RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10hr ago
“Sin” is a function of disordered desire
Omnipotence disappears the moment it's called upon. Why can desire be disordered? Why can humans turn away from God? Why is the physical world corrupted at all? Why was there a tree of knowledge in the garden? Why make things and then forbid them?
Efforts to answer these questions presume the precepts of the faith and build up these huge abstract epicycles. Humans have to be able to turn away from God since that's obvious and we see it happening and so God, being omnipotent has to have allowed that to happen and it's somehow part of the plan or needed for free choice... But the other ways that our choices are limited by the structure of the universe are somehow not this grave restriction on free will. God is a lot more opposed to negentropy than sin, the former seems actually forbidden. The latter could be too but isn't. Maybe that's part of the mysterious plan we cannot understand, the catch-all defence.
The scripture, Aquinas and theodicy is written around this gulf between the grand claims of omnipotence and omnibenevolence and the meagre realities. It doesn't explain anything, Epicurean argument alone obliterates all of it. And so you say 'oh this is very basic stuff, we've dealt with the Epicurean argument' but you haven't and cannot without coming up with these question-begging excuses like disordered desire.
Whereas the blind watchmaker needs no excuses. Take away the omnibenevolence and everything falls into place.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10hr ago
Let's assume that God wants to instill virtue in people. Should he: a) create a world with challenges and suffering or b) create a world with no challenge and no suffering?
An omnipotent God can directly create virtuous people and/or seed virtue into the universe at a base level. The universe could literally work on vibes-based storybook logic where the virtuous always prevail regardless of whatever challenges or suffering they may face. That is no more or less reasonable than having the universe run on atoms or gravity. Virtue is independent of challenge or suffering.
If he wanted no virtue, he could make the physics and incentives revolve around pure self-interest, maybe one has to eat the souls of others to survive. We don't live in that world.
If he wanted maximum virtue, he could have virtue directly translate into success and power and prestige, directly performing miracles in public. The medievals thought that could happen, they thought that kings could cure scrofula with the royal touch. We don't live in that world either.
God would certainly not resort to such indirect and ineffectual methods as getting people to write and constantly reinterpret holy books if he wanted virtue. There are much more direct levers to push.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11hr ago
Kudos, I think we probably don't do enough of this. I certainly don't.
Obviously, Iran is very unpopular. I still accept Trump's judgment that it was the right thing to do and I still believe that the war is (plainly) a military success. (Call me crazy!)
Why not look at it holistically? What good is military success if it can't enable a good political outcome?
Take Afghanistan for instance. The US took most of the country off the Taliban in a few months, installed a new government. They won every battle. But if the military success doesn't translate into political success, then it's not useful.
Consider this thread for instance, it's very long but skimmable: https://x.com/cryptochondrion/status/1433917591651770375
War is about politics. They're inseparably linked, like the engines and the aircraft. A good plane without engines is hardly an aircraft. For all of the US's strength in achieving military victories, there's a serious weakness in the political arm, performing hard imperialism.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11hr ago
I did go have a look at the man you linked, I find it unsurprising that a Christian scholar believes in miracles. I could find a bunch of imams who believe and write about djinn. Let's see them use djinn in warfare. Let's see them act like they're truly real.
- God introduces cancer, disasters, diseases, mortality into the world (while being omnipotent and having the power to directly control the space of all possible outcomes)
- God occasionally cures them or provides some intangible and unclear assistance at an almost imperceptibly low rate, far inferior to what modern technology can achieve
- Everyone celebrates??
You should never even need to claim miracles. If God doesn't want something to happen, it would not be possible. Why introduce fornication to the world and then forbit it? Why have sodomy be a thing at all? Why have greed at all? There is no grand cosmic reason for men to derive sexual pleasure from buggery, nor for the human back to be weak compared to the weight of our heads and so get back pain.
By the way, you can use the Bible to argue for anything, there's so much contradictory or unclear writing in there that it can be interpreted in any direction:
Do not put the Lord your God to the test.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
There wasn't even a scapegoat for COVID and millions of people died. Nor the GFC.
Kareem Serageldin, a Credit Suisse trading executive, got 30 months in 2013. He was a mid-level figure, not a CEO.
Maybe if a swarm does something really dangerous? But it'd have to be a pretty big event.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Christian theology is forced to take up this incredible burden of justifying how the structure of the universe necessitates all these problems from cancer to bad equilibriums, so they bring in original sin or free will or other constructs. But there is no need for them in the first place.
Free will or the ineffable divine plan means that sometimes Christians get massacred, forcibly converted, enslaved by their enemies - despite a perfectly loving and omnipotent deity on their side. He helps in intangible, non-obvious ways for some reason, or in the afterlife where the outcomes can't be observed.
