07mk
7d ago
Clancy is still getting punished. Spending years in a hospital for the criminally insane is not a good thing.
Sure, but this is only "punishment" in the same sense as that she's getting punished by being a mother whose kids are dead, which is also not a good thing. Going to the hospital for the criminally insane is there to help her get over her insanity so that she can be cured and re-enter society as a safe member, not for punishment; the unpleasantness is just a necessary consequence of the treatment, like how some medicine doesn't taste good. We can label any negative consequence of someone's actions as "punishment," but I don't think that's what people are referring to when talking about not being held accountable. If a bank robber with poor impulse control spends all his money on heroin and overdoses to death, one can claim that he was "punished" in some divine sense for his sins, but I don't think it makes sense to claim that he was held accountable in some meaningful, concrete sense.
07mk
7d ago
I'm not sure how it's possible to reference the former without referencing the latter, since the former exists as a reference to the latter.
07mk
7d ago
Whether your motivation for this discrimination is neutral or harmful does not change that.
Sure, but then this just makes it so that "racism" describes lots of entirely innocuous and even virtuous and desirable behavior. That's the far more important aspect of that definition of "racism" due to how it takes away what many people would consider perhaps the most salient characteristic of that word, which is that it's automatically bad.
07mk
7d ago
If fully automated luxury communism requires sufficiently advanced technology, then so be it, the technology must advance but until it does we can already get to work on implementing the desirable ideology it will surely enable.
This perhaps gets too much into Culture Wars, but I will say, I'm in a camp similar to this, except that I follow "the technology must advance" with "to truly overwhelming and crazy scifi/magic levels, which can only be done in an immensely wealthy and productive society, and only capitalism is known to be even capable of generating such wealth and productivity, which is why capitalism must be maintained as strongly as possible right now." I honestly don't see any other route into a Communist future that is actually desirable (i.e. doesn't equalize everyone at 0).
07mk
8d ago
This seems like an easily mostly-solved problem: if the suits are confidently unanimous you don't bug the chief; if not, you send a quick email, archive the response, and summarize it in the Show Bible.
I don't think we're there yet, but this seems like the kind of thing LLMs could be used to handle. However, LLMs could also obviate the need for an actual coherent extended universe, as the sheer volume of fanfiction being generated could take away the meaning and value of official canon in the eyes of fans.
07mk
8d ago
How much of this is just a function of people who saw the prequels as kids imprinting on the films at an early age, and enjoying them despite their uneven quality? Similar to all the people who love Disney direct-to-video sequels because they grew up with them.
This is an open question, and certainly it's nonzero, but my anecdotal experience is that, even among the younger viewers, respect for the prequels (mostly undeserved, IMHO) seems more driven by how much better they are than the sequels than by nostalgia. I've seen a number of completely new young fans who never watched the prequels or the sequels (or the originals) until recently express the opinion that the prequels are much better than the sequels.
If that's the true explanation, then just as the prequels started to be rehabilitated in the public eye as people who saw them as kids grew up and started making video essays about why the prequels were great, I wonder if we won't see the same thing happen as the kids who grew up with the sequels grow up?
We should be able to detect this pretty soon, if not now. The Force Awakens came out 11 years ago, which is less than the 16 years between The Phantom Menace and that film, but still plenty of time for then-10-year-olds to become influential in the social medias to shape the overall public view of it.
07mk
9d ago
Wouldn't it be a contradiction for any woman to become a thought leader as an anti-feminist? By definition she should be trying to not lead
I don't think that is the case. Even using the motte definition of "believes that equal rights between men and women is just," there's no reason why someone who is anti- that would believe that women ought not be leaders. If we take the more well-understood definition of something like "supports the movement that is labeled 'feminism,'" then it becomes even more stark, because the idea that women could be thought leaders is neither unique nor even unusual to the feminist movement.
I can't think of a reasonable definition of "anti-feminist" that would map onto the real world that would imply that they must be against women being thought leaders.
07mk
9d ago
By women I meant corporate bitches.
Ah. I'd guess
sex differences in how people react to things they hate in the modern environment
is a big factor in that case, since corporate bitches tend to be some of the least encumbered when it comes to expressing righteous indignation over some sort of ideological/political issue and/or have immense amounts of practice and encouragement of it in the last few decades, which should be the formative years of most of anyone in corporate.
