cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
5hr ago
The point is that this is not a culture war battleground that needs to be fought over by deploying arguments as soldiers. We fall short of the ideal of a neutral discussion area, but I see no reason not to whack down obvious "battleground" type posts where the whole point of the post could be summed up as "my out group sucks". That's boring and it happens literally everywhere else on the internet.
The point is not to be a courteous battleground. It's to be not a battleground at all.
cjet79
5hr ago
the very first clause reminding us that that Ingroup has some boo-worthy members too..
One sentence doesn't undo the entire point of the post. And we don't want some magic set of words to allow someone out of an otherwise rule breaking post.
And the entire point of the post is to point out that someone in the out group is doing something bad.
Someone is always doing something bad and I don't want this place to turn into a battleground where we all just publish the worst things that members of the out group are doing.
Parts of the Platner discussion struck me as much more nuanced than this. In the sense that they weren't about the veracity of the allegations but how others were choosing to respond to those allegations. Some of the Platner discussion was the boring "oh look an out group member turned out to be terrible" and that discussion should have probably been shut down.
cjet79
9hr ago
This is just boo outgroup stuff. We just banned someone in the last thread for doing this.
Three day ban for you as well.
cjet79
10hr ago
Im not a doctor and you are probably better off asking an AI. But I do know that the problem with distilled water is the leeching of minerals. It's not that water is supposed to provide a bunch of minerals, it doesn't.
The water that goes into you will balance with the water in your system. Which is why drinking salt water can dehydrate you. Or why Gatorade was designed to be an effective sports drink, it's supposed to mimic the balance of water in your body, to prevent the leeching of minerals or water to balance out what is being added.
If you are in the US tap water is safe and fine.
cjet79
3d ago
Apparently it's not the only story like it! That's crazy, never knew salvia was like that. I took a hit in college and definitely felt like it messed with my depth and time perception. But not nearly as crazy as this guy
cjet79
4d ago
The lack of convergence to similar outcomes is the evidence for a failure to assimilate.
The lack of convergence can be better explained by genetics than culture. Especially if you have black children of well off parents (who would be raised in a different culture) still reverting to the average of their race on a bunch of life outcomes.
If anything American culture as a whole has assimilated into black culture. Black athletes, pop stars, comedians, and actors have outsized representation.
People get culturally assimilated in the US, but not necessarily genetically assimilated.
cjet79
5d ago
I don't understand what causes so many people to abandon what seem like their important principles when it comes to Israel.
It's because Israel is the ultimate pragmatic hard situation.
Anytime any country wants to kill a bunch of people and steal their stuff the Jews look like an appetizing target.
I don't find ethnostates great, but realistically if the arabs got control of Israel they'd probably end up killing a bunch of the Jews living there and chasing the rest out. Especially now after what has happened. This is what is slowly happening in South Africa.
I think Israel is going to be a ethno-state no matter what, the option is either a Jewish ethnostates or an Arab one. I think this will probably be the case for a lot of countries and places.
I wish there was more America for them to move to. The way to break up these conflicts seems to be having both people move as far away from the context as possible, wait three or four generations and then the only people that cared are dead or too old to fight and their children get to move on.
cjet79
5d ago
America has already integrated a bunch of different nationalities and ethnicities into one country. We have done it successfully for 250 years. Successfully enough that we just lump "white" people into a single category. Europe has dozens of bloody and heated rivalries that were plenty active up until 50 ish years ago.
There is an argument to be made that we are no longer doing the things that allow for successful integration, but saying integration is impossible seems clearly wrong.
cjet79
6d ago
I still think reform is unlikely.
Heavily agree as well.
Libertarians have tried for a while to capture academia in the same way that the socialists did in the early part of the 20th century. The libertarians started their attempt in the 70s and expanded up into the 2000s.
They have been maybe the only thing saving conservatives from a complete academic wipeout. I think Jonathan Haidt polled an audience at a psych conference and got 4x as many libertarians as conservatives.
They've managed to get economics perceived as a conservative discipline, it is mostly liberal. Its just that it is 30-40% libertarian/conservative, rather than 0-5% libertarian/conservative.
The "UnKoch my campus" movement is hilariously mixed up about the ideological bent of campuses.
cjet79
6d ago
I sort of wrote a book, I'm waiting for AI to get good enough to finish it and then start writing me new books based on that book. Sounds like it is getting closer.
