Crowstep
1d ago
Excellent point. Real Americans have names like 'Running Bear' or 'Flying Eagle'.
People who call their children names like that tend to identify primarily as members of their (pre-American) tribe, and not primarily as Americans, which kind of proves my point.
Crowstep
1d ago
Hasan's parents were, as far as I can tell, legal immigrants and became naturalized citizens (a bit unclear to me if that happened before or after he was born), so opposing birthright citizenship for illegal aliens doesn't really "solve" here.
I was responding to your model of citizenship as an oath of loyalty. Citizenship can be inherited, but loyalty can't. Hasan is a perfect example of one way the 'pinky swear that you'll consider yourself as an American' doesn't work. The other is that there is nothing stopping a counterfactual immigrant Hasan saying he's a loyal American and then becoming a jihadi anyway. Words are wind. Even if America didn't grant birthright citizenship to the children of illegals, the problem would still exist, as it does everywhere.
I don't want to live in such a world, nor do I agree that that is an honest description of what citizenship has long been understand to entail in the American tradition.
I think it's pretty hard to argue that 'the American tradition' doesn't treat citizenship as a mere piece of paper when it literally gives it to the children of foreign criminals, allows its citizens to hold an unlimited number of other citizenships and doesn't have any substantial requirements to give it out other than 'you've lived here a while'. And that's without getting into the fact that for most of the country's history, it was illegal for citizens of one race to marry citizens (or chattel) of another race. That racialised understanding of the nation is the American tradition. And it is declining at the very same time that the number of Americans who even like America is also declining. I don't think that's unrelated. I think the term 'multi-ethnic nation' is a contradiction in terms.
Crowstep
1d ago
There's an older understanding of citizenship that is more akin to being bound in a sacred pact – like adoption.
Except Hasan was not a naturalised citizen. He never took an oath of loyalty or was willingly adopted into the country. There was no 'ritual' at all. The model of citizenship you describe is clearly incompatible with birthright citizenship, which involves handing out citizenship to babies of (both legal and illegal) immigrants.
This is precisely what I think we should all deny. "Citizenship is just a piece of paper" commodifies and cheapens citizenship
I would say that giving out citizenship like candy is what cheapens and commodifies it. Describing it as just a piece of paper is simply being honest about the world.
Oh, so you think that if he doesn't consider himself an American, then he's not?
If America truly is a 'proposition nation' with no ethnic requirements to be a member then pretty much. if America is simply a (very successful) economic zone where citizenship is just a piece of paper that grants you access, like a software key, then America isn't a nation at all.
I guess the point I was responding to was your sentence that Hasan was not a middle eastern terrorist, he was an American, as if those things are mutually exclusive. I would argue that Hasan is 100% a middle eastern terrorist, even if he is also 100% a US citizen, because all citizenship is just a piece of paper. If Britain was invaded by France tomorrow and we were all stripped of our citizenship to be made subjects of the French Empire, Britain as a nation would continue to exist. Because, to put it crudely, civic nationalism is fake.
Crowstep
1d ago
Nidal Hasan is not a Middle Eastern terrorist, he is an American citizen and soldier, born in Virginia, who shot his fellow soldiers to death
I think the fact that this sentence exists demonstrates the weakness of the 'American citizen' bit in being the sole definition of who is (or should be) an American.
Clearly, calling this man is a terrorist, that's not a partisan statement. And clearly he is Middle Eastern (which is why his parents called him Nidal instead of James). His attack was motivated by his Middle Eastern religion and his attachment to his fellow Middle Easterners. He may have had American paperwork, and even an American accent, but he clearly did not consider himself American in a meaningful sense of the word.
Crowstep
4d ago
Caplan is one person I just can’t develop a theory of mind for him
I've tried. The best I can come up with is that he is driven more by contrarianism than anything else. There seems to be almost an aggressive refusal to think through the details of his 'invite the entire world but abolish the welfare state I guess' positions. Every post on his blog where he visits another country ends with him saying 'this country's successes prove that libertarianism plus open borders is great' or 'this country's failures prove that it should embrace libertarianism plus open borders' and then ignoring the dozens of commenters pointing out how this wouldn't work and him ignoring them.
Crowstep
8d ago
I trade equities
Saying 'I'm an enquities trader' sounds pretty damn impressive. It makes you sound like a finance guy, who tend to make loads of money.
Do you make a regular income that you can live on?
Crowstep
8d ago
And as far as Russia is evil, Britain is also evil.
This argument might have more force when Britain invades France, massacres civilians, tries to annex half the départements and gets hundreds of thousands of British men killed in meat-grinder assaults.
The Russian regime legitimises itself to its subjects through whataboutery. If the Russian state lies, steals, kills and rigs elections, well every government (probably) does that too so all countries are equally bad. I can understand why Russian grannies who only watch state TV might believe that, but do you really believe it?
Crowstep
10d ago
iran is winning
Real life isn't an RTS. Modern conflicts can (and usually do) leave both sides worse off due to their destructiveness.
Crowstep
14d ago
I don’t watch any “revivals” because they’re always compromised by the cultural war
Even non-culture warry revivals suck. Futurama was bad when they brought it back from cancellation, so was Arrested Development, so was X-Files, so was Twin Peaks.
Shows should be allowed to die, even if they die prematurely (RIP Firefly).
Crowstep
17d ago
People are still masking in the year of our Lord 2026?! I had to check the date. I had expected it to be from 2022.
I find it strange that there is a bar that requires masking. You would think the kind of hypochondriacs who are still scared of COVID (?) wouldn't want to go outside at all.
