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4bpp

Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs

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joined 2022 September 05 01:50:31 UTC

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Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs

				
				
				

				

					3 followers  

					follows 2 users  

					joined 2022 September 05 01:50:31 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is this not just the success recipe of Christianity? The modal pastor constantly thunders against fornicators (presumably a good majority of their audience, per the strict definition) and sinners (everyone in their audience).


It turns out "you and I, we are both bad, but I am superior to you because I at least acknowledge it" is actually an appealing meme. Perhaps it allows those who have lingering feelings that they are bad recover a sense of self-worth without having to repress those feelings, or perhaps being able to tell someone else "you are bad" feels so good that it's worth acknowledging the "I am bad" for.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The noise I had to suffer in every single housing unit in the US (whether apartment or free-standing), due to your HVACs routinely sounding like jet engines and fridges like idling trucks, not to mention even wind and rain being loud due to your paper-thin walls and bad windows, is well in excess of anything you hear in a half-decent European apartment in a major city. In Germany it probably would be sufficient grounds to drag your landlord to court and have your rent slashed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This idea that your existence is in some sense subhuman (or else what is "live in the pod and eat the bugs" supposed to imply?) if you can't leave your housing without passing by other people does seem like a uniquely American hangup. Since we left the whole hunting and gathering thing behind, most people everywhere across the globe have lived in settings where the walls of their housing unit are also the walls of someone else's. Cities existed for some 6000 centuries at least, and within the walls of a typical European city, maybe between zero and ten people would have a residence that meets your criteria. Over in Germany (admittedly relatively far in the direction of people not caring for houses among Western countries), even Chancellor Merkel lived in an apartment, which she could only enter and leave by passing by other neighbours including apparently a politician from the opposing party.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They also don't believe that Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be a big problem, either because they have convinced themselves that the Iranian regime are the good guys actually (TDS at its fullest) or they figure Iran would be no worse than North Korea.




I think you might be underestimating the depth of anti-Israel sentiment. Many share the sense that in the present configuration ever-greater Israeli victory (of conquest, expansion and extermination) is basically inevitable: they can always keep fomenting a bit more instability in their periphery, provoke their neighbours and subjects and then use the reaction to slice off a bit more of their land and remaining freedoms, and it's only a question of how they pace it to maximise their comfort along the way, and if all else fails they always have Daddy America's credit card and their nukes to fall back on. A nuclear-armed Iran is one of the few attainable scenarios that could significantly reshape the game tree there, and for those who don't want Israel to prevail in such a fashion this seems like an important enough goal that they would be willing to hold their nose and accept the Mullahs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't they killing tens of thousands of their own civilians a couple months ago due to civil unrest?




I'm reluctant to keep accepting this claim at face value. Not that I would bet against it, were it put up on Polymarket with a resolver that seemed authoritative enough, but there are at least two complications:


(1) the possibility that it is an outright lie or exaggeration, because the claims are ultimately sourced to bodies who have no particular commitment to speaking the truth to the general public (US or Israeli intelligence? Iranian opposition?)


(2) the possibility that it is technically true but missing some nuance that would significantly change the interpretation. During the height of the uprising being suppressed, I saw some videos circulating (of course themselves of questionable provenance) that purported to depict opposition-aligned fire teams using automatic weapons at least somewhat competently. If the reality of the uprising earlier this year is that the US and Israel had prepared and equipped a mass armed uprising, similar perhaps to the 2014 Donbass rebellion, which was soundly defeated because the government response was more competent than anticipated, does "killed tens of thousands of their own [citizens]" still have the same ring?


We don't normally talk about Ukraine in terms of "killed thousands of their own civilians" in that context (though, naturally, the Russians do). If the US had a Chinese-sponsored uprising that involved tens of thousands of people attempting to storm government buildings and engage in shootouts with authorities, would it being suppressed with a significant number of those involved winding up dead excuse the subsequent casualties of a reckless Chinese bombing campaign?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I find that the "authoritarian" axis in political alignment tests is basically meaningless. We have a contested environment where there are four, if not more, obvious potential power centers (government; "the rabble"; the financial elite (business); the social elite (academics/journalists), possibly further pillarised into tribes so you have the Alex Joneses/Charlie Kirks and the NYT journalists), each having framed bringing at least some of the others to heel as a precondition to their own ability to exercise their natural right to live freely.


