?
> You know, if I was a member of a political movement that stood up for working people and found myself every single time on the side of Amazon, on the side of Apple, on the side of Google, I might ask myself if I've actually chosen the right allies and what it says about me...
Number of generations for Americans to abolish slavery
In the DHFC-BlitzBook video at around 1m50s, David Horowitz says:
> Once the United States was created with its Declaration that all men are created equal and have a right to liberty, it took one generation for Americans to abolish slavery at the cost of 350,000 Union lives.
The United States Declaration of Independence was signed and ratified in 1776. The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, was ratified in 1865. Almost 90 years passed between those two events. A generation is generally considered to be around 25-30 years, so it took more than one generation for Americans to abolish slavery.
In Tucker Calls Out the Absolute Fact That Trump is on the Path to Perdition (June 26, 2020), Andrew Anglin writes:
> These people are engaging in these attacks on our statues and burning down buildings on live television. The Justice Department is doing nothing. They are outright refusing.
> The House Freedom Caucus went on TV on Thursday and begged Barr to enforce the law – they read out laws that he could be enforcing! As if people don’t know that tearing down statues on federal and state property and arson are felonies! As if the Attorney General doesn’t know that! He needs to be reminded that it’s illegal, the weasel!
> The Freedom Caucus did a very good job, given the circumstances. They were all almost speechless, trying to explain the enormity of the insanity, and being forced to go out and publicly demand that the Attorney General of the United States prosecute a violent Marxist revolutionary mob that has overtaken the entire country.
> The city cops cannot do anything. City cops are being charged with murder for doing something. No one can expect them to do anything. Trump has to send in the feds. The FBI has teams to deal with this. All you need to do is round up the leaders of who are organizing these riots and statue pull-downs. Prosecute them, this will stop, Trump can claim total victory and campaign on having ended the chaos.
> But of course, Barr is not going to do that. If he was going to do that, he would have done it already. There is no reason he would wait a month before he started prosecuting a violent Marxist mob that is literally tearing down the country.
Andrew Anglin on women as programmers and engineers
In Twitter has Become Unusable (June 24, 2020), Andrew Anglin writes (among other things) about women programmers and engineers:
> On some level, [women computer programmers] are only pretending to be pretending to be men, given that they remain overwhelmingly preoccupied with looking cute while doing their big man jobs.
> How long does this woman spend doing her hair and makeup before going into the office and sitting at a computer?
>The average for women is 1 hour in front of the mirror in the morning (I’m sure it’s what that woman spends and she may spend more than that). Men are more or less incapable of grasping this level of vanity and self-absorption. Men will typically look for any excuse to grow a beard, so as to skip any form of morning grooming at all. They will also look for any excuse to wear a t-shirt and jeans, simply because it is so much faster to put on such clothing.
> Computer programmers are especially known for having beards and dressing overly casually.
> This probably stems from the fact that the morning hours are crucial to someone doing that kind of thinking.
In Trump Could Have at Least Avoided Having This Picture Taken After the Failed Rally (June 22, 2020), Andrew Anglin makes some interesting points about Trump's lack of action to quell the riots:
> The blacks who will vote for [Trump] are going to vote for him specifically because he doesn’t tolerate black riots and revolution. That is to say, what he is doing by refusing to address the black revolution is going to make it less likely that the blacks who do support him are going to bother voting.
> The staggering thing is that this is a self-inflicted wound. Maybe he can’t do anything. The military refused to defend the White House during peak riot, so it is unlikely he can really do much on that front. Maybe he can’t get AG Barr to prosecute the rioters. Maybe there is literally nothing he can do to stop any of it. But what he can do is what we know he can do, which is tweet and go on shows talking about it. He could be out there every single day denouncing the blacks, and calling this a hoax, saying it doesn’t really have anything to do with black people and that it’s just a communist revolution using the dumb criminal blacks as a tool.
> He was very loudly talking about “socialism” as a threat to “capitalism” throughout 2019, apparently as an election strategy. But now we have a full-on Bolshevik revolution, a direct attack on the very foundations of our entire civilization, and he’s doing what? He’s saying he’s going to reform the police and he’s honoring Juneteenth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU6CuSMzNus
> The Golden Age of the Internet Is Over
The Appleseed Project
Appleseed is a project to promote and teach rifle marksmanship as a living American tradition. To this end, they hold beginner-friendly rifle clinics across the country. The Appleseed standard of accuracy is to reliably hit a man-sized target at 500 yards, a distance which was once apparently known as the "rifleman's quarter-mile".
Seems like a worthy endeavor.
OXO Good Grips 3-in-1 Avocado Slicer
The OXO Good Grips 3-in-1 Avocado Slicer is a useful 3-in-1 tool for prepping avocados. It has:
1. An edge long enough to cut the unpeeled avocado in half. For safety, the edge is dull, kind of like the edge of a butter knife.
2. A three-part metal attachment that sticks into the core. Lets you easily pull the core out whichever half of the avocado its in.
3. A slicer — again, with a dulled edge for safety — that you drag through each half of the core-less avocado. This removes the peel from that avocado half and slices the half into 7 pieces at the same time.
you won’t believe it, but the answer to 230-220*0.5 is 5!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/supreme-court-gives-native-americans-jurisdiction-over-eastern-half-of-oklahoma/ar-BB16xpZm
> The Supreme Court ruled Thursday [July 9] that the eastern half of Oklahoma can be considered Native American territory, a decision the state warned could create "civil, criminal and regulatory turmoil."
Alito asked an important question:
> "Won't (residents) be surprised to learn that they are living on a reservation and that they are now subject to laws imposed by a body that is not accountable to them in any way?".
*Paul Revere's Ride* by David Hackett Fischer
*Paul Revere's Ride* by David Hackett Fischer tells of the Battle of Lexington and Concord (the first battle of the American Revolutionary War) and the events leading up to it.
One thing that stood out to me from the book is how much mob action the Americans engaged in. A few examples:
> In 1770 a frightened customs officer fired into a mob that had gathered before his house, and killed a boy named Christopher Seider.T he town made the child into a martyr. On the anniversary of his death a huge crowd gathered in a silent demonstration.
> On the morning of September 2, a huge crowd of 4,000 angry men gathered on Cambridge Common, mostly farmers from the towns between Sudbury and Boston. Whig leaders persuaded them to leave their firearms in Watertown. Armed only with wooden cudgels, they marched to “Tory Row” in Cambridge, and gathered around William Brattle’s mansion. This elegant house had been his family’s seat through four generations. Its gardens and private mall extended all the way to the Charles River. The property itself was protected by Whig leaders, but Brattle was forced to flee for his life, and took refuge at Castle William in Boston harbor.
The book says that the American victory at Lexington and Concord was due in part to William Heath's *circle of fire* tactic, a way of fighting which involved surrounding the British troops at a distance, firing at them, moving to a different position in the circle, and repeating.
Wikipedia says:
> Heath and Warren reacted to [British officer Hugh] Percy's artillery and flankers by ordering the militiamen to avoid close formations that would attract cannon fire. Instead, they surrounded Percy's marching square with a moving ring of skirmishers at a distance to inflict maximum casualties at minimum risk.
Of the American militia under Heath, the book quotes British Officer Hugh Percy as saying:
> Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself very much mistaken. They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about...
William Heath was a farmer who taught himself military tactics from books and discussions with soldiers. The book says:
> Most of Heath’s soldiering had been done on militia training days with Boston’s Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. He had not been in battle before, and had never commanded a large force in the field. But behind his country manner was a Yankee brain of high acuity. As early as 1770, William Heath had become convinced that the people of New England might be forced to fight in defense of their ancestral ways. He began to write for the local gazettes, publishing essays signed “a military countryman,” which urged his neighbors to prepare for the test that lay ahead.
> In Boston, William Heath haunted Henry Knox’s bookstore, with its large stock of works on military subjects. By day he studied the Regulars [British soldiers] at their drill on the Common. By night he toiled over his books in his Roxbury farmhouse, and made a serious study of war as he thought it might develop in America.
> In particular, William Heath became deeply interested in the tactics of the skirmish — the use of highly mobile light infantry in open order, trained to make full use of the terrain against a stronger force that stood against them in close formation. He believed that skirmishing was a method of war best adapted to the conditions in New England. Many American historians have believed that the inspiration for these tactics came from the Indians and the American wilderness. So it did, in large part. But William Heath and other New England leaders also looked to the old world for their military models, and found them in the campaigns of European irregulars. One of them described the Yankee militia as an organization of “colonist hussars.”
Colonial Americans respected Heath's military abilities despite his lack of battlefield experience:
> William Heath’s military scholarship was respected in New England — more so than it might have been in other cultures which believed that experience is the only teacher. In the American Revolution, New England produced a remarkable generation of self-taught military commanders who trained themselves by systematic study. They had virtually no military experience, but two of them, Nathaniel Greene and Henry Knox, would be among the most able generals on the American side.
Schools suck. Maybe Trump shouldn’t be in such a hurry to reopen them. https://redoubtnews.com/2020/07/disparagement-of-online-learning/
#16902 Unclear why they think online learning is a good anti-indoctrination opportunity.
Woman sues Maryland Catholic-run hospital for refusing to help surgically transition her to a man. Her suit cites the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (roughly, that refusing services to transgender people constitues discrimination on the basis of sex).
https://www.wnd.com/2020/07/new-round-court-battles-begins-based-transgender-ruling/
Didn't see a post dedicated to bad scholarship in general (only specific examples) so I'm reposting this here
from a thread titled "The debate around the 1619 Project is the worst example of modern gaslighting"
> For those who aren't privy to all the details:
> 1. The thesis of the project's lead essay by N. Hannah Jones features an obvious mistruth, namely the idea that the motivating factor for the Revolution was to preserve slavery. Setting aside everything that comes after, this is such an obvious mistruth -- besides about half the Founders being anti-slavery, there was no indication the British intended to do anything to change the status quo of slavery in the colonies -- that whoever wrote it is either an idiot or purposely lying.
> 2. N. Hannah Jones's handpicked factchecker points this out to her pre-editing. N. Hannah Jones refuses to change it, but even worse, *doesn't tell her factchecker that she ignored her advice*. This is a serious journalistic breach. A factchecker in effect lends credibility to a project by implicitly vouching for its veracity. Not even discussing this with her for such a high profile piece is inexcusable.
> 3. When it publishes, notable historians -- including some N Hannah Jones herself cites to argue *for* her work -- level the same critique that her factchecker did. N. Hannah Jones, knowing her own factchecker had the same issue with the writing, chooses to publicly accuse the historians of racial bias.
> So to sum up: the author of this work includes an obvious mistruth against the advice of her factchecker then impugns the credibility of historians for daring to criticize it. And she won a Pulitzer for her trouble, and its going to be mandatory reading for millions of kids.
http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4590826&forum_id=2#40653207
https://www.revolver.news/2020/07/red-bull-fires-black-lives-matter-employees/
> Red Bull ... Purged High-Level Execs Who Pushed for ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ [July 20, 2020]
Good for Red Bull.
from Discord
[11:04 AM] doubtingthomas: https://discord.com/channels/304082867384745994/304082867384745994/682402191750856705
> One can also just try to discuss philosophy but with an attitude of being careful and caring about small errors and trying to fix them and consider their causes.
I've been reading my past conversations. I can see now how incoherent I was. I can now understand this point. I wonder how much experience is required to know this.
[11:10 AM] doubtingthomas: I've been thinking of doing an improvement plan. What sort of help/guidance can I expect?
[12:21 PM] curi: depends. you can look at stuff ppl like Anne, GISTE and Max get to get some perspective.
[12:21 PM] curi: do u read FI google group or curi forum?
[12:24 PM] curi: generally, it's nicer to help ppl who are doing productive things on their own, and so the helper can just give some tips at high leverage points. if the helper feels like he has to guide the learning process, or the learning process is ineffective, then getting involved is way worse.
[12:25 PM] curi: it also helps to use existing community resources like archived discussion, articles and videos. ppl don't wanna repeat everything. and it shows effort. and the existing stuff is mostly on the topics that interest typical community members.
[12:26 PM] curi: and it helps to use the async and more serious forums (email, web) and use quoting well. it's fine to talk here some but it's a less effective way to get help. async and better designed to track discussions over time is more convenient for others.
[12:27 PM] curi: getting your own website to put stuff on can be good too
this is relevant to other ppl too
Interesting Article
This article puts forth the idea that America is on its way to a failed state:
https://thebaffler.com/latest/near-and-present-anarchy-zakin
thoughts?
#16933 It's long and has a bunch about Sierra Leone. Summary of main points re America?
I was playing with descript.com and transcription is a feature. It's fast and seems accurate. As a test I used ET's meme misconceptions podcast; the transcript is copied below. (I wanted somewhere to put it and figured this is probably a good place because it's his content after all.)
I've left the transcription errors in, but the app has a mode for correcting the transcription. It also has features like cutting out 'um's, 'like's, 'you know's, etc.
The paragraph breaks are often not great but at least there are breaks (AWS transcription doesn't add them, for example).
----
Anonymous asks, what are some typical misunderstandings you've seen people have about memes? The main misunderstanding is they think that evolution is a metaphor. They think it's vague hand-waving or maybe a bit better than that, but they don't see it as like a solid scientific theory or the exceptionalist with genes.
When it comes to genetic evolution, they view it as science. But with memes or any application that isn't just like how animals evolve. Mmm. They kind of view it as crap, kind of like evolutionary psychology, which actually is a hand-waving and telling stories. And it's not in the same category of like real science, like the evolution of the eye and animals right in the past.
So people see beams a lot like that. And a lot of ways people see memes as having like, even a worse reputation than evolutionary psychology, which, which is fooling far too many people. So the main thing about memes is they involve literal evolution, anything that can replicate with variation and selection, um, evolution can apply to that.
Genes are not the only thing if I can replicate and me varied and selected, that also works with ideas. And it's pretty easy to see it works with ideas. You can copy ideas. There are variations on the copies and there are selection; people critically think about the ideas and accept some of them and reject others.
So evolution takes place literally. This is hard for people to get, because they are unaware that with genetic evolution, the main concepts are replicators variation selection. Like they literally don't even know that that that's what's going on. That genes are replicators. Um, so since they don't understand the basics of genetic evolution, they're unable to take those basics and apply them to a mimetic evolution.
It's not just amateurs who are like us or like lay people or whatever. People who look like experts who write books. Um, they also do vague hand-waving I'm stuff about memes. There's literally only one person, whoever took me seriously, um, recognized like that technical views on evolution should be used to apply to memes.
And actually developed a, a reasonable objective non hand-wavy theory, and that's David Deutsch and his theory of rational and anti irrational memes as the two replication strategies. And no one else has ever done good work in the field. Except the only exception is David Deutsch fans who built on his work.
But no one else ever did like original, um, getting the ball rolling type of work. That was any good. I mean, it's only one person and every one else besides David's fans, um, just does bad work in the field and it's all hand waving and crap. So that's why memes have such a bad reputation as all the other, like advocates don't know what they're talking about.
And they don't treat it like a rigorous science, which they should, like, we know quite a bit about evolution and a technical detailed kind of way. And that should be used when thinking about memes, but people don't, they treat me and a lot more like psychology where standards are very low and people tell stories about human personalities or whatever, and it's vague and kind of crappy.
It's not useless. Like. You can tell psychological stories about what people are like to try to understand people and, and got some value out of that and maybe help some people, but that's a different kind of thing than like a scientific approach. So the basic problem is people put memes and the hand-waving category that maybe have some value rather than viewing it as a science and actually doing scientific investigation.
A lot of what's going wrong here is people don't understand the epistemology. Tie-ins like
memes are ideas. And so is super relevant. Like we're dealing with an epistemology. How do people learn how to deal with ideas? How do you think about ideas? And the good epistemology is evolutionary epistemology. And so people understood that and knew what was going on. Their memes would make more sense to them because they'd already be thinking about mental processes in terms of evolution in a technical way, instead of a vague, Oh, well, things got better over time kind of way.
If you're going to take evolution and apply it to the realm of ideas, memes are not the only thing that should be coming out of that. Understanding how learning works via evolution, via guesses and criticism and all that popper stuff should also come out of it. So people who are totally clueless about popper stuff, you wouldn't expect them to do well with memes either.
So the person asked about misunderstandings of memes, um, which I assume was like a very general interest question, but I'll also talk about, about people's misunderstandings of static memes, which are the memes that have a replication strategy of disabling people's creativity and preventing criticism preventing, rejecting the idea.
As opposed to irrational memes, which have a replication strategy of being useful, being out, competing other ideas in people's judging ideas and looking for good ones.
And if you want to know more about the types of memes it's in David book, the beginning of infinity, and also I'll put a link to a blog post of mine and the. Uh, podcast notes anyway, um, a decent number of people have like a general idea of static memes, um, from Deutsche or myself, but there's a lot of misunderstandings about them.
The basic thing is people say, Oh, well, that makes sense. And then they don't take it seriously. They don't integrate it into their thinking and they don't. Treat it as like a rigorous idea about what the world is like. And then look at the consequences. They treated us just like a vague, Oh, most people are mostly dumb kind of thing, rather than seeing that it means very directly that they are puppets of memes and major ways in their life.
It affects them. It's an urgent problem for them. They have a serious lack of control over their lives. In a lot of their lives are being determined by static memes, not by their own choices. And if you would acknowledge that and you realize that's the situation, then you should start researching it. Like actually learn more about this, try to understand it really well, which means learning and popper, learning evolution, etc.
Um, cause you need to understand that so you can know how can I detect this? How can I defend against what can be done about it? How do you limit the role of memes in my life? It's not a command. Um, and got more control over your own life. So that's like an urgent problem, you know, how can I control my life instead of being controlled?
Um, and people just don't seem to take it seriously or worry about it. They seem to have vague intuitions that nothing's too bad. Their life isn't a disaster nothing's going to wrong. They're mostly doing what they want to do. They're making their own choices. They're not a popup. And vague intuitions are exactly the kind of thing that Sadik mediums are good at controlling and fluency and manipulating, et cetera, anywhere that it's like pretty easy to be biased is just the kind of place that's easier for the meme is to be in charge of.
So relying on vague intuition for this kind of issue is really wrong. Headed like worse than usual.
cause it's basically like saying, well, the meme has told me I don't have a meme problem. That's what consulting your vague intuition means.
There's one thing ought to be enough to motivate people, to actually be scholars, to try to learn ideas seriously, and to focus a lot of attention on that because without it, like your life has on a lot of ways, a waste. And you're just going through a script. You didn't write and you don't know why you're doing it and then, and lies to you about what's going on.
And it's like, you're blinded to reality. And you're going through sort of a fake world where you don't make many of your own choices and you don't understand what situation you're in. And that's an awful thing. It's kind of like Plato's cave and. If you've got some knowledge that maybe are in that situation, even just maybe even just like 10%, that's worth investigating and more like you should care about that and not just accept it or be willing to take the risk, but people don't want to learn and think and criticize.
And so on I'm study. Yeah. Partly they don't know how, but they mostly got stuck at the beginning with the, not really doing much kind of thing. Like there's not much energy when people try and get stuck. But that's another topic.
I am trying the pro version of the app which removes more stuff (like extra words or whatever). I think it might remove too much. For comparison's sake I'll put the transcription below but will leave it to the reader to judge if the meaning has changed.
I'm going to post the modified audio versions to discord now.
---
Anonymous asks, what are some typical misunderstandings you've seen people have about memes? The main misunderstanding is they think that evolution is a metaphor. They think it's vague hand-waving or maybe a bit better than that, but they don't see it as like a solid scientific theory or the exceptionalist with genes.
When it comes to genetic evolution, they view it as science. But with memes or any application that isn't just like how animals evolve. They view it as crap, like evolutionary psychology, which actually is a hand-waving and telling stories. And it's not in the same category of like real science, like the evolution of the eye and animals right in the past.
So people see memes a lot like that. And a lot of ways people see memes as having even a worse reputation than evolutionary psychology, which, which is fooling far too many people. So the main thing about memes is they involve literal evolution, anything that can replicate with variation and selection, evolution can apply to that.
Genes are not the only thing if I can replicate and me varied and selected, that also works with ideas. And it's pretty easy to see it works with ideas. You can copy ideas. There are variations on the copies and there are selection; people critically think about the ideas and accept some of them and reject others.
So evolution takes place literally. This is hard for people to get, because they are unaware that with genetic evolution, the main concepts are replicators variation selection. Like they literally don't even know that's what's going on. That genes are replicators. so since they don't understand the basics of genetic evolution, they're unable to take those basics and apply them to a mimetic evolution.
It's not just amateurs who are like us or lay people or whatever. People who look like experts who write books. they also do vague hand-waving I'm stuff about memes. There's literally only one person, whoever took me seriously, recognized like that technical views on evolution should be used to apply to memes.
And actually developed a reasonable objective non hand-wavy theory, and that's David Deutsch and his theory of rational and anti irrational memes as the two replication strategies. And no one else has ever done good work in the field. Except the only exception is David Deutsch fans who built on his work.
But no one else ever did like original, getting the ball rolling type of work. That was any good. it's only one person and every one else besides David's fans, just does bad work in the field and it's all hand waving and crap. So that's why memes have such a bad reputation as all the other, like advocates don't know what they're talking about.
And they don't treat it like a rigorous science, which they should, we know quite a bit about evolution and a technical detailed kind of way. And that should be used when thinking about memes, but people don't, they treat me and a lot more like psychology where standards are very low and people tell stories about human personalities or whatever, and it's vague and crappy.
It's not useless. You can tell psychological stories about what people are like to try to understand people and got some value out of that and maybe help some people, but that's a different kind of thing than like a scientific approach. So the basic problem is people put memes and the hand-waving category that maybe have some value rather than viewing it as a science and actually doing scientific investigation.
A lot of what's going wrong here is people don't understand the epistemology. Tie-ins like
memes are ideas. And so is super relevant. Like we're dealing with an epistemology. How do people learn how to deal with ideas? How do you think about ideas? And the good epistemology is evolutionary epistemology. And so people understood that and knew what was going on. Their memes would make more sense to them because they'd already be thinking about mental processes in terms of evolution in a technical way, instead of a vague, Oh, things got better over time kind of way.
If you're going to take evolution and apply it to the realm of ideas, memes are not the only thing that should be coming out of that. Understanding how learning works via evolution, via guesses and criticism and all that popper stuff should also come out of it. So people who are totally clueless about popper stuff, you wouldn't expect them to do well with memes either.
So the person asked about misunderstandings of memes, which I assume was like a very general interest question, but I'll also talk about people's misunderstandings of static memes, which are the memes that have a replication strategy of disabling people's creativity and preventing criticism preventing, rejecting the idea.
As opposed to irrational memes, which have a replication strategy of being useful, being out, competing other ideas in people's judging ideas and looking for good ones.
And if you want to know more about the types of memes it's in David book, the beginning of infinity, and also I'll put a link to a blog post of mine and the. podcast notes anyway, a decent number of people have a general idea of static memes, from Deutsche or myself, but there's a lot of misunderstandings about them.
The basic thing is people say, Oh, that makes sense. And then they don't take it seriously. They don't integrate it into their thinking and they don't. Treat it as like a rigorous idea about what the world is like. And then look at the consequences. They treated us just like a vague, Oh, most people are mostly dumb kind of thing, rather than seeing that it means very directly that they are puppets of memes and major ways in their life.
It affects them. It's an urgent problem for them. They have a serious lack of control over their lives. In a lot of their lives are being determined by static memes, not by their own choices. And if you would acknowledge that and you realize that's the situation, then you should start researching it. Like actually learn more about this, try to understand it really well, which means learning and popper, learning evolution, etc.
cause you need to understand that so you can know how can I detect this? How can I defend against what can be done about it? How do you limit the role of memes in my life? It's not a command. and got more control over your own life. So that's like an urgent problem, how can I control my life instead of being controlled?
and people just don't seem to take it seriously or worry about it. They seem to have vague intuitions that nothing's too bad. Their life isn't a disaster nothing's going to wrong. They're mostly doing what they want to do. They're making their own choices. They're not a popup. And vague intuitions are exactly the kind of thing that Sadik mediums are good at controlling and fluency and manipulating, et cetera, anywhere that it's like pretty easy to be biased is just the kind of place that's easier for the meme is to be in charge of.
So relying on vague intuition for this kind of issue is really wrong. Headed like worse than usual.
cause it's basically like saying, the meme has told me I don't have a meme problem. That's what consulting your vague intuition means.
There's one thing ought to be enough to motivate people, to actually be scholars, to try to learn ideas seriously, and to focus a lot of attention on that because without it, like your life has on a lot of ways, a waste. And you're just going through a script. You didn't write and you don't know why you're doing it and then, and lies to you about what's going on.
And it's you're blinded to reality. And you're going through a fake world where you don't make many of your own choices and you don't understand what situation you're in. And that's an awful thing. It's like Plato's cave and. If you've got some knowledge that maybe are in that situation, even just maybe even just like 10%, that's worth investigating and more like you should care about that and not just accept it or be willing to take the risk, but people don't want to learn and think and criticize.
And so on I'm study. Yeah. Partly they don't know how, but they mostly got stuck at the beginning with the, not really doing much kind of thing. there's not much energy when people try and get stuck. But that's another topic.
#16948 the audio generated for the more-cut-down version: https://discordapp.com/channels/304082867384745994/304082867384745994/739877111220928622
subtitle sync shifter
If you are watching a movie with a separate subtitles file and the subtitles are out of sync (delayed or advanced by a consistent duration), you could use this online tool to shift the timestamps in the subtitle file by a desired offset: https://subtitletools.com/subtitle-sync-shifter
#16970 VLC has controls to delay or advance subtitles or audio.
#16975 VLC doesn't have those controls on some platforms, like AppleTV.
Does anyone know (preferably not curi, he's busy enough) if there's any decent research into things that *looked* like mental illness (psychiatrists would claim these things were at the time) but weren't?
Particularly looking for research or published material (or equivalent).
Example with a fake story: say 5 decades ago some psychologist noticed some pattern and called it Zenofenia. Psychs at the time thought it was good enough to put in the DSM-3. Zenofenia was hard to nail down (like everything else) but had some defining characteristics that were particularly mind related (like everything else psychiatrists have an opinion on). Some people got diagnosed, some new experimental (and expensive) medication got prescribed and so on. Mid 90s roll around and someone with a nice microscope notices some sort of parasite that wasn't meant to be there in some brain tissue. They pull the cadger out and get it to replicate. Some test are done, and someone finds a magic molecule which kills the parasite, but doesn't hurt people (and there's some good explanatory chain for why it doesn't hurt people, IDK some people make the magic m. naturally). Some due-diligence is done and it's decided to offer this to people who exhibit symptoms of Zenofenia. At the same time someone figures out a way to test for the parasite with some unobjectionable success rate (and low false positive rate and so on), so that get's rolled in. The result is some real disease that was otherwise only detected by paranoid psychiatrists gets eradicated.
It goes without saying this is fiction, but I anticipate it's enough detail for you to grasp my intention.
this guy is a really good chess teacher. watched a bunch of his vids. and this lecture is esp good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GypgXL6L-ag
he builds up from (fairly) simple positions to more complicated ones. at the end he briefly shows a much harder one and doesn't explain it, and i solved it using the concepts he taught earlier.