In terms of the threat to their actual work, if we presume that corporate bitches disproportionately fill what might be hyperbolically called sinecures, doing makework, versus men who disproportionately fill jobs where their actual productivity actually drives the company's performance, I'm not sure that women are worse situated either. AI is able to do productive work, allowing the productive workers to be replaced, but sinecures and makework can be justified and invented as much as needed, to fill demand, and I don't see any signs that the demand for more corporate bitches is going down any time soon.
However, there's also the argument that AI is capable of making the productive people so much more productive and capable of performing a lot of the makework tasks such that companies do decide to cut down on the demand for corporate bitches, in favor of profits. So who knows.
But most importantly, the perception of the corporate bitches versus men could indeed be that the former is more threatened than the latter, since, presuming that there's truth to the hyperbole, the former's work is, in fact, easier for AI to replace than the latter's. So you're probably right.
07mk
9d ago
I too feel like I've see fake-out deaths happen more and more often, and I don't know if it's me growing up or if it's a real thing. But it just seems to keep happening in basically all major mainstream media works, like in the last couple seasons of Game of Thrones where, e.g. Jon Snow was saved from falling into an icy lake by his uncle coming out of nowhere, and then during the Battle of Winterfell, we kept seeing character after character get overwhelmed by zombies, only to cut away, and then later see that they somehow got out perfectly fine. Or the latest Star Wars films where we saw Kylo Ren walk out of a crashing spaceship unscathed without explanation, and then later come back from falling into a pit to save Rey, and then have Rey "die" only to get saved by him. Or recent Marvel films like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness where Wong fell down the side of a mountain, only to be revealed to have landed on a ledge to survive. I haven't watched the latest Jurassic World film, but I heard that there was a scene near the end where a major character says "go on without me" to do a last stand, only to show up 15 minutes later unscathed, to be rescued.
If there is indeed a trend, I feel like it has to do with the extension of childhood that's been happening all throughout the West at least since my millennial generation and possibly longer. The writers want the benefits without the costs, the power without the responsibility, to have their cake and eat it too, to have that emotional death moment without the death. Children get to enjoy some of that, because they (usually) have guardians to take care of the responsibility stuff while giving them the benefits. I also expect that this effect might be stronger among mainstream media writers, as, I'm guessing, they're more likely, due to nepotism, to come from more wealthy and well-connected families which can allow them to live as children for decades at adult age.
07mk
9d ago
Have you watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, an earlier film by the director of The Nice Guys? It's essentially a prototype to the latter film, starring a pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Junior with a fantastic Val Kilmer (also Michelle Moghnahan). I liked it better, but I liked both.
07mk
9d ago
Also women seem to be in position to be more threatened by AI.
Do they? I don't know the stats exactly, but I was under the impression that women tended to do more people-oriented work like e.g. nurses, therapists, caretakers, while men tended to do more thing-oriented work like e.g. programmers, analysts, engineers. And the latter set of jobs seem to be more threatened than the former by AI right now. On top of that, threatening someone's job is far more negatively impactful for men than for women; a woman losing her job doesn't also have extremely negative impact on her sexual market value the same way that a man losing his job does, and that's a great determinant to someone's general life satisfaction.
Speaking of sexual market value, there's an argument that generative AI also tends to be more beneficial to women for simulating sexual relationships, as women tend to prioritize emotional connection more than physical ones, and currently AI can generate text that simulates emotions much better than it can generate atoms that simulate physical flesh and blood. So we could see a future with billions of femcels happily chatting with their AI boyfriends on their phones while billions of incels cry to sleep after jerking it to their ideal GF on a 2D screen on their phone.
HOWEVER, a counter-argument could be that women are more status-conscious and so they may be less likely to accept an AI partner as a good substitute; an AI can simulate status, but it can't actually be a high status man. So I think the jury's still out on that.
Of course, innovations in robotics and material sciences could make these even out or even flip, but those haven't happened yet.
Which explains why the foaming at the mouth AI haters are mostly women.
This doesn't match my experience, but I feel like this could be more down to sex differences in how people react to things they hate in the modern environment than to do with sex differences in how much they actually are threatened by it.
