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curious_straight_ca


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 November 13 09:38:42 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think we have some reason to believe we did strike a school and plausibly hit children (who, on priors, spend much of their waking time in schools): https://archive.is/9bWjL




An ongoing military investigation has determined that the United States is responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the preliminary findings.






Officers at U.S. Central Command created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency, people briefed on the investigation said.






A visual investigation by The Times showed the building housing the school had been fenced off from the military base between 2013 and 2016.






Satellite imagery reviewed by The Times showed that watchtowers that once stood near the building had been removed, three public entrances were opened to the school, ground was cleared and play areas including a sports field were painted on asphalt, and walls were painted blue and pink.




I think this incident is of little overall significance, it's the sort of thing that happens in every war. At the same time, it probably did happen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fault isn't zero sum. If a parent negligently ignores their small child and lets them wander out of the house into the middle of the road, and you strike the child with a car and kill them, that parent is is definitely very fault, and yet both in the eyes of the law and common sense you are not particularly much less at fault. I don't really think killing those children is one of the more notable facts about the conflict, it happens in any big enough conflict. But it was not a necessary strike and one that (as far as I know) wouldn't have happened if the US military had lived up to its own values and followed its own policies, so I really don't see the need to defend it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Does everyone just like it too much to find the change worth commenting on?




I dislike it too much to comment on it! Listening to Trump or Hegseth discuss the war (and not on clips, many hours of uncut video) should make anyone who listens despair that this is the chain of the command of the US military, the people who controls what some say is the biggest and most beautiful nuclear button anywhere. But Trump Bad is a decade old at this point, and talking about the continuous decline just isn't that interesting, idk. It makes you sound like you have TDS. Like, it really does look to me like he's making all these important geopolitical decisions in the manner of a professional wrestler, if not a teenager who's acting out. But ten million #RESIST liberals have already posted exactly that on facebook or tiktok etc. And what even is there to discuss about it?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Strongly agree. Although, is there anywhere left with good discussion culture, other than literal rationalists / LessWrong


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't have much to add beyond that I like posts like this as much if not more than 'actual' culture war posts. And that when somewhere I lived had a ~90% stairway slope, I thought it was a bit steeper than I'd prefer in terms of safety, but not so steep I think it shouldn't be allowed. Hm, now I want to read a good blog post about the history of building codes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Even if I thought your specific arguments for this were better it still wouldn't be worth suppressing anti-war arguments (at least among intelligent people), because said arguments are how we understand the world, how we figure out if we should continue the war or not, how we figure out in which way we should do either (because there are a million different ways to prosecute a war and a million different ways to exit a war, and they will have very different consequences).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ok bad or not it's I doubt it's even in the top 1000 strategic blunders in history, however this ends it's unlikely to end with the entire population of the United States, or even a mere twentieth of its population, dead or destitute or enslaved or similar, and that is not true of a lot of strategic blunders.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Iran had been undergoing water and energy shortages, as well as 40-50% annual inflation, leading up to the strikes.Decapitating that regime is hardly proof of being a hyperpower, or beat China in a war. What were you expecting a peer China to do in response, strike us, try to start a proxy war? Why would a China do anything else other than say mean things? What? I'm not a nuclear expert but nevertheless am quite confident that we aren't "rapidly approaching" "overwhelming nuclear dominance", especially since your evidence is that THAAD is hitting missiles that aren't nuclear ICBMs and trump is funding the golden dome and ... spacex? While the post spends two words evaluating China (the most significant potential competitor)'s military capability, "relatively small". I don't think this was a good post.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
More likely imo Trump wants to get away from the Epstein thing because they were buds in the past and that just looks bad, and he communicated that to his people in the usual Trump way, and there's lots of internal dysfunction and drama and poor communication in the Trump admin as there has been elsewhere, and you see the result. It's possible that actually Trump and Epstein did unspeakable things together on the island and he wants to cover that up, sure, but I think nothing looks different in those two scenarios.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If there's nothing substantial to be gleaned, why is there still so much being actively hidden? Does the Trump admin just engage in coverups for the fun of it?