The Daily Stormer and Ann Coulter on women voting
https://dailystormer.su/anal-uprising-in-poland-gets-the-boot-as-women-demand-everything-go-ultra-anal/ :
> Women will always, in any situation, in any country, support whatever harms the country – if they are allowed access to foreign propaganda.
> Women are incredibly susceptible to the influence of propaganda. There is literally no way to stop them from making decisions entirely based on their emotions, and foreign propaganda is totally capable of influencing their emotions. Thus it is that a foreign intelligence operation that is able to spread propaganda in a country like Poland is able to turn a huge portion of the women in the country against the country.
> You might say that the solution to this is to ban foreign propaganda. Maybe that is a solution, I don’t know. But it’s not the ideal solution. For one, it is very hard to do. For another, it necessitates violating the freedom of speech of the people.
> The much better solution is to simply ban women from participating in public society. This ensures that women are not able to destroy the society, while also ensuring the freedom [of speech] of the people.
Ann Coulter has made a similar point on multiple occasions. https://medium.com/@scott.d.jacobsen/ann-coulter-on-particular-suffrage-2001-2003-and-2007-6cdacd676e47 :
> It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 — except Goldwater in ’64 — the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted. (The Guardian 17 May 2003)
According to https://dailystormer.su/dick-masterson-shut-down-his-pateron-alternative-declaring-it-impossible-to-get-credit-card-processing-for-banned-people/ , someone named Dick Masterson tried to set up a payment alternative for people who had been banned from Patreon, but failed. The article quotes the following text by Masterson on Twitter from June 27:
> Bad news. I learned this week that New Project 2 is on the MATCH List. This is a global, credit card processing blacklist curated by MasterCard that all banks use to determine your processing eligibility. Some offshore banks will service customers on the MATCH List for all codes except one, “10: Violation of Standards”. Guess which one I’m on the list for.
> The site cannot process credit cards. As current subscriptions run out, all membership levels will terminate and the site will go dormant. I will leave your admin logins up for three months so you can retrieve data and subscriber info. Payout requests made during this time will include the last settled transactions.
> I recommend logging into your backend, copying the list of your subscribers, and sending them an email to alert them of your plans (use BCC or MailChimp). If you’d like to setup a system similar to mine, S2Member and WordPress will get you there. SubscribeStar is also an option, but no matter where you go, you will be under the thumb of MasterCard.
> I started this project with the goal of making deplatforming transparent. In the last 18 months, I have learned that the deplatforming process is not transparent because our financial system is not transparent, and the censorship works in reverse. Each Layer is built specifically to obfuscate what’s happening behind the scenes. Companies and banking partners are incentivized to censor proactively to abide by ill-defined requirement of the PATRIOT Act, left over policies of Operation Choke Point, and to protect staggering capital investments in credit card certification requirements of questionable necessity. They are held hostage. There is no customer support and no warnings given. It’s guess work done in a blackbox. Banks partner with processing institutions who have relationships with larger banks who all exist in the world of MasterCard.
There's a new paper about relative states in the Heisenberg picture with David Deutsch as a coauthor https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.02328
(PUA-related) Using Instagram accounts with high follower counts to get IRL dates
In mid 2020, HN user vmception wrote about using Instagram accounts with high follower counts to get dates in real life.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23579320 :
> For myself I have used one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women. In general on dating apps, women are funneling people to their instagram profile to ignore them. If you have a popular account its a night and day difference. I don't even attempt to match with them on the dating app, I just message them on IG straight away from the popular account (30K+ followers). Real dates and intimacy off of that, even in San Francisco. Skips the queue.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23585605 :
> the behavior I actually navigate is completely outside of the dating apps
> I see the billboard (on the dating app) and found a way to get to the top of their inbox for quality time (outside of the dating app). Never even attempting to "match with them" on the dating app. The other side of the control group is an experience of what happens when a normal bloke tries messaging them on instagram: absolutely nothing
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580795 :
>> Women who value popularity on instagram tend to be pretty hot as well.
> hot, yes, and another important factor being: fun!
> the combination is anomalous in SF since the demographics do not select for it, so the evolutionary pressures are non-existent.
> but here and everywhere you see them on dating apps and they don't see you at all and won't respond to you at all on the gram as this is their way of passively increasing their follower count and engagement. But when you show up with a lot of the thing they value? It is disingenuous to find this perplexing. Its wealth, social proof, and ingenuity in a tough market all in one. This has been attractive to our species for a very long time.
> The profiles can be about anything even scantily clad women (maybe not actual memes though, but maybe), and they don't even know what I look like and they come through at least to the cafe. No different than any other date, just all the exceptions you ever wished for, and with fun and hot people that otherwise ignored you. Its more about getting a response than anything and recognizing that you are incapable of being the strangest or most precarious circumstance that many women have ever been in, just offer and invite. You are already rich, in followers, and recognize that this is a currency, just like they do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGjNUuz7cCY
I liked this short video. Brandon Sanderson on "How to Identify an Unhelpful Editor".
Best idea from the video: Editors should help you improve the story you want to write, not try to change it into the story they want to read. They need to understand your goals and help with those, not change the goals.
My comment on that: Questioning and challenging goals *explicitly* should be possible but not typical editing. Covertly doing edits based on other goals is awful.
Blizzard allegedly partially pays employees with in-game mounts and an honor points rewards program.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Anolmt8klyQ
i've found it hard to find this link so putting it here with some keywords:
https://curi.us/files/diagrams/Skyscraper-Project-Plan-v1.pdf
tags: architecture, planning, project, pre-plan, meta-plan, plan-plan, idea tree, how to plan, big project, skyscraper, sky scraper
I'm not sure if curi has linked it from the pages on planning and idea trees I found
also this category looks empty: https://curi.us/archives/list_category/117
Right-Wing Populism, by Murray Rothbard (1992)
Right-Wing Populism, published by Murray Rothbard in 1992, is a political essay that makes some good points and is relevant even in 2020. The essay defends David Duke (apparently he ran for governor in Louisiana in the early 1990s), argues that right-wing populism is the only strategy by which minimal government conservatives can succeed, and suggests what a right-wing populist platform might look like. Below are some excerpts from the essay.
On David Duke:
> They said in the 60s, when they gently chided the violent left: "stop using violence, work within the system." And sure enough it worked, as the former New Left now leads the respectable intellectual classes. So why wasn't the Establishment willing to forgive and forget when a right-wing radical like David Duke stopped advocating violence, took off the Klan robes, and started working within the system? If it was OK to be a Commie, or a Weatherman, or whatever in your wild youth, why isn't it OK to have been Klansmen? Or to put it more precisely, if it was OK for the revered Justice Hugo Black, or for the lion of the Senate, Robert Byrd, to have been a Klansman, why not David Duke? The answer is obvious: Black and Byrd became members of the liberal elite, of the Establishment, whereas Duke continued to be a right-wing populist, and therefore anti-Establishment, this time even more dangerous because "within the system."
On right-wing populism:
> The basic right-wing populist insight is that we live in a statist country and a statist world dominated by a ruling elite, consisting of a coalition of Big Government, Big Business, and various influential special interest groups. More specifically, the old America of individual liberty, private property, and minimal government has been replaced by a coalition of politicians and bureaucrats allied with, and even dominated by, powerful corporate and Old Money financial elites (e.g., the Rockefellers, the Trilateralists); and the New Class of technocrats and intellectuals, including Ivy League academics and media elites, who constitute the opinion-moulding class in society.
The first four points of Rothbard's proposed 8-point right-wing populist platform are:
> 1. *Slash Taxes.* All taxes, sales, business, property, etc., but especially the most oppressive politically and personally: the income tax. We must work toward repeal of the income tax and abolition of the IRS.
> 2. *Slash Welfare.* Get rid of underclass rule by abolishing the welfare system, or, short of abolition, severely cutting and restricting it.
> 3. *Abolish Racial or Group Privileges.* Abolish affirmative action, set aside racial quotas, etc., and point out that the root of such quotas is the entire "civil rights" structure, which tramples on the property rights of every American.
> 4. *Take Back the Streets: Crush Criminals.* And by this I mean, of course, not "white collar criminals" or "inside traders" but violent street criminals – robbers, muggers, rapists, murderers. Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error.
I disagree with the "instant punishment" and "liability" aspects of Rotherbard's point 4: I think the consequences of breaking the law should be determined in court, not by cops, and I think cops need qualified immunity in order to properly do their jobs.
curi:
> Annual Percentage Yield (APY) for your Online Savings Account is changing from 1.00% APY to 0.80% APY on all balance tiers.
curi: as inflation goes up (corona stimulus crap), interest rates go ... down?
JustinCEO:
curi: as inflation goes up, the government tries to push interest rates down on purpose to confuse the economy?
curi: "the misallocation of resources caused by inflation isn't enough! we must meddle in more ways, preferably which work at cross purposes!"
Am I missing something?
#17390 I don't think inflation+low interest rates work at cross purposes from the government's POV. Both serve as incentivize for the purchase / holding of capital assets.
Inflation - because in an inflationary environment capital assets hold their real value better than currency.
Low rates - because in a low rate environment even low risk-adjusted return capital assets beat savings accounts and other low risk debt instruments.
Reisman on Pinochet
In General Augusto Pinochet Is Dead (2006-12-16), George Reisman praises Pinochet and defends him from left-wing attacks:
> General Pinochet deserves to be remembered for having rescued his country from becoming the second Soviet satellite in the Western hemisphere, after Castro's Cuba, and, like the Soviet Union, and Cuba under Castro, a totalitarian dictatorship.
> Had there been a General Pinochet in Russia in 1918 or Germany in 1933, the people of those countries and of the rest of the world would have been incomparably better off, precisely by virtue of the death, disappearance, and attendant suffering of vast numbers of Communists and Nazis. Life and liberty are positively helped by the death and disappearance of such mortal enemies. Their absence from the scene means the absence of such things as concentration camps, and is thus ardently to be desired.
> General Pinochet was undoubtedly no angel. No soldier can be. But he certainly was also no devil. In fact, if any comparison applies, it may well be one drawn from antiquity, namely, that of Cincinnatus, who saved the Roman Republic by temporarily becoming its dictator.
Reisman on NYT bias
In "Where The New York Times Is Coming From" (the top post at George Reisman's Blog on Economics, Politics, Society, and Culture, December 2006), George Reisman points out the bias in the NYT's obituaries of five heads of state:
> In these headlines we find utter condemnation of a dictator who was relatively mild as dictators go, but who was Anti-Communist [Pinochet]; his leading characteristic was allegedly rule by “Terror.”
> In contrast, in the case of Communist mass murderers we find non-judgmental tolerance in the headlines, along with a studious refusal to mention the incalculably greater terrors they caused. More than that, we find positive esteem and enthusiasm in the headlines for the Communist mass murderers.
Song: "I Need a Pinochet"
"I Need a Pinochet" is a song written by Christopher Cantwell and published to his blog on November 23, 2015 with the tags "Comedy" and "Music". The blog post starts off:
> Have you ever just gotten so sick of left wing nonsense that you just wanted a right wing coup d’état to come in and start executing liberals? You’re not alone, I sometimes feel this way myself.
The post goes on to give lyrics for the song (which mentions Rothbard in passing). Here's the chorus:
> I need a Pinochet, I need a Pinochet free up all the markets tonight
> Privatize Industry, open up trade, and sentence all leftists to die
> I need a Pinochet, I need a Pinochet massive repeals overnight
> Stop the inflation, stabilize currency, sentence the leftists to die, oh leftists to die
The post links to YouTube for the audio, but the link no longer works. Here is a link that works (as of today): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TRZlmYp3_c
No, the Woke Won’t Debate You. Here’s Why.
James Lindsay, "No, the Woke Won’t Debate You. Here’s Why." (July 30, 2020; ~4700 words):
> One of the biggest mistakes we keep making as liberals who do value debate, dialogue, conversation, reason, evidence, epistemic adequacy, fairness, civility, charity of argument, and all these other “master’s tools” is that we can expect that advocates of Critical Social Justice also value them. They don’t. Or, we make the mistake that we can possibly pin Critical Social Justice advocates into having to defend their views in debate or conversation. We can’t.
IMO, although liberals (in the original sense) do value debate/dialoge/etc., they don't value them that much in the scheme of things.
> These principles and values are rejected to their very roots within the Critical Social Justice worldview, and so the request for an advocate to have a debate or conversation with someone who disagrees will, to the degree they have adopted the Critical Social Justice Theoretical ideology/faith, be a complete nonstarter. It’s literally a request to do the exact opposite of everything their ideology instructs with regard to how the world and “systemic oppression” within it operates—to participate in their own oppression and maintain oppression of the people they claim to speak for.
> The hard truth is this: if you don’t yet understand this, you don’t know the fight we’re in or have the slightest idea what to do about it.
The last paragraph reminds me of the realization of the strikers in Atlas Shrugged about whether or not people want to live.
Note: As of today, the comments on the article comprise over 16,000 words.
> IMO, although liberals (in the original sense) do value debate/dialoge/etc., they don't value them that much in the scheme of things.
What is the scheme of things?
Not that much compared to who or what? Other groups? Your beliefs about the optimal amount to value them?
#17427 Compared to how much they could value it.
Four survival fiction books
Molôn Labé (2004), by Boston T. Party, describes a scenario in which a second Free State Project succeeds in Wyoming. Parts of it read more like a how-to manual than a book. For example, it goes into detail about how one guy assassinates a corrupt judge and buries his body so that no one will find it.
Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse (2009), by James Wesley, Rawles [1] is about a well-prepared group of people who survive an economic collapse in the U.S. It also reads like a how-to manual in places, going into detail about the group's security procedures, weapons, and fighting tactics.
EMP: Equipping Modern Patriots: A Story of Survival (2014), by Jonathan Hollerman, is about a group of well-prepared people who survive after the U.S. power grid is taken down by an EMP attack. This book also has a strong how-to aspect, but it's better-written than the above two books, and it has a more interesting story.
Defiance: An American Novel (1984), by Oliver Lange, is about a man who lives in the woods with his disabled son after the Russians take over the U.S. This book is shorter than the other three, and it doesn't have much of a how-to aspect. I found it the most emotionally moving and thought-provoking of the bunch.
[1] The comma is apparently part of Rawles' name.
#17439 My wife and I attended an IRL meeting with Boston T. Party in the early 2000's. He was actively pitching a second FSP in Wyoming. I don't remember a book. Maybe it was before his book came out or maybe I just forgot about the book. Either way he wasn't pitching fiction.
Both of our impression was this guy was dangerous and we wanted nothing to do with him or his plan. Seemed like he wanted violence and was trying to gather enough people & arms to provoke a Waco-like situation.
#17440 Makes sense. Molôn Labé describes a fair amount of vigilante violence by people aligned with Wyoming, and it describes in detail Wyoming's preparation for war with the federal government.
Also, I realized that Molôn Labé isn't "survival fiction": the infrastructure is working throughout the story.
#17396 Looks like breaking a few eggs to make an omelette is equally praised by right wing ideologues just the same way as the left would. Gross.
Fall of Civilzations Podcast: Roman Britain
I listened to episode 1 (Roman Britain) of the Fall of Civilizations Podcast a few days ago. It gave a pretty clear explanation of how and why things collapsed there. IIUC, it worked as follows. Basically, Britain was at the outskirts of the Roman empire, and it took a lot of soldiers for Rome to protect their territory in Britain. It took so many soldiers that the local Roman commanders in Britain tried, several times, to take all those armies in ships back to Rome to try to conquer Rome itself. Each time, they failed, and each time this (a) left Britain unprotected from nearby marauders and invaders and (b) messed up Britain's economy which was heavily dependent on supplying soldiers. After a few iterations of this, Rome gave up trying to hold Britain, and civilization there reverted back to a pre-Roman state.
#17472 Typo: In the title, "Civilzations" should be "Civilizations".
I forgot to TTS the title, but the typo'd version sounds similar to the correct version, so I might not have noticed the difference. More importantly, I didn't spell check the title or check it with any of my usual post checks. I don't currently have a seamless way to do this. I usually compose the body of curi.us posts in a separate editor where I can run my checks, but I usually compose the title right in the title field in the browser, where I can't. It would be better to have a more unified way to compose both fields.
#17473 When I send emails to FI list, I can edit the subject and the body in the same editor window. I suppose I could write a program to post comments to curi.us. Then I could compose curi.us comments the same way I compose emails.
#17474 Why don't you just enable spellcheck for text fields in your browser?
#17477 Yes, using and paying attention to the browser's spell-check would solve this particular issue. However, in the body of the post, I check for other things besides spelling. For instance, including:
- double spaces
- invalid domain names
- "a" followed by a vowel
- "an" followed by a consonant
The browser's spell check wouldn't catch those errors.
I already handle the curi.us comment title field specially. For example, I have to be careful pasting into it because my titles are often longer than the field (see http://curi.us/comments/show/16409 ). Commenting with a program would avoid all that.
#17478 Is this the best place to focus your attention? Is this your bottleneck?
#17478 Typo: ". For instance" shouldn't be there. I should have written: "I check for other things besides spelling, including:"
I *think* I listened to this, but I didn't notice it was wrong.
#17479
> Is this the best place to focus your attention? Is this your bottleneck?
I don't know, but I *think* my rate of posting is a bottleneck. Trying to avoid postmortem-worthy errors slows down my rate of posting compared to chat. Writing a program to post comments so I can compose comments in my editor would make me faster. Alternatively, I could remove typos and grammar errors from the list of things for which I write postmortems, either for curi.us comments or for FI in general, now that I've demonstrated (somewhat) that I am capable of avoiding those errors.
*If* post rate is your bottleneck – as in you get N posts per Y days independent of post content – *then* you should post about more important stuff, not typos. Make the posts related to your most important goals.
If your bottleneck is more complicated you should figure out what it is better so that you can manage it well.
#17482 I don't know what my goal is. That makes it hard (or impossible) to figure out what my bottleneck is.
#17483 maybe you have a goal related to politics. you often tweet and post about it.
#17484 Yes, I might be able to put into words some kind of goal I have related to reading and writing about politics. It sounds hard, though. Also, I don't know how the result would relate to any more important higher-level goals I might have, because I haven't formulated any of those either.
#17485 was by me. I forgot to put my name in as the author.
#17485 You should prioritize figuring out your goals better then. Do you agree?
If that's your goal, then two actions you could take are
- brainstorm goals.
- brainstorm actions to take.
and you could also consider first doing other actions in support of those, e.g. reading about and practicing brainstorming.
> You should prioritize figuring out your goals better then. Do you agree?
I don't know. I've been making some progress with my current priorities, whatever they may be. I don't know that trying to change them in that way would be an improvement.
Another issue is this: it could be that in order to have a productive discussion about goals I need to overreach less or be less emotional or improve in some other way. It's unclear to me how these things interact and what I should currently be putting more energy towards.
Good answer by Trump to reporter's question about QAnon
Video: President Trump holds news conference at the White House (timestamp 29:24) (my lightly-edited transcript):
> Reporter: The crux of the theory is this belief that you are secretly saving the world from this Satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Does that sound like something you are behind?
> Trump: Well I haven’t heard that. But is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?
> Reporter: *gasps/chuckles*
> Trump: If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there. And we are, actually. We're saving the world from a radical left philosophy that will destroy this country. And when this country is gone, the rest of the world would follow. That's the importance of this country.
@readmystuffplz, a Twitter account that has been deleted, wrote some good comments about how the way the word "racism" is used in practice doesn't match the definition. (He also wrote a bunch of stuff at that link blaming Jews that I didn't include because I disagree with it.)
> If the definition of "racism" was discrimination/oppression against a group based on their race then the people brainwashed with anti-racism would get angry at anyone who discriminates against Whites
> Yet not only do "anti-racists" NOT get angry at anti-White oppression/discrimination, they actually accept and promote it
> This shows you that anti-White discrimination is NOT "racism" even if they do not officially explicitly admit this
> The best way to really find out what "racism" really is is to ask yourself what behaviors/statements makes "anti-racists" start screaming "racist!" at you
> This is a very interesting question because when you do this you start discovering an entire brainwash sturcture
> For starters, racially discriminatory statements against Whites DO NOT trigger an angry response it "anti-racists" (aka leftists/liberals)
> The majority of "anti-racists" actually APPROVE and enjoy racially discriminatory statements against White people
> This shows you that discriminating racially against White people is NOT "racism"
> This is a very important discovery because it shows you that "racism" is not "discrimination based on race"
> If it was truly that then "anti-racists" would get angry at anti-White discrimination
> I don't care if the technical definition of "racism" is "discrimination based on race"
> The reality is that 99% of "anti-racists" not only do not disapprove of anti-White discrimination, they actually love it. It releases pleasure chemicals in their brains
My thoughts: most people would be quick to say that they're not "racist", but it seems that the word "racist" is actually used by many people simply to refer to anyone who regards whites either positively or with neutrality. So when a person says he's not "racist", lots of people will take that to *really* mean that he's anti-white.
@myholyfollowers, a Twitter account that has been deleted (and which I suspect is the same as @readmystuffplz from #17492), wrote some interesting comments about the democracy, the media, and censorship. (He also wrote a some stuff at that link blaming Jews that I didn't include because I disagree with it.)
> Just a quick thread for any people who don't fully understand what's happening here
> Why the sudden obsession of politicians with Facebook and "Hate Speech"
> Basically your entire democracy is fake and gay
> It's a system where a tiny group of privileged assholes control everything from behind the scenes while pretending that "the people" are somehow in control
> What happened is that in 2016 they saw their system imploding and they shat their pants
> They realized that they were no longer able to control the outcome of elections using their media due to the internet
> Most importantly due to social media
> The problem here is that they are not up against some centralized organization that they can simply subvert or shut down
> Their problem here is the average Joe posting "MAGA! Build the Wall!" on his Normiebook account
> And there's tens of millions of those
> They've been really pissed about this
> "Oh fuck how do we stop this. Are supposed to censor every single person who somehow counters our media narrative on the internet? There's millions!"
> That's exactly what they're trying to do now
> An uncensored internet (free flow of information) means that democracy could actually turn into "the will of the people" and they don't want that
> They want democracy to be "the will of the media owners"
Mises debunked the "widespread fallacy that skillful advertising can talk the consumers into buying everything that the advertiser wants them to buy". But I don't think his argument applies to the current situation with the media, censorship, and democracy.
For one thing, if one product is dramatically better in some ways than another (like electric lights vs candles), that's often something you can see for yourself in short order. The concrete consequences of political ideas and elections, on the other hand, often take longer to be seen and require more theory to understand.
Also, if people were banned from advocating some product (the way they are currently banned from advocating some political ideas), it would be harder for that product to gain widespread adoption.
> For those who don't know Edward Bernays [...] wrote a book called "Propaganda" [link added by me] where he explained that in a modern democracy the official power structure (the government) is not the real one, the real power structure is hidden and belongs to the people who control the media
> In theory, in a democracy the power lies in the hands of "the people" because the people elect the politicians right
> Ok but how do the people find out which politicians they should vote for
> They find out through their TV and the newspapers
> No politician has a chance of getting elected if he's being portrayed negatively by the media or being ignored by it against a competitor who has favorable media coverage
> The consequence of this is that any politician who gets in power will always suck the dick of whoever controls the content on TV and the newspapers and this is who they actually respond to, not "the people"
> But of course the media owners are hidden
> Do you have any idea who owns the TV channels and newspapers and Hollywood studios that hold power over the political system and shape the culture of the society and the worldview of the population
> Not only are they hidden, they cannot be elected
> They are unremovable
> The media is in their hands permanently, it is their private property
The media is not necessarily in a particular person's hands permanently. Some media outlets go bankrupt and the owners don't have the money or interest to keep funding them.
> And when they die or get old they will pass it to their children or buddies or fellow chosen tribesmen
> This shows you that the entire concept of democracy is a lie
> Democracy is not "the will of the people" as it purports to be
> Democracy is rule by media oligarchy
> Even IF the media was not in the hands of a small tribe of hostile anti-White, anti-Christian, anti-Western [...] people it would still be in the hands of someone, and that someone would have the real power, not "the people"
> Of course the exception to this is a scenario where the masses are able to inform themselves without the media in the middle
> Such a scenario is the internet and it is why 2016 was a huge scare for the Js
> They briefly lost their control over the political system
> Of course they quickly learned their lesson and they are fixing this now by censoring anything which is not approved, so that "the people" are only able to learn online the same things they learn on their TV
> Why do you think Jeff Bezos created Amazon became filthy rich then decided to buy The Washington Post after he was already one of the richest men on Earth
> Did he buy it to make money?
> To sell news at a profit? Lol
> He did it because owning a major newspaper gives him something Amazon doesn't
> It gives him political power
> It makes him a part of the actual ruling class
> Some more thoughts about this
> Why do you think the "ruling elites" insist with democracy so much?
> Your rulers really seem to love democracy huh isn't that strange?
> The rich powerful globalist elite assholes who control what you see on TV and rule over you really seem to love democracy
> If democracy actually meant giving the power to the people this wouldn't make any sense at all
> What democracy actually means is that all the political power lies in the hands of the small shadowy group of assholes who own the media and determine the culture/narrative
> So yes they do love democracy but only as long as they are the ones controlling the flow of information
> This why your "globalist elites" want to import tens of millions of dumb low IQ third worlders and give them all votes equal to your vote and then make it as easy as possible for them to vote too
> Again, if having a vote meant having real power this wouldn't make any sense
> Why would the ruling class want to give real power to the masses by giving them votes and then making it easy for them to vote
> It's because the bigger and dumber the electorate, the easier it is for the media bosses to control the narrative and by extension the political system as intended
> The stronger the mind control power of the media on the masses the stronger their grip on the political system
> I swear to you if they could they would make it MANDATORY for every citizen and/or illegal immigrant from Squatemala to vote using their cell phones
> And they would give Jose the illegal invader from Squatemala an additional vote for every underage kid he has
> Because equality
> Press one on your keypad for candidate A, press two for candidate B!
> Which candidate did you see on your TV that you liked the most?
> Wow glorious democracy the power truly lies in the hands of "the people" huh
> Ok so back to the point
> If the masses can bypass the "globalist elite's" media control using the internet it ruins the entire system
> Notice how at 0:22 in this video they attack social media calling it "extremely dangerous to our democracy" [ed: the video didn't come through in the archive]
> What they actually mean is
> "Social media is extremely dangerous to our control over the democracy"
> Lol that video is literally the "media bosses" telling you to stop consuming information online and to get back to your TV
> Seems legit bro I'll delete my internet right
Conservatives Benefit from Internet Censorship, Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, August 28, 2019:
Note: By "Conservatives", I think the author means "Conservativism, Inc.", not (what I would call true) conservatives like Ann Coulter.
> I’ve often heard people praise the “marketplace of ideas.” There never really was such a marketplace, because rich people could always buy media power and push an ideology. The internet made a “marketplace of ideas” seem genuinely possible. For a brief time, independent journalists, commentators, and artists could expand the public debate. If you produced good content and could attract an audience, you succeeded.
Yeah.