I also think there may be a portion of image/video generation that women tend to get more upset about. That is, image/video generation allows for the creation of infinitely diverse, bespoke porn, which cuts out actual women from the production cycle, arguably lowering the price they can charge for actual photos and actually filmed videos. It also greatly lowers the barrier to entry for someone to take a real photo of a real clothed person and to draw over it in a way that makes it appear as if she's nude, or even to create a completely new image with a new pose and setting for the same face, which I believe women tend to find problematic more often than men do. Likewise with the ability for someone to take a photo and then generate more images and audio to put together to a video where only the first frame is a real photo, and the rest of the video is a depiction of the actual person doing something that never happened.
I'm arguing it's better than the implicit proposed alternative of "I want a movie where the tall good-looking kid kicks in the short whiny kid's teeth".
That's a fine argument to make, but that's a very different argument or statement than the one from that comment I originally responded to, which claimed that basically all movies universally were "tall goood-looking kid kicks in the short whiny kid's teeth" in the before-times, which the Jews saved us from (according to SS's narrative, anyway). If you're now claiming that the statement you made was false for the purpose of hyperbole, I think that's inaccurate, but justified.
I don't think I'd really enjoy seeing even one token overdog movie. I can just look at real life if I want a big-kid's-values-reinforced story.
I don't have much of an opinion on any given film without knowing the specifics, but I personally want a high diversity of types of movies to cater to a diverse group of people, including those who want to celebrate seeing the big dog crush the underdog because of the implicit message of the film that being big and strong is morally superior to being small and weak. I see a dearth of that right now, and I personally think it's because of just plain old profit-motive plus luck of history, rather than anything nefarious. But intent need not be malicious for bad things to happen, and I certainly think that a relative dearth of such diverse fiction to cater to such diverse people is a bad thing.
07mk
9d ago
Currently I find that the story of the big kid beating up small kids finds plenty of traction as long as the big kid has the moral* high ground. I am not interested in watching stories where the big kid beats small kids up simply because he can and that is the entire message. If that means that the small kid in movies will always be coded non-Aryan, I'll take that trade. My hair is not particularly blonde, anyway.
Okay, but your personal opinions and preferences aren't what's being discussed here. It's the lack of diversity in fictional media where, e.g. big kid beats small kids up simply because he can and that is the entire message. I don't know if I'd personally like that sort of media specifically*, but neither my preference for/against it nor yours is really relevant to the reality of the lack of such diversity in the recent media landscape. Which is what I was addressing by pointing out that describing things before as "endless cultural veneration of the big kid's boot on the small kid's face, forever" is wrong.
It seems like you're just saying, "Okay, you're right, but it's a good thing." Which is fine, I don't think anyone has any issues with you thinking it's a good thing. But that doesn't change the reality.
* As always, it would have to come down to the execution, which is orthogonal to the message. Possibly my favorite film of all time is Schindler's List, and I'd personally love to see a film with similar competence in filmmaking that just depicts Nazis crushing the Jews as glorious, which I could rank as better. It's just unlikely, since outdoing 80s/90s Spielberg is very unlikely.
07mk
9d ago
That is to say: openly, unapologetically sexist men, who don't even try to hide it or justify it.
I think this is definitely true, but only in the sense of "sexism" as would be understood by a majority of mainstream self-identifying feminists, as a consequence of that latter group trying to - and mostly succeeding in - redefining what "sexism" means to cover huge swaths of both innocuous and virtuous behavior. Which predictably resulted in the word - and concept - "sexism" losing much/most of its negative connotations. In terms of the definition of "sexism" that led to it gaining those negative connotations in the first place - i.e. something like "drawing un-evidenced/unsupported conclusions about an individual purely on the basis of their sex" - there's probably a bit of a blip, but it's certainly not evident to be more, by my observations. Certainly whatever blip it is doesn't rise to even within 1 order of magnitude of that type of sexism directed by mainstream self-identified feminists towards males, so if it's more than a blip, it's not easy to notice, at least.
07mk
9d ago
ones who spared me from being subjected to endless cultural veneration of the big kid's boot on the small kid's face, forever?
The whole Jewish conspiracy theory seems like utter nonsense to me, but this seems like even more nonsense, and exactly backwards. The story of the underdog defeating the big dog is at least as old as David and the Goliath, and there was no shortage of such stories between then and the past 50 years. It's just that, in the past 50 years, we've entered an era of endless cultural veneration of the small kid's boot on the big kid's face, forever. We've never had a situation of endless cultural veneration of big kids crushing small kids; it was balanced by the aforementioned underdogs.
07mk
10d ago
07mk
10d ago
I was hesitant where to post it, but quickly dismissed the culture war thread as this has nothing to do with politics.