In this setting, being "libertarian" just ends up meaning "wants more power for the power centers the labeller likes" and being "authoritarian" means "wants more power for the power centers the labeller dislikes". The "tankie left" wants power for the rabble, and a hypothetical government of them, over the others; "yellow lib-right" wants power for the financial elite; traditional auth right wants power for government; "liberals" want power for their social elite, and the Ivermectin circuit essentially forms a sort of shadow liberal set that is excited over Robert Kennedy and probably also vaguely pining for an era when microchurch pastors with weird idiosyncratic beliefs commanded respect in their communities. Each of these groups thinks that it is natural if their respective elites rule, and unjust oppression if they are prevented from doing so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for April 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, David Deutsch (of quantum computing fame), for example, is in fact Jewish. Maybe there is something like "the lady doth protest too much" class naming?


On the main topic, my impression is that of all the present-day European cultures, Hungary perhaps has the most extensive Jewish influence, showing most obviously in aspects like cuisine and music as well as plain public visibility (Budapest has a remarkable number of random shops with Hebrew signboards), while there also does not seem to be nearly as much of a sense of gap/otherness between them and the rest of the population as elsewhere. If I recall correctly, even Horthy at most reluctantly did the bare minimum of participation in the Nazis' anti-Jew agenda, and nobody likes the guy thy briefly installed to replace him in the final year. Moreover, ever since Trianon, Hungary has a very similar "beleaguered nation-state bearer of a totally unique people's destiny" self-image. It is therefore unsurprising that they feel some kinship with Israel.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


As a side note, it does seem that generally speaking white people more or less represent the standard of attractiveness/desirability in the world and have for some time. With respect to white women, I recall reading somewhere that during the days of African piracy, lighter skinned women carried a higher price in slave markets. I'm not sure about men. Perhaps after Europeans conquered and dominated the world, women of all races started associating white men with power and status.




I think it's even more soft than hard power, nowadays. In my observations, those who prefer East Asian media over American media also tend to value partners of the corresponding ethnicity higher, which is relevant as the bubbles in which this preference has reached fixation keep getting bigger and more mainstream. I have already seen social groups in which the (comparatively handsome, successful) white guys quietly mald as the resident loose girls openly prefer to chase mediocre Japanese and Korean guys.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Arguments are soldiers. More specifically, in this case, the mistake is assuming that, say, "datacenters use too much water/we should waste less water" is the reflection of a terminal value. "Datacenters bad" is much closer to terminal, whatever it is; the role of the water narrative is more akin to "finally I have found a good story to convince the sheeple to join the fight against datacenters".


If you take it away, this does not, in their eyes, make datacenters any better, but just makes it harder for them to get agreement and sympathy.
So it is with everything else; telling any doomer that their legible indicators of doom are a lie is just telling them to shut up and endure their feeling that everything is rotten alone. (Crime statistics tend to do similar things for right-wingers.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Russia is still not doing a universal draft (of the type that would involve calling in masses of people who have finished mandatory service) or sending particularly many mandatory-service conscripts, and even then there is a big caveat that distinguishes it from Western systems: if you go straight to university from school, your being "drafted" does not actually entail even having to stay at the barracks for any amount of time, but instead you get some substitute military leadership programme as part of your university education, similar perhaps to ROTC in the US. Therefore even if they sent all the mobiks into the grinder it could still arguably be eugenic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I rather believe something like the converse - most instances of what we consider "hypocrisy" are actually mostly tradeoffs between values, perhaps more specifically outwardly displayed ones and embarrassing/"naked self-interest" ones that are kept concealed. I don't think "naked self-interest" is a clearly delineated, distinct category of values anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, the question is also how it compares to the situation with Russia and Ukraine; I'm sure there are many who don't want to lean too far out of the window there in terms of asserting restrictions on the conduct of besieged countries lest it come around to bite them now or later. Of course there is some asymmetry in that Ukraine and allies have a clearer-cut case that the ships they are attacking are in some sense Russian rather than merely serving Russian interests, but I don't know how much bite this distinction would have before a court of legal autists when most of the other gulf countries are hosting US military bases.


