Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
29d ago
But nothing ever really ends.
Tell that to the Tanguts, the Jangil, the Dorset, Homo floresiensis, or the dodos.
I don't actually believe that. The Blue Tribe has better liars, better loophole-finders, and above all else a much better social shaming apparatus. It has a nonzero ability to affect Red-aligned normies' worldview, while Red think-tanks are pretty useless at shifting Blue-aligned normies' Overton window. If everyone fights maximally dirty, then, all my personal opinions aside, I'm betting Blue.
Not to speak for FC, but that you think that this is the only possible battlefield on which the tribal conflict can play out is part of the delusion ("sustained by ironclad control of the knowledge-production apparatus" as it is). Setting aside the literal bullets possibility to avoid fedposting (though, in my view, it remains a likely outcome), there's also a number of domains between the two. One example: infrastructure.
Who grows the food? Who keeps the lights on? What would happen if someone were to shut down the water pipe to southern California, or collapse the aqueducts feeding NYC?
I have a civil engineer friend who has gone on at length — repeatedly — about the vulnerability of our cities, and how easy it would be to get urban Americans to "start eating each other." He argues that in many cases, it wouldn't even require active sabotage — just for a particular relatively-small group of almost-entirely Red Tribe men to stop showing up to work.
FC mentioned "thrive vs survive." Which tribe is better positioned to survive, and come out on top, in the wake of the sort of infrastructure collapse I've outlined above?
The way I see it, your choice is between selective application of the second amendment, and it simply being torn down.
Or we can get non-selective application of the second amendment after we crush the Blue Tribe, by (per Sun Tzu) ignoring all that social shaming/Overton window/think-tank space in favor of a battleground that favors us.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
29d ago
Counterpoint: I wish a mothafucka would. Unfortunately right-wing nationalist violence often seems to manifest as mass shootings carried out by clearly mentally unstable people that target the entirely wrong targets. I.e. random people in a school or grocery store instead of assassinations targeting politicians, the leadership of NGOs that help illegal migrants illegally migrate, etc
First, this reads as a touch fedpost-y (I say as someone who's eaten some bans for the same). Secondly, I don't recall where I've read it, but I know I've encountered at least a couple of people on the right arguing that the Labour Party of Norway was noticeably weakened by their loss of up-and-coming young talent at Utøya, and thus, contra Yarvin, Breivik did make a difference for his side. (I'd argue that this is actually why Yarvin spent so long pooh-poohing ABB, because — particularly after listening to him on podcasts — so much of Yarvin's political program seems to be aimed first and foremost at preventing this sort of thing — for entirely understandable historical reasons.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
29d ago
Perhaps, but Moldbuggian solutions in particular seem, at least to me, more about making High Modernism more efficient — and cementing the power of technocratic Blue elites — through eliminating (the pretense of) democracy (and the Landian variety is anti-human).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
29d ago
To actually take it seriously as something that matters in the world, including the present day; and not just treat it as a creation myth — something of the long, long ago — to serve as an alternative narrative to Genesis.
In slightly less broad terms, to recognize things like Darwinism meaning you can have telos without a (conscious) telos-giver (what makes an adaptation an adaptation?); or to reject the creationist-adjacent idea that evolution is always so "crude" and "random" that even the smallest amount of Intelligent Design will always do better (that's how you get High Modernism). Back in the last century, quite a lot of effort into AI was about trying to work out how to Intelligently Design a mind top-down, while others worked on more evolutionary, bottom-up methods like neural networks. Well, who proved more fruitful there? Or recognizing that there isn't one single "environment" to which creatures — or social institutions — adapt, but countless local ecosystems. Just as there's no "perfect bird" — only birds perfectly adapted to particular conditions in particular places — there is no single "ideal government," only governments ideal for a particular people, in a particular place, with a particular culture, at a particular time in history. (I seem to vaguely recall de Maistre having said something relevant to this point.)
It's about recognizing that the idea that some armchair "experts", with just a couple months of mental work, will necessarily "outdo" the products of evolution — whether that's the folks confident about vast enhancements without trade-off via genetic engineering, tankies who think that this time their socialist central planners will beat free markets, or Seeing Like a State-style High Modernist social engineers.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
29d ago
That might be a subcategory of what I'm talking about, but not everyone goes as far into laissez-faire as they do (after all, we're social animals, and building cooperative communities is part of our extended phenotype).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Is there a general term for the sort of broad political position of 'secular/atheist individual who believes in Darwinian evolution so deeply that he is led to reject liberalism, high modernist utopianism, and much of the "Enlightenment" project'?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Count me as another one who found this through the AAQC roundup.