> Some claim President Trump will win in 2020 because the Democrats have become too “extreme.” Yet who determines what’s extreme? Ultimately, those with media power. Through his inaction, President Trump has given his enemies a media monopoly.
This reminds me of the points about media and censorship made by @myholyfollowers that were quoted in #17493.
Can’t Doom the Loom, Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, August 19, 2020:
> The most important issue is platform access. With it, we can build a mass movement. Without it, we must operate on the fringes and are cut off from any popular base, at least in the short-term. Even the most gifted activists can’t do much if their message isn’t heard.
> I’ve argued that Conservatism Inc.’s survival depends on control over what the grassroots sees and hears. It works in partnership with the Left against their common enemy: populists. If independent voices with a populist message can break through, the Beltway Right loses control, as it did during the 2015-2016 presidential campaign.
> Without censorship, grassroots Republicans would listen to others, including some white advocates. To survive as the System’s phony opposition, Beltway Right careerists need people like Miss Loomer silenced.
> Media control means elites impose their values, morality, and beliefs on the population. That’s more important than guns or legal authority over police or soldiers. Media govern.
These points about media and censorship are similar to the points by @myholyfollowers quoted in #17493.
Who Governs?, (Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, August 13, 2019) is another article that deals with censorship and the power of the media in a democracy:
> Clearly, there is no objective “rule of law.” So who rules? Journalists.
> They are increasingly conscious of their power and argue openly for state repression of those with whom they disagree. An extraordinary article in the Washington Post argues that federal prosecutors should use RICO statues against white nationalists.
> [link to WaPo article titled "Why free speech makes it difficult to prosecute white supremacy in America"]
> “The First Amendment is a major block in investigation and prosecution of a white supremacy group,” complained G. Robert Blakey, author of the RICO statute. Mr. Blakey notes ominously that RICO is “not a written law” but a “culture.” Mr. Blakey means a legal culture, but really it’s a media culture.
> The corporate media determine what is politically possible and what views are considered beyond the pale. The law is secondary to ideology.
> Why is President Trump a “white nationalist” despite never advocating an ethnostate, while Keith Ellison, who explicitly did so, is never called a black nationalist)?
Good question.
> It is because politics is about who, not what. Most of those with media platforms have a story about Good Guys and Bad Guys, and they have decided we’re the bad guys.
> White advocates still have legal rights and they should use them aggressively, but it’s naïve to think courts will be fair. The most important thing we can do to defend our rights is to support alternative media and expose corporate media.
This is why, regardless of Trump's many failings, he does good by criticizing the "fake news media".
The article ends on a somewhat hopeful note:
> Liberals are good at deplatforming people they don’t like, but repression has limits. Many Americans despise our media rulers. They obey out of fear, so our job is to embolden them. We need to help activists survive attacks. We need to build communities. We must expose media bias — a never-ending job.
> Corporate media power is broad but thin. We can weaken it. With persistence and courage, we can break it.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ajykDPoioWophNRkA/highlights-from-the-blackmail-debate-robin-hanson-vs-zvi
> Here's my overview of their positions.
> - Zvi thinks that blackmail would incentivize a whole host of terrible actions, such as trying to trick people into norm violation, and people becoming intensely secretive even around their closest friends and family.
> - Robin thinks that blackmail is a weird rule, where you cannot ask for money to keep a secret, but the other person is allowed to offer it (e.g. people can offer you money if you sign an NDAs). This makes no sense and Robin is looking for any clear reason why making one side of this deal should be illegal.
Justin do you know anything relevant about blackmail laws?
> https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ajykDPoioWophNRkA/highlights-from-the-blackmail-debate-robin-hanson-vs-zvi
>> Here's my overview of their positions.
>> - Zvi thinks that blackmail would incentivize a whole host of terrible actions, such as trying to trick people into norm violation, and people becoming intensely secretive even around their closest friends and family.
>> - Robin thinks that blackmail is a weird rule, where you cannot ask for money to keep a secret, but the other person is allowed to offer it (e.g. people can offer you money if you sign an NDAs). This makes no sense and Robin is looking for any clear reason why making one side of this deal should be illegal.
> Justin do you know anything relevant about blackmail laws?
Alas not, have never really looked into blackmail or extortion law and I don't recall studying it in school.
Antifa tactics: roles played by people in a mob
https://crimethinc.com/2020/06/10/the-siege-of-the-third-precinct-in-minneapolis-an-account-and-analysis (emphasis added):
> ... the fall of the Third Precinct demonstrates the power of ungovernability as a strategic aim and means of crowd activity. The more that a crowd can do, the harder it will be to police. Crowds can maximize their agency by increasing the number of roles that people can play and by maximizing the complementary relationships between them.
> *Non-violence practitioners* can use their legitimacy to temporarily conceal or shield ballistics squads. *Ballistics* squads can draw police fire away from those practicing non-violence. *Looters* can help feed and heal the crowd while simultaneously disorienting the police. In turn, those going head to head with the police can generate opportunities for looting. *Light mages* can provide ballistics crews with temporary opacity by blinding the police and disabling surveillance drones and cameras. Non-violence practitioners can buy time for barricaders, whose works can later alleviate the need for non-violence to secure the front line.
Obama on "peaceful" protests
Transcript of Barack Obama's eulogy for John Lewis (Thursday, July 30, 2020):
> But we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators...
Which "peaceful" demonstrators are receiving that treatment?
The ones who caused $55 million of damage in Minneapolis, including burning a police precinct to the ground?
The ones who have been vandalizing, committing arson and beating people up for the last few months in the Pacific Northwest?
The ones who turned Manhattan into a boarded-up wasteland?
The group of 100+ who attacked the Seattle Police Officers Guild headquarters last Sunday?
The ones who chanted, "What did you see? Didn't see shit!", after one of them set a fire in Portland's Multinomah Building on Aug 19, 2020?
The ones shouting, "Wake up, motherfucker, wake up!", through bullhorns at night in a residential area?
If a right-wing movement had been responsible for even a tiny fraction of this activity, there would be local and federal indictments, and it would be national news for months, if not years.
Organizers of rallies, protests, and demonstrations typically give lip service to an intention that the event be peaceful. One test of whether such an event is actually peaceful is whether you can freely exercise the rights you would normally have in public without being assaulted by the other participants. This includes freely filming the activities of other participants and wearing clothing or holding signs that convey messages opposed to the theme of the event. There is video evidence showing that Black Lives Matter rallies in many cities flunk that test, while right-wing rallies such as The March for Life pass with flying colors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional-managerial_class
> It is estimated that in the United States during 1930, people in professional-managerial class occupations made up less than 1 percent of total employment. In 1972, about 24 percent of American jobs were in professional-managerial class occupations. By 1983 the number had risen to 28 percent and in 2006, 35 percent.[5]
That's quite a big change to the country.
#17600
> The ones who chanted, "What did you see? Didn't see shit!", after one of them set a fire in Portland's Multinomah Building on Aug 19, 2020?
True Pundit reported that the Multnomah Building is "where the region’s store of COVID-fighting personal protection equipment (PPE) is stored."
Will Trump win in 2020?
Will Trump win in 2020?
It's not clear. PredictIt has it at about a 40% chance. Here are my thoughts.
Two major factors that hurt Trump's chances in 2020 are Democrat (Dem) attacks on voter integrity and Dem attacks on freedom of speech:
- *Dem attacks on voter integrity*: The democrats are stepping up their voter fraud efforts far to a larger scale than what they had in 2016. They are pushing for universal vote by mail which means they send a mail-in ballot to everyone, regardless of whether one was requested. Mail-in voting can make it take longer to know the result of the election, because not all jurisdictions require votes to arrive by election day. Also, universal mail-in voting has much less integrity than voting in person and regular absentee voting (in which a person requests a ballot), so it's more susceptible to cheating and to litigation. Finally, the Democrats are already saying that Trump is a dictator if he contests the election in any way.
- *Dem attacks on freedom of speech*: A relatively uncensored internet was a big factor in Trump's 2016 victory. He doesn't have that going for him any more. The Democrats have been successful at censoring Trump's base and even Trump himself. Trump's tweets are routinely hidden behind a warning. Zuckerberg said only about 5% of readers clicked through similar warnings on Facebook posts.
Trump's base does not support him as fervently as they did in 2016. Here's why:
- *Trump's weak and harmful messaging*: Trump has watered down his messaging compared to Trump's historic 2016 campaign. In the final months of Trump's 2016 rallies, he was using a teleprompter to read strong speeches that were, I assume, heavily influenced by Bannon. At every rally he would talk about building the wall and getting Mexico to pay for it. He talked about Making America Great again. Now, he rarely mentions the wall except to lie about it. He's talking about Keeping America Great (which is a weaker message, since he hasn't made it great). At least half of the featured speakers at the RNC -- which includes Tiffany Trump! -- will not excite his base. Trump fired Bannon, who was helpful in shaping the nationalist/populist messaging that fueled Trump's victory in 2016. Finally, while American cities burn. instead of campaigning strongly on law & order, the RNC (I believe) has pushed at least one ad about how Kamala Harris was a cop.
- *Trump's broken promises*: Trump hasn't fulfilled many of his campaign promises, nor has he done much else that his base would be excited about. Trump didn't build the wall, let alone have Mexico pay for it. One of his Supreme Court appointees, Gorsuch, is pretty squishy.
- *Trump's betrayal of his base*: Trump hired Kushner who has politics very opposed to Trump, and allowed Kushner to influence important decisions. No one voted for that. Trump signed the horrendous First Step Act which lets violent criminals out of jail sooner; this conflicts with the law & order message he needs to convey to win this election.
18 murders, 16 days, ~0 hours of media coverage
From August 12 through August 27, 2020, there were 18 black-on-white murders in the U.S. that received almost no national media coverage:
I was skeptical, so I fact-checked each one:
- John Shockley: “Police say 27-year-old Sammy Tinnin was arrested in this case and charged with felony murder.” (1/18)
- Craig Cullen: “A 28-year-old man is accused of killing his wife’s 80-year-old grandfather... Domonique Moore is charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Dr. Craig Cullen-Terzano.” (2/18)
- Robert Coughlin: “Evan Smith-Erving, 23, wanted for questioning re: the 8/13 murder of Robert Coughlin inside Coughlin's rented apt on Shelby Ave. Smith-Erving's silver Mercedes left the immediate area at the time of the murder. Detectives can't find him or the car.” (3/18)
- Jossline & Joe Roland: “Kyree Brown, 18, was arrested and faces two counts of first-degree murder related to the deaths of Joe and Jossline Roland, according to the Aurora Police Department (APD).” (4+5/18)
- Nichole Merrell: “Dennis Stone has been arrested in Davidson County, TN [stemming] from an investigation involving the shooting death of Nichole Merrell on August 14, which also injured a child that she was holding at the time of the shooting at the Ideal Market in Earlington, Ky” (6/18)
- Donald Carlton: “Police arrested a man and woman Wednesday after they allegedly shot a man during a robbery & left him to die in his truck… police announced the arrests of Derrick Holmes, 20, & Lashanta Williams, 18, on first-degree murder charges.” (7/18)
- Veronica Baker: “Baker was shot dead inside her still-running car in a Bojangles parking lot in Garner, North Carolina… On Wednesday, police charged 17-year-old Devin Cordell Jones with murder.” (8/18)
- Nathan Garza: “A 23-year-old Martinez man has been arrested in connection with the shooting death Sunday of a Fairfield teen in American Canyon. Christopher “Roly” Young has been booked into Napa County jail on suspicion of murder.” (9/18)
- Donald Troutwine: “Police [say] 21-year-old Brandon Deonte McDaniel was found at a home in the 2700 block of Dodson Avenue on Wednesday… McDaniel is accused of the shooting death of 25-year-old Donald Troutwine on August 17.” (10/18)
- Teresa Ribs: “A Minneapolis man already facing charges in a fatal shooting at a downtown parking ramp earlier this month is now accused of killing a woman five days later in her backyard on St. Paul’s East Side…” (11/18)
- Ryan Lehnig: “…after a brief verbal altercation at a residence on North Decatur Street, Kirkwood fired a handgun inside the house, according to the release. The witness later stated the victim left the residence and was bleeding. Kirkwood left the residence soon after with an unknown white female.” (12/18)
- Nick Wall & Laura Anderson: “Georgetown County double homicide victims’ family remembers duo that ‘loved everybody’… Authorities have charged Ty Sheem Ha Sheem Walters III, 23, in the shootings.” (13+14/18)
- Chelsey Morris: “…the female victim, identified as 24-year-old Chelsey Morris, of Bells, died at the scene. The male victim, who is from Oklahoma, was transported to a Memphis hospital for medical treatment. During the course of the investigation, agents developed information that led to the arrest of Tavares Ray and Wylie Ligon III…” (15/18)
- Aaron Leach: “Jameel Elias Cox was arrested Thursday for fatally shooting 32-year-old Aaron Leach at Leach’s home on Lindy Lane Monday afternoon.” (16/18)
- Megan McNeil: “Megan McNeil, 27, died this week after she was hospitalized following the shooting on Aug. 17, according to MassLive. Police say that her boyfriend shot her before turning the gun on himself. He died at the scene of the shooting.” (17/18)
- Wade Parramore: ““Curtis Smith later told (his girlfriend) that he did not mean to shoot Wade Parramore but was meaning to shoot (the other man),” the warrant states.” (18/18)
(h/t Twitter post by @FrenRight)
https://caldronpool.com/we-rejected-god-we-dethroned-our-kings-is-it-any-surprise-western-nations-are-now-losing-their-countries/ :
> Many western leaders today are more concerned with being welcomed into elite globalist circles, rather than prioritizing their own people. Indeed, this is evidenced more than anything by the attitude of western leaders to their people; they see them as interchangeable, and replaceable, by anyone, from anywhere, who wants to come here, and manages to secure a visa, and residency.
> When a national leader says an immigrant from Spain, Morocco, Sudan, Iran, or Vietnam or wherever is as much an Australian as a descendant of the first fleet, or a descendant of those men who federalized and created our sovereign nation, they are saying, whether they know it or not, that you are replaceable.
> If anyone can be Australian, just by changing location and taking a test, then “Australian” in their eyes is literally a social construct and not an ethnic reality. Indeed, this is why many western leaders refer to foreigners as “ethnic” people, it’s a subtle indication that they are denying, implicitly or explicitly, that we Aussies have an actual ethnic identity, when we do; Australian originally meant a British person living in the southland.
> The denial of this reality is a denial of definitional nationhood, it is a globalist approach to statehood, that says the state is supreme, and its people fully replaceable and interchangeable. Whereas the correct position is the nation is supreme, and the state exists to serve it.
Good points.
https://twitter.com/revenge_of_pepe/status/1259353150542295041
> There’s a 0% chance that the actual number of whites committing violent crime against blacks in one year is 60,000
> Each case would be nat’l news
> How are the statistics wrong, you ask?
> The Latino skew…
Twitter thread argues that, due to Hispanics being counted as white, white-on-black violent crime is actually much less common than crime statistics would seem to indicate,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq4G-7v-_xI
> The Bronze Age Collapse (approximately 1200 B.C.E.)
I like the Historia Civilis channel. Short educational history lectures with some decent illustrative animations.
I like this podcast. Each episode talks about how an ancient civilization failed.
https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com
In June 2020, the think tank CSIS recently released a report claiming that right-wing groups perpetrated the majority of terrorist attacks between 1994 and 2020. However, the report can’t be fact-checked because the authors refuse to release their data! AmRen writes:
> The line [in the report] between “religious” and “right-wing” is blurred. Attacks motivated by opposition to abortion are “right-wing,” not “religious,” and “hatred based on sexuality or gender identity” is “right wing.” By this definition, Omar Mateen, who pledged allegiance to ISIS and murdered 49 people at a gay nightclub, could be a “right-winger.”
> But there is now way to know whether CSIS called Mateen “right wing” or “religious.” The study is based on “an original data set of 893 terrorist plots and attacks in the United States between January 1994 and May 2020,” but the authors won’t release the data. I emailed and called several people at CSIS and asked for it. Caleb Diamond, “Media Relations Manager and Editorial Associate” finally got back to me and said CSIS refuses to share it.
> CSIS promoted this study knowing that it would make waves. It also made sure you can’t check its work. Are we the only people who care?
:(
#17738 The gatekeepers, journalists, elites who spread studies like that, and transmit them to the general public while implicitly or explicitly vouching for their reliability (not 100% but saying it's decent work) are biased fraudsters. They do a mix of passing it on without checking (b/c they like the conclusion) while pretending to be competent ppl who check stuff ... or sometimes actually knowing the data isn't available and still passing it on to the public.
They don't provide to the public the services they tell the public they provide. They are liars and in a better world would be taken to court over this and lose.
Podcast request: What's your advice be to a friend with a child due in like 4 months? (if it matters, is there a difference if both the friend and child are male?)
Same or follow up podcast request: What's your advice for the same situation but the friend knows about FI, curi.us, a very small amount about TCS, and has read BoI at a light-medium level of understanding/retention?
#17741 Don't have multiple kids. Start learning stuff. I don't know some great shortcut.
Podcast request: Parent-child patterns of success exist in things like politics, F1 drivers, business leadership, *philosophy*, media, dog breeding, and other lots of other broad categories. Does the existence of these patterns imply that someone good at thinking (by FI standards) will have a significant advantage?
Some clarifying notes:
* Excluding stuff like getting good at politicking & other social dynamics. That person might be able to get good at them, but it's not necessary.
* The list of examples is meant to be representative of general, broad goals, like: "I want to be a philosopher", or "I want to be the best race car driver", etc. Goals where there are multiple paths to realizing it; where there's no one specific problem to overcome.
* Examples of these sorts of parent-child patterns: Bush Sr and Bush Jr, Leonard and Kira Peikoff, Will and Jaden smith, Keke and Nico Rosberg, Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, and the Walton family.
also thanks re #17742, didn't see that before posting #17743
#17744 - there's some social stuff in that msg.
re #17743 - that's a closed question, I mean I'm interested in your thoughts in general on that topic.
#17743 No.
Iowa man who burned pride flag stolen from church sentenced to 16 years (December 20, 2019):
> An Iowa man will spend up to 16 years behind bars for stealing a pride flag from an Iowa church and setting it on fire...
The U.S. criminal justice system seems to be biased against the right.
#17758
> The U.S. criminal justice system seems to be biased against the right.
I saw a Tucker clip recently where a Kyle Rittenhouse lawyer said the guy with the handgun who attempted to murder Rittenhouse, who Rittenhouse shot in the arm, has not been charged.
post from autoadmit regarding left wing indoctrination at a top law school
Date: September 2nd, 2020 1:13 PM
Author: bond XII
I was inspired to write this up after this thread about the Northwestern orientation: http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=4616430&mc=62&forum_id=2
Before orientation we had to take a 120-question survey about our "cultural sensitivity." It asked us how much we agree/disagree with statements like "My culture is [freer / more tolerant / more industrious / etc] than other cultures." It was obviously written to get Americans to say good things about America, but there was a second set of instructions that said if you felt your "culture" wasn't necessarily a country, you could answer the questions about that culture. So America-hating libs were prompted to say nice things about liberal culture.
Once on Zoom, we then did a "self-identification" exercise. In a recorded session of 800+ people, we were told to hold up our name plates every time the speaker said something we agreed with. We would thus see the names and faces of our peers tied to specific beliefs. It started off innocuously enough: "I am excited to start law school." "I am nervous about classes." "I am proud of my family background." Then the typical diversity stuff: "I am first gen / LGBT / black / disabled."
But then they started asking about political beliefs. After the speaker said "I am a feminist" the people whose name plates were raised began glaring at the people who didn't. The next one was "I am an environmentalist" and more name plates were raised, but some people started visibly shaking their heads, and by the end of the prompt, almost everyone had their name plates raised. Then, "I am an antiracist." Even I hesitated at this one, but everyone ended up raising their plates having been conditioned by the previous prompts.
I was reminded of a passage from a book on how CCP prisoners of war were encouraged to write essays to get rewards like cigarettes. Since only essays bashing America won, over time the POWs were conditioned into writing anti-American essays, and subconsciously began to identify more with communism. By the end of the exercise, you could have gotten us to raise our name plates for anything BLM-related.
The final step of the indoctrination was to remind us all about our survey responses. They made a big deal about the science behind the survey, and how some huge longitudinal study had shown its accuracy in detecting racism. Of course, when it instructs people to essentially say nice things about their in-group, it can find "racism" anywhere. When our class was told how racist our survey responses were, some people took it really personally. I saw a few women start crying and turn off video. It felt kind of like a religious ceremony, something out of Scientology. We were all sinners, and the only way to cleanse ourselves of this horrible racism was to follow the teachings of antiracism and commit works in the name of BLM (joining certain activist student groups).
This is a T14 law school committing this kind of emotional blackmail.
http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4616874&forum_id=2#40858293
#17766 +1
#17016 I don't know why you post Daily Stormer stuff. I think you shouldn't be reading them, let alone reposting them.
puzzles
http://thinkingcomplete.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-compendium-of-conundrums.html
i liked some. some are ambiguous or dumb IMO.
https://cacm.acm.org/news/246744-picking-locks-with-audio-technology/fulltext
> security researchers say they have proven that the series of audible, metallic clicks made as a key penetrates a lock can now be deciphered by signal processing software to reveal the precise shape of the sequence of ridges on the key's shaft. Knowing this (the actual cut of your key), a working copy of it can then be three-dimensionally (3D) printed.
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2020/08/youtube-stop-email-new-video-notifications-soon.html
ppl are so bad with email and configuring what they want emails for (which YT offers bad UI tools to help with) that YT disabled all video notification emails
i was using them. they gave me an easy way to save videos for later (leave the email unread). i only had active notifications (hit the bell and choose to receive all notifications) on a limited number of channels where i actually wanted the emails.
#17439
> EMP: Equipping Modern Patriots: A Story of Survival
i read that a while ago. i think it's awful and discredits its author.
Aubrey De Grey Interview - Misconceptions about Global Warming?
https://www.neurohacker.com/transcript-aubrey-de-grey-interview-on-solving-the-aging-problem
Podcast transcript with Aubrey de Grey dated April 1, 2020 (Podcast was released March 5, 2020)
Sub-section of the transcript is titled:
# POTENTIAL PROBLEMS FOR OUR WORLD IF PEOPLE LIVED LONGER
> Dr. Heather Sandison: Well, no, the one that I really want to stop worrying about is climate change. So, can you just talk about how that is easy to solve? Then I can sleep better at night.
> Dr. Aubrey de Grey: Sure. Totally. So, why do we have climate change? People would say, "Because we've got too many people." But that's nonsense. The reason we have climate change is because we have too much pollution. We have too much burning of fossil fuels and too much agriculture and so on. And, hello, we've already got technologies on the way that will be completely ubiquitous and established way before we get these therapies coming along, let alone before the therapies actually have a significant demographic impact. They're going to completely solve that. You know, I mean, renewable energy from wind and so on is already about the same cost to generate as fossil fuels, and getting cheaper all the time because of improved technology. And of course, you've got to worry about energy storage, batteries and so long, but that's also coming down really fast. So, there is no way that fossil fuels are going to carry on even being a thing by 20 years from now, to speak of.
> And of course, the same with agriculture. Artificial meat is already a thing, and 20 years from now, for sure and certain, it's going to be both tastier and cheaper than regular meat. So, again, a huge amount of the source of greenhouse gases will just go away, and not even as a result of people waking up and deciding that climate change is actually quite a bad thing, but rather just because people can make money out of it. You know? And this applies across the board in terms of other pollution, whether it's desalination or whether it's plastic-eating bacteria or whatever. So, the whole idea of overpopulation arises not from not having enough space; it's all about pollution, and it's going away. And there's no...
> Dr. Heather Sandison: That's very reassuring.
----
When Aubrey says:
> You know, I mean, renewable energy from wind and so on is already about the same cost to generate as fossil fuels, and getting cheaper all the time because of improved technology. And of course, you've got to worry about energy storage, batteries and so long, but that's also coming down really fast. So, there is no way that fossil fuels are going to carry on even being a thing by 20 years from now, to speak of.
Does he have a misconception here about the causes of global warming and what potential solutions will look like?
Is it realistic to expect fossil fuels to be gone in 20 years? Is that outcome even desirable for us?
I want to know more about which climate change issues he might be majorly wrong about based on what he's said here.
#17882
> I want to know more about which climate change issues he might be majorly wrong about based on what he's said here.
All of them. Some places to start:
http://curi.us/2241-global-warming-debate
http://curi.us/2231-productive-global-warming-discussion
http://www.moralcaseforfossilfuels.com
test post to look at payload (related to upcoming post)
- Andrew Ryan
Post tests at http://curi.us/2370-formatting-test-thread
Draft about discussion forums
Here's a draft I've just started about discussion forums. I want to make sure my ideas are clear and documented + I'm not missing anything big.
Interested in anyone's feedback - particularly wrt list items. Did I miss anything or put something in the wrong category?
---
Discussion forums are important. Practically, most public discussion happens via discussion forums. The vast majority of *enduring* conversations take place on these forums, and last beyond the life of the website (e.g. via archive.org).
Despite the significance of d.forums, they have not significantly improved beyond newsgroups. The basic model is still: a starting post begins a thread, and discussion takes place via a list of replies. This is still the simplest and safest model used.
Some other models are used from time to time but they have big downsides. Facebook allows replying directly to other replies to a maximum depth of 1. Reddit has a full tree structure but has poor support for navigating that structure. Reddit also locks old posts by default, positively biases comments early in the thread history, and negatively biases deep comments.
There are lots of problems with how comments and posts are ranked, too. In general there's no good way to algorithmically find the *best* posts, though you can find the posts people like to click on, or like to reply to, or want to promote (by upvoting). These aren't useful things if you're interested in the best *discussion*.
What are the things that can offer an improvement over current forums?
### High value features
* Replies to replies
* optional metadata on related posts (sort of like replying to multiple comments)
* Excellent support for quoting, emphasis, links, footnotes
* Copying a message copies emphasis and other markup
* Quotation inline by default (not a top/bottom post system -- that should be an optional way to *render* posts)
* Modest support for rich content
* Anonymous posting / easy to use aliases
* View mode: as tree (ideally with multiple sorting methods)
* View mode: as list (like curi.us)
* Edit history fully public after some threshold (e.g. posters have 1 min to click "undo" like the Gmail feature) -- note: editing at all is not necessary except to like redact PII or something like that.
### Features with some positive value
* A reply should be able to kick off a new thread
* Ideally copying from the page automatically adds a later of quotation
* Reputation and history for all posters (including disposable anons)
* Verified authorship when desired
* Automation compatible design (e.g. traversal/analysis)
Some more things I've added to my draft:
High val features:
* Server side rendering
* Rendering method supports arbitrarily deep discussions (even if there's something like pagination going on)
* Ctrl+F **always** works (no collapsing)
* Archives easy and accessible
Nice to haves
* Context provided by default when permalinking
* Collapsible tree nav (never by default)
* Easy to traverse history of a reply
* Cryptographic ID support (e.g PGP/simple ECDSA)
> * Edit history fully public after some threshold (e.g. posters have 1 min to click "undo" like the Gmail feature) -- note: editing at all is not necessary except to like redact PII or something like that.