At some point it should just get good enough to write books based on vague ideas and good feedback. I'm looking forward to that.
cjet79
8d ago
My mom is the one that verifies peoples genealogy and then organizes a signoff party where the local chapter all signs off on the new member. She recently got some of her sign-offs rejected because she apparently used the wrong blue ink pen. She was livid with these ladies.
cjet79
9d ago
I think it's gonna be too heavy on the dark and brooding and too light on the action. So many of the trailer shots are the brooding looks and traveling and not enough of the action. Which might be more accurate to the story. Also people are gonna hate the story of what happens at his home while he is gone. It adds a lot of length to the story with a very long payoff time.
But it's Nolan so maybe the action will look awesome and kick lots of but.
cjet79
9d ago
(separate from this, I think it’s a useful discussion norm to avoid being too vitriolic or hyperbolic in your language, except perhaps once in a blue moon to make the point that you care about this issue so much that it’s your one exception to your non-vitriol policy. But if someone fails to follow this discussion norm, their penalty is being self-sorted to spaces that have bad discussion norms, not being held responsible for any resulting acts of violence.)
I mostly agree with this, but also notice that most of the largest discussion forums fall into two categories: no moderation (which is rare and often temporary). Or partisan moderation. Where the other side is held to the strict standard but not the side the moderators like. This is the case with reddit, where you can find plenty of posts happily celebrating Luigi and defending ICE is probably grounds for a ban in most subreddits.
Where I disagree with this is that you are allowed to have an occasional exception where you start spitting vitriol. The rule should be no vitriol ever, and eat the consequences of a ban if you think it is worth it that one time.
My hope is that no one on this forum could even be accused of stochastic terrorism (regardless of whether its 'real' or not).
cjet79
9d ago
Daughters of the American Revolution.
190,000 active members.
The activity is ancestor worship, roleplaying corporate positions, dress up, and pin collecting.
That's meant to be tongue in cheek, my mom is in the org and roles her eyes at some of the stuff they do, but also likes the social interaction.
cjet79
9d ago
I've worked for 4 different libertarian/right leaning think tanks. 2 of them as basically an intern, and two of them as web developer after I worked in private industry for a while.
I'd recommend against it.
The cons:
- Pay is shit
- Internal politics at these places is rough. Far worse than companies because competency won't protect you, and far worse than the government because firing is easy.
- You aren't making a difference. The right leaning organizations mostly end up designed to bleed old rich people of their money. Being effective has some correlation with that but not much. The leftist organizations end up designed to bleed the government, old people, and other organizations of their money.
The pros:
- As easy as a government job, no one knows if you are effective or not. No profit to say you succeeded. Fundraising is the exception, everyone knows if they are successful. That is basically a sales job.
- Less rules. Drink and do drugs in the office, hookup with underlings, and just have some mediocre level of output and be likeable.
- Occasionally feel like you are doing something and your job is meaningful, also most people outside the industry will think you are doing something meaningful. You are wrong in the moment and they are wrong in general, but feeling good things is still nice.
cjet79
10d ago
I think it's a baseline rate for every the middle class version of sex crimes is creepy coaches and priests.
Every few years we would hear of either a priest or coach getting caught doing something pervy. When I was in highschool it was the JV girls soccer coach, one of the girls found a camera in the locker room, they traced it back to him.
My sister had a weird and uncomfortable encounter with the physical therapist for the high school. But it was a few years after we were gone that he got arrested for a statutory assault.
I would not be surprised if the news about sex crimes is bi modal. The middle class likes to look down on the lower class animals beneath them, and also know the sordid details of the rich and famous.
cjet79
10d ago
Dodged it, I live in northern Virginia. But currently finishing up a week at the beach down in the Carolinas.
The local pool board I'm on had a discussion about closing, they ultimately decided to close for guard and patron safety.
cjet79
16d ago
It almost happened during COVID. The Biden admin had an eviction moratorium and this also applied to military personnel.
cjet79
19d ago
Ya I admit I didn't see Hansons latest post cuz I hadn't fully read the parent post. So I didn't believe you that he had said that.
See it from my perspective:
If Hanson thinks aliens are real then I'm willing to update my beliefs to think that aliens are real.
So you saying that Hanson says aliens are real is for me basically claiming aliens are real. Using the same logic you've used elsewhere about not trusting authors on something where you have really low priors ... I thought it more likely you were mistaken the that aliens are real.
Then the article you linked to was at a time when he didn't actually think aliens are real. So that confused me.
And I agree Hanson is not a careful writer. It's very easy to read any of his stuff in isolation and see him as a crackpot.