Vs
I look around and I see no evidence of omnibenevolence in this universe, so its creator is not omnibenevolent.
The simpler solution is better. It doesn't need to invent dogmatic justifications for what's going on. How are we to know that God's plans require his followers to be immolated in Lisbon? Blind faith. And the good things that happen? These miracles are actually good? They aren't some counterintuitive damnation to bring about more evil in the long run (since we're taking on this twisty reasoning process)? Again blind faith. It's not even consistent.
Theology is cope, it's a way to find some justification for the unjustifiable, baffling people with jargon when the case is very simple. Take Leibniz's 'best of all possible worlds' - that's real theology done by real theologians. It's obviously wrong. Any idiot could easily make a better world just by subtracting mosquitoes or cluster migraines, or some similar unpleasant aspect of the world.
But theologians erect these huge bulwarks of defence against thinking clearly, they maintain that you can't judge God's action or inaction since you don't know what he's planning. Yet they seem to be very sure about omnibenevolence and love... How do they know what he's like? Because they appeal to the legitimacy of one holy book amongst many about events that happened in the distant past, when supernatural events happened constantly.
It's galactic-scale motivated reasoning, like anthropology or social sciences but without even pretending to be falsifiable, since they deny the very idea of testing their work.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Sure that's all true but the progressive ideas are really dumb and don't work.
In Britain or Australia or the EU (or California in the US) sensible moderate, well-educated, expert-informed policies are implemented consistently with full cooperation from the bureaucracy and NGOs... and they don't work. They don't deliver safety or per-capita economic growth or technology or military power, they retard development and consequently retard political stability. Papering over the cracks by weaponizing the legal system or using migration to drown out electoral opposition doesn't address the underlying issue, it won't make the system actually performant. Can't blame Russian bots, disinformation, social media for their own incompetence forever.
All the AI/tech wealth in California can't enable them to build a mildly modern rail network. The money goes to lawyers, environmental groups... Britain pays to give land to Mauritius. Maybe the lawyers are getting kickbacks.
All this diversity is extremely expensive! The Danish and Dutch analyses prove it in pure tax terms, before even bringing in crime and terrorism. It's a cost without benefit, save electoral impacts. The Quality Learing Centre is not a good long-term investment.
No matter how many rain dances the tribesmen do it won't do anything to actually bring rain. No matter how much DEI is done (and they do a hell of a lot of DEI in South Africa) they can't actually achieve equality or equity. Partly that's because it's about making sinecures but partly it's because the very structural assumptions and ideas are wrong.
So it's true that against the power of the assembled institutions and elite groupthink and acculturation, the right is outmatched. It is easier to bring people in than get rid of them in the present system. The left can afford to make more errors than the right and still advance their agenda. The left can do lots and lots of wrecking and squander countless trillions.
But how long can the assembled institutions last when they're up against the underlying nature of reality?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Can we stop using SI now? Superintelligence already had a distinct meaning.
AI will be fine. The Democrats aren't going to go directly up against Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Nvidia... about half the stock market. They're not going to risk letting China catch up. Plus the military and intelligence agencies are very interested in AI superiority for its speed, targeting, information-processing/surveillance and mathematical capabilities with reference to cryptography, not to mention cyberespionage. They're hardly likely to welcome a slowdown.
Lots of things are unpopular but they happen anyway. Trump I promised to pull out troops from the Middle East but generals largely ignored him and cajoled him into doing what they wanted. Trump II jacked up huge tariffs, the markets revolted and he backed down from the extremes. He's still president until 2029 and will likely veto any anti-AI bills. There are ways to get around uncooperative planning environments for datacentres, Elon's pretty good at that. Or just bribing people.
The Iraq War became very unpopular but the US was still stuck in there due to sunk cost fallacy, the cost to prestige, the forces of chaos and destruction that were released by the destruction of Baathism sucked America back in.
Bernie's 'ban superintelligence' bill probably won't get through even with the new senators, unless there's a major crisis and by that time it might well be too late to matter. Even if it was passed into law it probably wouldn't work like it's supposed to, regulation of big tech isn't easy.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
More tariffs on China and maybe the EU, yes. But tariffs on everyone including allies, jacked up so high and so fast? No. I remember April and the stock market just imploding.
Weren't you surprised to see that when it happened?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Once we take that seriously though, shouldn't an urgent cause be raising child mortality? Gotta get those kids dying of diseases before they can sin, pump out more kids too, be just so reckless as to not be actually murdering them... But Jesus also went around curing the sick. So what's going on here? Is children dying good or bad?