(The comparison here works, and somewhat fails with your Israel example, because in objective terms most ships passing through both the Suez canal and the Strait of Hormuz belong to American allies or can be argued to have a causal link to the continued ability of the US to prosecute the war. Conversely, if somehow Europe and the US either grew a spine or grew enough Muslims to collectively assume a posture of support for Hamas against Israel and then Israel did the thing you described, I doubt that, say, the Chinese or Argentinians or any other mostly neutral party would be getting their panties in a twist over this.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I never liked the proverb that goes like hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue (why is paying a tribute a compelling metaphor here?), but the underlying sentiment is somewhat relevant. Specifically, (1) unlike the rat-adjacent crowd, most people don't have absolute, immutable values nor are even particularly disturbed by the prospect of value drift; (2) they experience "conflicting" values/terms in their value function (ones that you can't maximise simultaneously) not as a fun math problem but as painful and embarrassing; (3) if a pair of values they hold keeps causing problems as in 2., they will happily gradually do away with one of them as in 1. (At some point vice is driven to default?)


Now, add to this that most people also, apart from any other values, hold pragmatism and reasonableness as a value, as well as (more cynically) being perceived as following universal, elegant principles of the kind that get mentioned as a Philosophy in textbooks, as opposed to boring non-universalisable ones like "more power to my race". As a result, it's generally actually quite effective to promulgate the statement that some object-level aspect of your target's value system is inconsistent, impractical and/or non-universalisable. They will feel the tension between the "LARP as philosopher-king" value and whatever other value you are challenging (e.g. abortion views, religion, in-group favouritism) and often enough the other value will be the easier one for them to do away with.


(Of course, this also creates the continued demand for apologetics, * Studies and other word slop that basically serves to shield the object-level values from having to be traded off against the acting-reasonable value.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The atmosphere in Budapest last night was quite something. The streets were awash with people getting piss drunk, shouting, high-fiving passersby, climbing up on buses, cars honking late into the night; one could really imagine this is what it was like when the Berlin Wall fell.
I almost can't wait for the inevitable disappointment to set in so I can get more mileage out of the evergreen "first time?" image macro.


I really had the sense that the opposition supporters were deathly anxious right until the moment the preliminary results started rolling in, perhaps expecting some Trump 2016 style flood of dark-matter enemy voters or shenanigans popping their bubble. Someone with good understanding of crowd psychology had the great idea to let a veritable rave to be held in the square in front of the parliament building through the evening after polls closed (tagline: "More Techno in Parliament") which allowed people to blow off steam, but judging from people's demeanor and the sheer amount of vomit puddles around its periphery I would guess there was a lot of steam built up to blow off indeed (while opposition (after)parties through the previous days had more of an exam night vibe).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But does this matter? I think you will struggle to find any widely supported position where the majority of believers can articulate an intelligent justification. You can argue about whether it is an effective strategy to attack the "head-empty believers" directly (by way of shame or ridicule or whatever you think works), but even if it is, performing that attack here will not reach them and only shit up this discussion space.


Also, it stands to reason that those who do hold the position for more intelligent reasons hold an outsize influence on it; even the ones who just think on the level of "fat moneybag CEO bad" are vaguely reassured by some belief that some smart and high-status people can articulate a more robust line of reasoning for why it is so. Far more interesting and fruitful, then, to engage with that line.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The circumstance that he stepped up to crank Moloch's ratchet when Anthropic made a principled stand to not play ball with the War Department probably was a factor. Not only was this a strike in favour of "you can't stop or circumscribe AI, if you try to someone else will just pull ahead" for the game theorists and doomers, it also put Altman in the Trump stooge/useful idiot box for Blue normies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If your model of what drives the outgroup is this simple and pejorative, you should be at least a little suspicious of it. Can you try to steelman the pro-Luigi case?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In a way, this observation does support OP's claim, no? "Directionally wrong" sexual prejudice is redeemed by a "directionally correct" racial component, but "bad" racial prejudice is not made acceptable by introducing a "good" sex component; ergo the racial dimension empirically matters more.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Does the one-eyed man get to be king of the properly sighted just by presenting some blind people he would be comparatively fit to lead, though?