It's bad to encourage people's habit of doing an reread/editing-pass on their post right after sending. If they're going to do that, they should do it right before sending instead.
People with reasonable behaviors shouldn't be expected to catch PII problems in a short time window after submitting a post that were not caught earlier. That's a bad safety mechanism.
And it causes trouble for anyone who sees the post pre-edit. If you're going to have a short edit window, don't show the post to anyone else until that window is over. This can be done manually by just not submitting it until the editing window of their choice (e.g. it can be 10m or 10h if they prefer) is over.
If people are rereading posts right after submission because they want to see the final formatting, the solution would be better previewing features.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7327501/couple-no-home-no-kids-spouses-ontario-court/
> A wealthy businessman will have to pay more than $50,000 a month in spousal support for 10 years to a woman with whom he had a long-term romantic relationship even though they kept separate homes and had no children together, Ontario’s top court has ruled.
#17971
> It's bad to encourage people's habit of doing an reread/editing-pass on their post right after sending.
I don't think it needs to be encouragement. I agree ppl should take more responsibility tho and not rely on these sorta features.
I think I'll move it from 'high value' to 'nice to have'
The reason I think it's still good to have:
* prevents destruction of means of correcting mistakes
* cheap / easy to do
* can be turned on and off
* allows for a more 'practice friendly' environment (we're still fallible)
> And it causes trouble for anyone who sees the post pre-edit.
I was thinking it prevents publication - so there is no pre-edit as such (except like on the poster's computer).
I realise I put the "undo" type feature in with the "edit history public" feature, which contradicts the previous sentence. I was unclear/wrong in the original dot-point I posted in that regard.
> If people are rereading posts right after submission because they want to see the final formatting, the solution would be better previewing features.
That's another good one to add to nice to haves.
> https://globalnews.ca/news/7327501/couple-no-home-no-kids-spouses-ontario-court/
>> A wealthy businessman will have to pay more than $50,000 a month in spousal support for 10 years to a woman with whom he had a long-term romantic relationship even though they kept separate homes and had no children together, Ontario’s top court has ruled.
> https://globalnews.ca/news/7327501/couple-no-home-no-kids-spouses-ontario-court/
>> A wealthy businessman will have to pay more than $50,000 a month in spousal support for 10 years to a woman with whom he had a long-term romantic relationship even though they kept separate homes and had no children together, Ontario’s top court has ruled.
My text fell off.
He even tried too cover this kind of theft to no avail.
> he insisted she sign a marriage contract and came up with several drafts. She refused.
> he insisted she sign a marriage contract and came up with several drafts. She refused.
Shouldn't have married her, then.
> > he insisted she sign a marriage contract and came up with several drafts. She refused.
> Shouldn't have married her, then.
Should have read the article.
>>> he insisted she sign a marriage contract and came up with several drafts. She refused.
>> Shouldn't have married her, then.
> Should have read the article.
Being a jerk about it isn't going to help.
>>> Shouldn't have married her, then.
>> Should have read the article.
> Being a jerk about it isn't going to help.
I posted both #17976 and #17977 - which I don't think came across (because they were both under Anon).
I opened the link in a new tab, wrote 17976, read the first 2 paragraphs (realising my mistake), then posted 17977.
I should have said I was the same poster, though.
#17979 You, like most people, do not have the skill to do single use anon's.
It's hard enough to communicate instead of assuming people can read your mind, and do share your background knowledge, when you give your name and have a reputation (so they at leave have a chance). It's much harder when you are hiding your past discussion history. You have to communicate more and better to make that work. *And* you have to make every post offer more immediate value or you'll get ignored more than you would for posts attached to a reputation.
You ~all ought to pick a name and change it infrequently and probably tell me when you change it.
> #17979 You, like most people, do not have the skill to do single use anon's.
#17980 That's fair. Thank you for the feedback.
I've been too careless when posting as anon.
#17732 I also like Historia Civilis. I highly recommend his series on Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire
* Julius Caesar playlist - A subset of the Roman Empire playlist, though at least one video (Caesar's funeral) is missing. I think this series is basically completed, too.
* Roman Empire playlist - I'd suggest this over the Caesar playlist for those who have more time or are interested in the wider political context and fallout after Caesar's assassination.
I knew very little before watching the above, and I didn't realise how enjoyable history could be. HC changed my mind on that.
#17990 One thing I dislike about the default of posting as Anon is that sometimes I'll forget to put my name in the author field, esp if replying to a post. I posted the above. I'm not sure how to prevent this besides paying more attention, using grease-monkey, or making a browser plugin.
#17991 I think I used to inadvertently leave the Author field blank more often than I do now. I've started getting in the habit of filling in the Author field first, which helps, but I still forget sometimes, especially when I compose my comment in a separate editor window. Using a Greasemonkey script (or something similar) would be an acceptable workaround, IMO.
A Failure of Civility
"A Failure of Civility" is a 2012 book by Mike Garand and Jack Lawson that argues that the best way to survive an SHTF scenario for many people living in urban or suburban areas is to band together in advance and create what the book calls a Neighborhood Protection Plan (NPP). An NPP is basically a military-style approach to defending an area of your neighborhood or a high-rise building in the event of a SHTF scenario (what the book calls a "failure of civility"). You have patrols, guards, watches, etc. Different people play different roles in the NPP depending on their skills and inclinations.
The book talks about lots of things, including:
- how you need to have a 24/7 watch over your perimeter
- how many people are required to defend a location, depending on whether you have an isolated farmhouse or a larger section of a neighborhood (even for an isolated farmhouse they say you need at least 6 people)
- how to block all but one of the entrances to the area inside your "protective perimeter"
- how to approach your neighbors to get the ball rolling for the NPP before the SHTF
The book has one chapter on securing a region in a low-rise residential neighborhood and another chapter on securing a high-rise building.
It says one of the critical things for long-term survival is having a water source in or near your location.
Fire prevention is apparently a big deal post-SHTF. So is disease prevention, which requires sanitation measures like burying dead bodies deep enough and safely disposing of urine and fecal matter. Also, any outsider who comes to your NPP is potentially a vector for disease.
The book has a lot of info, is clearly written in simple language, and is well organized. It does a great job explaining stuff in a way a beginner can understand, without overloading the reader with info. For example, it talks about how when you need to move as a team when people are shooting at you, you have some people fire at the enemy so the enemy has to stay behind cover, while other people move, then once the other people reach some cover, they fire at the enemy so people in the first group can move, and so on. I guess when a guy shouts "cover me" in the movies, that's what he's referring to: fire at the enemy to impair their ability to fire so the guy can move. I never knew that before.
One of the authors, Jack Lawson, just came out with what seems to be an updated version of the book, called the Civil Defense Manual ( http://civildefensemanual.com ). I ordered it.
#18012 Preface to all my comments: I am not a prepping expert. What I do know is fairly tailored to my personal situation and preferences. YMMV.
> SHTF scenario
There are many different SHTF scenarios. What works well in one doesn't necessarily help much in others.
I think it's important to have a good grasp of the possible scenarios, what would and wouldn't work in them, the costs of various forms of preparation, and which of the workable strategies you're willing and able to prepare to implement.
Here's what I personally think about at a high level.
There are some relatively mild scenarios where I just want my normal life to be able to handle them with minimal or no changes. Crime, lack of timely or effective police response, some supply shortages / interruptions, and the rioting and burning that's happened in many cities (including a limited amount in mine) are all in this category. COVID itself has also turned out to be mostly in this category.
There are some relatively short duration infrastructure, supply and services disruption scenarios I prep for. Natural disasters are the model (tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes), though some man-made scenarios also fit here (some kinds of terrorism and conflict).
There are some longer term localized disruption and danger scenarios for which my primary prep is the ability to leave the area in relative speed and comfort, with places to go already pre-arranged. My primary unaddressed vulnerability here is with scenarios that would prevent me from leaving safely while self-protecting with only relatively normal arms (pistols, rifles, etc). I don't prep anything more for that because of cost reasons.
There are some political scenarios such as oppressive / totalitarian government for which my prep is to leave for a different political jurisdiction in which I have residency rights. Again the main vulnerability here is something that would prevent me from leaving. Which could happen but is difficult to prepare for beyond some basics like having different forms of money and different exit modes planned.
There are some economic scenarios such as hyper-inflation, currency crisis, unemployment, major taxation, or property confiscation which I am, to a good extent, prepared for. Any of it that goes on long enough / bad enough to sink me economically would almost certainly cause enough follow-on problems first that the scenario would cease to be primarily economic in nature.
There are some severe scenarios for which I have preps to avoid some of the immediate impacts but for which my long term approach would have to be determined after the event and my preps would realistically be inadequate. Targeted assault, EMP and nuclear detonation are the main ones in this category.
My list of prepared scenarios *does not* include widespread failure of civilization. For some people, that is most or all of what they mean by "SHTF scenario", and since I don't prep for that they wouldn't even classify me as a prepper. Which is fine - I'm not attached to the label.
I don't prep for widespread failure of civilization for two related reasons:
- Cost: I believe preparing for such a scenario is necessarily either ineffective or extremely costly. Ineffective preparation is mostly wasted (you prepared and the scenario occurred but your preps didn't actually help much). I think most preppers are in the ineffective category. They have key unaddressed vulnerabilities that render the rest of their preps near useless. Some peppers do plan a lot, spend a bunch of resources and could be effective for some reasonable period of time in a civilization failure scenario, but I think they're a small minority.
- Preference: Most of the widespread civilization failure scenarios result in long term life situations I regard as a fate worse than death or something nearly so. As a result, the value to me of surviving, say, a tornado greatly exceeds the value to me of surviving a widespread civilizational failure. So even if they were equally likely (which I don't think they are), I'm willing to put many more resources towards surviving tornados than I am towards surviving civilization failure.
Because prepping for widespread failure of civilization is both high cost and low value to me, I don't do it, and I explicitly recognize that I am not prepared for a widespread failure of civilization.
#18012 I haven't read the book, so maybe he addresses this but:
> the best way to survive an SHTF scenario for many people living in urban or suburban areas is to band together in advance and create what the book calls a Neighborhood Protection Plan (NPP).
IMO this sounds like a good example of an extremely costly and probably ineffective prep.
Unless you take extraordinary steps your neighbors are, for practical purposes, random with an average knowledge, skill, principle, and moral level not much different from the average in the population as a whole. Which is good in some respects - they're unlikely to be murderers, rapists, or outright thieves. But they *are* likely to be shallow, dishonest (to themselves as well as others), gossips, fickle, lazy, have low standards, lots of bad political ideas, tons of family drama, etc.
If you want your neighbors to be significantly better people than average you have to pay a lot of location premium for the privilege, especially in urban or suburban areas. A house in a legitimately (no bullshit) great neighborhood costs at least 2X, probably more like 4X-10X, what a house of similar size and amenities in an average neighborhood costs. Such neighborhoods are also hard to find, since price alone is not a reliable indicator. Lots of pricy neighborhoods select for authoritarian aesthiticists, conspicuous consumers, social status seekers, or some combination thereof rather than people who are legitimately better than average at the kinds of things you care about in prepping for SHTF.
So you either spend a lot of time & research & money to acquire a spot in a significantly better than average neighborhood, or you get average.
NPP in an average neighborhood is just flat out not going to happen IMO. You won't get a critical mass of people to actually commit to what it takes over time. When it comes to stuff like this average people are a bunch of flakes and morons.
Let's suppose you bear all the costs to get better than average neighbors though. Now you talk to your above-average neighbors enough for them to start trusting you (maybe you like that sort of activity, but I don't and consider it another big cost). You eventually bring up this NPP. Since they're better than average neighbors, we'll assume they don't mostly just laugh at you, or decide they'd rather spend the money on booze, or figure your interest in the end times makes you a great potential convert to their particular religious sect. They actually talk seriously about the NPP, and maybe some agree to do some stuff in advance beyond what ex: Neighborhood Watch already does.
Then you gotta do the prepping stuff. I'm not sure what the author specifically recommends, but if you don't train together regularly you'll be ineffective when the time comes to act. You gotta keep this training up regularly, for years, or it goes stale. You gotta coordinate among all the things going on in your life, and all your neighbor's lives. You gotta bring in new neighbors who move in when others move out. It better be, at least, a significant ongoing hobby.
Suppose you do all that then the SHTF. Time to put all your planning and preparation into action. Except, neighbor Joe who has half the barricade supplies was on vacation when it happened and the person he had watering his plants (with the key) doesn't live in the neighborhood and doesn't know about the NPP. And Steve and Mary's son is recently woke and thinks it's totally wrong to seal off the neighborhood so is going to secretly undermine the activity any way he can. So you gotta watch him like an outsider while permitting him to be an insider. Or (somehow?) kick the whole family out? And Bob's cousin lives just two blocks over and wants in, but Lou knows that guy is his brother-in-law's boss and is definitely an asshole. So now Bob and Lou aren't speaking. Meanwhile Ray's wife Sue never liked the idea of an NPP to begin with but silently went along figuring it would never matter. Now that SHTF has actually happened she just wants to leave for her mother's place, and if she leaves Ray (the paramedic) leaves too. And Jack is still recovering from the gall bladder surgery he had last week, so can't do his expected jobs. And between all those absences there aren't enough people to man the perimeter and we have no medic. And so on.
There's a real good chance that whatever adversely affected the local cops to the point of rendering them wholly ineffective is also going to adversely affect the members of your NPP.
In any realistic SHTF scenario I think there's going to be too much damage and personal drama for any reasonably sized neighborhood to be effective at much. Military units composed of healthy 20-somethings separated from family commitments, wearing uniforms, training and working together as a full time job struggle with unit effectiveness in things like maintaining a secure perimeter 24/7. Even an above average neighborhood is going to be a basket case. IMO.
Plus your neighborhood perimeter is now a big, obvious target. Your whole neighborhood becomes a target of choice. Must be lots of goodies in there if all those people coordinated and planned well enough to set all that up.
I think you have *your* house, hopefully *your* immediate family members, and that's all you can expect to rely on unless you are part of some kind of intentional prepper community (which won't be in an urban area to begin with).
Make sure that, externally, your house doesn't look much different from anyone else's house. You want to look a little more secure than average so you don't get a bunch of opportunistic probes but otherwise look like one of the hundreds of other houses in the area, so that no one has reason to target you in particular or think you have a bunch of stuff worth taking.
In terms of resources: How much time & money could you put into selecting and unobtrusively fortifying and stocking a house in an average neighborhood, and equipping and training your family, for what it costs to move to a neighborhood where your neighbors might possibly maybe be able to be effective and then coordinating things for years to try to maximize that?
I think the answer is: you could do a ton of stuff to your house, buy a bunch of weapons, take classes for you and your family, get a bug-out vehicle, tons of supplies, etc. and have money and time left over compared to trying to have an actually effective strategy involving neighbors.
#18012
> Fire prevention is apparently a big deal post-SHTF.
It's a big deal all the time.
I don't understand why people routinely live in wood frame houses when the premium for masonry is relatively modest. A brick house + stainless steel screens & a tile or metal roof is not fire proof but is way less prone to intentional, natural, or accidental burning than wood frame construction and bare windows. Not to mention termites!
Fire extinguishers are cheap and various types should be plentiful around the house, checked / recharged regularly.
Don't use natural gas, or know where the shutoff is & how to shut it off, and do so whenever fire is a concern.
Make sure your electric breakers are working, appropriately sized, and are easy to shut off when needed.
> how you need to have a 24/7 watch over your perimeter
I think this is true if your perimeter is too large and permeable for passive threat detection and response (certainly anything bigger than a house) -or- if you are a target of choice rather than a target of opportunity.
I think I'm relatively safe without 24/7 watch if my perimeter is my house, it's difficult to get in silently, getting in noisily without very special equipment is slow enough for me to respond, and no one is targeting me in particular.
> It says one of the critical things for long-term survival is having a water source in or near your location.
Ya, but you need to match that source to your planned time frame and processing capability. A 40 gallon water heater has enough for about a week if you're only drinking and cooking with it, and requires zero processing. A 10,000 gallon swimming pool with a cover will last for months but requires filtration capable of removing both chemicals and biological contamination. The effectiveness of rain barrels depends on the location and season, but also require filtration for biologicals. Natural sources like streams and wells are unlimited, but probably require filtration and are quite scarce in some locations.
> For example, it talks about how when you need to move as a team when people are shooting at you, you have some people fire at the enemy so the enemy has to stay behind cover, while other people move, then once the other people reach some cover, they fire at the enemy so people in the first group can move, and so on.
Lol the book should be talking about how to avoid situations where people are shooting. And if that fails, how to avoid situations where people are shooting at you. And if that fails, how to avoid situations where you need to move as a team when people are shooting at you. If you get to the point of needing to move from cover while people are shooting at you, you failed really really badly and your risk of death is super high.
I'm interested in getting some home workout equipment but am concerned about comfort given existing knee issues. A local gym has a "membership for a day" program that lets you visit the gym for a single day. Would it be dumb for me to use this program to try out various machines in order to gather information for a purchasing decision, given COVID? Is there a better solution to my problem?
> - Cost: I believe preparing for such a scenario is necessarily either ineffective or extremely costly. Ineffective preparation is mostly wasted (you prepared and the scenario occurred but your preps didn't actually help much). I think most preppers are in the ineffective category. They have key unaddressed vulnerabilities that render the rest of their preps near useless. Some peppers do plan a lot, spend a bunch of resources and could be effective for some reasonable period of time in a civilization failure scenario, but I think they're a small minority.
This reminds me of people with ideas, like Solmononoff Induction, or their pet theory on how to make an AGI, or tons of other sophisticated-sounding philosophy stuff. They have key unaddressed flaws that render their view as a whole near useless. But they ignore that and view themselves as doing their best and think that's good. They don't want to consider that reality doesn't grade on a curve and there's no A for effort (themes emphasized by EY in RAZ btw), and you need to look at objectively whether your stuff will actually accomplish your goals, and if your goals are out of reach with known methods too bad.
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Overall I liked and agreed with lots of your comments Andy D. Seems like a reasonable and competent pov to me.
Although I think it's interesting in some ways and not all wrong, I think prepper stuff is mostly pretty bad and dumb, and a lot is related to dumb fantasies. And if you're going to have escapist fantasies, i suggest reading novels where some *good* things happen instead of fantasizing about disasters and spending a bunch of money on the matter too.
The purpose of the Neighborhood Protection Plan is fantasy. You socialize with other people fantasizing about how badass you'll be protecting your homes with military tactics. It is reasonably realistic to get some other guys to share those fantasies and hang out with you, and some additional people to pay lip service to it, especially since preppers do not live in random places. While their neighbors will be pretty average in lots of ways, like you talk about, they will tend to have neighbors who are more open to prepping or combat training, at least as a fantasy. So while it could easily fail, I think a decent number of book readers could get a few buddies to agree to read the book, and to talk about stuff over beers, etc. And then the book readers will lie to themselves that they have an NPP and enjoy the social legitimacy for their prepper ideas and be happy.
Then you can all read books about how preppers save the day (with specific scenes designed for each prep to come in handy) and save all the women in town from the rape dungeon (actual plot from a wish fulfillment book that the Prepper poster recommended above) and feel even better about yourselves.
*EMP: Equipping Modern Patriots: A Story of Survival*:
> Yesterday morning we set an ambush and captured Mr. Andrews and his men on their way into town and we marched them back to his retreat to rescue this man's daughter. We found her in his basement, chained to a bed along with six other young girls who had been abused and raped repeatedly over the last months. I cannot describe or adequately put into words the atrocious conditions these young women were found in. Along with the aid of Sheriff Branson, we have brought Mr. Andrews and his men before you to stand trial and face the consequences of their actions.
Themes like "once the police go away, lots of people become rapists" and "only preppers can protect effectively against rapists" and "none of the preppers will become rapists themselves" are pretty common in prepper books.
#18013
> I think it's important to have a good grasp of the possible scenarios...
*A Failure of Civility* categorizes societal conditions on a spectrum from "Normal Civility" to a "Failure of Civility":
> The Authors define *Normal Civility* as the time when there is a functioning effort of law and order, where a judicial system is the civilized method of dispute resolution between people, when there is a functioning commerce, when there is a working government maintaining essential services and when people are not fighting over Critical Life Supplies and Services [particularly food and water] to sustain their and their family’s daily existence.
> A *Catastrophic Event* is an event that will interrupt your normal life and that of the majority of people around you... it may progress to cause extreme suffering and death. [A few of the 20 or so examples they give include:] Financial collapse ... [Nuclear or solar] EMP... pandemic...
> The Authors define an *Area Emergency* as the condition after which a Catastrophic Event has occurred, but Critical Life Supplies and Services are available to all people just as they were during Normal Civility. There may be damage to property, infrastructure damage, or commerce and everyday life may be temporarily disrupted.
> The Authors define a *Crisis* as Critical Life Supplies and Services being either rationed or controlled but are sufficient for all people of the area affected or assistance from outside areas will prevent a Long Term Crisis until enabling the return to Normal Civility. This is a worse condition than an Area Emergency where all Critical Life Supplies and Services are available as they were during Normal Civility without disruption.
> The Authors define a *Long Term Crisis* as when the duration of the Crisis has begun to exhaust the Critical Life Supplies and Services. What Critical Life Supplies and Services exist are being rationed but reduced in amount below normal demand. There are shortages or an insufficient amount for some or all people of the affected area before further Critical Life Supplies and Services can be obtained. This is a worse condition than a Crisis where all Critical Life Supplies and Services are being either rationed or controlled but are sufficient for all people of the area affected.
> The Authors define A *Failure of Civility* as the condition in which some or all Critical Life Supplies and Services are either insufficient or exhausted for the majority of people.
Note: most emphasis in the original was lost in my copy & paste; however, I have retained the emphasis on each term as it was being defined.
> concerned about comfort given existing knee issues.
What have you done to directly try to address the knee issues themselves? If you haven’t tried to fix the things *causing* you knee issues addressing this might be a good thing to do first. Try to see if any of these things help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbe_DqMJfzg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YYb9vyj6zQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iODncOLJnk
>> concerned about comfort given existing knee issues.
> What have you done to directly try to address the knee issues themselves? If you haven’t tried to fix the things *causing* you knee issues addressing this might be a good thing to do first. Try to see if any of these things help:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbe_DqMJfzg
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YYb9vyj6zQ
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iODncOLJnk
I did in-person physical therapy sessions for a while recently and have been doing exercises from that + trying other stuff I've found on YT. I am familiar with the videos you linked. I've been working on this issue for several months.
> I did in-person physical therapy sessions for a while recently and have been doing exercises from that + trying other stuff I've found on YT. I am familiar with the videos you linked. I've been working on this issue for several months.
Ok.
Have you tried sport taping? It will not fix the cause of the knee issues but dependign on the knee issue it might reduce the pain for the time being. So might be of interest to add to the knee exercises if your knee exercises are helping.
Random videos of sport taping:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sport+tape+knee&FORM=HDRSC3
#18017
> This reminds me of people with ideas, like Solmononoff Induction, or their pet theory on how to make an AGI, or tons of other sophisticated-sounding philosophy stuff. They have key unaddressed flaws that render their view as a whole near useless. But they ignore that and view themselves as doing their best and think that's good. They don't want to consider that reality doesn't grade on a curve and there's no A for effort (themes emphasized by EY in RAZ btw), and you need to look at objectively whether your stuff will actually accomplish your goals, and if your goals are out of reach with known methods too bad.
Regarding AGI, I think it's possible for currently known and applied methods to meet some common but unstated goals like:
- Be seen as or feel like you're working on something important.
- Make a bunch of money by supplying the market's demand for investments making socially credible claims of doing world-changing work in tech.
- Write fun or useful programs which aren't AGI but can fool most people about being meaningfully closer than previous efforts.
In meeting such goals it seems to me that belief, requiring some combination of ignorance + self dishonesty, would be helpful.
> The purpose of the Neighborhood Protection Plan is fantasy.
Makes sense. It's not the kind of fantasy I find appealing though. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything good by rejecting it.
Whereas with AGI I still have the idea I missed out on opportunities to achieve the goals I listed above and be happy with those results despite not actually succeeding at AGI. I haven't fully and successfully criticized the idea that I'd have been better off maintaining the fantasy that known methods were capable of producing AGI.
> meet some common but unstated goals like
I agree.
> Makes sense. It's not the kind of fantasy I find appealing though. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything good by rejecting it.
Yeah, I think it's bad.
> I haven't fully and successfully criticized the idea that I'd have been better off maintaining the fantasy that known methods were capable of producing AGI.
It depends significantly on what you do instead.
You're describing an option where you wouldn't have done anything very significant (re global optima), but would have done some stuff that got you money and social status, and which could be fun/clever to do (local optima) when you didn't realize how useless it was.
If you compare that to e.g. a job/life where you more honestly don't do much, and make less money and have lower social status, I could see why you'd remain conflicted. Where are the positive benefits from that extra truth and honesty? Certainly there are benefits to being a better more honest thinker, but if you don't get *concrete* benefits then it's easier to have doubts.
Whereas if better knowing the truth led to doing actually-significant work, or to some better path to getting money/status/other-values, then it'd be easier to evaluate.
It's also more clearly beneficial if you become a better and more honest thinker about *all* or *many* issues, and easier to doubt the benefits if you think better about AGI specifically (leading to a lost career path, but not to any AGI process) while *not* thinking much better about other stuff.
#18026
> Whereas if better knowing the truth led to doing actually-significant work, or to some better path to getting money/status/other-values, then it'd be easier to evaluate.
Makes sense. That hasn't happened yet, and I don't know if it will.
>> I did in-person physical therapy sessions for a while recently and have been doing exercises from that + trying other stuff I've found on YT. I am familiar with the videos you linked. I've been working on this issue for several months.
> Ok.
> Have you tried sport taping? It will not fix the cause of the knee issues but dependign on the knee issue it might reduce the pain for the time being. So might be of interest to add to the knee exercises if your knee exercises are helping.
> Random videos of sport taping:
> https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sport+tape+knee&FORM=HDRSC3
been meaning to try it for a while, finally got around to it. had a problem - i think cuz my legs are very hair the tape didn't stay in place and curled up.
#18018
> *A Failure of Civility* categorizes societal conditions on a spectrum from "Normal Civility" to a "Failure of Civility"
Sounds bad.
One reason it sounds lake a bad way to think is that I don't need to prep for "societal conditions" directly, but only insofar as they may affect my personal conditions. And that varies a lot.
For example if I'm diabetic and need regular insulin that spoils without refrigeration, I'm in deep shit if I'm not prepared for my electricity to be off for a few days. Or if no new insulin supplies are available for a few weeks. That's true for me even if the rest of society is functioning approximately normally, there's plenty of food & water, police and courts functioning etc.
Conversely, if there's a severe, long-term water shortage but I've got a *secret* water well in my basement, I may be fine even though most of my society is quite desperate.
Another reason it sounds like a bad way to think is that both societal and individual conditions exist across many relevant dimensions and can't be adequately represented by a single spectrum. Some of the dimensions I have in mind are:
- Physical infrastructure (how damaged?)
- Information infrastructure (how comprehensive? how available?)
