2rafa
13hr ago
It’s more about the situation in which 3 would occur, namely near-total loss of US support, an increasingly Muslim Europe, China and Russia signing onto sanctions to appease Muslim allies like Pakistan and Iran, and then relatively quickly almost the whole world is against them, the US for residual world peace reasons forces them into this quasi peace, and then maybe Turkey or another coalition of Arab nations decide that it’s just time for the killing blow, there’s a mass Palestinian uprising of the kind that didn’t occur on October 7th etc…
2rafa
13hr ago
I think Israel will change behavior if that happens and act / beg for scenario 3, but as I said, there are many routes by which that leads to scenario 2 anyway.
2rafa
1d ago
It’s clear that the Nobel committee for reasons of generic Nordic internationalist liberalism could not stomach giving it to Trump directly (think of the humiliation at parties!) but decided to give it to a Trump-aligned Venezuelan conservative and anti-communist as a kind of consolation and gesture, in that Trump could hardly say she absolutely didn’t deserve it.
2rafa
1d ago
This conflict has continued for 70 years and will continue indefinitely until a “final resolution” occurs. Settlers continue to exercise growing power in Israeli politics; while not as fecund as the chareidim they stil have substantially higher tfr than secular Jews. Hamas is re-asserting control of Gaza and still likely has at least 10-20,000 fighters, and very high Gazan fertility rates and a large pool of existing 10-14 year old males means it will have many more in short order.
There are only 4 final resolution states:
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Total victory of the Israelis, involving the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, followed by a subsequent peace deal with the surrounding nations that involves some kind of naturalization for Palestinian emigres as full citizens of other nations or another nation. Very unlikely.
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Total victory of the Palestinians, involving the ethnic cleansing of Jews (either in a genocidal context or Algeria-style ‘suitcase or coffin’ emigration) from all current Israeli territory and a single Palestinian Arab state. Unlikely for now although less unlikely than scenario 1, and radically more likely if the world enters a period of sustained international upheaval.
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A two-state solution imposed by the United States and other powers to Palestine’s benefit. America and other nations sanction Israel or threaten to until it experiences a domestic political crisis and forcibly withdraws settlers from the Palestinian Territories and agrees to a Palestinian state along either 1967 or (less likely) 1948 borders. There is a substantial chance of this turning into scenario 2, although it is theoretically possible with a ‘neutral’ international force overseeing the process. If public sentiment shifts further against Israel in America I think this is plausible in the medium term.
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A two-state solution imposed by the United States to Israel’s benefit, which would involve one or more Muslim powers administering a semi-autonomous collection of Palestinian city states in an arrangement with Israel and possibly other global powers, principally America. This was the goal of the Israeli right but seems less likely as time goes on.
The most likely outcome of the current process is that Hamas returns to power in Gaza, the world mostly forgets about the conflict for 5-10-15 years, and then things eventually flare up once Hamas is ready for another big attack.
2rafa
1d ago
For example, why do antipsychotics increase the risk of pneumonia? Nobody knows. Why do clozapine and olanzapine cause the most weight gain (within antipsychotics)? Fuck knows. There is no logical chain that leads from the pharmacology of clozapine to it causing more weight gain than ziprasidone. We only know these things through observation. The exam questions reflect this reality. They do not ask you to model the interaction of dopamine antagonists with hypothalamic appetite centers. They ask: "Which of the following drugs is most associated with weight gain?" This is not a test of your reasoning. It is a test of your internal lookup table. You either pass the herblore skill check or you don't.
Sure, but I would classify this closer to the ‘classical’ examination than the rote legal memory check where, you FOOL, you forgot that it was actually a class 5(a)i notice and not a class 5(b)i one even though you actually! In the sense that I would imagine that smart and well-read psychiatry students would probably know that antipsychotics increase the risk of pneumonia and so on. Even moreso for Freud’s ‘nonsense’.
2rafa
1d ago
First of all, sorry to hear that and all the best with the tests.
