4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
<3
User ID: 355
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
2d ago
I hope you don't mind that I took this very nearly explicit "try and ID me" challenge as such! I quickly found an individual that seems to match the profile drawn by your opening post exceedingly well, but I can't see the associated photo as depicting the same person as the iPhone ad video you linked before. Is this just coincidence, my borderline faceblindness striking, or did you actually borrow someone else's biography for camouflage/misdirection?
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
5d ago
Right, I'm reasonably familiar with them but wasn't terribly impressed. They only really brought the "anyone can make a board" thing as an innovation, nothing about the posting system itself apart from some QoL improvements that had accumulated on altchans over the years. Compare to how 2ch->Futaba involved the addition of images.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
5d ago
I wonder if 4chan getting hit by the bus will enable some innovation in the anonymous posting space (like how Futaba Channel/4chan's direct Japanese template first flowered as a replacement when 2ch/its text-only predecessor went down), or the whole concept was just waiting for its overdue demise. Any interesting alternatives to watch?
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
6d ago
Well, it is, but how much do we know about the CO part of the equation? There seem to be often-cited figures for calories burned by various activities, but for example it seems quite obvious that whatever people poop out is not actually of zero caloric value, and that moreover the difference between, say, diarrhea and wombat poop cubes must be nontrivial, but this seems to never be addressed in those arguments.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
8d ago
If it turns out that our current approach to AI fizzles out at von-Neumann IQ levels, then all is good as historically, that is not sufficient intelligence to take over the world.
Well, we don't know. We ran this experiment with one von Neumann, or maybe a handful, but not with a datacenter full of von Neumanns running at 100x human speed. While we don't know if the quality of a single reasoner can be scaled far beyond what is humanly possible, with our understanding of the technology it is almost certain that the quantity will (as in, we can produce more copies more cheaply and reliably than we can produce copies of human geniuses), and within certain limits, so will the speed (insofar as we are still quite far from the theoretical limit of the speed at which current AI models could be executed, just using existing technology).
I always got the sense that LW was, and the AI alignment movement continues to be, stuck with the idealistic memeplex that '70s economics and classical AI had about the nature of intelligence and reasoning. The sense is that uncertainty and resource limitations are surely just a temporary hindrance that will disappear in the limit and can therefore simply be abstracted away, so you can get an adequate intuition for the dynamics of the "competing intelligences" game by looking at results like Aumann agreement.
It's not at all clear that this is the case; the load to model the actions of a 0.1% dumber competitor, or even just the consequences of the sort of mistakes a superintelligence could make in its superintelligent musings (to a sufficient degree of confidence to satisfy its superhuman risk aversion), may well outscale the advantages of being 0.1% more intelligent (whatever the linear measure of intelligence there is), to the point where there is nothing like a stable equilibrium that has the intellectually rich getting richer. Instead, as you are ahead, you have more to lose, and your 0.1% advantage does not protect you against serendipity or collusion or the possibility that one of those narrowly behind you gets lucky and pulls ahead, or simply exploits the concavity of your value functions to pull a "suicide bombing" on you, in the end forcing you to actually negotiate an artificial deadlock and uplift competitors that fall behind. Compare other examples of resource possession where in a naive model the resource seems like it would be reinvestable to obtain more of the same resource - why did the US not go FOOM among nations, or Bill Gates go FOOM among humans?
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
22d ago
The $variables, I think, come from PHP (which used to occupy approximately the role that Javascript does now as the lingua franca of amateurs making things that run on the internet), with acceptance being helped along by their older use in Perl (though it is manifestly not Perl: you never see @thing, %thing etc.).