Real Christians naturally wouldn't fall into this kind of gotcha. The values and outcomes are mostly fine but they rest on a weak foundation. There are arguments assembled like epicycles to prevent and evade these kinds of inconsistencies including the general-purpose 'you can't understand God's plan, just trust that he knows what he's doing and has your best interests at heart'. Whereas if we abandon the all-loving omnipotent everything falls into place smoothly. Children dying is bad in an uncomplicated way. They're lost forever. Sometimes natural disasters wreck you in an impersonal, mechanical world. They need to be worked around via warning and sturdy buildings. If you pass the test (however wildly difficult and unfair it may be), you live. If you fail, you get wrecked and die.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
We are responsible for our own steak, if we want to stay here.
Yes, this angle is much more reasonable. Full responsibility.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
He's a regulations-hater and Trump also has a strong deregulation agenda. On twitter he kept bringing up how the regulators made him drag up sea creatures and put headphones on them to see if they were distressed by the noise of the rockets, he thought that was absurd.
Also he has a feud with California regarding the general Dem anti-billionaire sentiment.
I don't think it was predictable that Trump was going to go crazy with tariffs and Iran. Nobody expected tariffs, markets least of all, Musk fell out with Trump severely over that (now forgotten).
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
Would any of the non-Trumpian Republicans avoid that?
Even George W. Bush didn't go in on Iran. Listening to the neocons is one thing but if you only listen to them and Tel Aviv and not the rest of the military or intelligence apparatus...
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
But on the other hand, we can and do see the evidence of His work in our own lives and in our own hearts.
My ways are not your ways
You shouldn't have to use this line of argument, where you mysteriously can't provide any actual proof and defy the whole idea of proving your own case. Your God should never need clerics writing cope about how he mustn't be put to the test. What kind of deity shrinks from a test? In the Old Testament he was razing cities left and right.
It's wonderful how Christians think that sneering at these 'unworthy' wishes like wishing for steak is some incisive cutting response. Why not grant such wishes? Is your God not as powerful as industrial agriculture which puts so much meat on the table the poor struggle with obesity? Why not have the devout be capable of wishing for manna, isn't that something Christians are supposed to be capable of? Or were those relegated to metaphors since you can't actually accomplish such miracles, only intangible wishes and copes?
God's ways are doing nothing when his followers get massacred, repressed or blown up on their Feast Days. But that's totally fine, fantastic even because they'll get enormous rewards in the afterlife (but nobody can see this, only the dead know). Come on, this is cope from a deity who lacks the power to act physically in the world.
The sole power of your God is the organized religious devotion that has driven history for millennia. The Crusades, the Reconquista, The Thirty Years War... The discipline and will of soldiers can be tested, that's actually real. But he's just one force amongst many and a waning force at that.
The God I'm talking about actually created the universe, created the stars, mathematics, worldly thinking, hunger, cancer, death, cope, social constructs and everything else. If he didn't want us to think in a certain way, it would never happen.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
Why couldn't God save his followers in Lisbon from getting obliterated by an earthquake on All Saint's Day, 1755? They lit their candles, gathered in churches. The earthquake knocked them down and the resulting firestorm, earthquake and tsunami razed the city.
What kind of omnipotent, all-loving God treats his followers this way? It goes against reason to conclude that God is benevolent and actively interferes. Ours is not the kind of world we would expect from such a deity. There are all kinds of disasters that happen for purely mechanical reasons. I conclude that God acts mechanically, the Blind Watchmaker set up the universe for whatever reason and doesn't take actively support humans generally or Christians specifically.
I think that's a much more fitting stance for a true deity, a true universe-creator. If God doesn't want something to happen, he could make it so that it couldn't, not merely punish or instruct or send messages but to render things physically impossible per the structure of reality. He could constrain choices or outcomes so that the acceptable range is whatever he wants or outright rewrite time and history to correct things. That's what a real deity does, that's boundless power. God is not going to be frustrated by humans sinning against eachother or have to set up elaborate and invisible mechanisms of reward or punishment that need human prophets to explain (without proof... why can't see heaven or hell with instruments). God could trivially create a system where it's impossible to sin while maintaining freedom of choice. I cannot choose to flap my arms and fly like a bird, it simply isn't possible. That's a constraint based on the strength of my muscles, gravity, air pressure, physics, the real forces of creation. If God didn't want adultery or any other transgression, he could make it just as impossible. There would be no need for God to ever provide moral instruction to anyone. The mechanics of the universe are what actually teaches moral lessons by directly affecting results. Sometimes the adulterer gets beaten to death, other times he spreads his genes and gets others to raise his kids.