And ya my "goalposts" have shifted as I've learned more. I think the framing is maybe bad. I don't think I'm trying to "win" an argument against you. There are mistake and conflict arguments and I was treating this more like a mistake one. I'm certainly learning lots. I don't have any particular strong values attached to the existence of aliens or in defending Hanson. I think it's a mistake to dismiss Hanson out of hand, but he doesn't do himself enough favors for me to think it's vital to defend his reputation. He has been hit with like a half dozen cancellation attempts over things he has said. I've cringed at most of them.
So I guess I'll state what I'm trying to get across and leave it at that:
I think it's a mistake to entirely dismiss Hanson. Especially on his topics of expertise: Aliens, Prediction markets/futarchy, and signalling models of social behavior.
cjet79
19d ago
If you are unsure about what some public intellectual is saying, or is there is maybe a difference in interpretation between us, it would make sense to me to look at other things they have said on the topic. By not being willing to read other things on the topic you are dismissing disclaimers or other ways of explaining how he might have a more nuanced take. And you don't even have to go read them or find them, I've been providing them.
After going through a lot of Hanson blog posts on Aliens yesterday I think I have a much better grasp on what has happened. Some key things:
- He formerly did not consider aliens likely.
- He was presented new evidence.
- He now considers aliens likely.
- I went and looked at the same evidence that he says changed his mind.
- The evidence also convinced me.
Back in 2020-2023 Hanson has a bunch of posts on Aliens and UFOs. Some key takeaways is that he thinks the government hoax angle is the most likely explanation for instances of UFOs that can't easily be explained away. He thinks the government hoax angle is 2 orders of magnitude more likely than nearby aliens coming to visit us. The 2021 blog post "UFOs -- What the Hell?" is from this early period. Its him toying around with the idea and having fun and not taking it too seriously. Because his given likelihood for UFOs being explained by aliens around this time period is like 1 in 10000.
In between now and then two major pieces of evidence are what changed his mind.
The first piece of evidence is directly linked in the "My Politics" post. Its about Pre-Sputnik Earth-Orbit Glints. Basically a telescope survey of the sky before humans were launching things up there found a bunch of glints in orbit around the earth.
The Second is that the government started saying there are aliens. Not exactly that, but they started admitting and presenting evidence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. Its not just a single "report" like you were describing it where one author might be coincidentally wrong. It was more of a meta study that had to be signed off on by a bunch of people. I haven't found Hanson speaking about this directly on his blog, but he is on a government panel in charge of similar releases, and he has definitely read these reports.
I get what happened, you see him say something that seems completely crazy. You follow his first link, thinking that justifies his craziness. Instead he treats it with a dismissive almost silly attitude.
I'm telling you he badly curated the links here. He does treat it with a serious attitude, he does have posts where he goes over the evidence. And many posts with the theoretical explanations for various things.
He does acknowledge that this will make him sound crazy.
My priors on aliens are not as low as yours. There is nothing physically impossible about aliens existing. Travel between stars is slow but not impossible. It would be like hearing that there is a one time use pill that cures 90% of depression cases. My priors on that being true would be really low. But its not physically impossible. I'd check what Scott Alexander has said about it, because I'd probably not be the best at digesting all the evidence. I'd still take a shot at reading some of the evidence, but I know in the back of my head I'm just not as qualified as them. I'm doing the same thing here.
I don't know what it would take for you to change your mind on alien likelihood. I would just say consider the fact that it is not a package deal. Someone can believe aliens are possible and still think faster than light travel/comms are impossible. The aliens don't have to be little green men, or any other hollywood stereotypes.
Why do you consider the possibility so infinitesimally low? Is there some physical law you think it is violating?
cjet79
20d ago
From the first one
it seems we must take seriously the claim that these were glints off of big flat reflective parts of advanced devices from an alien civilization. That kinda hurts to type, knowing that many of you will respect me less for saying so. But I gotta go where the evidence leads.
Now obviously the authors behind these studies might have made big mistakes, and the world should want to see confirmations using other analysis and datasets. And we should worry a bit that they, or those who supplied them data, might be fronting for an expensive psych-op that is faking evidence to push some narrative.
My guess, however, is that this isn’t a psych-op, and they didn’t make big mistakes in the above analysis. Making this pretty big news.
If the history of a user is part of the ban reason I'd usually list it out and link to it.
Sometimes I'm seeing a bad trend and I'll increase punishment. This has happened a few times before with low effort top posts, which are usually just a warning or one day ban for repeat offenders. The latest offender might just be unlucky more than anything.
That last paragraph was an afterthought, on its own it doesn't really stand well and the rest of the post is just describing how fucked up the politician is, which is boo out group material.
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