The Jargon File is trying to be this, but thanks to the biases of its shepherd(s) it generally underrepresents anything from cultures that do not have a direct lineage from oldschool Unix hackers.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
22d ago
If I were only taking seriously people who benefit from moderation, I'd put more weight on your objections
The logic there does not check out - the latter would follow if the insinuation were they you take all people who benefit from moderation seriously, not that you only take people who benefit from moderation seriously (= do not take people who don't benefit from moderation seriously). Anyway, I think that not being moderated oneself is a pretty low bar for "benefitting from moderation", coming across as somewhat alike in flavour to a tinpot dictator saying that all the people on the streets should just be grateful they have not been imprisoned yet. All that happened is that I had the sense to avoid fights with people who are evidently moderator darlings. Certain individuals getting lots of leeway for things including general culture-war obnoxiousness and even personal attacks, while any attempt at proportional defense is punished harshly, is in fact the primary way that moderator bias here manifests itself - and, of course, you don't generally mod people for attacking you, which makes it easier to suspend disbelief and maintain narrative that you are actually quite even-handed.
Now if WC speaks up and says "No, actually, I did wonder if @Belisarius was into cuckolding" - well, I'll own to granting him too much charity (and give him a warning not to do that again).
Do you not realise how absurd this sounds as an argument for your impartiality? "Well, of course if he were to step up and outright admit guilt in this specific fashion, I would have no choice but to punish him (that is, give him a stern warning)"
I mod people I like all the time, often with great regret.
I can't say I have seen any clear examples of that. In fact, I had you pegged as a clear instance of the "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law" sort of authority.
I know the history of "cuck" as a right-wing slur, and maybe you should consider that the word triggered a disproportionate response from you when @WhiningCoil was using it in a more literal sense (and talking about the historical figure Belisarius, not the poster @Belisarius).
My response was triggered by your post, not WC's. If I had seen that post on its own, I would have mostly likely dismissed it as typical 2025-motte low-quality posting (maybe, if I were in a particularly futility-seeking mood, I'd have reported it as a low-effort post, expecting nothing). The thing that set me off is that the recipient, who evidently did take it as an attack (perfectly reasonably!), responded in a level-headed manner that could even be taken as defusing if the previous post was in fact meant as a personal attack, only to earn a modhat comment from the moderator that I had already previously taken note of for doing the "rules will be applied to people I dislike when they have slightly heated arguments with people I like" thing before. I knew very little about the exact political position of the two users (I figured they were both somewhere on the right), but given how much more prolific WhiningCoil is, it seemed plausible enough that this was yet another instance.
All of this could have been avoided if you didn't think it is a good idea to exempt users "in good standing" from the rules as written - even if you want to have the charity to consider it a joke, aren't jokes that are plausibly taken as personal attacks among the things that "Make your point reasonably clear and plain." is supposed to guard against?
I think you're a bad faith objector whose objections are purely tribal
Does the objection here break along tribal lines somehow? I couldn't tell who of the two is more "right-wing" for sure. At most, my sense is that WhiningCoil is more of a prolific and popular user that I figure you like, and my objections are "tribal" insofar as "users that Amadan likes" constitute a tribe. In that case, though, any objection against favouritism is definitionally tribal, and in your concept space, the only people who can have "good faith" objections to moderator bias are those who benefit from it. Maybe you think that is right and well, but then I can only say it is unfortunate if it turns out you only favour users who lack the principles to protest favouritism they benefit from.
(Though maybe you think that not finding a beloved right-wing slur intrinsically funny is already sufficient evidence of bias against the Right that rises to the level of bad faith...?)
To be fair, I should say I do appreciate that you explained your reasoning here. It does help me understand why you arrived at that decision, though I still think that the optics of it are terrible and it betrays an extreme double standard that you can muster the level of charity to interpret WhiningCoil's post, which really does not read as anything other than a wanton drive-by attack to me, as an innocuous "bit of jocularity" while also the level of anti-charity to interpret Belisarius's really rather level-headed response as "antagonistic".
I would expect this quality of moderation from 4chan, not TheMotte.
Of course you know I have had a beef with your partiality and believe that you treat users and tribes you are sympathetic to favourably, but this is an entirely new level of tendentiousness. User A makes an off-topic post trying to relate User B's username to a common slur/fixation, User B responds in a mildly standoffish manner but actually clarifies the origin of the username, and User B - only User B - gets a modhat reprimand? Of course, I fully expect that any objections will be met with the same old "I disagree, and no, I am not going to justify anything" sort of response from you. Is that what it is going to be, or do you have something better to offer?