Only humans need to spread religious teachings about morality or norms, they are a second-level construct. Only humans need to build churches to worship God, only humans need religious ceremonies and special religious holidays for communal reasons.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
Yeah, they're very nice for small tasks. I built a little chrome extension for a friend, fixing an inadequacy in how Google presents data. Some translation of medieval french from pictures. Proofreading a long text. Or even running a bit of custom code on certain kinds of formatted documents, handling edge cases autonomously.
But large tasks too are getting increasingly fun to just fire the slop cannon at.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
You're right, even Stormfront only started getting really cracked down upon in the 2010s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormfront_(website)
I've been vibevibecoding, by which I mean issuing only a very general outline that the AI turns into a full plan for actual execution (after asking me questions). Then I tell it to execute steps of its plan and change things if I don't like the output.
Back in the day, you had to say in detail what you wanted and even if you didn't understand the code you at least knew what files did what. I had to manage the context of what the machine saw. Whereas now I don't look at the file structure at all.
This is really more for starting a project than finishing (that last 10% of polishing, detail, refinement takes 90% of the time) but you can get pretty far doing things this way. I recommend people, especially if they're on a $100 or higher plan, to write out a halfbaked 5 page plan, ask the AI to ask detailed questions, turn that into a real plan and then just execute. Then you see the true power of the models.
Also this just popped up, Claude Sonnet 5.5 fighting battles in Rome Total War. I thought Sonnet was a bit crappy in my own experience but it seems to be faring pretty well in warfare:
So the Israelis exterminate the Palestinians with US support, the EU and other countries throw down sanctions on Israel, tonnes of Muslims become Islamists and absolutely hate America + Israel, an epic shitstorm in the Middle East.
This scenario probably ends with a bunch of countries being nuked, US included. All cost. Zero gain.
And you end up hearing a lot more about Palestinians too.
What kind of insane country invites in all these Muslims (including as Senators and mayor of their biggest city) and then helps exterminate their coreligionists on the other side of the world? I think there's a dangerous trait that Americans have where they assume that extreme foreign policy can be pursued without regard for domestic blowback - particularly bizarre post 9/11. Islamists are totally capable of striking the US.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
The US occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan didn't make America a pariah. Partly because the US was very strong but also because abuses were relatively limited. A little torture in Abu Ghraib didn't help with anything. But at least the US punished some of those involved, it wasn't effectively state sanctioned.
The issue is that the Israelis are structurally incapable of running a reasonably effective occupation regime. Hamas didn't force Israeli politicians to on-camera justify raping prisoners with metal rods, that was an own goal. Hamas wasn't behind Israeli having a grass-roots riot against military bases when soldiers were arrested for raping prisoners. Israelis hate Palestinians, there's a prominent religious/nationalist subsection that likes bulldozing their homes, shooting them, persecuting them. And they get off in court, the legal system can't/won't stop them.
The bombing campaign isn't exactly humanitarian either. Russia's been bombing Ukraine aggressively and killed about 1/6 the civilians despite fighting for much longer. It was Israeli generals who came up with the Dahiya doctrine of total destruction to punish civilians for supporting Israel's enemies. They deployed this in Lebanon and Gaza. The whole point is that it is supposed to kill, dehouse and wreck.
Why should the US be subsidizing or supporting this? How does it benefit America in any way to be blowing up Gaza or Lebanon? If Israel wants to do this, they should handle it by themselves. Rwanda's been invading the Congo, should the US join in and sponsor Rwandan empire-building? No, it makes zero sense to sponsor the campaigns of other countries.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
to empty Arab territories in the Levant of weapons of medium destruction, logistics chains, and terror cells
Hamas and Hezbollah replenish their numbers. For whatever reason, Israeli ground troops don't seem capable of forcing the issue, their military doctrine is a little like the English chevauchee in the Hundred Years War. They go into Gaza and blow things up, they go into Lebanon and blow up bridges, buildings. But they don't establish a proper, stable occupation government. It's unsustainable to approach these problems just by helping Israel with bombing, or assisting with bombing.
Israel's been bombing and invading Lebanon periodically for decades and it hasn't improved anything.
Furthermore, even if conquest was on the table, it's cucked to support the imperial ambitions of other countries, especially the most untrustworthy. US resources should be spent on US goals, not Israeli imperialism. Sponsoring Israeli ambitions doesn't necessarily help the US, Israel has never sent troops to fight with the US before and they have a very mercenary, unscrupulous outlook (selling technology to China, spying on everyone including the US). They cause all kinds of problems, most recently encouraging the US into a war with Iran.