- Area (are problems happening only local, or national or global?)
- Supply status (are there lots of available supplies or are there major shortages?)
- Legitimacy (is there consensus on who is legitimately the government?)
- Tyranny (is the government trying to oppress some people?)
- Health status (are people basically healthy or are many people sick or injured?)
- Outlook (is it reasonably expected for things to get better soon or not for a long time?)
- Economy (do people have a functioning money and price system?)
- Conflicting ideologies (are people trying to impose ideologies on each other, or just trying to live?)
Preparing to handle even quite dire conditions on one dimension does not necessarily prepare you to handle even moderately disrupted conditions on others.
> Another reason it sounds like a bad way to think is that both societal and individual conditions exist across many relevant dimensions and can't be adequately represented by a single spectrum.
Multiple dimensions that don't convert into a single, unified spectrum/unit/ranking is one of my themes of Yes or No Philosophy. (idk if you had that connection in mind). I agree it applies here. I think your list is a good example.
> For example if I'm diabetic and need regular insulin that spoils without refrigeration, I'm in deep shit if I'm not prepared for my electricity to be off for a few days.
This reminds me of some stuff in BoI about knowledge and life support.
I wonder how many people with an NPP have a health condition like this (esp type 1 diabetes), or require regular medication. Do they include things like keeping a supply of pigs on hand to manufacture insulin from? Or maybe they have a lab set up to handle GMO e.coli/yeast cultures (plus the filtration, etc)?
I suspect not.
I think part of the problem with over-prepping is that most "failure of civility" (FoC) situations are either big and man-made (nukes, bio-weapons) or big and not man-made (gamma ray burst, meteor, volcano). Prepping generally doesn't help with the *actual* problems (which are due to a lack of knowledge). I think if preppers where really really serious about this sort of stuff happening they'd put more effort in to preventing it (there'd be more evidence of that, too).
Personally I'd prefer to put work into preventing bad things, rather than ending up better off after bad things have happened. I can't solve every problem, but I might be able to contribute to some. If everyone does that (given the degree of specialization ppl have) it seems like a reasonable way for society to avoid FoC situations. And it lines up well with other goals we have, like having a specialized and/or rewarding job.
(Note: I think we can do a lot better avoid FoC situations. Resources dedicated to global warming alarmism is a good example. Better to spend it on e.g. figuring out how to better deal with forest fires; or even just educate ppl on stuff like why a bit of smoke a few times a year/decade from back-burning is a good idea. I'm not sure what the situation is in SW USA, but back-burning is one of the main preventative measures in Australia and ppl complain about it whenever it happens, despite it significantly reducing the risk of an uncontrolled fire destroying their house.)
I mention *over*-prepping particularly b/c stuff like having a go-bag seems reasonable; a large collection of firearms and military grade rations/supplies seems like a waste of money.
That said, I think that's one reason ppl get in to prepping and (some of them) have some of the associated fantasies: it involves stuff they like, e.g. shooting/guns, camping, low-tech high-utility tools and knowledge, a feeling of self sufficiency and competence, etc. Do preppers get much of those things elsewhere? If not, I think it makes sense for them to--in essence--have a shared hobby like this. It lets them do the stuff they like. Some of the associated context/fear-mongering is bad (and dishonest) but prepping does solve a real need for them; just not the one they claim it does.
#18035 I didn't have any connection to Yes or No Philosophy explicitly in mind.
I also don't know if I got the idea of many dimensions vs. a spectrum from Yes or No and forgot the connection, or if I got it somewhere else.
My intuition is that I got it somewhere else, and didn't connect it to Yes or No because when I saw it there I already knew it.
But that could easily be incorrect because I don't remember getting it anywhere else, and I don't remember coming up with it on my own either.
>>> I did in-person physical therapy sessions for a while recently and have been doing exercises from that + trying other stuff I've found on YT. I am familiar with the videos you linked. I've been working on this issue for several months.
>> Ok.
>> Have you tried sport taping? It will not fix the cause of the knee issues but dependign on the knee issue it might reduce the pain for the time being. So might be of interest to add to the knee exercises if your knee exercises are helping.
>> Random videos of sport taping:
>> https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sport+tape+knee&FORM=HDRSC3
> been meaning to try it for a while, finally got around to it. had a problem - i think cuz my legs are very hair the tape didn't stay in place and curled up.
Anon with knee issue from previous posts here. I decided to go by KneeAnon
I found the exercise in this video pretty demanding.
https://youtu.be/kB8OBFM_vWg
I liked the clear, straightforward explanation of what to do and variations. Too many YT exercise vids have lots of buildup and social stuff but this vid seemed okay as far as that
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1306089478612688896
https://twitter.com/GarettJones/status/1306320698655141889
> When deciding where to work, mobile elites place a lot of weight on state tax rates, so little surprise.
> Doesn't happen overnight, so shortsighted voters barely notice as the trickle eventually floods the basement.
The tweet also has a picture of text from a study about this and a link about Ben Shapiro moving his company out of California and blaming the government.
a compilation of parody news posts by noted autoadmit poster evan39 http://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=3642714&mc=72&forum_id=2
https://www.tiktok.com/@chlsymusic/video/6871075029979876613
Girls makes video mocking coronavirus conspiracy theories. Deletes within a day because too mean.
Netflix screen records it and puts it in a documentary, with her handle. But they only include the part where she describes a conspiracy theory, without the mocking. They present her as advocating the thing she was attacking.
dad jokes = jokes that are not mean and not dirty
(i'm anonymously stealing credit for something my friend told me and they got it from some reddit thread they read years ago)
i want to read all of the fallibleideas.com and then after that read fallibleideas.com/life
i dont really have much of a plan other than: dont read to many of them in the same day.
maybe i could try doing some reading practice on some of them, the main practice im thinking of is: reading a sentence, saying what i think the sentence meant, then re reading it and seeing if i think i accurately remembered what it meant. i think this kind of practice helps with remembering/knowing what things meant.
i might only do the sentence remembering practice every few sentences or if it seems especially important cuz i think it could more than double the time it takes to read an article if i do it for every sentence. if i dont mind it taking to long then i think i could do it for every sentence
----
to get a sense for how long it would take to read all the articles i:
- opened fallibleideas.com/
- opened in new tab every second article in each paragraph
- i then pressed CTRL A to select all the text on the page
- then CTRL C to copy all the text
- then CTRL V to paste each article into wordcounter.net
at 350 WPM the 8 article i copied would take 22 minutes to read. 22min / 8 articles = 2.75 min per article. 2.75min x 34 (the total number of articles) = 93.5min
so an hour and a half to read every article at 350 WPM
i think i read at about 300 WPM
idk how to do the math to figure out how long it would take to read at 300 WPM so im just gonna put every article into the word counter and see how that goes:
ok total reading time is 153 minutes at 350WPM instead of the 93.5 minutes i calculated
at 300WPM that would be 172 minutes
at 150WPM it would be 356 minutes (172 x 2 is supposed to be 344. i dont understand why this is 356 instead of 344 but im gonna move on for now)
----
ok so reading all the articles would take about 6 hours minimum if i did the practice for every sentence, not including the time it would take say what i think the idea is outloud before i re-read the sentence. also not including the time it could take for me to see an idea, then stop reading and think about it for a few minutes.
what things take time? reading a sentence, saying the idea i read outloud, re-reading the sentence, pauses i take to think about something for a few seconds or a minute.
i think saying what i think the sentence i read meant, would take as much time as reading the sentence for hte first itme.
i feel like reading the articles would be about 4 hours if i dont do any of the practice and 8~9 hours if i do the practice all the time. main thing im unsure about is how much time am i gonna spend not reading.
> i want to read all of the fallibleideas.com and then after that read fallibleideas.com/life
> i dont really have much of a plan other than: dont read to many of them in the same day.
FYI u could import the first ebook here (which has the FI articles) into Voice Dream Reader and then read them using that
http://curi.us/ebooks
In TMS Live Stream with Matt Bracken - 3PM EST August 15th 2020 @ 1:59:34, Matt Bracken says, regarding where to move:
> And preferably, look for a state which is conservative all the way from from your county sheriff to the mayor, to the county to the... at every level [so] that you don't have a situation where, yeah, my mayor is pretty solid, but the DA is a communist. And every time the mayor tries to do something, or the police chief arrests these guys, the communist DA just says, "no charges".
> So, it's better than being in Portland. Portland is like a worst case. You have communist, communist, communist, communist from the local to the state governor. So when you move and, if you have a choice, like, if you're moving to North Carolina, don't move to Asheville, okay? Asheville is like the Austin of North Carolina.
> So, even in a great state like North Carolina, look for the county where it's like, you know, a military veteran is the mayor, you know, a former Special Forces guy is the police chief. And I'm not saying it's 100%, but I do look for Special Operations qualifications or SWAT team. If I see a guy is former SWAT team, I see he's a former Army Ranger captain, he's a former Blackhawk pilot, Apache pilot, I'm thinking, it's not very likely this guy is sympathetic to the communists. Even if he's, you know, 35 years old, he's generally going to be a pretty solid guy. Because, like, there's nothing like being a war fighter to ground you in reality. And I'm not saying that some of these guys that came out of our wars didn't go in the communist direction. Some of them do. But if I have to just pick between, you know, a candidate for mayor who has a liberal arts degree from a liberal college, and some guy with a community college degree who spent his 20s in the Army Rangers, I'm picking the Ranger. Period. You know, that's the way to vote. And that's where you want to move. You want to move where people like that are going to be, you know, your Sheriff mayor, all the way up to Governor.
That sounds like good advice.
#18083
> dad jokes = jokes that are not mean and not dirty
I dunno about that. I googled for dad jokes and found this page
examples:
> 1. Child: ‘Dad, can you make me a sandwich!’ Dad: ‘Poof, You’re a sandwich!’
> 2. Child: 'Can I watch the TV?' Dad: 'Yes, but don’t turn it on'.
> 4. Anytime I do something smart my dad says, ‘Wow, you’re a fart smella…I mean smart fella!’
I think these could be seen as mean. There are elements of dishonesty, deliberate misinterpretation, and coercion.
Lemmings following each other off cliffs is fake news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNtpWSRF6o8
I started watching chess again a few weeks ago and I'm enjoying it a lot. I noticed the commentators are much better than for any other sports or esports that I'm aware of. There are commentators explaining the game who are way better than me and say stuff I don't know and look a bunch of moves ahead. Other games often have commentators who are either worse than me or dumbing it down, but I'm way way above average at chess skill and they are saying lots of things I can learn from.
My favorites to watch are from the Saint Louis Chess Club. Here's a recent tournament:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPNaE_P44DY&list=PLVWaFpMwtaGhqGvV2hyswDubBJQNAQxnh
And there are also educational lectures. The best teacher IMO is Caleb Denby, who is not as strong a player (better than me but not a grand master like a lot of them), but has some teaching knowledge. example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru_53S3HbyM
Todays' Girls Chase newsletter has info about typical numbers of attempts guys need to get outcomes. I think it's good to give realistic numbers even though they can't be exact. It helps people know the ballpark of what's normal, what to expect, and what indicates a problem that needs fixing.
There's no web link for a source but you can sign up at https://www.girlschase.com/dating-tips-newsletter
---
- **Get a date:** most guys can get a date with a girl within about 12 to 20 approaches.
- **Get a one night stand:** the average guy needs to approach around 30 to 80 women to find one who'll sleep with him that night.
- **Get a same day lay:** the average guy needs to make around 50 to 100 daytime approaches to pull off a same day lay.
- **Find a girlfriend:** depending on his standards, the average guy needs from 1 to 7 lays to find a girl to be a girlfriend.
- **Have a threesome:** the average guy needs to propose a threesome with around 5 to 15 of the women he will (or could) sleep with to set one up.
- **Secure a wife:** the average guy needs between 2 to 6 long term girlfriends before he settles on one as a wife.
- **Achieve pickup mastery:** some guys with really good social intuitions achieve a level of expertise around 50 to 75 lays... but for the vast majority of men, it takes 100 to 150 lays to start hitting mastery. Some might argue you don't hit true mastery until 200 to 250
https://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/09/the-world-forager-elite.html
Summary: World elites talk with each other and then cause strong correlations in government policies across countries.
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
> Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued
People have collectively reported over $10 million/year in raises to patio11 that they credit to his article.
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1309362261077581824
> A thread on answering interview questions questions which sound like trivia quizzes:
patio11 is pretty good at knowing how some business related social interactions work. He's much more OK than I am with just following the rules and getting a good result.
http://georgereismansblog.blogspot.com/2020/09/irresponsible-reporting-causes-needless.html
one thing it says is roughly: there's an important pattern where ppl are so convinced by early, biased, repeated media reports that they will disbelieve corrections later.
rant/ramble
*Trump brags about not touching SS on TV*
Me: "he SHOULD be touching it, then brag about that instead"
Mother: "why?"
Me: "it's bullcrap"
Mother: "not when i am close to mine. I paid for it"
Me: "you also've paid into CHIP, SNAP and unemployment checks"
---
I asked my mother:
"If YOU had to take welfare checks, would YOU feel ashamed?"
I asked, knowing the answer
Sure enough, she said YES
"Why? You paid into it, isnt that getting your money back?"
The idea SS is ok because it isnt welfare is false because it IS welfare
Do we NOT pay into SNAP, CHIP, unemployment?
We pay into SS, but we ALSO pay into welfare
...if "it being our money" makes it valid to not touch, ...why do you feel ashamed taking welfare?
Welfare is your money back. You should EMBRACE it, not feel ashamed
You can tell SS not welfare all you want, but there ISNT ANYTHING we DOOOONT pay into
Then, ...either stop acting like SSI is different, or endorse welfare
You either are owed back money you pay in on both or you arent
----
The only time I've been this...DAFUQ smh, is when my father said medicare/medicaid isn't welfare because it comes from the state, not the feds
1st, nothing comes from the feds, taxes simply travel up then back down but are you KIDDING me?
yes, it is thru the states but so is AAAAAAAAAAAALL welfare
If that is the metric, WHY DO MY PARENTS COMPLAIN about welfare rats?
All welfare is state, and they say state means it isnt welfare
So when they complain about welfare rats, I will ask them, WHAT welfare?
Theyll say, these people collecting SS or these people collecting unemployment
It is THEIR money -- and it is from the state. Why would you deny people THEIR money? It isnt welfare if it is from the state either
I would say this SARCASTICALLY, because they make ZERO sense
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4nkSD3SJpitfrMBM5/numeracy-neglect-a-personal-postmortem
some analysis from a person who isn't mathy. they consider their edu history which is introspection-adjacent (but different than examining their current internal state).
i think the main thing going on is they now see math as more important than stuff they studied. they've talked with mathy people who know things about science and they're impressed/jealous/regretful. they don't go into much detail about what they did learn and why they thought it was valuable as they were learning it.
i think they're pov is pretty flawed but has some info about how people go wrong and are confused. i think he's currently confused about what math or himself is really like. lots of people use math/science type stuff in ways that aren't effective and part of their problem is lack of philosophical wisdom. math/sci/etc is a useful tool but, like LW in general, he sees it as more of a primary than it is.
https://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2015/11/10/lord-acton-and-idea-liberty
i think the article fails on several points
aristotle wasnt in favor a mixed republic, socrates only told them to question not disregard authority
and worse,they confuse suffrage which can only occur under a state with liberty AGAINST a state, as to the slave or the universal
it also mistakes liberty as methodological individualism, what is properly called libertarianism, with that of utilitarianism
something btw, LORD ACTON HIMSELF opposed
As did Mises, Rothbard, and every libertarian for the free market that influenced anarchists, classical liberals etc
Liberty is not an end of itself because moral order is ALSO not an end of itself
If liberty is an end of itself, it cannot be liberty. End implies attainment by transformation
A state transforms. Liberty is had or it isnt had. You cannot make liberty. You can only resist authority
That is utilitarian -- it is actually anti-libertarian, it is democracy as equality itself
The author has that bit off
it is as annoying those who mistake his cosmpolitan order for either a soviet ethnofederal model OR that of a civic nationalism. Neither is correct because while he did not espouse support for a monarchy, he also did not express support for a republic
In fact he did the OPPOSITE. His support for subsidiarity is in his eyes meant to PREEMPT a republic
In his lectures on the french revolution, he lays this out where he calls into question not the monarch's power to subvert the people but the rise of republicanism to subvert that of the people's own liberty. He was arguing republicanism in explicit terms the connection between equal representation and equal property
acton said "equal power implies equal property" --
he actually equated "power sharing," not just representation, to socialism
was he in favor a king alone? ofc not, but this article pretends he believed in some social contract
that is false. he believed in the church limiting the state, not in a civic republic
further ironic since this is called the acton institute
it IMPLIES they would have READ acton, no?
ofc shes billy kristol's mother
IT EXPLAINS A LOT
"Himmelfarb admired Hayek for having linked Acton to Adam Smith and the 'Manchester school"
since when is acton remotely like smith or smith like manchester?
Hayekian, i can believe that. About Himmelfarb I mean
Typical reform schachtmanite, they idealize burke for their antimonarchsim and support crony corporate socialism as an "alternative" to markets, covering their belief in universal peace with a victorian patina
Perhaps it is worth remembering Mount Pelerin was behind the social democrat party of germany's economic ideas
"This sharp distinction between the two Enlightenments would later prove fundamental to both Himmelfarb's and Kristol's own work.""
That is an automatic disqualifier
If Kristol isnt a child of enlightenment communism AGAINST the individualism of a SAXON MONARCHY,
IDK what is. One needs look no further than Goldberg's LATEST book ROMANTICIZING the age of enlightenment as democratic -- something NOT EVEN neocons of TODAY normally -- at least in WORDS ALONE romanticize
Yes, it wasnt only the Federalist people who had IMMENSE criticisms
If it influenced Kristol's work...I'VE SEEN KRISTOL'S WORK
Today I learned, communism is monarchism and is also individualist because the soviet union was capitalist
i just wanna scream and start punching people about now about how fvcking......oh FVCKING ...i wanna just punching these fvcking morons
too many words dont express my anger deeply enough at how...retarded and WRONG that is
...the day a libertarian thinks kristol is a good idea, ...is the day i kill myself
anything that starts with ...fundamental and ends with kristol's own work,
means kristol either didnt have a clue what he was reading, anymore than about what he talked on
or what he read was so fundamentally communist LIKE HIM, that it should be burnt in a pyre, spat on and its authors hogtied, castrated in a pit of snakes
Agree or disagree with Acton, his argument INSTEAD went something like this:
if the agreement is the church limits the king -- in the churchs interest to remain a social force -- and this social force likewise while limiting his power, also grooms the public to be without angst toward the king, the people enjoy market freedom, are excluded from voice in "what" gov to "have" -- and the king can continue on enriching himself on his own expense "only" or again in theory only but still
Once the councils won, the king became much more a state+church in one. King now owned the state. Owned the church was the church
He had unlimited power. The public saw this. Understandably fed up and fearful they demanded say
They demanded a limit on his power
If he had been limited by the church, there would avoid a social contract
And the king would have less power
But now checks gone, his indulgence made necessary an alternative check
A civil check. A check that is of the state against the king
This ofc only made it worse as acton said but was a result of removing the limit on the king's power that led to a social contract
Greed for power leads to revolt. Much as reform does
But because this reform came in hand increased voice, it bound the state to newfound communism, a populare king we call president or premier or chancellor or so on
Because what also limited the king prior this also kept social order,
The only thing standing in the way between king+people was how best to calm a populace where said demagogues seeking power their own were impossible to separate from the larger mass again understandably fed up the king's newfound power
Because to deny the people in fear the demagogue only popularizes the demagogue by validating his rhetoric in a clout of interest
To deny the demagogue directly is to have him sic his masses in role martyr, "the king fears us because he knows we are right"
Likewise, or so it was SUPPOSED to have been (obv, since like 11-13-1500s, aristoi lost power against the king) AT LEAST, well, so did nobility -- again or was meant to, also separate and balance power civically, where the church couldnt
Notice the wording,
Civil liberty. In Marx, this is the difference between political and human emancipation. But in LIBERTARIAN discourse, or just CLASSICAL conservatism, it is the difference between that which is NATURAL -- or normative, and that which is STATE-PROTECTED, not SIMPLY against the state, though this too
https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/455
If they actually had read Aristotle, they'd know this
"The idea of a king is to be a protector of the rich against unjust treatment, of the people against insult and oppression. Whereas a tyrant, as has often been repeated, has no regard to any public interest, except as conducive to his private ends; his aim is pleasure, the aim of a king, honor. Wherefore also in their desires they differ; the tyrant is desirous of riches, the king, of what brings honor. And the guards of a king are citizens, but of a tyrant mercenaries."
They suffer similar faults in their reading of Locke. For instance, Locke never cited argument against a broad church, and the whigs were who imposed the taxes on us
They cry against gnosticism, but they are themselves a child of the puritan-quaker mix.
Himmelfarb, if she has not read Acton, clearly reads into it her own bias
Being I actually have read Hayek on true and fake individualism MYSELF, and can say he has a VALID analysis, no matter his OWN issues at APPLYING it....
I can say, Kristol like Himmelfarb cannot blame Hayek for that. She INDEED reads into it her own opinions
I wonder what text between the texts, in some invisible ink they are seeing. Do they have voices in their heads? Are they dyslexic, schizophrenic or blind? Or just self-aggrandized liars?
sorry, this was where I was retrieving OTHER lines
https://mises.org/wire/hayek-and-mont-p%C3%A8lerin-society
BTW, another thing:
"The common law of England has fared like other venerable edifices of antiquity, which rash and unexperienced workmen have ventured to new-dress and refine, with all the rage of modern improvement. Hence frequently its symmetry has been destroyed, its proportions distorted, and its majestic simplicity exchanged for specious embellishments and fantastic novelties. For, to say the truth, almost all the perplexed questions, almost all the niceties, intricacies, and delays, (which have sometimes disgraced the English, as well as other courts of justice,) owe their original not to the common law itself, but to innovations that have been made in it by acts of parliament, “overladen with provisoes and additions, and many times on a sudden penned or corrected by men of none or very little judgment in law."
This is from Blackstone
Some people have claimed he was in favor legal fictions
destruction, distortion, embellishment, specieousness, disgrace?
Those don't sound like compliments to me
Perhaps the reason is HARVARD teaches FULLER'S definition of legal fiction
Fuller was a CLUELESS bastard
Legal fiction has ZEEEEEEEEEEERO to do wording
There is already that concern as laid out in Justinian's corpus, "definitions are dangerous in civil law, as there is little that cannot be subverted"
However, civil law is NOT COMMON LAW
Civil law ISN'T EVEN quiritarian law
Ius Civile is not civil law today
The shiremoot? There was no circuitry. Case law appended common law DOCTRINES and CUSTOM
Oh and fof all the people who in praising Mansfield, claim common law was bound to rigid custom, they have NEVER READ a book by MANSFIELD ooooor Blackstone, OOOOOOOOR hale, OOOOOOOOOOOOOR Coke
That is sorta SPECTACULAR since these are articles OOOOOON Mansfield, and Hale, Blackstone, and Coke are CONSIDERED staple READING CURRICULUM at many law schools
If you write on Acton, on Hayek, on Aristotle, on Blackstone, or work at an institute in THEIR NAME,
Make sure you have READ it before opening your FAT MOTHER-FVCKING MOUTH
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/574/445/
"unjust enrichment [lol]" is in ***roman law***, but NOWHERE TO BE FOUND in common law -- there is a basis in LATER common law for "ABNORMAL DAMAGES" whatever the heck that means (rhetorical point, mind you me here), but abnormal damages is NOT THE SAME THING as SO-CALLED "unjust enrichment." SO-CALLED "unjust pricing" is CLOSER to that than "abnormal damages"
so the question isnt just whether theyre REINVENTING common law
The question is why theyre INVENTING it
Theyre just restating statutes
since not even the roman basis was anywhere in us law books till the past century or ao
Since when did statutes become synonymous common law?
To restate something, the "RE" implies it is there preceding
that is sorta why it is not called STATING but RE. RE RE
There is NO RE. NO RE IS THERE. NO RE
#18147 It's fine to write all this in this way if you want to. If you want to be understood more, it'd help to slow down and explain your claims more instead of speeding through so many claims and references to background knowledge.
Yeah, I was copying and pasting chat messages, out of eager angst, in retrospect
https://www.johnstossel.com/biased-media/:
> “A pioneer devoted to equality.”
> That was The Washington Post’s headline about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
> But when Justice Antonin Scalia died, the headline was, “Supreme Court conservative dismayed liberals.”
> When the founder of ISIS was killed, the headline was: “Austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies.”
> But when President Donald Trump’s brother died, the headline was, “younger brother of President Trump who filed lawsuit against niece, dies.”
Article has more good examples.
Jon Stossel praises Libertarian Presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen: https://www.johnstossel.com/a-better-president/
Awful.
https://twitter.com/tombevanrcp/status/1315254934812659712?s=21 :
> With lightning speed, the Associated Press adopts Democrats' language on SCOTUS: adding members is now "depoliticizing" the court, only "critics" refer to it as "packing."
> [image of the following AP story quote:]
>> Bullock said that if Coney Barrett was confirmed, he would be open to measures to depoliticize the court, including adding judges to the bench, a practice critics have dubbed packing the courts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24771376 :
> "The phrase begging the question originated in the 16th century as a mistranslation of the Latin petitio principii, which in turn was a mistranslation of the Greek for "assuming the conclusion"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
> "Assuming the conclusion" is a very good name. Use that.
+1
Jordan Peterson: The best thing you can do is teach people to write. ‘Cause there’s no difference between that and thinking.
Probability riddle
Imagine 10 basketball players lined up across from 10 hoops, with each player attempting a single shot into his own hoop at the same time. Assume each player is a 50% shooter and is not influenced by the other players. After all 10 players have taken their shot, tell each player:
- Put on a red shirt if the 3 players to the left of you each hit their shot
- Put on a blue shirt if the 3 players to the left of you each missed their shot
- Put on a grey shirt otherwise
If no one puts on a blue shirt, have everyone shoot again. Repeat until at least one player puts on a blue shirt.
Now choose a player with a blue shirt at random and ask him to step forward. What is the probability that his shot was successful? Round your answer to two decimal places.
I would be interested to see who answers this correctly. Since commenting here may influence others, you may submit your answer at this Google form. No email address is required, but you may include your FI handle in your answer for credit. I may share your answer along with your handle in a follow-up comment discussing the solution.
(Note: this puzzle is not original to me.)
#18309 The 3 players farthest to the left will always have grey shirts.