(I don't even understand what you find so funny. Is it just "haha bro just called him a cuck"?)
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
24d ago
Driving cars is among the later capabilities you'd expect to fall, if you switch off human conceit and take the far view. You're asking to beat billions of years of evolution in a data-poor domain (navigating the real world) rather than some thousands (written) or at most hundreds of thousands (spoken) in a well-databased one (words and symbolic reasoning).
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
24d ago
The state of children transitioners is in my not so charitable opinion a giant Munchausen by proxy from the mothers being enabled by society.
How do you square this with the erstwhile right-wing complaint that schools will encourage kids to transition while keeping it secret from their parents?
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
26d ago
Can you think of some examples of people you like believing false things that would support your political beliefs if they were true, or is this purely an outgroup affliction in your eyes?
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
27d ago
Not OP, but in my view the least enforced ones are "don't wage the culture war" (typical violation: "how do we best organise to end immigration?"), "write like everyone should be included" (typical violation: "$outgroup behaviour is a disgusting perversion and I am tired of pretending otherwise") and the one against "boo outgroup" posting.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
27d ago
I'm a fairly active reporter, only a small percentage of things I report get acted on, and the exchanges when I complained in the open that no action was taken were maybe about 50/50 between very late responses insinuating that it was unreasonable to expect action to be taken quickly, and dismissals with either no particularly coherent reason given or some form of messenger-shooting ("we get lots of people wanting their outgroup to be moderated more").
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
27d ago
Do we? One of the reasons immigration has been so controversial is by being openly a way for the Left to rig politics by importing paid-up foot soldiers.
At the object level, the person this thread is talking about is Asian-American, a demographic that is hardly solidly left.
I think that first-generation immigrants are essentially guests and should refrain from any public criticism of their host - a policy that I follow myself.
If you are invited to the home of a kid (to be clear, in this metaphor, this is the university community) who has an ongoing conflict with their parents, and the kid brings up the topic, do you side with the kid, the parents, or do you try to awkwardly stay neutral saying it's not your place to meddle?
If you are invited to the home of an adult with roommates (with a jointly held lease) who has an ongoing conflict with their other roommates (say, the majority of them), [same question]?
(Up to you to decide which one of these is a closer model of the situation at hand, though the choice would also reveal something about your understanding of nations.)
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
27d ago
Well, I mean, the implied problem is that only foreigners who have the wrong kind of politics as far as the administration in power is concerned will run into trouble - so as long as you admit international students at all, under this principle, they become a way to bolster the numbers of the pro-government camp on American campuses. Due to the nature of the "marketplace of ideas" at university, this is bound to have adverse effects on the political expression even of native students who happen to oppose the government line.
(On the other hand, if international students are actually all forced to be completely apolitical, this may not make people happy either - I remember hearing complaints about Chinese MA students on this basis from both tribes during my US grad school period)
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
27d ago
Would this argument also work to defend a hypothetical instance of a Democratic administration revoking the visa of pro-Trump (and hence, in particular, in favour of Trump's current Ukraine/Russia policy) students?
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
1mo ago
This attitude is not exclusive to America. Brexit is probably a more notorious example: poor Britons who voted Leave correctly identified that their government considered their job not governance but selling them decisions made in Brussels. In their ignorance and naivete, they expected their own government to pick up the slack after leaving and believed they could do a better job of it by themselves. The reality is this: a government used to outsourcing their decision making process and shirking responsibility cannot be expected to suddenly pick up that responsibility when it is placed upon their shoulders.
Why do you figure it is this way around, as opposed to Brussels just being a fig leaf that would let politicians point and say "we had no choice, it was ordained from above" for unpopular policies that they themselves actually wanted all along?