Culture war is often explicitly politics-related, but it's also something a little different from politics, and I think a lot of people would consider atheism/religion (or perhaps atheism/Christianity specifically) as one of the OG culture wars in the internet forum sphere.
I actually wonder now who/when/where the first internet flame war about the existence of God/god took place, and if it's still accessible somewhere, or if it's been lost forever to the sands of time. Most likely the latter. Likely no way of provably knowing that any given one was the first one, anyway, unless it could be traced to the very first instance of some message board technology such that one can be sure no earlier example could have technologically existed.
07mk
10d ago
Consider a billboard: it's basically taking up part my view of the sky, and potentially distracting me while I'm driving, for no benefit to me in most cases!
That's exactly what I find so beautiful about such things. It's a functionally useless slab of metal put there ONLY for the purpose of stealing people's glances so that some other company can better extract money from those people. The amount of effort involved in getting all that metal and plastic and ink and etc. arranged in that way is far from trivial, and it's all in service of something that is basically wishful thinking on the part of the company, that it will have some marginal positive effect on the money they can extract from the public. It's a reflection of an immense amount of freedom and excess wealth in the society, which I find beautiful.
07mk
11d ago
I don't actually think consent is an ordinary word. It has a legalese connotation, and really does come up most frequently for ordinary people in the context of sexual consent.
I suppose it's not too far from "molest" which is also an ordinary word with an ordinary non-sexual meaning, but which almost always gets used sexually these days. "Consent" is perhaps not an "ordinary" word, but I think most people who have been to the hospital as adults are at least familiar with "informed consent" or "consent forms" which have nothing to do with sex. And I think this is to enough of an extent that it's not justified to accuse someone who uses the term "consent" as trying to smuggle in sexual implications.
Part of the problem is the strange mismatch of expectations. If I say, "My neighbor starts mowing the lawn at 9 AM without my consent", it implies that there is some reason to think your neighbor should need your consent, but unless there are local noise ordinances or something, why should your neighbor need consent for that?
This is the true issue that should be being brought up in the example I provided. The disagreement with AI training on copyright-protected works without consent is whether or not consent is required. As someone who believes that there's nothing unethical about it, I openly say that I am freely violating the consent of the copyright-holders (and support Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, Meta, etc. doing so) and that I feel no guilt over this, because their consent doesn't matter. Much like your neighbor doesn't need yours in your example. That's the point to make, not the one claiming that invoking the copyright-holders' consent is a way of smearing oneself or AI companies as rapist-adjacent.
07mk
11d ago
But better than advertisements are murals commissioned to real artists whose goal isn’t to sell something to the lowest common denominator. I prefer those on walls and structures and imagine Fenway Park would look better with them too.
I think there are certainly contexts where this is true. I'm skeptical about Fenway Park specifically; a mural that exists purely for beauty isn't out of the question in an MLB stadium, which are known to have similar things like fountains or statues or even aquariums which serve similar functions. But I think there's something especially beautiful about the way a stadium reflects its purpose - i.e. to generate profit for the owners via providing a space that people are willing to pay money to watch their local professional team play - that is missing in a mural that isn't in an advertisement. The mural could beautify the stadium and provide a more positive experience to the fan which compels them to be willing to pay more or to come more often, but a pretty piece of 2D art on a wall isn't generally something that baseball (or any sportsball) fans find that appealing about going to a baseball game, and so if it's there, it's almost definitely mostly motivated by some desire to make the park more beautiful to look at and experience, rather than the desire to get more people to be more willing to pay more money to come into the park. And, again, there's something beautiful to the park's visuals reflecting its purpose rather than reflecting some desire to show people a beautiful wall.
07mk
11d ago
Because they should do it to every commercial: I want every non-monopoly with aggressive advertising to be given this (or the Bud Light post trans ad) treatment, until public and online spaces look even better than São Paulo, Lancy Geneva, and Maine (where billboards are outlawed).