Secondly, about:
Especially exams that require months on end of grinding and memorization, when is rather be doing anything else.
I’m curious about these medical exams and studying. Are there some candidates you’ve met that can just ace them without studying, based solely on general medical knowledge and above average recollection from both medical school and hands-on training in the years before their specialist qualification? Or is it like some legal qualifications, where even a towering intellect needs to rote memorize that the answer is a section 37 part 3 form and not a part 4 and that a certain period is 13 working days and not 12?
hallucination rates are close to negligible
This has not been the case for me, unless you count “yes, you are correct, it seems that x is actually y” follow-ups when specifically prompted as negligible, which I would not. The eternal problem of “are you sure?” almost universally lowering its previously declared confidence in any subjective answer also remains. No specific examples, just my general experience over the past few weeks.
The appropriate response to hallucination handwringing from luddites is “it doesn’t matter”, not “it’s not happening”, by the way.
2rafa
1d ago
The real disaster is that the ones who are self aware enough to know they are bad writers went from 2 line emails to paragraphs of AI slop, no doubt promoted by the same 2 lines they would have previously just sent.
2rafa
1d ago
“I will flee like a rat to the suburbs and abandon the civilization my forefathers built because getting rid of homeless psychos and dealing with violent crime seems like too much work”
Who can be surprised at 70 years of total failure on the American right when this is the common mindset? Out of sight, out of mind, and all the while you fade into irrelevance.
2rafa
1d ago
“Full sized” in terms of product volume or selection? In terms of volume of fresh, OK quality food the average Manhattan Whole Foods has more than a huge big box store in a poorer part of the Midwest. It’s bleak out there, the fact that NYC doesn’t have 37 shelves of 48-pack soda isn’t a downside.
2rafa
1d ago
I just get my food delivered when I want once a week for the in-store price plus a nominal (literally $2) delivery charge, which is viable for the store because of how dense a city is.
China doesn't care which tribe runs the ports, only that the trade flows.
Neither did the British at first, but eventually you have no choice but to care, because the other side might ally with someone else or extort you for more.
could exterminate every Pakistani but as long Gwardar port remains open for COSCO it doesn't matter.
Sure, but in a regional total war a key revenue-generating asset like that is getting bombed to nothing on day one, so the practical outcome is that they are invested in that kind of conflict. Comparative trifles in Burma (which are a little more complex than ‘supporting both sides’ I’d say, though my understanding is far from comprehensive) don’t suggest otherwise. Agree mostly on Taiwan, though one can’t discount face.
In the cascading list of great satans the dispossessed third world wants dead, China ranks relatively distantly.
I think the chance that China emerges unscathed from nuclear war involving all the largest powers on its border is very, very low. Involvement in several forms would be inevitable, and at that point the likelihood of getting nuked increases significantly. As for the Islamist threat, ‘rogue nuke’ is very 1990s; it is possible but I suspect the next major attack will have another format. China is less safe than you think; vigorous imprisonment and surveillance of the kind unimaginable in the West have reduced the number of domestic attacks, but I wouldn’t discount the very substantial number of jihadists now in Central Asia and elsewhere with a very strong grudge to bear. Russian collapse doesn’t mean that nukes will fall into the hands of Islamists who want to nuke the USA or Israel either, in fact given the locations of key sites and the personnel and staffing structure of the relevant agencies that is relatively unlikely.
Pakistan falling would see India or Israel get nuked by jihadis, Russia falling would probably see Israel or USA get the brunt of it.
More specifically, state failure doesn’t happen overnight and the respective officials with knowledge of all devices and sites will gladly trade that information to the Americans and/or Chinese in exchange for money and safe passage to a life in Gulf exile a week before the storming of the presidential palace.
2rafa
3d ago
The Chinese certainly have naturally isolationist tendencies but I think even they know that in the era of engineered global pandemics, nuclear weapons (whose proliferation is an inevitable consequence of the end of Pax Americana) and A(G)I, they will have no choice but to be involved, especially given their location at the edge of ongoing potential conflict zones between India and Pakistan, the Koreas etc.