As an inhabitant of the state with the highest population fraction Eastern Orthodox, I feel like I should say something here; but I don't exactly have much relevant first-hand knowledge, except to note that our Orthodox population is, as one might expect, disproportionately Native (what with many of their ancestors having been first evangelized by Russian Orthodox missionaries, back before Russia sold the place to the USA).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Maybe incel isn't the correct word stricly speaking. It's just coded in the sphere of ideologies such as red pill, mgtow, mra, pua, etc.
Again, what does that have to do with whether it's true or false, correct or incorrect?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
a very incel coded conclusion.
You use the word "incel coded" (and "incel worldview" above) as if said modifier implies, or is synonymous with, "incorrect." It's a sneer masquerading as argumentation.
If a conclusion is true, then it is true regardless of how "incel coded" it is.
What does it add to the conversation, except as a verbal "boo light"? I mean, at best it's Bulverism — "You only believe this because…".
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
And wouldn't it still be useful to be able to spin up an arbitrary number of genius AIs to think about any problem you wanted to?
Sure, but more in the "putting people out of work"-style future (a la Tyler Cowen's "Average is Over"), than anything like the revolutionary futures envisioned by singularitarians.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
I'm very not certain, but I seem to recall a study they did on female teenagers back when they attempted to educate them on the benefits of abstinence by making them carry around a toddler-like doll for the entire day. IIRC, the result backfired, as the teenagers reported wanting to have children more afterwards, not less.
It was a 2016 Australian study; this piece discusses it. (I previously brought this up on the Motte here)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Yes, the decline of alloparenting and loss of opportunity to develop child-minding and child-rearing skills shouldn't be underestimated. I made a similar point here 5 months ago (along with discussing children's toys and sex ed classes fighting teen pregnancy).
I'm reminded here of Arnold Kling's "Where are the Servants?" from back in 2011:
In an economy where some folks are very rich and many folks are unemployed, why are there not more personal servants? Why don’t Sergey Brin and Bill Gates have hundreds of people on personal retainer?
Both in the comments there, and in responses I remember reading elsewhere, some posit cultural factors (I recall someone elsewhere recounting a passage from a history book talking about the culture clash when a European aristocrat visiting a wealthy American in the mid 19th century tried treating an employee like a European domestic servant). But plenty of people point out that the same services are still available to the rich, just in the form of specialized firms. To quote commenter "mark" on that page:
It’s a definitional issue – what is a “servant” vs “employee” vs “contractor”. Think of administrative assistants, personal trainers, personal chefs, cleaning services, car services, handymen, private plane pilots, personal book keeper, family wealth manager (the “family office”) and so on. Would you call them “servants”? I suspect not. But all they do is provide personal services to higher income people who have specialized their labor towards a lot of income. You can call them “small business owners”, “contractors or “employees”. The differences are modest. Maybe “servant” connotes livery, a small room in one person’s mansion etc. But in the old days “servant” was just another word for employee – “master – servant” relations was another phrase for the employment relationship.
And Bryan Willman:
I’m no billionare, though I have known a few.
But there is a squad of people who maintain my lawn – I don’t call them servants, or retainers, I call them the landscaping company, and I hire them for that specialized task like all the rest of their clients. The “manage the staff” bit that a butler (I think) would have done is dealt with by me hiring the company – that company’s management deals with everybody else.
Likewise the house cleaners (again, a company that specializes in that.)
No so different, the garage I take my cars to for maintence (they give me a ride to my office), my Doctor (who is no retainer but certainly provides personal medical services better than any King of England got until fairly recently.)
I do, in a sense, have “retainers” – but we tend to call them lawyers….
I have an accountant, whom I share with his other clients, but is very much paid to tend to a particular part of my affairs.
Bill Gates has private planes, whose pilots are most likely provided by a service like netjets even if the plane isn’t leased out. So there’s a “family transportation staff” even if none of them see a check signed directly by Bill.
You don't have a gardener, you hire a landscaping service to come by regularly. You don't have maids, you hire a cleaning service. Instead of a "lady's maid" taking care of your hair, you've got a hair dresser. You don't have a coachman, you call up a car service. And instead of nannies, you've got daycare.
From other comments there:
Dan Hill:
As Don Bordreaux points out that they probably buy many of these services in the marketplace, rather than employing people to provide those services as rich people used to do.