Yes! They would definitely do that! Many of these people aren't very smart, many of them are very smart but put all their skill ranks in Bluff and not Knowledge, and either way their demonstrated competence over the past year implies they probably aren't going to be intelligently planning what to cover up and not. Consider the documents case, where for a while they could've just, like, returned the documents, but instead they had to make false statements and obstruct the investigation and such.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Idk. The term and concept of 'sex trafficking' is an ongoing exaggerated moral panic. The conflation of pedophilia (bringing to mind 12-14 year olds) with sex with mostly-consenting 17 year olds is another. But the emails do seem to demonstrate Epstein was acting as a pimp providing women, some of whom were under 18, to powerful men, which is still rather distasteful.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think it's valid to assume that the 64% that are only about 'lack of sufficient supervision' are because the parents let their kids walk outside alone. The bottom 1% of parents are very bad parents, where lack of supervision probably means 'not parenting them at all, letting them do drugs' than 'letting kids walk around unsupervised'. Even in a world where CPS is terrorizing parents who let their kids walk to the grocery store by themselves, the good or even meh parents will stop doing that after the first or second CPS visit, so that statistic wouldn't be evidence.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Silver has historically crashed all the way back to where it was three weeks ago. Actually, two weeks ago, now that I check. We got as low as a month. I would be careful!




The underlying logic still seems sound (needed for electronics, inflation/weakening USD, increased international drama)




This is a good thesis for why silver should be priced higher than some assumed baseline where we needed less electronics and had less international drama. It's not necessarily a good thesis for why silver should be higher than it is now. Maybe that's already priced in. Maybe it's priced in five times over. How do you know? You should either have a view on the underlying economics / value of the thing, where your decision to buy or sell depends directly on the price, or acknowledge that the last month of price movements have little to do with underlying facts and everything to do with narratives and approach it mostly like you would a shitcoin. In which case, sure, maybe it dumped a little to hard, the narrative still has energy, it was primed for a little more pump when you posted that. But it's important to know why you're buying!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A house is an investment! In a combination of the location being one that will be even more valuable than it already is in the future as the economy grows and people agglomerate, and the taxi medallion of already existing in a world of many different land use restrictions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is all true now, but your '5 to 7' year timeline seems long! LLMs were not anywhere near where they are now 2 years ago, and with simple extrapolation 2 years from now I think it's as likely as not they'll be able to handle legacy code just fine, just like humans can.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This seems absurd about a 98-year old judge. It seems far more likely to me that the 98 (!) year old judge is just genuinely having cognitive issues. I have some elderly relatives who are younger than that and are about as sharp as you can hope for at that age, but just like with LLMs if you speak to them for a few minutes the picture is different than if you do for a few hours, and neither I nor they would want them to be federal judges.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I disagree with your claim that Unikowsky's analysis on Trump is outcome-driven against him. Directly, you accused him of letting his bias against Trump drive him to think that Trump could be removed from the ballot. Yet, when the case was actually decided, you can read Unikowsky's take on it. He doesn't explicitly say what he thinks should've been decided, but while he thinks that from the 'law nerd' perspective it's wrong, he ultimately seems more sympathetic than not to the claim that the practical consequences of keeping Trump on the ballot mean it's worth deciding it 'wrongly'. Which is outcome-driven in the other direction!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the replies are somewhat overstating how bad LLMs are - they do have all those failure modes, but the rate at which they fail in those ways isn't that high. And also sort of assuming that the alternative is any better - getting a smart domain expert to spend some time answering you question is of course much better than getting an LLM to, but you weren't gonna do that anyway. At the same time, I agree that 'I (nonexpert) asked Claude and it said this' isn't that useful of a contribution, and when not guided by an expert the LLMs are probably not gonna be that informative on an issue of this complexity.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Colorado Supreme Court Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sorry to bump the thread again, but I think I disagree with this claim. It is a lawyer's job to make the best possible argument for your client's position. By the standards of the legal profession, if Adam was arguing in front of SCOTUS and didn't make the best possible arguments just because he personally thought that they were probably not as convincing as the best opposing arguments, that would be doing wrong by his clients! I do think there's something a little off there, but it doesn't make sense to hold it against Adam individually. Like let's say he takes a case, researches and thinks about it for a while, and realizes that on balance probably the other side is right. What do you want him to do, give it up? Or make the argument, and then never be allowed to have a personal opinion on any related issues of legal philosophy ever again? And of course it would look pretty bad if you just said 'yeah all that stuff i said in front of the supreme court was wrong lol'. Again I think this situation as a whole is slightly questionable but why should we hold it against a specific person?