Crowstep
26d ago
But surely if the Chinese companies aren't going to pace the frontier, then the US frontier companies have even less incentive to slow down (or in this case, to lobby the government to force them to slow down)? If the US government forces them to slow down, then their Chinese competitors will find it easier to overtake them. The fact that they are lobbying for a slowdown in spite of this suggests that their stated concerns about alignment are real.
The best explanation of the C-suite AI safety concerns is that the frontier AI companies are not making enough money to justify their capex
That explanation is certainly popular on Reddit. It combines cynicism and a dislike of big corporations, and it demonstrates the poster's intelligence. Other variations include that the frontier companies are worried about open source models threatening their business model or that they are juicing the numbers for an upcoming IPO. If you want to get really spicy, you might claim that Hugging Face was a publicity stunt and was deliberately set up.
But is it really the best explanation? I would say the best explanation is that the people who know most about AI are genuinely worried about it. They have been talking about the risks for years, after all. They've read about the Hugging Face incident and the similar cyber attacks from Anthropic. They understand the race dynamics involved, both between frontier companies and between the US and China. They've read AI 2027. And above all, they've seen what the internal, unreleased models can do and know how they are training the next generation to be even more powerful.
Crowstep
29d ago
Angus Barbieri survived for more than a year with literally no food. He was obese and lived off his stored body fat, which presumably included lots of PUFAs from all the deep fryer oil (he worked in a fish and chip shop). There's a school of thought (that I subscribe to) that it's actually excess PUFAs in vegetable oil that is causing the obesity epidemic.
IIRC, lioleic acid has a half-life of about two years, which could explain why it's so hard to lose weight through dieting. If your body fat is full of linoleic acid and it has such a long half life, any calorie controlled diet is just going to release a bunch of LA into your bloodstream.
Crowstep
29d ago
*Please note, lack of essential fats - rabbit starvation - is literally the fastest-killing form of malnutrition; if you were to eat a truly fat-free diet, you'd be incapacitated in a week and dead in three.
Rabbit starvation isn't caused by lack of fat. It's caused by lack of fat and carbs. Or more accurately, by excessive protein. The body can survive for months and up to a year with zero fat because it makes its own fat from carbs, as well as having stored body fat.
Crowstep
1mo ago
And not to sound like a broken record, but what is really really means is "please please regulate us so we can get an oligopoly and cash out our insane valuations before China eats our lunch"
If it's in the interests of Anthropic and OpenAI, why isn't this coming from their press offices instead of individual employees? And why aren't the two companies putting out a joint statement?
Also, China only has about 16% of global compute. They only way they are staying 6 months behind the frontier is by distilling the American models. They're not about to eat anyone's lunch.
Crowstep
1mo ago
Yes that's part of it, but there are 1.3 billion people in Subsaharan Africa, and that subcontinent isn't producing nearly as many smart fraction people. Nor are any Subsaharan countries doing the kind of O-ring stuff that India is managing.
Crowstep
1mo ago
The interesting thing about the subcontinent is that they built nuclear bombs, run high end-intelligence programs, and Pakistan has a heck of an Air Force. These are very hard problems, and subcontinentals achieve them
I don't know about Pakistan, but Indians aren't really an ethnic group. 3000 years of caste-segregated breeding means you essentially have a country with thousands of ethnic groups, some of which are very smart. It's as if India was 5% Ashkenazi, 10% Chinese, 15% Polish, 20% Algerian and 50% Somali. Their smart fraction is providing half the CEOs to Silicon Valley while 20% of the country can't read.
Crowstep
1mo ago
But a good Karate, Taekwondo, or Jujitsu club will still improve your fighting abilities compared to someone with no formal training.
I don't think that's right. Karate is basically worthless. Spending most of your time on kata and drills that have no correspondence to actual fighting, and then 'sparring' by playing what is essentially tag with your hands and feet. The same is true of Taekwondo (with a weird reluctance to use their fists). Brazilian jujitsu is absolutely valid, but the traditional Japanese kind is closer to aikido (the bullshittiest of bullshit martial arts) than anything that resembles fighting.
Not learning to fight while thinking you're learning to fight seems like a dangerous combination. Far better to practice the mystical ancient art of running away and phoning the police.
Anything that doesn't involve punching, kicking, grappling, throwing, pinning or submitting a resisting opponent is basically dancing. And if you're gonna learn to dance, at least make it a style with hotter girls like salsa.
But if learning to fight means risking injury, well yeah. Fighting is hurting the other guy. That's a pretty inescapable tradeoff.
Crowstep
1mo ago
Yeah that's probably a better way of putting it. In any case, any style that isn't intensely stress-tested on the mat/in the ring isn't worth bothering with. Judo may not be a huge part of MMA since the fighters don't wear clothing beyond shorts, but judoka do fight competitively (although there is definitely a groundfighting gap there that BJJ fills).
Crowstep
1mo ago
Martial arts is a solved problem. The optimal fighting style is MMA.
Any style that can't prove itself in the octagon isn't worth looking at, if your goal is to actually fight.
Crowstep
1mo ago
The far-right AfD got 43.8% of the vote
If a party is getting close to 50% of the vote, I'm not sure you can call it 'far' anything. Surely the political centre should be defined by what the public actually vote for?
Crowstep
1mo ago
This whole system seems extremely fragile.
It's worth noting that only some common law jurisdictions require unanimous juries. Some allow majorities or supermajorities, or they aspire to unanimous decisions but will allow majorities or supermajorities if that isn't possible.
I didn't say there was. I said that both Hasan and his parents identified primarily as Muslim Arabs and not as Americans. Which seems pretty obvious to me. Some ethnic groups in America do chose to identify as Americans, which is why, for example, Chinese Americans give their children names like Andrew, Amy and Jenny instead of Wei and Fang.
Did you mean to respond to somebody else?
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