#18309
With 4 players:
TTTH and TTTT. 50%
With 5 players:
TTTHH 1
TTTHT 1
TTTTT 0
TTTTH .5
HTTTH 1
HTTTT 0
3.5/6
TechLead: Why "senior software engineer" isn't worth it
TechLead, “Why "senior software engineer" isn't worth it... (as an ex-Google tech lead)”, YouTube, 2020-10-15 (my rough transcript, created with the help of otter.ai):
> Welcome back, TechLead here. Now before we get started today, I have a few quick announcements I wanted to make just some logistics to take care of. And that is that I just needed to remind you all that I am an ex-Google, ex-Facebook, multimillionaire tech lead. So with that taken care of and out of the way we can actually get started today. And I wanted to talk about senior software engineering. I actually get a lot of questions from people who want to figure out how to become a senior software engineer. And sometimes they get into a company, they feel like they're under-leveled, and they want to get into as high level as possible. And especially from my perspective, as somebody who's actually climbed this whole career ladder to staff software engineer, that's about E6/L6 level at Facebook or Google. At FAANG, this is in the top say 10 to 15% of software engineers at these top tier tech companies. It's a pretty difficult thing to do. It takes probably 10 to 15 years for most people to actually achieve this level.
Maybe it takes 10-15 years after you enter the industry to get to L6 if you stay at the same company, but I've heard it typically happens faster if you change companies. Often, the best way to get a raise or a promotion is to go to work for a different company. Later, you can switch back to your original company, provided you left on good terms, and keep your raise/promotion.
> And so I wanted to give you my thoughts on this, the pros and cons of this, and then potentially alternate paths in your life that may be more rewarding.
> [snip sponsored message]
> Now, one thing to understand is that software engineers, and this may be you, are some of the most prideful and arrogant people on the planet. And so therefore, they always believe that they deserve more, and they always want to go to that next higher level. The thing is, there tends to be a lot of title inflation at a lot of smaller companies. So startups tend to over-inflate petals as a means of a non monetary reward for their employees. And in fact, at many startups there's no title below senior software engineer, and then there's senior senior software engineer and senior senior staff software engineer as well. So therefore, I see many so called senior software engineers applying into Google or Facebook. And then they seem to get dismayed that they're only being considered for an intern role.
Yeah. It's not uncommon for people who were managers elsewhere to become individual contributors (non-managers) at FAANGs.
> So that's the first thing to realize. Everybody's always going after more status, more prestige, but at some point, you may reach a point where the rewards aren't going to be worth the effort that you have to put in, right? You may reach a point of diminishing returns. And what I'm trying to get at is that this point of diminishing returns, you may reach it, as soon as you've entered a company, right? By the time you get into, say entry level at Google or Facebook, you're pretty much at that point of diminishing returns. And you may not need to work much harder after that.
> You know, when I was working as a staff software engineer, there was an uncomfortable level of expectations on me, it felt like I was just in the spotlight 24/7, and all eyes were always on me watching my next move, what was I going to do? How was I going to handle a project and I was expected to stay on top of everything. And all of the projects status updates from everybody on my team, even from areas which I didn't have much interest in, I still needed to make sure that I would stay informed on that and make sure that these other engineers on my team who they wanted to call themselves senior software engineers, but they were actually operating at an intern level, I still had to make sure that they would get their work done. And so I would just be busy all the time, often with mundane menial tasks, like maybe understanding how logging works for some feature project that we're working on, making sure to clear some technical roadblocks for my team by reading up on some technical wiki on some internal company webpage, or having to schedule meetings with people who didn't really want to talk to me just to make sure that we could all work together.
> And as a project lead, while you may be expected to be on call, most of the time, if there's a crash that happens at night, you know, you kind of want to be there, know what's going on, be ready to respond. The next morning, you have to know all about the crash, what happened, know all about the major issues that are happening in the projects, read up on all the emails. And this could just be a lot of load on you, maybe in the evening, you want to watch two Netflix movies back to back and you can only watch one.
> Whereas when you compare this lifestyle to that of a entry level L3/E3 software engineer just a basic software engineer. Like these software engineers get to just cruise. You just do the work you've been assigned, sit back, relax, take your two hour lunch breaks, you really only have to put in say four hours of work a day maybe even less is okay, surf reddit sometimes. And when you go home at night, and then there's a production bug crash, well, you can just continue watching your Netflix movies because somebody else is going to take care of it. You're not on the hook here. And so that sounds like a pretty nice life to me. And really what's pushing these people further is ego or pride/arrogance.
> But you have to remember that once you reach, say at the highest level in the video game, for instance, you kind of lose all motivation after that. And so once you get to, say, senior software engineer or staff software engineer, then the race, the hustle to that next level starts all over again. And then at some point, you're just going to think this this is just too much work
> For me, in retrospect, I would say that the staff software engineer level which is around L6, it's it's a little bit too much. It's a little bit too much responsibility and a little bit too tiring. The sweet spot is around L5, senior level. And that's the level where you have a decent amount of autonomy and respect from the peers around you. And yet not too much overbearing responsibility and commitment from outside of your standard 9-5 hours. And I would say there's no real rush to get there, you can kind of take your time and enjoy the progression at each level. And in a sense, L3 level, entry level is kind of the best, because you can really just cruise, take your time.
> And what I would really recommend, if you're looking for more money, for more prestige, for instance, is maybe just start a side hustle on the side. Right, so instead of putting all of your effort into just the company and trying to uplevel in that career, in an area where other people are going to make the decision, whether you get promoted or not, you can kind of take things into your own control by starting a side hustle, where you get to decide how far you're going to advance in this other business that you're working on.
> Because the thing is that for senior software engineers, oftentimes they're using their own personal time in the evenings, on the weekends, to figure out how to find the new initiatives. You know, I'd always be spending my personal time digging through the company code base, or looking around the internet for open source projects, where I can come up with ideas for new initiatives. And imagine if I just took all of that time that would put into these other areas, and put it into my own side hustle during that time, I could probably have built up another business on the side right there. Not to mention, oftentimes, when you're working at the company, it can be difficult to find the proper project for the proper impact that you're looking at to take you to that next promotion level. Like for example, when I was working at Facebook, Facebook itself is a very mature product. So it can be difficult to find areas that you can improve on. All of the performance optimizations, network optimizations, or low hanging fruit for project ideas, features, most of them are already in there. And then anything else that's left it can be hairy, complex features that span whole areas that could take weeks or months to really put in. And the thing is, the higher level you go, the bigger project that is you need to find. You can no longer just create little features or buttons. Most of that work is for, say, L3/L4 level software engineers. And by the time you're senior, you really need to start taking on these bigger, meatier architectural type of projects that span multiple features and pages, and maybe across multiple teams. And that could involve a lot of work that you may not necessarily enjoy, like harassing other people, hassling other team members, trying to dig up information from people, maybe refactoring some terrible piece of code that's really ancient.
Seems like a good description of the kind of extra responsibility that comes with L6+.
> And you want to keep in mind that other levels may be important for people within the company in order to distinguish themselves. From outside the company, people just see that you're working at some company, some big brand name, right? Like you work at Qualcomm, Intel, Facebook, Google, whatever. And the level or the role, or the team is really almost something secondary, right? Like, if I see somebody coming from Microsoft, that's just ex-Microsoft. Not to mention, I've also found that at higher levels, you become more of a target. And this was especially true at Facebook, where people on other teams, they look to you and they try to come after you to harass you, to figure out ways to take you down, because it's going to make themselves look a little bit better if they're able to take down a senior member of some other team.
I hadn't thought of the fact that being higher level could make you sort of a target. Makes sense, though.
> I found myself having to deal with more conflict between my team and other teams, especially in technical discussions where I would have to beat the representative speaking on behalf of my team, because nobody else was going to do that. So overall, at least the way I see things is that there's definitely value to working at the company. But most of that value can be had simply by gaining access into the company walls.
Good point.
> And you don't necessarily have to climb that career ladder all the way up. Because simply by being there, you're able to gain access to the excellent health insurance that the company provides. And health insurance is a big thing in the US, at least. And then after that, maybe the company offers you life insurance, maternity benefits, or paternity benefits, right? You could just have a bunch of kids and just take a bunch of time off after that, right, and just keep having kids and taking time off. And that could just be a really great lifestyle in and of itself.
> When you compare the lifestyle differences of say an entry level software engineer, and then a senior engineer, well, everybody's pretty much doing the same stuff, right? People are going to the same local bars, same restaurants, people are living in the same areas and shopping at the same supermarkets, going to the same company parties, using the same internal tools, the same company issued laptops and hardware. And maybe the only difference is that senior software engineers are driving a Tesla because, hey, they need to maintain their status, whereas you get to drive a Honda Civic. And maybe they're ordering a steak for dinner takeout which comes back home cold and soggy whereas you're ordering like a pizza and some custom hamburgers. And the thing is neither case nobody can really comfortably afford a house at least not in a tech hub like, say, Silicon Valley where houses start at say 1.5 to 2 million just for something basic and a decent School District.
> In order for that type of money, you know, a lot these people they have to be like startup founders or start up some side business to really get to a comfortable level like that, I would say, or maybe like a double income family or something like that, which is why I advocate a side hustle. Like a basic side hustle can easily start bringing in pretty decent income, especially you can start taking off tax write offs as well, and it can take you into to say, L5/L6/L7 territory quite quickly. And then you use that employment as a way to provide for your basic lifestyle, your health insurance, your social status, maybe your network, your friends, your work colleagues, and then that resume building and career building.
> [snip sponsored message].
> So that'll do it for me, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on climbing the career ladder and at what point do you think we reached diminishing returns, where the additional gains and, say, monetary reward or respect from our peers just isn't going to be worth the additional required time, effort and responsibilities, that additional stress that comes with the role? If you liked the video, please give a like and subscribe. Really appreciate that and I'll see you in the next one. Thanks, bye.
Good message, well-delivered. I'd summarize it like this: get to L4 or L5 (I've heard that Google, at least, doesn't allow people to stay at L3 forever) and coast. You'll enjoy your at-work and off-work hours more. The main benefits of your job are income, insurance, stability, and potentially name brand recognition if you apply to work somewhere else. You get all those benefits, except for the higher income levels, just from being employed as a tech worker for the company, regardless of your level. If you want extra income, start your own project on the side.
How much extra money do you make by advancing in level? Here are typical total annual compensation amounts for L3 through L6 at Google in the SF Bay Area, according to levels.fyi:
- L3: $192,000
- L4: $267,000
- L5: $351,000
- L6: $501,000
The total compensation increases by 30-40% at each level above L3.
Going from L5 to L6 increases your total annual compensation by $150,000. It might be hard, or stressful, to build and run a side hustle that pays that much. Still, one nice thing about a side hustle is, if you don't like it, you can wind it down. Advancing in level at a tech company, in contrast, is like a ratchet. You generally can't go back down a level. Once you've gone up, you have to keep performing at that level.
One important issue TechLead didn't mention is that tech companies lean heavily to the political left, and the higher your level, the greater the expectation is that you will actively promote a left-wing view on matters such as diversity, inclusion, equity, transgender activism, and multiculturalism. The lower your level, the easier it is to fly under the radar and keep silent.
#18311 Nice work on the 5-player case by Anon. I wrote a program to figure it out for 10 players: https://play.golang.org/p/DJOqGEGDwRW
Similar to Anon's analysis, my program prints out all the cases with at least one blue shirt, and it counts the number of hits by blue-shirt players and the number of blue shirts in each case:
> shots : # blue-shirt hits / # blue shirts
> 0000000000: 0/7
> 0000000001: 1/7
> 0000000010: 1/6
> [...]
> 1111100011: 1/1
> 1111110000: 0/1
> 1111110001: 1/1
And at the end it prints this:
> number of scenarios in which at least one player put on a blue shirt: 476
> Probability that the blue-shirted player who stepped forward hit his shot:
> 129427/199920 (approx 0.6473939575830332)
The puzzle is originally by Joshua B. Miller. Here's the source: https://twitter.com/jben0/status/979243195623092225?s=20
How to tweet an image that won't be cropped or clipped
blue compass found that if you tweet a single 1100x628 pixel image, it won't be clipped/cropped by Twitter on any major platform. This information isn't part of Twitter's image guidelines.
To check, I tweeted an image of that size, containing only text. Then, on iPad, MacOS Safari, MacOS Brave, and iPhone, I viewed that tweet as part of the feed on the account's profile page, without clicking on it directly to enlarge it. I could see the entire image each time.
This tip may not always work. Twitter is known to treat some images differently depending on their contents. And maybe Twitter will change their image processing algorithm. But the tip works for now.
#18342 I updated my program for the basketball puzzle to let you change P(hit), the probability that a player hits their shot. Formerly, P(hit) was fixed at 1/2. (P(hit) is still assumed to be equal for all players.)
When P(hit) = 1/2, the new code gives the same result as the old code for 10 players. For another test, I manually checked the results for 5 players with P(hit) = 1/3. For reference, here's the output:
> shots: P(shots) # blue-shirt hits / # blue shirts
> 00000: 32/243 0/2
> 00001: 16/243 1/2
> 00010: 16/243 1/1
> 00011: 8/243 1/1
> 10000: 16/243 0/1
> 10001: 8/243 1/1
>
> Number of players: 5
> Probability of a player hitting his shot: 1/3
> Number of scenarios in which at least one player put on a blue shirt: 6
> Total probability of one of those scenarios occurring: 32/81
> Probability that the blue-shirted player who stepped forward in one of those scenarios hit his shot:
> 5/12 (approx 0.4166666666666667)
With a little experimenting, I found that, in the 10-player case, the value of P(hit) that gives an overall 50% chance of a blue-shirt hit is in the interval 0.35375322085 ± 5 × 10⁻¹¹. The program uses exact rational arithmetic (except for the value labeled "approx" in the output), so there are no rounding errors.
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1318868788943626240
> One of the biggest questions in the world with the most grossly insufficient amount of brainsweat applied to it:
> Are we experiencing unprecedented levels of institutional failure or unprecedented levels of transparency into prevailing competence levels?
I think patio11 asks a good question. Anyone got answers?
San Francisco Officials Let People Sue over Racist 911 Calls
San Francisco Officials Let People Sue over Racist 911 Calls, American Renaissance (2020-10-20, original source: Associated Press):
> Fed up with white people calling 911 about people of color selling water bottles, barbecuing or otherwise going about their lives, San Francisco leaders unanimously approved hate crime legislation giving the targets of those calls the ability to sue the caller.
> The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday on the Caution Against Racial and Exploitative Non-Emergencies Act, also known as the CAREN legislation. It’s a nod to a popular meme using the name “Karen” to describe an entitled white woman whose actions stem from her privilege, such as using police to target people of color.
I suspected satire for a moment, so I searched Bing for [san francisco caren act], where I discovered two things:
1. The CAREN Act is real
2. Even Bing is getting on the "anti-racism" bandwagon
My Bing search yielded this result box above all the normal blue links, including a creepy image of two hands shaking in a way that looks like a heart:
> What is unconscious or implicit bias?
> It is a preference for or against a person or group that one is not aware of having, but nevertheless is communicated through statements, actions, or assumptions.
> Learn more about anti-racism on Bing
American Renaissance continues:
> Other places have moved to make placing racist 911 calls a hate crime. California’s governor recently signed a measure making the crime a misdemeanor punishable by jail time and a fine. New York approved legislation allowing the victims of racist 911 calls to sue.
> The San Francisco legislation gives people the right to sue a 911 caller in civil court, and supporters hope it will make some think twice before turning to police. The discrimination need not be only racial; it can also be due to the person’s sex, age, religion, disability, gender identity, weight or height.
... but not their political beliefs.
> The legislation does not spell out the standards needed to sue. But it notes that qualifying calls are those that caused the person to feel harassed or embarrassed; damaged the person’s reputation or business prospects; or forced the person from an area where they had a lawful right to be.
This is so fucked.
Future posts will use comment numbers starting at 1 in each thread.
#18421 fixed a bug in the screenshot. it errors when c is nil. i planned for c.comment_number to be nil because nil converts to the integer 0, but chaining a method on nil breaks (which is actually a common problem. IIRC they actually did something to make it more convenient to deal with in a newer ruby or rails version).
the new comment system (ids start at 1 in each thread) is now active in the IGC topic and future topics.
#18428 -- is there a convenient way to refer to comments in those threads?
Is there a shortcut like /2387#2 ? (If not, would that shortcut be easy to implement?)
I guess curi.us/2387#2 always works, is less convenient.
#18430 you can just use the number as before, e.g. #1, and also clicking the reply link will generate that
#18432 -- ahh, I should have been clearer: I meant referring those those comments *from other threads*.
Also, did references like #12345 always *only* link to the same thread? If not, maybe there's a bug with the new comment things:
#18437 - I realise now I might have been mis-remembering that ever being a feature, which would explain why I asked about linking cross-thread in the first place and why I thought there might have been a bug.
(And forgot `Author` on that last post)
Short links to other threads have *never* been a thing. I think they'd be misleading. People see a short link and reasonably assume it's referring to a comment from the same discussion. Seeing a full link can communicate an external link which I think is good. Plus I don't want short links to cause page reloads so to make them work externally I would have needed to check which are external and handle them differently.
#18441 makes sense - I agree it could be misleading.
In my 'ideal forum' mental model I think 2 types of links might be nice. one with less syntax like #123 and one with more like /2387#2. I'm not sure what the syntax should be. I sort of like reddit's u/username mentioning system, so something like t/2387#2 could work.
---- different topic ----
I've thought for a while that podcasts should have an accompanying thread for discussion. I'd like that and there's more than a few things I've thought about discussing. We can always use FI or open discussion, but having their own thread would be nice and organised.
#18447 The podcast page
https://curi.us/podcast/
has links to threads for both submitting questions and discussing podcasts.
I don't think separate threads for each podcast are necessary. I'd reconsider if the single podcast discussion thread got too busy.
#18448 Also there are around 2000 threads on this blog. You can usually easily find a relevant, inactive thread to discuss in. Most people won't do this or criticize the idea. idk why. I kinda assume it's b/c other sites don't work that way. And maybe they are bad at searching (including finding searching a little bit hard – too much of a burden/effort instead of really cheap/easy).
#18448
Ahh, I missed those. I think I last looked on the page for an individual podcast, which doesn't have the links.
#18449
I find searching for stuff a bit hard when I don't know the right terms. If I can remember a post about a topic I can usually find it, but it can take minutes otherwise. (not to mention the overhead of getting distracted by other posts along the way -- one has to at least skim them for relevance)
Searching has gotten much easier as I've read more of your archive.
I usually just search the list all posts page for a string like Popper and find something. leave off the end for words that can end in multiple ways, e.g. "criti" is a better search than "criticism" cuz you'll also find "criticize". If that doesn't work, typing some words in google should work since they can match the body instead of just the title.
#18374
> https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1318868788943626240
>> One of the biggest questions in the world with the most grossly insufficient amount of brainsweat applied to it:
>> Are we experiencing unprecedented levels of institutional failure or unprecedented levels of transparency into prevailing competence levels?
> I think patio11 asks a good question. Anyone got answers?
I think the answer is two-fold. Partly option 2 (transparency+incompetence) and partly something else. The something else is like:
Variance in ppl's competence increases as our society & economy get more specialised. Also, the relative impact of static memes / social dynamics on ppl's quality-signals has increased or stayed pretty consistent. (static memes affect quality-signals sort of like how regulation affects pricing-signals. maybe merit-signal is a better term than quality-signal)
that means: even though ppl have kept getting more capable, increased variance + suppressed merit-signals means we don't have much reason to expect the distribution of competent ppl to improve.
that said, this isn't universal. some corporations/institutions/etc are pretty well managed. there's a bit of sampling bias in that we have more of those things now than ever, and we also consume fresher news from a wider catchment. so high-up incompetence has a broader cost and there's less time for incompetent ppl react. (note: relevant ppl might be competent in a lot of things, just not managing the institution. stuff like doing social networking with powerful ppl or being good at hiding their incompetence and deflecting criticism.)
I suspect - proportionally - there's less institutional failure now than in the past, so on average things are getting better -- local variance aside. the more sophisticated we get, the higher the stakes can get (corresponding to our increase in wealth). so in absolute terms there's more damage from incompetence, but not in relative terms.
> I think the answer is two-fold. Partly option 2 (transparency+incompetence) and partly something else. The something else is like:
I don't think you understood the issue and the options. Option 2 is not transparency+incompetence.
>> I think the answer is two-fold. Partly option 2 (transparency+incompetence) and partly something else. The something else is like:
> I don't think you understood the issue and the options. Option 2 is not transparency+incompetence.
Hmm maybe. I read patio11's original thread and thought it was sort of lacking - maybe examples would have helped.
I think putting option 2 as "(transparency+incompetence)" was lazy. In hindsight I feel like I should have just left it out. Would you say a similar thing if I'd just omitted it?
I will describe my idea of the elements of the issue in some depth because it might make an error/miscommunication easier to spot.
I think institutional failure means the failure of things like corporations or govt services in a systemic way. e.g. due to somewhat common bad ideas about management that put the business or a service at risk. the collapse of lehman brothers and hospitals not being able to provide enough beds due to mismanagement are two examples of institutional failures.
I think patio11 is drawing a comparison between two ideas and asking if they're related somehow, or if there's a way to consider them in terms of a single explanation, or if one of them is an illusion and can be explained by the other. Maybe other options too since it's pretty open ended.
The first idea is the idea that we're experiencing institutional failure an all-time-high.
The second idea is that there has always been some substantial incompetence but now our ability to observe this is all-time-high.
The juxtaposition is suggesting that there are some particular ideas which should be considered; ideas like 'institutional failure is at an unremarkable level but we notice it a lot more because the increased transparency means the effects are more evident or more easily attributed to some actor/choice/etc.'
random elevator operator math problem
Here's a math problem I came up with. I haven't made much headway on it.
Eric works as a random elevator operator in Infinity Hotel, which is an infinitely tall building with floors numbered 0, 1, 2, 3, ... The elevator moves instantly between floors. Eric starts work at the ground floor (floor 0). In his pocket is a coin that comes up heads with probability h < 0.5. At the end of every minute, Eric flips the coin. If it comes up heads, he goes up one floor. Otherwise, he goes down one floor, unless he was already on the ground floor, in which case he stays where he was. For every minute Eric spends on floor x, he gets paid $x. If Eric does this job for a long time, how much, on average, can he expect to make per minute?
Anyone know the answer or have any pointers? I can easily simulate this problem for particular values of h, but I would prefer a simple formula.
#18472 The highest floor he'll have gotten to after N flips may be near sqrt(N). That'd (IIRC) be the expected max deviation from 0 if negative floors were included. You can find the reasoning and math for that in Feynman's Lectures on Computation and use some of the same techniques for this problem.
#18473 I'm familiar with the normal random walk problem, where the person starts at 0 and can go in either direction (negative or positive), but I don't know how to apply those ideas to my problem, where the person can only go to nonnegative numbers.
#18475 Have you read the relevant sections of the book? Did you review them before giving up on my idea?
> Have you read the relevant sections of the book?
Yes, I have. Most recently the last time you brought them up here.
> Did you review them before giving up on my idea?
No.
I did write a simulation to find the farthest floor that had been seen after different time-steps. Here's what it found when the probability of heads is 0.4/0.9:
> Expected highest floor after 10 minutes: 2.764900
> Expected highest floor after 100 minutes: 7.999600
> Expected highest floor after 1000 minutes: 16.526500
> Expected highest floor after 10000 minutes: 26.315300
> Expected highest floor after 100000 minutes: 36.582100
#18478
> the probability of heads is 0.4/0.9
Based on the linked code it looks like you meant:
P(heads) = 0.4/0.9 = 4/9 = 0.444...
I was initially confused b/c 4/9 is the reduced form which I would have expected. adding `0.444...` in parens after (or equivalent) would have made it clear what you meant.
#18472 I had a think about how to approach it and wrote down my thinking process as I went.
# general first comment
it seems clear that Eric doesn't get v far with h<0.5 -- he should always end up back at 0 at some point in the future.
# idea for method
The initial way I thought of for tackling this: since Eric always returns to 0 at some point, and he gets paid nothing for this, there are two distinct 'modes' he can be in: earning `0` or earning `> 0`. so for the denominator of the average calculation (`sum(earnings) / count(periods)`) we can say `count(periods) = count(periods_earning_0) + count(periods_earning_not_0)`.
If you can calculate some formula for the area under the periods_earning_not_0 then you could sum those up. That formula might be a reasonably simple one like Sigma(n_periods * avg_height) or something
# free thinking about it
My intuition is something like `periods_earning_not_0 ~ (1-h)` but I don't think that will pan out. If is at some height H then the time to get back to 0 will be proportional to the difference between `h` and `1-h`, so proportional to `1-2h`.
# sanity checking
This makes sense if h=0.5 b/c ... our formula would give 0; which isn't right. It's proportional to the *inverse* of `1-2h` - or something with that sort of hyperbolic-approaches-discontinuity sort of property.
let T(h) be the draft formula for time-back-to-0 (we might use something other than `1/(1-2h)` but I'll keep referring to it as T(H))
T(0) = 1. So our constant of proportionality might be H (since it would take H steps to go from H to 0). For h=0.25 then out of every 4 steps we'd expect 2 steps to cancel out and 2 steps to move us down, which would be a rate of like 0.5. T(0.25) = 1/(1-0.5) = 2. So we'd expect it to take 2H steps. Seems reasonable.
# earnings from height H to 0
So for some periods were he'd be earning money, at a maximum height of H, it should take H/(1-2h) steps to get to 0, so this is roughly a triangle of height H and base H/(1-2h) which would have area `H^2 / 2(1 - 2h)`. this is approx his earnings on the way down.
I don't know what the error on this would be, but it seems reasonable enough at this point.
# how quickly does he go up?
It feels like the 'going up' bits are probably pretty lucky. the best luck would mean getting to H in H steps. I suspect most of the times he get's very high would be "lucky" sorta periods.
sanity check, JC gave some pairs of 'highest floor' numbers. take (10e5, ~36.6). for h = 4/9 ... how do we connect these numbers? 1-2h = 1/9.
# thinking
what was curi's suggesting? JC mentioned something about not knowing what to do when negative, but we don't really care b/c we want to sum the positives. so we only need to know about the times we're >0, and we can deal with those individually. when we get to 0 it's a reset. if we had some formula for this sorta thing then all the periods that would be negative count for $0 and can be 'compressed' into 1 period.
curi said:
> The highest floor he'll have gotten to after N flips may be near sqrt(N).
let `highest floor after N flips` = HF(N)
curi's suggestion sounds reasonable, I feel like it might it work for 0.5. but for h=0 then HF(N) = 0, and for h=1, HF(N) = N. So transitioning from 0, through N^0.5, then to N seems like we're playing with the exponent.
what does N^h yield? For h=4/9, HF(10e5) = 10e5^0.444... = ~166. Not close to JC's numbers.
maybe we should check JC's program.
- set h=0.5
- copy to local file
- `go run main.go`
> Expected highest floor after 10 minutes: 3.272600
> Expected highest floor after 100 minutes: 11.530200
> Expected highest floor after 1000 minutes: 38.414300
> Expected highest floor after 10000 minutes: 125.369500
> Expected highest floor after 100000 minutes: 396.257900
(note: also tried h=0.45 and got pretty similar numbers to JC)
b/c I was interested I also tried h=0.55
> Expected highest floor after 10 minutes: 3.780900
> Expected highest floor after 100 minutes: 16.856100
> Expected highest floor after 1000 minutes: 108.955100
> Expected highest floor after 10000 minutes: 1009.267200
> Expected highest floor after 100000 minutes: 10008.146900
Hmm. Might need a new approach.