That’s a function of two things; how efficient and liquid markets now are at providing these services and the significant fixed costs (and legal risks) in being an employer in a modern regulatory environment.
Bottom line, I’m pretty sure one way or another these guys do not mow their own lawns, wash their own cars or clean their own toilets!
Tracy W:
I’m a bit puzzled by your terminology. The labour market is as much a market as the appliance market. Perhaps the main difference is standardisation – if I buy a dishwasher I can get a pretty good idea of the quality by recommendations and reviews of dishwashers, if I own a good dishwasher and I suddenly lose it (say to a home fire), I can buy another of the same brand with reasonable confidence that I’ll get another good quality one. But people differ more, my neighbour might employ a great maid, but her sister might be hopeless, and if I employ a fantastic maid and she quits for whatever reason, I can’t just go out and hire another version of her. (Not that I employ servants, but I have for example noticed far more quality differences between different waiters than between different dishwashers of the same brand.)
More from Bryan Willman:
“Help” is NEVER CHEAP, unless the help ALREADY KNOWS WHAT TO DO.
It’s not just minimum wage, or government regulations and burdens.
It’s that for very many tasks, I can do it faster than I can explain it. That’s not true of landscaping or house cleaning, but it is of many many other tasks. No matter how I value my time, paying somebody else to listen to me explain it and then do it, all more slowly than I could do it, is a loss. Worse when they have to ask me questions about it.
Now add management of people, the risks and hazards of having people around (being sued for something, having stuff stolen, people quarreling with one another, people forgetting their keys, etc.)
Note that most of these issues apply even if the wage rate is 0. That is, I would refuse to have people come “help me” for free.
The person who had a staff in Thailand (which was a pain) only had to put up with that due to lack of appliances and weirdness of the transport system. Who today would hire a dish washer for their household? Somebody to manually do what the clothes washer does?
…
Two more items to add to the thread.
1. My accoutants and lawyers give me a body of advice which can be summed up as “NO EMPLOYEES EVER”. There is a minimum cost associated with having an employee – a minimum (long) list of things one must do and do right to avoid fines, surprize costs, meddling, and sometimes jail. Hiring all services out to companies side steps all of that.
People who already have companies with employees have a much easier time adding a personal assistant using that same infrastructure.
2. A fair part of the current “rich” are folks who are geeks like me, often from modest backgrounds, who made fortunes in the PC revolution (and to a lesser extent the .com bubble.)
There’s a whole host of “fancy services” some of these new rich just don’t care about. Another set that involve human interactions they are uncomfortable with. (Remember, we’re talking programmer geeks here. We can be way stranger than most people realize.)
In short, hiring somebody directly is legally and financially scary, requires out-of-the-ordinary personal interactions, and may have low perceived effective returns.
The modern way is more efficient, taking advantage of specialization and centralization. (Of course one can make the case, as Yarvin once did, that this is the sort of area where increasing employment might be preferable to raw economic efficiency.) Further, the burden of finding and sorting out quality staff, of dealing with all the tax and regulatory burden of employment, the employer liability, et cetera, is borne by the landscaping/cleaning/daycare/whatever service instead of the rich person.
Thus, as Steve Sailer notes:
Life is better for rich people than ever before. They get all the advantages of being rich, including all the personal services they want when and where they want them, without the old-fashioned disadvantages like having to dress for dinner to set a good example and discussing things “not in front of the servants.”
Edit: here's a follow-up of sorts from Kling on his Substack "Servants to the Rich, 1/18" in 2022:
Some of the components of the twentieth-century middle class are declining . The percentage of the work force that can be called manufacturing production workers is down. Many mom-and-pop retail businesses have been defeated by Wal-Mart and Amazon.
Ten years ago, I wrote Where are the Servants?
In an economy where some folks are very rich and many folks are unemployed, why are there not more personal servants? Why don’t Sergey Brin and Bill Gates have hundreds of people on personal retainer?
Perhaps we are now living in the New Servants economy. Tyler Cowen has a series called “those new service-sector jobs.” My favorites include Coffin Whisperer and Wedding Hashtag Composer. The demand for such services can only come from people with excess wealth, and the supply comes from people who realize that their best source of income is to cater to those with excess wealth. This is very different from the age of mass consumption, when Henry Ford tried to manufacture cars that his workers could afford.
Actually, I think that the biggest engine of the trickle-down economy is the nonprofit sector. I don’t have data on this, but I suspect that if you ask the next 10 young professionals you meet where they work, at least 3 of them will reply that they work for nonprofits.