[not a lawyer, could be missing something ofc]


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Amusingly, the order was initially dated February 31 https://twitter.com/ASFleischman/status/2017712436409733160




I tend to be critical of strongly worded opinions that strive to be historic.


But if you're going to do one, you've got to make sure you haven't issued it on the 31st of February




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Michael Vassar




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The ... obvious?


There was the DOGE website where they overstated the amount of money they were saving by cancelling contracts by at least 2x in a way that was obvious if you looked at where they claimed to be getting the data and knew how to read. They eventually had to reduce the number. And details that emerged later showed they saved much less than they claimed to. If they had saved as much as they've claimed, it'd show up in overall spending numbers in a way it just hasn't.


There was all the drama over Elon. The thing where he said he'd fire any government employee who didn't write him an email even though he didn't
have the authority to do so (discussion before). The claim that "20 million people were receiving Social Security benefits past age 100", which was totally false, because he didn't understand how to interpret the database.


And then eventually:




Exclusive: DOGE 'doesn't exist' with eight months left on its charter


WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate, ending an initiative launched with fanfare as a symbol of Trump's pledge to slash the government's size but which critics say delivered few measurable savings.


"That doesn't exist," Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about DOGE's status.


It is no longer a "centralized entity," Kupor added, in the first public comments from the Trump administration on the end of DOGE.




This wasn't a complete list, just from memory, but DOGE just didn't work. Which is a shame, because I like the broad concept as I said at the time. But it just didn't.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's entirely possible and in fact extremely likely he's who he really is and it's still disinformation/grift. There's selection bias here, if 95 of 100 Army SF people are reasonable and epistemically virtuous, 4 in 100 are a bit crazy but don't post on social media, and 1 decides to go all out telling ChatGPT to add color to their uninformed speculation and post it on twitter, you'll only see the 1.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


With that in mind consider the possibility (just the possibility) that the current administration is not as stupid and incompetent as so many like to imagine it is, and instead is operating within constraints and frameworks you may not have considered.




I have seriously considered this possibility and it just doesn't align with how the administration actually acts. When the administration succeeds, such as when they removed Maduro, it's not something that requires competence on the part of the administration themselves, they just have to give the word, because conservatives already wanted Maduro gone and the US military's already the best in the business. But when anything requires competence on the part of the admin, especially things like Liberation Day, DOGE, they're just poorly executed and don't particularly accomplish their stated goals or any obvious secret ones.




trying to fight them is not a winning move ... how do we remove the maximum number of Illegal immigrants while staying within the bounds of both our capabilities and principles?




If this is true then you've already lost! Your premise is that anything you do that actually removes enough illegal immigrants to matter by your values, to cause the real changes to the American economy and society, by your values will be blocked by business interests who don't like those changes. And your response to that is - how can we remove a small enough number of immigrants that it doesn't actually matter, but we still feel like we're doing something? Why even bother at that point? I don't think the premise is correct, a lot of things are possible, things happen today that didn't seem very possible a few decades ago. I think it's possible a more competent Trump could succeed with mandatory e-verify, and also possible that he could fail, and that Trump mostly just doesn't care enough about generic illegal immigrant laborers (as opposed to criminals from insane asylums in the Congo) to take the risk, and also is acting through the lens of an entertainer and e-verify just isn't good TV.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Any asset can be a shitcoin if retail bids it hard enough. There are good reasons for silver to have gone up, but nowhere near this much. Retail sees it, like gold, as a way to invest in "hard money", to avoid your dollars being inflated away, except it's cheaper than gold. And then they're not price sensitive about it at all. And then it gets high enough that speculators get washed out by new margin requirements, big buyers of silver get nervous they'll be screwed if it goes up more and lock in the price, people get short squeezed. For the same reason that accurate prices are good for an economy, this is bad for the economy! It causes silver to be inefficiently allocated among productive enterprises, all so gamblers can get their fix, because Seahawks vs Patriots isn't quite as exciting as pumping a trillion dollar market cap asset.