# how quickly he goes up again
Next thing I'd do is assume that when he goes up is ~negligible and think about how high how often.
at 0, p(tails) = 1-h, so he stays there. h often he goes up, and 1-h often after that goes back to zero. so P(heads then tails) = h*(1-h).
What about P(heads, heads, tails, tails)? He could go H,H,T,H,T,T too, so you could inject little bumps of P=h*(1-h) or something. This is a bit different to what I said I'd do next.
1-h often he earns 0
h*(1-h) often he earns 1
h*h*(1-h)^2 often he earns 4
h*h*(1-h)*h*(1-h)^2 often he earns 7
hmm, maybe there's a way to continue that?
anyway, finishing up there for the moment.
I just deployed much better caching to curi.us
Stuff should now load faster. It was previously caching less stuff and destroying the entire cache when a post or comment changed. It should now just destroy the specific correct cached data.
If you see stale pages/data, please let me know.
http://curi.us/post-list will only be updated when a new post goes up, so the comment counts won't be accurate. I don't want to destroy its cache every time a new comment is posted. That page being slow was my main motivation to improve the caching.
I'm going to add a cron job to clear it daily so the comment counts don't get too far out of date.
test: `h*h*(1-h)^2`
^ sorry, i just found out this is where i can test formatting: https://curi.us/2370-formatting-test-thread
#18490 the * still shows up so it works ok. you can also indicate multiplication with x or a unicode dot or other options from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication_sign
I disabled caching of blog post pages. I fixed it to work with reply and quote links, but did not fix it to work with the query string parameters to limit comments displayed, start at a particular comment, and a few other things. The difficulty with the system is that a cached page is used regardless of query string. I fixed reply and quote by routing them not to use query string. e.g.:
map.connect '/:id/reply/:reply',
:requirements => { :id => /\d+(-.*)?/},
:controller => "blog",
:action => "post"
If anyone wants to suggest a rails 2 solution to page cache post pages with any combination of comments, limit, start and single-comment query string parameters, let me know. The routing technique I'm using above doesn't work well with optional parameters (I don't want to make one long url with spots for every possible parameter) and I don't want to make a separate route for every combination. I imagine there's a better way. And yes I know there's fragment and action caching as options too.
formula for random elevator operator math problem
#18472 I understand the elevator problem better now. Given that Eric's coin comes up heads with probability h and that h is less than 0.5, I think Eric can expect to make E = h/(1 − 2h) dollars per minute.
To test that formula, I plugged different values for h into my simulation. The outputs closely match the formula.
In the process of coming up with the formula, I did some web searches and eventually learned that the scenario in the elevator puzzle is called a *birth-death process*. The resource that helped me understand these processes the most is *The Birth and Death Markov processes*, by Dr. Shun Yan Cheung.
Below is an explanation of the formula in my own words.
Let f[i] be the probability of Eric being on floor i (where i is a nonnegative integer) during a random minute after having been at work for a long time. (To make this a bit more precise, suppose that Eric has been working for T minutes. Choose a minute at random from 0 through T − 1, inclusive, and see what floor Eric was on during that minute. f[i] represents the probability of finding Eric on floor i as T goes to infinity.)
I don't yet understand how to prove that f[i] is well-defined, but, intuitively, I can accept it. Since Eric is more likely to go down than up (unless he's already on the ground floor), his probability of Eric being on any given floor decreases with the height of the floor.
To find a formula for f[i], I'll start with trying to find some concrete values. I'll start with the ground floor.
Intuitively, the probability of Eric being on floor 0 should be the same as the probability of him being on floor 0 or 1 and then flipping tails (which happens with probability 1 − h). In symbols, that's:
f[0] = (1 − h)(f[0] + f[1])
Simplifying yields:
hf[0] = (1 − h)f[1] (1)
(The "(1)" at the end is not part of the equation. It's a label for the equation, so I can refer to it later.)
Moving up one floor, the probability of Eric being on floor 1 should be the same as the probability of him being on floor 0 and flipping heads or being on floor 1 and flipping tails:
f[1] = hf[0] + (1 − h)f[2]
Replacing h f[0] with the right-hand side of (1) yields:
f[1] = (1 − h)f[1] + (1 − h)f[2]
This simplifies to:
hf[1] = (1 − h)f[2] (2)
Repeating this analysis yields, for all nonnegative integers i:
hf[i] = (1 − h)f[i + 1] (3)
Dividing both sides of (3) by 1 − h yields:
h/(1 − h)f[i] = f[i + 1] (4)
I'll be using the coefficient of f[i] from (4) a lot, so, for brevity, I'll give it a symbol. The page I linked above uses ρ (lower-case Greek rho) for this, so I'll use that too: let ρ = h/(1 − h). (4) then becomes, for all nonnegative integers i:
ρ f[i] = f[i + 1] (5)
Using (5) on the first few floors yields:
f[1] = ρ f[0]
f[2] = ρ f[1] = ρ ρ f[0] = ρ² f[0]
f[3] = ρ f[2] = ρ ρ² f[0] = ρ³ f[0]
So, in general, for all nonnegative integers i:
f[i] = ρⁱ f[0] (6)
This means that the probability of Eric being on floor i at a random time is the probability of him being on floor 0 times ρ to the power i. If I knew f[0], the probability of Eric being on floor 0, equation (6) would be complete. To find f[0], it will be helpful to recall that the probabilities of being on all the floors must sum to 1:
f[0] + f[1] + f[2] + f[3] + ⋯ = 1
Replacing each f[i] where i > 0 with its definition from equation (6) yields:
f[0] + ρ¹f[0] + ρ²f[0] + ρ³f[0] + ⋯ = 1
Factoring out f[0] yields:
f[0](1 + ρ¹ + ρ² + ρ³ + ⋯) = 1 (7)
The expression in parentheses is a geometric series which sums to 1/(1 − ρ), provided ρ is less than 1. We are given that h is less than 0.5, which means the numerator of the right-hand side of ρ = h/(1 − h) (from (4)) will always be greater than the denominator. Therefore, ρ < 1, and (7) simplifies to:
f[0](1/(1 − ρ)) = 1
Solving for f[0] yields:
f[0] = 1 − ρ
This can be substituted back in to (6) to obtain a general formula for the probability of Eric being on any floor at a random time:
f[i] = ρⁱ(1 − ρ)
That's really interesting! Say I have another biased coin that comes up heads with ρ. Then f[i] is the probability of flipping i heads in a row followed immediately by tails. For instance, f[3] is the probability of flipping HHHT.
At any rate, I still need to find Eric's expected pay per minute, which I've called E. This is equal to the amount Eric gets paid for being on each floor times the probability of him being on that floor in a random minute. He gets $0 for being on floor 0, $1 for being on floor 1, $2 for being on floor 2, and so on, which means that:
E = 0f[0] + 1f[1] + 2f[2] + 3f[3]
Replacing each f[i] where i > 0 with its definition from equation (6) yields:
E = 0h⁰(1 − ρ) + 1h¹(1 − ρ) + 2h²(1 − ρ) + 3h³(1 − ρ) + ⋯
The first term is zero, so this simplifies to:
E = 1h¹(1 − ρ) + 2h²(1 − ρ) + 3h³(1 − ρ) + ⋯ (8)
The expression on the right-hand side is 1 less than the expected number of flips to get tails on a coin that comes up heads with probability ρ, which is 1/(1 − ρ). Therefore, (8) simplifies to:
E = 1/(1 − ρ) - 1 (9)
(Another way to arrive at this result is to divide both sides of (8) by 1 − ρ. The right-hand side then becomes a simple arithmetico-geometric series that sums to ρ/(1 − ρ)². Multiplying both sides by 1 − ρ yields E = (1 − ρ)(ρ/(1 − ρ)²), which simplifies to (9).)
After expanding the definition of ρ from (4) and simplifying, (9) becomes the formula I gave at the beginning:
E = 1/(1 − (h/(1 − h)) - 1 = h/(1 − 2h)
#18500 caching (using or creating) is now disabled when a query string is present. caching blog posts is back on. tested some. seems to work. let me know if you run into any problems.
#18502 I had an idea for approach.
1) treat every time he leaves the ground floor and returns as one game (or shift or whatever)
2) figure out the average money he makes in one game
3) figure out the average time one game takes
4) figure out the average time he stays at the ground floor between games
This breaks the problem down into parts. I figured finding his avg income from one game would be easier than his avg income over a long time.
#18483
Max wrote:
> I was initially confused b/c 4/9 is the reduced form which I would have expected. adding `0.444...` in parens after (or equivalent) would have made it clear what you meant
Good point. I should have written it as 4/9, not 0.4/0.9.
#18486
Max wrote:
> If is at some height H then the time to get back to 0 will be proportional to the difference between `h` and `1-h`, so proportional to `1-2h`.
> let T(h) be the draft formula for time-back-to-0 (we might use something other than `1/(1-2h)` but I'll keep referring to it as T(H))
It's really interesting to me how, with your 1/(1 − 2h), you arrived at something so close to the final formula I came up with, h/(1 − 2h). I was wondering how to explain the denominator intuitively, and it looks like you may have done it, or at least made a lot of headway towards it. IIUC, your idea is that the denominator is the difference between the probability of going down and the probability of going up: (1 − h) - h = 1 − 2h.
In coming up with the formula, I ran into two things that reminded me of coin flipping.
First, the probability of finding Eric on floor f at a random time is (ρ^f)(1 − ρ), which is the probability of flipping a biased coin that comes up heads with probability ρ and having it come up heads f times in a row followed by tails.
Second, the expected amount Eric makes per minute is the expected number of flips to get tails on the ρ-biased coin I just mentioned, which is ρ/(1 − ρ). (If we replace ρ with its definition, h/(1 − h), we get h/(1 − 2h), as before.)
Maybe there's a way to use your idea to derive the final formula more simply and intuitively. It took a lot of algebra the way I did it.
#18504 Nice idea! That should simplify the problem. I updated my simulator to count the number of minutes per game and pay per game. Here is a table of the results for a few values of h:
h | in-game minutes/game | between-game minutes/game | $/game | $/in-game minute | $/minute
0.05 | 1.111 | 20.000 | 1.173 | 1.055 | 0.056
0.10 | 1.250 | 9.999 | 1.406 | 1.125 | 0.125
0.15 | 1.429 | 6.667 | 1.735 | 1.214 | 0.214
0.20 | 1.667 | 5.001 | 2.222 | 1.333 | 0.333
0.25 | 2.000 | 4.000 | 3.000 | 1.500 | 0.500
0.30 | 2.500 | 3.333 | 4.375 | 1.750 | 0.750
0.35 | 3.334 | 2.857 | 7.222 | 2.167 | 1.167
0.40 | 5.001 | 2.500 | 15.000 | 3.000 | 2.000
0.45 | 9.996 | 2.222 | 54.956 | 5.498 | 4.498
I noticed two patterns. First, the average length of a game ("in-game minutes/game") looks like 1/(1 − 2h). Second, the average number of minutes between games ("between-game minutes/game") looks like 1/h. I don't know how to explain or prove those formulas yet. Also, I haven't yet figured out the patterns for the next two columns ("$/game" and "$/in-game minute").
#18508 $/in-game-minute is easy given the other info.
let:
S = shift time (avg)
B = break time (avg)
P = pay/shift (avg)
pay/break = 0 (no pay at ground floor)
C = B+S (avg cycle time)
A cycle is just a break followed by a shift, since the scenario is he shows up at floor 0, takes a break, takes a shift, and repeat that cycle indefinitely.
Then $/time is just P/C
#18502 Another question about the elevator scenario that I can now answer is: what's the lowest floor we could pick such that Eric would be below that floor at least 99% of the time?
We know from earlier that the probability that Eric is on floor i at a random time is f[i] = (ρ^i)(1 − ρ), where ρ = h/(1 − h), and h is the probability that Eric goes up a floor as opposed to going down.
Now define g[i] to be the probability that Eric is on floor i *or greater*. This is the sum of the probabilities of him being on floor i, floor i + 1, floor i + 2, and so on. That is, we have:
g[i] = f[i] + f[i+1] + f[i+2] + ⋯
Expanding the definition of f yields:
g[i] = (ρ^i)(1 − ρ) + (ρ^(i+1))(1 − ρ) + (ρ^(i+2))(1 − ρ) + ⋯
Factoring out (ρ^i)(1 − ρ) from each term yields:
g[i] = (ρ^i)(1 − ρ)(1 + ρ + ρ^2 + ⋯)
The expression in parentheses with an ellipsis is a geometric series with ratio ρ. Since ρ is between 0 and 1, the series sums to 1/(1 − ρ). Making this substitution yields:
g[i] = ρ^i(1 − ρ)(1/(1 − ρ))
This simplifies to:
g[i] = ρ^i
Now we want to use that to find the lowest floor i such that the probability that Eric is below floor i is at least 99%. Since g[i] is the probability that Eric is on floor i or greater, 1 − g[i] is the probability that Eric is below floor i. We therefore want to find the least integer i such that:
1 − g[i] ≥ 0.99
This simplifies to:
g[i] ≤ 0.01
Substituting the definition of g[i] yields:
ρ^i ≤ 0.01
To solve for i, we can take the logarithm of both sides. This yields:
log[ρ^i] ≤ log[0.01]
By a property of logarithms, this is equivalent to:
i log[ρ] ≤ log[0.01]
Since ρ is between 0 and 1, log[ρ] is negative. Therefore, dividing both sides by log[ρ] flips the direction of the inequality, yielding:
i ≥ log[0.01]/log[ρ]
We defined i as the *least* integer that satisfies this inequality, which means that i is the *ceiling* of the right-hand side:
i = ⌈log[0.01]/log[ρ]⌉
Finally, using the definition of ρ = h/(1 − h), we obtain:
i = ⌈log[0.01]/log[h/(1 − h)]⌉
And that's that.
For example, when h = 4/9, the formula says that i is 21. This agrees with the output of my simulation code.
#18503 Possible caching issue. I am not certain how I got to this URL (maybe via RSS), but the comments don't seem to show up.
https://curi.us/blog/post/2390
#18531 I fixed the RSS feed to use the regular post links.
find the parts you want in my YT videos!
tables of contents for many of my youtube videos, including IR and Max tutoring. you can do text search or skim through for topics you're interested in.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/647276416857276426/774754425952534548/stream_tocs.zip
link may break in the future. this should get put on a webpage sometime.
possible caching issue
I went to curi.us/2380 to copy a link to https://curi.us/2380#18579. When I loaded the page I didn't see the most recent comment. Doing a ctrl+f5 (force refresh) brought the new comment up. I didn't do a normal f5 first. I've sent curi a screenshot privately.
Conjecture: Depending on the set-up in the backend, I could see some cache-invalidation failing with this context: Normally the user's browser sends hashes of locally cached files with the request for files. The backend will check something and, if the hashes match, return 304 Not Modified. When the user forces the request, the backend does a different check which either fails or rebuilds the cache for that page.
I don't know enough about various defaults or common set ups to know if this might be possible in this case. I don't recall getting out of date pages prior to curi's caching changes.
#18580 sounds like browser caching? if it was server caching refreshing the page wouldn't help.
i made no changes to what headers are being sent to tell browsers what files are expired or anything like that. all i changed was saving local html cache files of some pages which nginx can serve and i added logic to delete them when they're invalid.
The goal of the group is learning
> The goal of the group is learning. So most of your posts should explain an idea that someone could learn something from.
From https://fallibleideas.com/discussion/guidelines
I suspect most (all?) new ppl end up ignoring this bit. I was checking the guidelines just now and I didn't remember it, like I couldn't tell you if it was new or always there.
That seems like a problem. IDK if it's particularly me but it feels more general based on new ppl's behaviour -- I don't have that much perspective on new ppl's behaviour tho.
Poppy seed cookie problem
I'm trying to fit a math puzzle I came up with into a tweet. Here's what I have so far:
Ingredients for cookies with poppy seeds pour at a constant rate into a huge mixer the size of a grain silo. Dough comes out a tube at the bottom & is sliced into cookies of equal volume. 10% of cookies have 10 or more poppy seeds. To the nearest integer, what % have exactly 6?
Is the wording clear? Poppy seeds are meant to be modeled as tiny compared to the cookies, and the mixer is supposed to thoroughly shuffle/randomize the ingredients inside it, so you have some chance of a cookie with no poppy seeds and some (very remote) chance of a cookie with a 1000+ poppy seeds.
#18610
> Is the wording clear?
I guess but it's a bit distracting.
Why are you telling a story about giant mixers and baked goods particularly?
why not:
> Equal volumes were taken from a random mix of seeds and oil. 10% of them have 10 or more seeds. To 2 sig figs, what % have exactly 6?
That fits in old-length tweets. You can probably omit "of them" too.
#18611 Thanks, that's a big improvement. I went with this:
> Samples of equal volume are taken from a random mixture of poppy seeds and oil. 10% of samples have 10 or more seeds. To the nearest integer, what % have exactly 6?
caching issue - 'reply' link
I found a caching issue -- I tried force refreshing and loading the link in a different browser (which had the same result).
Sample URL: https://curi.us/2380-max-microblogging/reply/18021
Note: comment total says 90 and most recent comment was on Nov 2nd. current comment total should be >= 109.
This seems to be the same situation with replying to other comments too: https://curi.us/2380-max-microblogging/reply/18038#post-comment and https://curi.us/2380-max-microblogging/reply/18190#post-comment
Seems to work on this post, too (though these two examples have *different* cached pages): https://curi.us/2234-open-discussion-2-2019/reply/18611 and https://curi.us/2234-open-discussion-2-2019/reply/18451
https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
Link says that iCloud backups include iMessages history, and that Apple can read your iMessages history from the backups if they want.
#18629 pretty disturbing
#18625 i've disabled caching quote or reply links at all. they would have a low cache hit rate anyway. and they were causing disk space problems when a web spider when through hundreds of them on a large page.
https://www.capitalismreview.com/2020/10/objectivists-and-the-2020-u-s-presidential-election/
> Objectivists and The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election
decent article
#18629 Seems to be incorrect in major ways: https://blog.jacopo.io/en/post/apple-ocsp/
#18660 I didn't see anything in the article linked in #18660 that refutes that the claim from the article linked in #18629 about iMessages and iCloud backup. In fact, the article linked in #18660 doesn't contain either of those terms. Maybe #18660 is saying that *other* claims from the article linked in #18629 are incorrect in major ways.
#18660 the jacopo.io article was discussed on Hacker News.
There are 3 tl;dr points at the end of the jacopo.io article. Here's the first:
> - No, macOS does not send Apple a hash of your apps each time you run them.
About that, HN user lapcatsoftware wrote that, ok, even if it doesn't send a message to Apple for *every* app invocation, the responses are only cached for around 5 minutes.
The next tl;dr point is:
> - You should be aware that macOS might transmit some opaque information about the developer certificate of the apps you run. This information is sent out in clear text on your network.
About that, HN user xvector wrote:
> Developer certificate IDs [which are apparently at least part of what macOS sends back to Apple] are almost a 1:1 match with which app you’re running.
And HN user the_duke wrote there's still no justification for sending the info in cleartext.
The third tl;dr point from the jacopo.io article was:
> - You shouldn’t probably block ocsp.apple.com with Little Snitch or in your hosts file.
Related to that, earlier in the article, the jacopo.io author wrote:
> if you think your privacy is put at risk by this feature more than having potential undetected malware running on your system, go ahead
This seems to say it's OK to block ocsp.apple.com if you have a particular belief, and that belief isn't unreasonable for technical users.
So far, I don't see how the jacopo.io article pointed out anything that was incorrect in a major way in the original article.
#18629 Apple replied:
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/apple-privacy-macos-app-authenticaion/
The binomial CDF
My goal for this comment is to say something true and interesting about math. I'll try to explain what the *binomial CDF* is for and give a formula to calculate it exactly. I won't try to explain that formula or why it works, though.
The binomial CDF
Say you have a biased coin that comes up heads 60% of the time. If you flip it 100 times, what's the probability that you'll get 55 or fewer heads? There is a mathematical function that answers this kind of question. It's called the *cumulative distribution function for the binomial distribution*, or the *binomial CDF* for short. The binomial CDF is a function of 3 parameters, traditionally called k, n, and p:
- k: the upper limit on the number of times you flip heads
- n: the number of flips you make
- p: the probability of heads
You can evaluate the exact formula for the binomial CDF in Wolfram Alpha:
sum over i from 0 to k of (n choose i)(p^i)(1 − p)^(n − i), n=100, p=0.6, k=55
With that formula, Wolfram Alpha says the answer to the question above is roughly 18%.
#18614 I made a Monte Carlo simulation for the seeds & oil puzzle: https://play.golang.org/p/IHfCxzE-c6c (click Run).
Here's how it works. The container for the mixture is treated as a long tube divided lengthwise into 1 million numbered samples of equal volume. 6,221,300 seeds† are randomly placed into the tube. Each seed is assigned a real number representing its position in the tube, which is chosen uniformly at random from the range [0, 1 million). Rounding each seed's position down to the nearest integer gives the sample the seed falls into. After each seed has been placed, the number of seeds in each sample is counted. Finally, the percentage of samples having k or fewer seeds is displayed (as a probability), for each k from 0 up to the maximum number of seeds seen in any single sample. For comparison, the values of the cumulative distribution function for the Poisson distribution with parameter λ = 6.2213 are displayed alongside the simulation outputs.
† I found this number by setting 0.9 equal to the sum of the terms for k=0 through k=9 of a Poisson distribution with parameter λ, solving for λ, and multiplying by 1 million.
#18731 I updated the Monte Carlo simulation for the seeds & oil puzzle to use only integer random numbers: https://play.golang.org/p/-316bQLX_bT (click Run).
Before, it was using floating point random numbers and rounding them down to integers. The way it works now is, since the samples are all of equal volume, each seed is equally likely to go into any sample, so we essentially roll 1dN for each seed (where the container is divided into N samples) to assign each seed to a sample. That's simpler than the way I was doing it before.
Also, I forgot to mention that the purpose of the simulation is to be understandable by non-mathematicians who are used to familiar random number generators like dice and spinners.
#18733 I made a Google docs spreadsheet that carries out a Monte Carlo simulation of the seeds & oil puzzle. The purpose of putting the simulation into a spreadsheet was to make the simulation more understandable by non-programmers.
Here's how the spreadsheet version of the simulation works. The spreadsheet has 6221 rows, one for each seed. Each seed is randomly assigned to a sample in the range from 1 to 1000 (using RANDOM(1,1000)). Then, the number of seeds in each sample is counted (using COUNTIF). Finally, the percentage of samples with each number of seeds is displayed (again, using COUNTIF).
This Japanese Shop Is 1,020 Years Old. It Knows a Bit About Surviving Crises:
> The Japanese companies that have endured the longest have often been defined by an aversion to risk — shaped in part by past crises — and an accumulation of large cash reserves.
Having a cash buffer protects against some kinds of adverse events, but not all. I wonder whether Japan had an especially stable government for 1,000 years in order for a business to survive that long?
> I wonder whether Japan had an especially stable government for 1,000 years
no, it hasn't (and you can look this up easily besides remembering WWII)
On Dec 9, 2020, Tanya Golash-Boza (@tanyaboza) tweeted :
> My teen daughter just asked me if Latinx is a race or ethnicity. I told her to read Chapter 7 of my book, Race and Racisms, so we can have an informed discussion.
Someone shared a screenshot of this tweet. I suspected it of being a parody, so I searched for the original and found it.
#19120 I don't think it is a parody. The author describes herself in her Twitter bio as "Prof of Sociology at UC Merced. Author of Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism & other books. Born & raised in Washington, DC." and her URL is MappingGentrification.com.
How to see what internet providers serve a given zip code
InMyArea lists the internet providers that offer service in a given zip code.
BroadbandNow has a heat map of U.S. broadband coverage. By default, the colors represent the number of providers that serve the area. You can also filter by fiber, cable, DSL, or fixed wireless. Like InMyArea, BroadbandNow also offers a list of internet providers that offer service in a given area.
claim about a left wing study (haven't verified)
http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4710493&forum_id=2#41532054
#19126 The Google Video Quality Report is helpful for checking the internet availabiltiy in an area. It charts the fraction of YouTube streams during an average day that are in HD/SD/LD for a given ISP in a given area. A higher fraction of high-quality video streams (e.g, HD vs SD) indicates better internet service.
Google's methodology page goes into lots more detail, for example:
> Rather than being based on data from a small sample of users, this report is based on billions of YouTube videos watched across thousands of ISPs.
> We look at how quickly all YouTube video data was loaded over the last 30 days.
> We segment the results by ISP and by geographical location.
> We determine what the minimum available speed was at least 90% of the time.
How to compare Amazon Prime shipping times between locations
Here's a way to figure out how quickly Amazon Prime will ship to a given area (assuming you have Prime).
1. Go to Amazon, find an in-stock product that ships with prime, and add it to your cart. Go to the checkout page and see how long it would take to ship to where you live.
2. Find a residential address in the area you want to check. I used Google Maps to find a street and a house number, then used the USPS Zip Code Finder to find the Zip code.
3. See how long your order would take to ship to that address, and compare.
There is only one Apple Store in the American Redoubt. It's in Boise, ID (southwest corner of the state). Montana and Wyoming have none. There are also no Apple Stores in North Dakota or South Dakota, two states to the immediate east of the Redoubt.
#19172 Also, there are *no* Ikea stores in the American Redoubt, nor are there any in North Dakota or South Dakota. (map of Ikea stores in the U.S.)
Ham radio
This is an introductory post by a beginner (me), for beginners, about voice communication over ham radio, a.k.a. amateur radio.
I've been playing around with ham radio because I'm interested in using it to see what's going on in emergencies, and because it might be useful for communication in a grid-down scenario.
With ham radio, you have a radio (handheld or otherwise) and you basically use it to become your own radio station, except you're transmitting and listening on frequencies other than the standard FM/AM ones. Think of it like a conventional radio with a tuner dial except that in addition to listening to what's coming in on a frequency, you can also transmit on that frequency. When you transmit, you actually become your own radio station, in a sense. Whenever anyone, including you, transmits on a frequency, anyone within range who's listening to that frequency can hear them.
In order to legally be allowed to transmit on ham radio frequencies outside of an emergency, you have to pass an exam. However, anyone is allowed to listen to ham radio frequencies.
When you talk on ham radio, what you do first is announce your "call sign" when you start talking, then you mention it again every 10 minutes or so, and you mention it a final time when you sign off. A call sign is basically a short (~6 character) alphanumeric code that's uniquely assigned to you when you first pass the ham radio license exam. Call signs are the ham radio equivalent of regular radio station names like KQED.
The range of ham radio depends lots of things, including the terrain and man-made obstructions like buildings, but a few miles seems to be pretty common for the basic frequencies.
I got a Yaesu FT-60R handheld ham radio. As a beginner, I'm pretty happy with it. It has good reviews. I've used it to talk a few times. I'm getting a better antenna for it than the one it came with. I'll see how that goes.
#19181
> This is an introductory post by a beginner (me), for beginners
[...]
> The range of ham radio depends lots of things, including the terrain and man-made obstructions like buildings, but a few miles seems to be pretty common for the basic frequencies.