Online, I'm with you, but in public physical spaces, I disagree so much. As a Red Sox fan, I remember when the Green Monster at Fenway Park didn't have ads in the 90s and early 00s (in contrast to sometime before that and before my era, when it was plastered with ads), until the new owners decided to plaster it with ads yet again. A high proportion of fans were against it on the basis that it would uglify this holy site, but almost immediately after it happened, I absolutely loved the results and thought it looked far more natural with all the ads (aside: same for the Monster seats; before that, the Green Monster only had netting above the wall). Since then, I've come to appreciate the beauty that is added to things by advertisements that were motivated purely for commercial desires, and often - not always, but often - I feel like there's a real resource being wasted when I see some highly-visible wall or structure of some commercial or industrial building not being decorated with advertisement that could be generating revenue and having a 50/50 chance of helping out the company that's advertising.
I also learned recently that many Torii gates in Japan are sponsored by businesses and the Japanese characters written on their pillars are advertisements for those businesses, so they're roughly the equivalent of a "WALMART" or "DICK'S SPORTING GOODS" stamped on the gate, and learning this made me like these gates even more.
07mk
11d ago
On this meta note, I've seen a sort of parallel here with "consent" and "denial" that I find really odd.
In the past, I've seen some AGW-skeptics claim that the anti-AGW-activists calling them "climate deniers" is a dirty attempt at associating them with "holocaust deniers" because they're both using "denier." This, despite the fact that "denier" has a very well known, basic non-holocaust- (and non-AGW-)related definition in English that has no derogatory connotations whatsoever and only negative connotations in the sense that "denying" something means "negating" something.
More recently, I've seen some [people who consider AI training on copyrighted material without consent to be perfectly ethical] claim that the [people who consider AI training on copyrighted material without consent to be unethical] pointing out that the former are pro-violation-of-"consent" is a dirty attempt at associating them with rapists - i.e. people who violate sexual consent - because they're both relating to the word "consent." This, despite the fact that "consent" has a very well known, basic non-sex- (and non-copyright-)related definition in English.
Ironically, perhaps, these complaints are, in themselves, attempts to smear someone else as engaging in bad faith tactics merely through association of the same vocabulary.
That said, I haven't seen this that much. Just more than I would have expected and certainly far more than I would like.
07mk
11d ago
Is there Fiverr or the like in Damascus? Perhaps you could hire a venue, producers, and a few amateur musicians to put on a minimum viable metal show. I have no information, but I would guess that cost of services there are low, such that you could still come out ahead if you win the bet, depending on how much you value izzat.
07mk
11d ago
The question is whether the taxes raised are going to be a net benefit after fully accounting for the costs of hosting these businesses. At some point it tips over into a net loss, and the closer it is to that point the less worthwhile it is. Given that one side has billions of investment capital and a fleet of corporate professionals dedicated to getting a datacentre built at the optimal cost while their opposition are a set of competitors each consisting of a bunch of minor league politicians and their under-funded, under-paid, under-experienced and under-qualified admin staff who also have to manage their other various duties it's a safe bet that a deal will favour the business.
Nice thing, though, is that it can favor the business and still offer that local municipality benefits far greater than if they hadn't given tax breaks. The devil is in the details, of course, but trying to extract as much from the municipality as possible to the the extent that the municipality has net losses from the transaction is something that would cost the business quite a lot of money, likely with diminishing returns as they have to rely on more and more obscure loopholes (that invite court challenges) or hire more and more expensive lawyers who are better negotiators, and it's not like these data center businesses are lacking for other places in which to invest money that have positive expected value.
I think one aspect that my statement doesn't capture, though, is the humiliation or "pride" at having "won" against the business, which I think may be a big deal for a lot of the politicians and the electorate that support them. I kinda understand that this is important, but also, I kinda don't, and I wish more politicians, ideologues, etc. especially from my side of the aisle, would embrace our side being humiliated if it means that we actually make life better for people; it's only through embracing our humiliation that we can prove to ourselves that we actually care about making life better, rather than about feeling pride at believing that we're the kinds of people who make lives better.
I was not the most aware kid in the 90s, nor was I a Star Wars fan, but I recall that Star Wars held a near-sacred status among both scifi nerds and film enthusiasts in that time. IIRC, they were the highest grossing movies of all time until Titanic, and with about a decade having passed between the 3rd and then-latest installment, in the days of limited VHS or TV runs, its myth and legend grew. I imagine that the responsibility of handling such a holy franchise and the pressure that comes with it was probably too daunting for most directors, perhaps even Spielberg. Since Lucas was still alive, if the results were anything less than mindblowing and revolutionary like Star Wars was in 1977, whichever director was at the helm would surely get dragged through the mud (Lucas himself was dragged, of course, mostly deservedly so IMHO).
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