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
1mo ago
I get the sense that going too far into this direction may actually turn out to be counterproductive for that goal, though - unlike in the case of the drunk friend, there is no doubt in the case of the Trump administration who ultimately was at the wheel during the "cruel texts", and so for some future Newsom or Buttigieg admin, any loss of credibility would have to factor through the perception that they could be followed by a Vance or Trump Jr. administration that would renege on its predecessors' promises all over again. But the more exceptional Trump's actions wind up being perceived as, the more credible a Newsom/Buttigieg assertion that this was a one-off and appropriate precautions have been taken to not allow a repeat will be, especially if Trump keeps pushing the envelope and winds up being repudiated/defanged/experience a mysterious heart attack/successfully impeached.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
1mo ago
I wonder if the Staten Island boat graveyard still is a thing, if that sort of thing is your thing.
My favoured conspiracy theory is that the main utility of this is somewhat similar to mafia initiation rituals: the participants know that everyone gets a nuclear level of dirt on everyone else, which establishes a level of trust that would otherwise be impossible among the powerful and eccentric crowd that is the Who's Who. Every member of the group is incentivised to cooperate with every other member of the group, at least to an extent that nobody feels sufficient spite and desperation to trigger MAD. (Imagine an Epstein Islander were to go to jail for the rest of their life for securities fraud, and felt that the others could have pulled strings to prevent this.) That most men would not exactly be repelled by sexual attention from 16 year olds is just a nice plus that makes recruitment go more smoothly (and perhaps allows participants to deceive themselves that they are just reaping the fruits of power, rather than entering a death pact). On top of that, shared experience of transgression probably builds a feeling of camaraderie.
It's worth noting that corresponding rumours from Europe (the Dutroux case) involves girls that are much younger, corresponding to Europe's lower social and legal age of consent (as American national politics operate according to California rules). This is also consistent with the illegality being the point. (Perhaps Europe's patronage networks are less effective than American ones because fewer men are actually into sexual attention from 8 year olds, creating a recruitment problem for the web of trust!)
The association with, and cultural memory of, secret satanic rituals might just be a holdover from when those were similarly grounds for automatic cancellation no matter how powerful the person engaging in them. The weakening of cultural Christianity, under that theory, necessitated switching from Satanism to underage sex. If the rise of Social Justice had not been halted, we could one day have lived in a utopia where the rich and powerful could just go to some island to hold secret blackface parties, instead of having to diddle kids.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
1mo ago
Huh, this is pretty good, and I had previously all but written off SCP as it got flooded by posers who can't write and people rehashing the same tired clichés /r/nosleep style.
Obvious similar recommendation which doesn't seem to have come up in this thread yet is Cordyceps: Too Clever for their Own Good.
4bpp
After January 20th, all orange flairs are considered political
1mo ago
It's easy to forget that before the Trump fan/TDS dynamic, a prototype of the same was already being sketched in Obama followers vs. what should in hindsight be labelled ODS. In the same way in which Trump inspires his adherents but inspires revulsion and a resulting willingness to cling to any smear that makes this feeling of revulsion rationalisable and communicable in his opponents, everything about Obama also clearly elicited visceral disgust in his detractors, who were then just searching for a justification to allow them to continue modelling themselves as sensible people who believe things for good reasons. Why does this president elicit such antipathy in me? Ah, right. He is not who he claims he is, and can't even legally be the president. He is a foreign deep cover agent and secret lovechild of Malcolm X raised to be the perfect political cult leader. His wife is also a man. No wonder I disliked him so much. I always had a good intuition about people.
The Trump counterpart are stories like Russiagate and piss tapes. Both of these are much more compatible with the smart critic's self-perception than "I am disgusted by his outgroup mannerisms and the idea of being subordinate to someone like that makes my lizard brain convulse". From the outside, both seem like extremely flimsy rationalisations to reject an elected president - like, so what if he does not meet some technical condition? It's a democracy, and more than half of voters voted for him. Even if Obama is foreign-born or Trump has to go to jail or whatever, people hypothetically should have been able to get the same politics by voting for a stand-in who promises to exactly implement the original's policies but is not encumbered by the gotchas, in the style of Thailand politics.
Sent.
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