[...]
> I got a Yaesu FT-60R handheld ham radio.
I don't think your way of presenting the range of "ham radio" makes sense, even for beginners.
Your statement is correct for a specific context: the range of a handheld ham radio communicating directly with another similar handheld ham radio.
However, that is not the primary context a beginner or prepper would usually want to get into ham radio for. The range of direct handheld to handheld ham radio is pretty similar to the (cheaper, no test passing, fewer rules) GMRS/FRS radios. If all someone wants is to communicate a few miles with a handheld, then GMRS/FRS is generally a far easier and better choice than ham radio. Not the least of which because you can stockpile 5 or 50 GMRS/FRS radios and hand them out to people you want to communicate with in a disaster without worrying about everyone having to pass a ham radio test.
The two main things ham radio offers that are advantages over other 2-way radio services are:
- Repeaters, which allow handheld ham radios like your Yaesu FT-60R to communicate over about a hundred miles or so with a single mountaintop repeater. There are also interlinked repeater networks that work over several hundred miles. Many, but not all, ham repeaters are either completely off-grid powered or have backup power for some duration in the event of a grid failure.
- Skywave, which requires a bigger radio and antenna but can then in principle communicate with similar radios anywhere on Earth with no intermediate infrastructure. These are the best "everything is down" communication systems.
There are tons of other things you can do with ham radio, many of which are great fun (like fox hunting, my personal favorite). But the above two are the main reasons why a beginner should consider getting a ham license.
Product recommendation: Quick n' Eat fully-cooked angus choice beef patties
Quick n' eat fully-cooked angus choice beef patties are frozen burgers that actually taste amazing. I'm a big fan of grilling and have gotten good at grilling steaks and burgers, but I can't see myself buying raw hamburger again when I can just buy Quick n' Eat frozen beef patties. They taste like they just came off the grill even if they just came out of the microwave. (The testimonials agree.)
You can buy them at Sam's Club and Costco.
#19183 Thanks. I've used repeaters to communicate with people beyond the range of my handheld, but I didn't realize most repeaters would remain usable (for a while, at least) if the electric grid went down. I also had never heard of Skywave, and I didn't know that GMRS/FRS radios were a cheaper and more usable alternative to standalone (not used with a repeater) ham radios.
#19185
Skywave is also known as skip, ionospheric bouncing, or just HF (which technically refers to the frequency range rather than the means of signal propagation).
Almost all ham gear is designed to operate on DC, including repeaters. This makes them easy to run directly off batteries. Placing rechargeable batteries in parallel with an AC to DC power supply creates a grid powered system that continues to operate for some time if the grid goes down (or the power supply fails). That's a reasonably common setup where I live.
As solar has gotten cheaper, it's become more common to either supplement or swap out the AC to DC power supply with a few panels and a charge controller. The other thing solar has done is make placement of repeaters in off-grid locations more feasible. Both developments have increased the resiliency of repeaters to grid failures.
But if you're planning to depend on a particular repeater you should become familiar with its specific characteristics.
1 - Go to a repeater directory like: https://www.repeaterbook.com/repeaters/index.php?state_id=none
2 - Find the call sign of the owner of the repeater you're interested in
3 - Go to the FCC license search: https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchLicense.jsp
4 - Look up the call sign you found from the repeater directory
5 - Contact the owner at their FCC registered contact info and ask about how their repeater is powered and how long they expect it to operate in the event of grid power failure
Alternatively, you can contact the local chapter of a ham radio disaster relief group like RACES or ARES. They'll know which repeaters in the area are expected to operate in a disaster.
FI person fitting in to a Christian community?
How is atheism perceived by Christians? If I want to fit in with a majority Christian community just enough to help them and be helped if the SHTF, would my atheism be a problem?
Any other potential clashes between FI and Christianity? I guess TCS clashes with how most Christians treat their kids, so, to that extent that "fitting in" involves being around bad parenting, there could be challenges there for an FI person.
#19194 ⁕to *the* extent that ...
(Note: I used a unicode flower punctuation mark here instead of an asterisk so as not to trigger the markdown formatter.)
#19194
I think it's pretty risky to be an atheist and try to fit in a Christian community. Especially if you're not that familiar with the culture, have no family ties with actual Christians, and no intention of actively working a competent deception.
Atheists are distrusted by most Christians. Secondarily, atheists are associated with leftist political beliefs and deviant sexual behaviors, both of which are generally hated by Christians.
As to how they'll actually treat atheists, it depends what kind of Christian and whether or not you can fly under the radar and NOT be thought of as an atheist.
Some Christians will be fine even under quite dire circumstances, as long as you are discreet about atheism, don't openly defy Christianity, and you have socially calibrated responses to ordinary Christian activities and phrases[1]. They're not going to ask for your testimony[2].
Others absolutely will ask for your testimony, and if they find it either not forthcoming or not believable you will not be welcome. You really don't want to be around these people if SHTF and they find out you're an atheist. Plenty of atheists have been disowned by their own Christian family members. If a parent will disown their child for atheism, you have zero chance with that person.
And then there's a lot of shades in between. These are actually the most dangerous people from a prepping standpoint because you'll think you're fine with them but when the chips are down you're actually not. "Judge not lest ye be judged" *is* a major theme in Christianity, and they'll try to abide by it under ordinary circumstances. But when times get tough judgement becomes necessary, and people who seemed really nice and accepting before are likely to become suddenly cold or openly hostile.
A community is likely to be made up of some mixture of these types. Unfortunately a few zealots are likely to make trouble for you within the larger community just when you don't need it.
[1] Some things like:
- How to respond if someone calls you brother or sister
- What to do if someone has a problem and is expecting you to pray for them, but won't ask directly
- What you say if someone says they'll pray for you or for a group that includes you about some problem
- What food should be prayed over before eating (and what not)
- When you should hold hands during prayer and when you shouldn't
- What to say if someone asks you to lead in prayer
[2] By testimony I actually mean a lot of things that tell your history as a Christian. How you learned about Christianity, what churches you've been a member of and what denominations they were, when and where you converted, favorite Bible verses, etc. Basically, the story of your life as a Christian + an affirmative profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Although if they *specifically* ask for your testimony they're usually just asking for a 5-10 minute story of how you converted to Christianity.
#19196
> Some Christians will be fine even under quite dire circumstances, as long as you are discreet about atheism, don't openly defy Christianity, and you have socially calibrated responses to ordinary Christian activities and phrases[1].
Interesting. I don't know any of the things you listed in the footnote. I wonder how hard it would be to learn that stuff? I searched the web for "learn to fit in with christians" and "learn christian traditions when to pray food" (both without the quotes), and didn't see anything relevant to my situation on the first page of results. I doubt there are professional materials for it like there are for picking up girls or sales.
> Others absolutely will ask for your testimony, and if they find it either not forthcoming or not believable you will not be welcome.
Great point about how some Christians, before accepting you, will want you to describe, at some length, your belief in Christianity, how you came by it, and how and where you've practiced it.
> And then there's a lot of shades in between. These are actually the most dangerous people from a prepping standpoint because you'll think you're fine with them but when the chips are down you're actually not. "Judge not lest ye be judged" *is* a major theme in Christianity, and they'll try to abide by it under ordinary circumstances. But when times get tough judgement becomes necessary, and people who seemed really nice and accepting before are likely to become suddenly cold or openly hostile.
Good point about the danger of relying on Christians who are in between the extremes of those who will clearly accept atheists and those who won't.
Also, (and I realize you know this, just saying it for my own benefit), "Judge not lest ye be judged" is another Christian idea that conflicts pretty directly with FI, which advocates the Objectivist idea of *judge and prepare to be judge*.
> A community is likely to be made up of some mixture of these types. Unfortunately a few zealots are likely to make trouble for you within the larger community just when you don't need it.
Good point.
Thanks for your reply. It sounds to me like an atheist trying to fit in with Christians is kinda like an open communist trying to fit in with American patriots. It's an especially bad idea when the "fitting in" is meant to extend to an SHTF situation.
#19202
> I wonder how hard it would be to learn that stuff?
Pretty easy if you want to - after the pandemic of course. Find a church of a suitable denomination[1] where you already are, hang out there some, and ask questions as needed.
You can do *that* safely and openly. You can say you don't believe in God, were not raised Christian but are searching for truth, and are interested in how Christians live. All true, and in ordinary times will get you as much exposure as you can tolerate. Plus it will explain your ignorance of even basic Christian behaviors, and as a result they're likely to be super tolerant at least for a while.
You can share as much or as little of the rest of your backstory as you care to, including that you're considering moving to a community that is majority conservative Christian. They won't trust you, but they don't need to as you aren't looking to do anything that requires their trust.
Go to services, some education and social activities too. Arrive early or stay late to observe social behavior.
Some things you will need to avoid, which they'll probably tell you before but just in case not:
- Don't partake in the Lord's Supper - where they pass around little crackers and grape juice. That's reserved for people who have had a conversion experience and made a public profession of faith in Jesus.
- Don't go to church business meetings, or vote if they bring a matter of business into something you are attending. That's for church members.
- Don't speak to or otherwise interact with children unless their parents approach you with the kid(s).
If you start getting a "we're annoyed with you" vibe from one church, or just learn all you care to from one before learning all you care to about Christianity in general, pick another one. Again no need to conceal that you tried another church before - that's normal and expected.
They will try to convert you. Certainly by the content of services, in which possibly all or possibly only a few will include an "altar call" in which non-Christians are asked to come forward and convert. You can just ignore these.
They'll also possibly try 1-1 conversion outside the church during other activities. It's also possible they'll make one or more home visit(s). In these cases you'll need to make some kind of response. If you just say you're still searching and not ready to become a Christian they'll probably back off. If they press for details it's OK to give an explanation why you don't believe in God. But if this goes more than a couple of back and forth exchanges on details you'll probably need to find a new church. Because then they'll go from just general distrust to open fear that you'll sow doubt among their membership.
[1] If you're looking for something conservatives hang out at you want an evangelical church. Baptists are the one I'm most familiar with, and there are several subdenominations (Southern Baptists are the most conservative, or at least they were when I was involved). Pentacostals and Presbyterians and Calvary chapels also probably fine though I don't have personal experience with those.
Stay away from churches with no denominational affiliation (non-denominational) or a denomination that's not large - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members. The reason is the variability among non-denomination/small denomination churches is way too extreme for a beginner. Some are quite odd and "out there" with behaviors that aren't normal for Christians. You won't know if some odd behavior is parochial to that church or true of Christians in general. There's also a high risk of running into a mini-cult of personality, or extreme/invasive conversion attempts.
#19205 Thank you.
Mormons
Another denomination I know some things about that you might want to look into in the context of prepping is Mormons.
Mormons (and also Jehovah's Witnesses[1]) are a denomination that calls themselves Christians but Baptists and I suspect other evangelicals regard as *not* Christian. It's kinda odd - Baptists are totally accepting of ex: Presbyterians or Lutherans and will even accept Christians with strong leftist strains like Catholics or Unitarians over the (largely conservative) Mormons, which they basically despise. Baptists had a whole course of really specific info about why Mormons are all going to hell - the only such course I ever saw. The negative material was theological or theologically motivated smears though. It's largely irrelevant to an atheist beyond noting that yes, Mormons have some truly ridiculous theological beliefs that are additive to or contradictory to the ridiculous theological beliefs of standard Christians.
When I became an outspoken atheist and spent a few years going around looking for religious arguments, I found out why the Baptists singled out Mormons for special negative attention. The Mormons were by far the most accepting and friendly people I ever argued with. I went many back-and-forth rounds with various Mormons and they kept coming. I made friends with some of them. I got invited to tons of social events, a few of which I went to and were better than the Baptist ones primarily because Mormons didn't consider dancing and large sections of the popular rock music catalog to be proto-sins[2]. As a late teen / early 20's if I *had* believed in God, absent strong theological arguments I would've converted from Baptist to Mormon cuz Mormons were way more fun to be around while preserving most of the culture and values I was comfortable with.
My involvement with Mormons ended after I successfully converted one of their missionaries to atheism. Even then they never told me I wasn't welcome...they just stopped sending missionaries to my house and overtly inviting me to stuff. If I hadn't done that I'd probably still be getting Mormon visits. :)
Mormons also have an especially prepper-friendly culture. Part of being a good Mormon seems to be maintaining large stocks of basic necessities. The first barrels of stocked up rice and beans I ever saw were at the home of one of the Mormons I became friendly with. They seemed to have the right attitude - preps are for getting through hard times. I didn't get any of the "End Times" / chosen few to survive while the world burns vibe from them I got from some other denominations[1].
There are small Mormon-dominated communities in many western states. What I mean is, a place that's small enough to have only one main church and the church is Mormon. If I didn't have family associated with evangelicals and was looking for a small community I'd strongly consider a Mormon one. If for no other reason, in a disaster your neighbors are unlikely to be stealing from you because they probably all have their own stocks.
However I'd avoid communities that are still small but big enough to have ex: a Mormon church and an approximately equal sized evangelical church. The risk of the two communities fighting is high in a SHTF scenario relative to ex: different strains of evangelicals, or even evangelicals and non-evangelical denominations.
If a community is big enough to have ex: multiple evangelical churches plus Mormons it's fine if you want to work with the evangelicals. I wouldn't choose the Mormons there though, as in a SHTF scenario they're apt to get steamrolled.
[1] I recommend avoiding Jehovah's Witnesses. Their relationship to prepping is of the "End Times" variety - focused on how they're going to be the chosen ones while everyone else gets destroyed. Plus they're strongly anti-science and even less fun than Baptists.
[2] Proto-sins are things that aren't themselves technically a sin, but tend to lead people to sin and should therefore be avoided. For example, dancing is not considered sinful unless it's overtly sexual. But most dancing does tend to arouse sexual feelings which can lead to extra-marital sex which *is* a sin. And most dancing goes on in bars where people tend to get drunk which *is* a sin. So Baptists avoided dancing because they think it leads to sin - they generally looked down on people dancing and certainly did not sponsor dances. Whereas the Mormon attitude seemed to be: if there's dances at the church we can make sure it doesn't get too sexual, and there's no alcohol so people aren't getting drunk, so less sinning than if there aren't dances at the church and people dance elsewhere.
#19202 Watch some Christian TikTok and YouTube (read some comments – that'll help you know when other people find stuff extreme or unusual. some popular people get attention with strong views instead of typical views, e.g. if you don't even kiss your spouse before marriage that could get attention but it's not typical in any large subculture afaik).
Video will help convey the culture but you should also try some text too. I'm sure there's tons available on Facebook. There's probably stuff on reddit, twitter and blogging platforms too.
#19213 Thanks. I started with Christian text-based forums. I found a few posts I thought were relevant to my questions about fitting in.
Here's one of the recent comments on the /r/Christianity subreddit:
> I’ve made many mistakes in my life that I’m not proud of. I have a lot of urges that get me into trouble and they have ruined some of my relationships. I never believed, and I’m still skeptical, but I would like to change the way I view life and want to give myself a new purpose. Get back on the right track. Can I just walk into a church? Is it free? Is it worth it?
I guess a vague openness to the possibility that the Christian god exists would go over better with Christians than committed atheism would.
> ... you probably shouldn't take part in communion.
Right. As Andy D. mentioned.
> ... just walk in and follow along. Maybe tell the greeter you're new here and need some instructions.
Makes sense.
Here's another post from /r/Christianity:
> I am a seeker. I would like to believe in Jesus. My parents believed in Him and my sister does too and they all seem to draw great things from their faith. However I am a skeptic by nature and the Bible just seems like made up bullshit to me. Has anyone here gone from skeptic to believer, and if so, how? What arguments convinced you?
Again, I guess a "seeker" could fit in with Christians more effectively than an atheist. Is that true? I guess that an atheist would be seen as a possible convert, while an atheist would be seen more like an enemy.
I noticed that /u/brucemo, one of the moderators of r/Christianity, has the Atheist tag by his username when he posts to that group (example). Unclear to me what I can infer about the subreddit from that. Maybe that it's not very Christian in some sense.
I also looked at the top posts for the last month on Gab's Christianity group. Here's one of them:
> I'm convinced if Jesus, Paul, and Elijah were alive today with veiled identities, they'd all be put under church discipline for unchristlike speech.
> Jesus called the pastors of his day a brood of snakes, hypocrites, and told them they're all going to Hell (Matt. 23:33). Elijah told non-Christians that their false god is probably not responding because he's taking a dump (1 Kings 18:27). Paul told false teachers (who said gentiles needed to be circumcised to be saved) that he wished they'd cut off their dicks (Gal 5:12).
> Evangelical culture is too soft and doesn't create space for men with bold prophetic voices. Blunt and salty language is not called for in every situation, but there is a time and a place for it. Everyone loves the prophets after they've been dead for a while (we chuckle at how freely they spoke and admire their boldness), but few can stomach them while they are alive.
I kinda like that last sentence. Reminds me a bit of Elliot's situation.
#19214
Context: Investigating Christianity where you currently are rather than trying to integrate with a Christian community for disaster prep. Evangelical Christians
> > I never believed, and I’m still skeptical, but I would like to change the way I view life and want to give myself a new purpose.
My guess is if you said this (or something similar) it'd be a lie in the context of Christianity. There's no need for lies and it could get you into trouble if they ask questions about it: "Why do you want to change how you view life?" "What's your current purpose and what is wrong with it?" etc.
> I guess a vague openness to the possibility that the Christian god exists would go over better with Christians than committed atheism would.
If the Christian God actually exists, would you want to know? (My guess is you'd answer, genuinely, "yes")
Are you open to the possibility you are wrong about your conclusion that the Christian God does not exist? (my guess is again, you'd genuinely say "yes")
Those two true facts are highly relevant and what you actually need to get across. I suggested "searching for truth" as a short and simple way to suggest them, but there are other ways. Including stating them explicitly.
And if they want to ask questions about them I think you'd be fine: "Why would you want to know?", "Why are you open to the possibility you are wrong?" etc.
> Again, I guess a "seeker" could fit in with Christians more effectively than an atheist. Is that true? I guess that an atheist would be seen as a possible convert, while an atheist would be seen more like an enemy.
"Seeker" alone is too vague and has a long history of abuse. You could be seeking converts to atheism. Or seeking to con the church members out of their savings. Or seeking to molest the children. These are the kind of things they'll be most worried about, and what you say should help put their mind at ease rather than leave those doors open.
"Seeker of truth" would be OK, but I think "searching for truth" would raise fewer red flags.
#19214
Some things in [evangelical] Christianity are binary, and trying to be vague won't help.
There's heaven or hell after death; nothing in between. The Catholics believe in things like purgatory and levels, but the evangelicals don't.
Matching with heaven/hell, you're either a Christian or you're not. Nothing in between. Being a Christian means making a specific choice, having specific beliefs and having made a public profession of those beliefs - being "born again". If you did that, you're going to heaven. If you didn't, you're going to hell.
A recurrent theme in evangelical denominations is that acting like a Christian, saying you're a Christian along with doing good deeds will not get you into heaven. Mormons are an example. And conversely an atheist or devil-worshipping death row murderer who genuinely converts right before execution will get into heaven. Everyone is considered a potential convert up to the moment of death.
You're not trying to claim you're a born again Christian. So they're going to presume you're hell-bound unless you convert. No amount of vague statements will change that status. So don't try.
One relevant area where there are shades of gray is about the threat you pose to them as a non-Christian. Threat to sow doubt in the congregation is a big one, although as I mentioned they'll also be worried about you being some sort of criminal or sexual pervert.
If they think you're too much of a threat you'll be unwelcome. But (presumably) you're not actually much of a threat. You're not trying to convert them. You're not a criminal. You're not there for any kind of sex. You just want to learn some about Christianity.
If your actions and statements are consistent with that reality, you'll probably be fine. And if you're not fine in one church, there's probably 10 more to try. Evangelical Christians think a major purpose in their lives is to convert non-Christians. They do that by having interactions with non-Christians. They want to welcome non-Christians as long as they're not a big threat.
Another area with shades of gray is your openness to changing your mind. I think being a critical rationalist is enough. Would they be more eager about you if you present as an unhappy agnostic rather than a CR atheist? Sure. But you don't need them to be that eager.
#19215
> If the Christian God actually exists, would you want to know? (My guess is you'd answer, genuinely, "yes")
> Are you open to the possibility you are wrong about your conclusion that the Christian God does not exist? (my guess is again, you'd genuinely say "yes")
> Those two true facts are highly relevant and what you actually need to get across. I suggested "searching for truth" as a short and simple way to suggest them, but there are other ways. Including stating them explicitly.
> And if they want to ask questions about them I think you'd be fine: "Why would you want to know?", "Why are you open to the possibility you are wrong?" etc.
Wow, thank you again. That's really helpful.
I also think I understand why seeker" is problematic and why "searching for truth" is better.
#19216 It looks like it'd be good if I could convey, through my actions and statements, that I'm not there to cause problems, in particular the problems they're especially concerned about, i.e.:
- people who are there to sow doubt in the congregation
- people who are there to look for sex partners, esp. what they'd view as perverted sex (?? an Evangelical church seems like it'd be low on my list of places to look if sex were my goal)
- criminals
AS excerpt - Passive / Active voice (Possible Spoilers)
I'm reading *Atlas Shrugged* for the first time. I remember over a year ago I came across the concept of active vs. passive voice in the FI discord (I don't have the quote on hand so I don't want to rely on my memory to speculate about it. I might check the logs when I'm next at a computer rather than on phone and post the original example, because I have a vague intuition that it might have some similarities in context to the below excerpt.)
This excerpt below from AS stood out to me as a possible example of passive / active voice.
For context, "she" is Dagny Taggart and "he" is John Galt.
> As they drove on along the edge of the lake, she asked, “You've mapped this route deliberately, haven't you? You're showing me all the men whom”—she stopped, feeling inexplicably reluctant to say it, and said, instead—“whom I have lost?”
> “I'm showing you all the men whom I have taken away from you,” he answered firmly.
> This was the root, she thought, of the guiltlessness of his face: he had guessed and named the words she had wanted to spare him, he had rejected a good will that was not based on his values—and in proud certainty of being right, he had made a boast of that which she had intended as an accusation.
I like the way this entire excerpt works together to point out this difference in values, but I'm having some trouble putting that feeling into words. What specifically do I like about this excerpt as a whole and why? I think I can only put some of what I like about it into words, while lots of what I like about it is kinda implicit and and unclear to me in words. Below is my attempt at putting some of that into words :
I like that the last paragraph explains how what Dagny was holding back as an accusation was actually something John was proud of. Dagny didn't expect him to be proud of that so she changed her phrasing partway through. (I think because she still partly views his actions as being opposed to her, although her negative view of him as the "destroyer" seems to be shifting gradually). Dagny's "inexplicable reluctance" to phrase her thought in active voice in the first paragraph also indicates she didn't know why she changed her phrasing, but John's response helps her realize that he knows anyway. She realizes there is a difference in values, but I don't know if she then understood her own reluctance and it became explicable in her own mind. Dagny chose to change the phrasing from the kind intended as an accusation into the kind intended more as a passive statement of fact.
Some questions I have: Is this a valid example of passive / active voice?
Is Dagny's insight that this is the root of John's lack of guilt (that his face indicates that he has never experienced guilt) correct? His different, better values mean that he can state the truth of his actions and take responsibility for them without feeling guilt. Presumably this means that other people might feel guilty about some stuff if they copied John's actions, but John knows better and doesn't feel guilty about the stuff he's done.
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As a tangent, I've been noticing more of this kind of speech IRL. Like situations where someone will talk about a problem, but not name the source of the problem as a specific person (so they're phrasing it in passive voice). It's strange because it doesn't always seem like a gesture of goodwill from the person phrasing things passively. Sometimes it's like they are trying to hold power over the person they aren't naming, and if that person says out loud that they actually caused the problem, like John Galt did above, then the person leaving things unnamed has no power over them anymore. I think it's often mixed, where the person using passive voice has some good will, but is also just uncomfortable with potential conflict and with discussing objective reality instead of social reality.
I think I'm overreaching with this message so I'll stop writing and post what I havenow. I enjoyed thinking and writing about this, and I mostly wrote stuff I didn't expect to write. It took about an hour on my phone.
I'll go back to reading AS now and post any other questions or comments I have. I've been highlighting (on a mobile eBook reader app) any interesting quotes or excerpts I come across to refer back to them. Some things stand out to me and I rarely know why, like the word "serene" stood out to me and I started noting down where it showed up and how Ayn Rand was using it. It seems like a positive way to describe people's facial expressions and to show that they're more connected to objective reality with their values than most people rather than being evil or second handed. Especially in situations where they just learned something meaningful or are doing something particularly heroic. I'll look for some examples of this before my next comment because I think I should be more tentative about my analysis of the usage of "serene".
So just to recap for myself: two action items I've promised in this comment:
1. Find and quote the original active / passive voice conversation (which was my introduction to the concept) from discord FI logs.
2. Post and analyze some examples of the usage of the word "serene" from AS (and maybe FH?) and try to improve my understanding of how they're used there.
passive versus active
#19358
This isn't actually an example of passive voice versus active voice. However, the idea is similar.
Passive voice is a grammar thing. *you're showing me the men whom I have lost* is active voice. It says who is doing the showing ("you") and who lost the men ("I"). Passive voice would be *I'm being shown* and *the men who were lost*, where it doesn't say who is doing the showing or who lost the men. You can get more info on passive voice by searching for it and reading some different pages on it.
But the idea you're identifying in the passage is the same one. Galt did the taking away of the men. Dagny doesn't say that but Galt does, and that's important to the passage.
What Dagny says isn't actually in passive voice. But it expresses even less action than saying "the men who were taken away from me" (which is in passive voice) by not even using the verb "take" and just saying that she "lost" the men.
The rest of what you wrote seems fine to me.
One example of this kind of thing that I notice IRL is when people say "I have to go now" or something instead of saying "I'm going now". They aren't taking responsibility for choosing when/whether to go; they are acting as if the decision is not theirs.
Ryan Kaji: 9-year-old boy tops YouTube’s highest-paid 2020 list. Guess how much he made, *Hindustan Times* (2020-12-20):
> Ryan Kaji, a 9-year-old boy, topped YouTube’s highest-paid stars list for 2020 by making nearly $30 million, to be precise $29.5 million. In fact, this year is not the first time he topped the list. He also became the highest paid YouTuber in 2018 and 2019.
I thought it was interesting that the same person was the highest-paid youtuber for 3 years in a row, when he was 7, 8, and 9 years old.
I watched one of Ryan's videos that was listed in the article. He was making cone-shaped things out of baking soda and pouring vinegar and water on them. ~4 tiny, finger-tipped sized toys were revealed when the baking soda reacted with the vinegar or was kinda washed away by the water. I didn't find the video all that interesting, but I guess I'm not the target audience.
#18661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25778758 :
> It's also important to realize that the backup includes your encrypted iMessage messages, and the key required to decrypt them. Meaning that if you have backups enabled, all the "end-to-end" encryption in iMessage is defeated. Apple and by extension the FBI can read your messages. This is documented by Apple here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
> Even if you disable backups, whenever you correspond with someone that has backups enabled those messages are still accessible to Apple.