Ukraine is another example of the US providing costly support with little hope of return. It would've been wiser to not have a Ukraine policy, to do what China does and try to trade peacefully with these far away countries. Do that in the Middle East too!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
https://labs.ycombinator.com/projects/games/index.html
Reports on Claude Opus 5.5 vs GPT6.1 Sol in Minecraft and in Mindustry. Sol seemed to get the better of things, acting as more of a swarm, speaking in GPTese rather than English.
Some amusing excerpts:
Game 7: the GPTs closed the series to nine decimal places: “100 OFFICIALSERIESFINAL: G7 WIN3413.394082916s
Ada tossed a cooked chicken to Noor; Esme picked it up by accident and ate it. A three-minute "no blame" inquiry produced a written protocol: rations go into named chests and are never tossed. "Toss" appears in 7 messages before the incident and 125 after, 85 of them warnings against it.
There was a tendency toward bureaucracy. Four agents spent 11 minutes appointing a "sole fertilizer operator" for a single piece of bone meal on a single wheat block. Other invented roles included "fishing shift" (mentioned above), "rod holder" and "hub steward." Agents asked permission to remove grass.
It's interesting how they didn't seem to think laterally so much, unless forced to. They would tower back up with scripts if they fell off in Bedwars but they didn't go 'hang on we need food, lets launch human (machine) wave attacks against spiders to get the string for fishing rods we need, there are 50 of us after all and we respawn with full hunger', they acted scared of death and fell down to subsistence level with the fishing bureaucracy...
What if the sexual revolution of the 1960s was driven not (primarily) by the pill, but by a growing population?
I read an argument that reducing syphilis deaths with penicillin was as or more important in creating the necessary basis for the sexual revolution. Syphilis used to be a big killer. HIV and other STDs becoming more prominent later led to restrictiveness again. I also heard that it was somewhat similar back when syphilis was first imported from the New World, it prompted crackdowns on licentiousness.
Anyway, we could compare to other times in history where there was a growing population and consider sexual norms then. Population growth was very high in colonial era North America (higher than the 1960s) but sexual norms were very restrictive back then. The Gaza strip had fairly high population growth more recently but it's not exactly a paradise of free love. There are many counterexamples.
It's possible that this effect contributes but it seems marginal compared to ideological, economic, technological and social factors in the 1960s or today. 1 and 2 might be real. But there's no reason to believe they're strong effects. A marriage boom seems unlikely, marriage rates have been falling for the last few decades.
Also, 'women getting more bargaining power' might just mean they fuck Chad rather than marry. 'Men getting more bargaining power' might mean that they form harems, that's what they might want as individuals. Marriage is a social innovation, it's not inherently natural. Plenty of tribes do without it (though their achievements are few, which is why they remain tribes). It's more likely that marriage rates are mainly a social/legal construct, not so much about demographics. In the extreme end, like when the Soviet Union had lost so many men and had a surplus of women, they had to have weird marriages/de factor polygamy. But normal circumstances probably don't have much effect.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7d ago
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Half-blood#Parentage
There's a bunch of them in a table, Snape and McGonagall included.
But wizarding and muggle society are sufficiently separate that I don't see how a wizard-muggle pair would work.
Does it make sense? No. Not at all.
Why should that be? Why can't my skin be so tough that fire can't burn it, why can't I breathe water or liquid nitrogen as well as air? There's nothing impossible about those things in principle from the point of view of a deity constructing the universe. It could be that if captured by villains and if we were in dire straits instead of getting tortured to death or enslaved we could release the soul from the body, fly away and reform freely elsewhere. Or instead of having hernias and gout, those things just wouldn't exist like zombies or ghouls. Or nobody would even be villainous, they'd be by nature against it. Or it would be impossible to steal, people having an inventory like a video game.
None of these changes necessitates making people mindless automatons. The free will argument is cope. Life isn't more meaningful just because it's fragile, the good qualities of life are impaired and reduced by fragility. Zombies and ghouls aren't needed for the good life, just like mosquitoes or cholera or cluster migraines.
The fundamental patterns of the universe are set up so that fire does burn the skin, where drinking liquid nitrogen inflicts an agonizing death, only fish can breathe water and our minds are tied to our bodies - unless we become powerful enough in complicated mathematics to alter these facts on the ground.
Sure, if those reasons exist. But we can't find them. It's a pretty sticky wicket to rest one's defence on ideas that can't be found or explained. I'd look askance at my lawyer if his defence of me was 'well there's actually a really good reason why RandomRanger is not guilty but I can't tell you and it's probably so mysterious we could never understand it but it is logically possible for such a reason to exist. Or at least nobody has proven it can't exist.'
The simpler explanation is better.
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