The British and Dutch also started with purely mercantile aspirations, but the trouble with that is that eventually tribe #2 decides it wants to destroy tribe #1, and all your valuable ports and factories and mines are in tribe #1’s territory, so before you know it you’re a colonial power.
2rafa
3d ago
When AI kills the outsourced WITCH tech sector the consequence on the domestic middle class, consumer spending and so on in India is going to be grim, surely.
Very good points, but the small absolute volumes of REEs required means that effective transshipping will be very hard to stamp out unless all exports anywhere are curtailed, which would draw the ire of most of the regional trading partners that the CCP actually wants to continue to keep onside. The Chinese century is inevitable because western countries will descend into civil chaos due to mass immigration and for no other (major) reason.
The personal automobile (and every consequence of it, including the specifically American suburb) papers over the cracks of an unusually violent and dangerous first-world society, and has since the 1950s and 1960s.
America can transit, but that would require confronting the actual problem.
2rafa
3d ago
Finally, you're on the AGI hype/doom train. It would confound me beyond belief if the Mormon memeplex was the dominant one even in the near future. That's really unlikely, to say the least. In other words, a choice like that is to tell myself I have compromised my values, and for what? Something I can get anyway?
A recipe for an existence spent in the lobby of life, constantly waiting for something big to happen. Even if you agree with Yud that extinction is probably inevitable, there is nothing for it but to live as if it isn’t. (Speaking of that kind of ‘lie’ to the self…)
Finally, what's objective about it? In the strict sense? Do you seriously think that GDP per capita, indexes of mental health and TFR are such robust metrics that they overshadow everything else? Do you not care about anything else?
I believe the average Mormon in Utah lives a better life than the average person with a similar genetic makeup in almost every sense. This is backed up by metrics but is also backed up by vibes, aesthetics, and my personal experience.
How should we determine human flourishing? That’s a big question, but questions like “would I rather live in a slum in Kinshasa or a slum in Copenhagen?” or “is quality of life higher in Singapore or South Sudan?” can help up determine the baseline correlations if we can find it within ourselves to approach an answer.
The only catch is that you, the conscious entity reading this now, will be gone. The parasite will be piloting your body, living a life that is, by all objective measures, better than the one you are living now. Few of us would take that deal.
Semantic babble. Will the parasite have my memories, personalities and genetics? Will my children be genetically identical to my children if it doesn’t exist? Will ‘I’ love them the same way? Will my family not notice any difference? Will I be the same person in every conceivable non-magic sense? Will I act within the bounds of my own personality, developing naturally according to the genetic and environmental destiny with which I would otherwise have been aligned? If a comprehensive scan of brain and body were performed, would I be entirely identical to my current self?
If the answer to all of the above was ‘yes’, then sure, you’re just talking about a magic, better version of me. This is just a ‘brain upload’, something you yourself have expressed interest in.
For me, deliberately adopting a belief system I consider false, even for its wonderful benefits, feels too much like accepting the parasite.
You are not adopting it, you are suspending disbelief, no differently to when you watch a movie or play a video game and don’t obsess over plot holes. As others noted, we do this thousands of times a day, tell ourselves, friends and family thousands of little lies, just so stories. It is only your sentimental attachment to this specific narrative about religion and God that makes it harder for you to understand the same applies.
2rafa
4d ago
People should actually read scientific literature and look for things that usually work.
You Will Know Them By Their Fruits.
Mormons have produced a High Quality Civilization, even by Anglo standards (compare to the native English working class, beset by various issues).
Their tribe, their identity, their mode of being and living works, by an objective, scientific measure, indeed according to the only measures by which a civilization should be judged.
You, dear friend, are the one making the emotional argument. I am not emotional about it. I agree that this is a faith founded on a ridiculous story by a charlatan. But, by Jove, it works.
2rafa
4d ago
There is no panacea for delusion and bad decisions, just actions and traits that make succumbing to them less likely.