I don't think the metaphor you chose works here. In the end, you are just trying to force the parent poster to answer for some incompatible view espoused by unrelated people who happen to agree with him on the "Trump bad" part, which we can maybe consider to not be completely invalid if you also take responsibility for the "support Israel to position the set-pieces for the Rapture" camp on your side.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's going to be "too soon to do so" in the anecdotal Zhou Enlai sense for a very long time, and on top of that hopelessly subjective (is "US police are now scared of casual violence towards black do-no-gooders" a benefit or not? Would "Israel occupies part of Lebanon" be? Would "US Evangelicals ecstatic because they think the Rapture has drawn closer" a benefit or not?).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, given that the Iran war's direct costs are already estimated to be in excess of 20 billion, a couple hundreds more in funding are being requested and this does not even include figures for random damage like US embassies and bases in the region let alone indirect costs due to more expensive fuel and what-not, I think we are some orders of magnitude past that. (We'll see about the deaths depending on whether they actually proceed with a ground invasion.)


(And no, the "military budget is just money reinvested in US companies" argument won't do much here; it's still money that means part of the economy is retargeted towards making things that explode rather than twinkies. You could make absolutely the same argument about BLM damages since presumably the damaged storefronts were also rebuilt by US companies, too. What's the qualitative difference between "fire a missile and pay for a replacement" and "shatter a window and pay for a replacement"?)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
His opposition including some stupid people who can't get their narrative straight is not a particularly strong point in his favour.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Contra The Usual Interpretation Of The Whispering Earring
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll need more time to chew on the rest of your essay before I can respond cogently, but




Simulation and emulation are not magic tricks. If you encode an abacus into a computer running on the Von-Neumann architecture, and it outputs exactly what the actual abacus would for the same input, for every possible input you care to try (or can try, if you formally verify the system), then I consider it insanity to claim that you haven't got a “real” abacus or that the process is merely “faking” the work.




I think calling it insanity betrays a bit of a failure of curiosity towards this aspect of human psychology. Why is it that any people make "retro" games for retro architectures, when they could just imitate the style in a modern engine? The HN public, I imagine, would be much more excited about "I got Doom to run on a toaster" than "I got Doom to run in a VM that has the power of a toaster". Why is breaking out of Alcatraz more interesting than clearing an obstacle course that was designed to be equally difficult? If in the Paralympics, a one-legged guy was hop-racing a two-legged guy with one of his legs tied to his back, which one would we cheer for? Why do we fantasise about Robinson Crusoe scenarios when we could do like the Primitive Technology youtube guy and buy a plot of land somewhere cheap and go frolic around in it wearing rags? Why is the handmade plastic trinket more valuable than the molecule-perfect mass produced Chinese replica? Humans, I think, tend to find acts, and products, of any form of "ingenuity" more real if they sit at or near the optimum point of a real optimisation landscape that someone may realistically encounter. If the optimisation landscape is artificial, and defined by restrictions that we could really just "wish away", then optimising for it is fake and play, and the product of such an optimisation process is a toy. Perhaps it is also so with the human software: a human running under the constraints of self-replicating meat evolved in the African jungle is a precious and impressive thing, but a human running in an emulator on a piece of silicon that is powerful enough to run Culture Minds is a neat diversion that's maybe worth 10 minutes of scrolling and an upvote.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Apart from faceh's argument below, it also seems to me that if a lawmaker passes a law because it seems like a good idea at the time, the times change and now it no longer seems like a good idea, then it should be up to the lawmaker to revoke that law. If you want this to be up to the courts, you at least ought to force the lawmaker to bundle each law with some text describing the contingent circumstances that the law is meant for, rather than simply letting the court and the commenting public engage in motivated guessing ("surely they said this because there was a frontier to settle and they needed bodies, which is no longer the case"/"surely they said this because they wanted to found a country to rule and represent everyone living in its confines, which is just as applicable today").


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Or put it this way - Trump chickened out of tariffs that would have been far less damaging to him than 10,000 American military deaths in a full or even partial invasion. Why would he TACO the former but not the latter?




Seems like a good opportunity to test the theory that Israel has a unique grip on him (directly, or indirectly by way of having a grip on his handlers/the top of the USG apparatus).