Indeed, and the problem is that it’s possible bad decisions are often a consequence of truth-seeking and an obsession with internal coherence. It may be that deep, personal introspection, and in particular a willingness to face the cold, hard emptiness of the universe with a grand disdain for spirituality and superstition is bad for us. Rationalism has no real answer to this beyond ‘nuh-uh’, ‘you’re doing it wrong’ and ‘maybe, but it doesn’t matter’, all of which I find profoundly unsatisfying.
When I think about the most fulfilling and happy moments of my life, none of them had to do with my (lifelong, since I was perhaps three or four years old, and really I have no recollection of ever having any belief in god) atheism. There were no euphoric moments, was no enlightenment by my intelligence. Instead I think of simple company, family and friends, the feeling of being part of bigger and greater things, being at peace with my life, my past, my future, and in time with my passing.
2rafa
5d ago
Congratulations on finding a faith, it makes me happy to know I played some (very) small part in it, and I wish you all the best on that journey.
2rafa
5d ago
You can make a soup by frying, say, various raw ingredients and then pouring water over them in a big pot and bringing it to the boil and then eventually after some time consuming it. There are ways of making coffee that are mechanically extremely similar.
This is a known strategy, but coming after a discussion on the downsides of wireheading, it creates a certain cognitive dissonance.
As I recall, my objection to wireheading was largely that it seemed unaesthetic and depressing, that I don’t want to be the human version of a mouse in a dopamine button experiment, etc, and that I think it is probably inherently unfulfilling. I even included a personal example of what I think that kind of life leads to among the very rich, which you refuted by implying they probably just need to recalibrate their own measures of life satisfaction.
By contrast, looking at the happy, stable, prosperous, fecund, clean, healthy and attractive Mormon community and concluding that it would be a smart move to join them is precisely the opposite philosophical choice, the equivalent of taking up the hard work of, say, going to the gym or forcing yourself onto 20 first dates in a year because you know the outcome of a healthier body or an eventual happy marriage and family are things that will fulfil you more than your present existence.
That is not to disagree completely. I won’t speak for @Hoffmeister25, but I think it would be hard for me, or most of us here, to truly convincingly become Mormons in the religious sense. There are some very smart born Mormons here who have indeed, despite being part of this largely (post-)rationalist and atheist community, resisted the urge to look behind the curtain, and I respect them for that, but I have looked behind the curtain and read the catastrophically persuasive takedown of the entire structural basis for the faith written by that one guy and widely shared online and I think I would find it hard to overcome that.
But does it matter? Hundreds of generations of extremely intelligent people lived and died as true believers of the absolute sort, could not even conceive of an atheism in the way we do today. Hoff’s children will be believers, will (or had least may) resist looking behind the curtain they have known their whole lives, and so at ‘worst’ he is making a sacrifice for their happy and prosocial future.
Good luck, I can't really find it in me to condemn you, but I wish you hadn't gone down this rabbit hole even if it has hot blondes and fun, family-friendly activities along the way.
At some point, and I think a few ‘sacred cows’ of liberalism are like this, you have to look around you and determine that actually maybe I’m the one who believes something that makes for a worse, less fulfilled society, no matter how “objectively true” it is (and often it isn’t, even, objectively true, although I think on religion it might be). Better that my children should be happy believers than unhappy philosophers.
The bulk of the peasantry and proletariat in the region would gladly throw everything at Israel. The leadership refuse because of a number of reasons; the connection between Hamas and other Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood that wants to overthrow the Egyptian military regime, those who would destabilize the Jordanian monarchy etc; the fact that the US supports Israel; the fact that the IDF could destroy their militaries leaving them vulnerable to domestic upheaval (see the first reason) and so on.
However, if Israel appears weak, these same governments may be unable to resist popular pressure to give in to the people and mount an invasion. This would be especially true if there was a Palestinian uprising. In addition, Egypt may well eventually fall to an Islamist government.
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