In the 1970s, the catch-phrase “petro-dollar recycling” became popular among international economic technocrats. The idea was that oil-rich countries accumulated substantial wealth, and this wealth would somehow find its way to poor countries, primarily being channeled as loans.
Today, I think that what we are seeing is “techno-dollar recycling.” Winners in technology and finance have accumulated substantial wealth. This wealth finds its way to young professionals, primarily being channeled through nonprofits.
(One interesting bit — for me — that really dates the piece is from the very end:
And here is Sam Harris interviewing, and slobbering over, young billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. Not once does Harris ask the question of why it is more ethical for Bankman-Fried to donate his money in an unaccountable way than it is for him to invest his money in profit-seeking business. I don’t count on Congress allocating resources wisely, so I don’t favor wealth taxes. But I don’t count on any billionaire allocating resources wisely without any feedback mechanism.
I find Bankman-Fried scary, and my guess is that I would find other billionaires with his approach to altruism just as scary. I don’t think that any one person has as clear a picture of morality as Bankman-Fried and Harris believe that they own.
Yeah, we saw how that turned out, didn't we?)
What arguments convinced you both that this relationship would be asymptotic or at least have severely diminishing returns, and that we are at least halfway along the way to this asymptote?
Mostly personal observation of the utility (or lack thereof) of the higher levels of human intelligence versus the average, combined with general philosophic principles favoring diminishing returns and asymptotic limits as the null hypothesis, along with a natural skepticism towards claims of vast future potential (why I'm also deeply irritated by Eric Weinstein's whole recurring "we need new physics" riff; or similar arguments held forth by, say, UFOlogists).
Edit: consider also, as toy examples, the utility of knowing pi to an increasing number of digits; or the utility of increasing levels of recursion in modeling other agents and the speed of convergence to game-theoretic equilibria.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Gregory Clark on horses and the automobile comes to mind here:
There was a type of employee at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution whose job and livelihood largely vanished in the early twentieth century. This was the horse. The population of working horses actually peaked in England long after the Industrial Revolution, in 1901, when 3.25 million were at work. Though they had been replaced by rail for long-distance haulage and by steam engines for driving machinery, they still plowed fields, hauled wagons and carriages short distances, pulled boats on the canals, toiled in the pits, and carried armies into battle. But the arrival of the internal combustion engine in the late nineteenth century rapidly displaced these workers, so that by 1924 there were fewer than two million. There was always a wage at which all these horses could have remained employed. But that wage was so low that it did not pay for their feed, and it certainly did not pay enough to breed fresh generations of horses to replace them.
And as others have pointed out in reference to this, domestic horses in the modern day do live much more comfortable lives than those workhorses of old… but there's a whole lot fewer of them around.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Thank you very much for this post. Your three-question analysis really helps highlight my differences with most people here on these issues, because I weight #2 being "no" even higher than you do (higher than I do #1, which I also think is more likely "no" than "yes").
That said, I'd like to add to (and maybe push back slightly) on some of your analysis of the question. You mostly make it about human factors, where I'd place it more on the nature of intelligence itself. You ask (rhetorically):
We probably seem magical to animals, with things like guns, planes, tanks, etc. If that’s the difference between animal intelligence → human intelligence, shouldn’t we expect a similar leap from human intelligence → superhuman intelligence?
And my (non-rhetorical) answer is no, we shouldn't expect that at all, because of diminishing returns.
Here's where people keep consistently mistaking my argument, no matter how many times I explain: I am NOT talking about humans being near the upper limit of how intelligent a being can be. I'm talking about limits on how much intelligence matters in power over the material world.
Implied in your question above is the assumption that if entity A is n times smarter than B (as with, say, humans and animals) then it must be n times more powerful; that if a superhuman intelligence is as much smarter than us as we are smarter than animals, it must also be as much more powerful than us than we are more powerful than animals. I don't think it works that way. I expect that initial gains in intelligence, relative to the "minimally-intelligent" agent provide massive gains in efficacy in the material world… but each subsequent increase in intelligence almost certainly provides smaller and smaller gains in real-world efficacy. Again, the problem isn't a limit on how smart an entity we can make, it's a limit on the usefulness of intelligence itself.
Now, I've had a few people acknowledge this point, and accept that, sure, some asymptotic limit on the real-world utility of increased intelligence probably exists. They then go on to assert that surely, though, human intelligence must be very, very far from that upper limit, and thus there must still be vast gains to be had from superhuman intelligence before reaching that point. Me, I argue the opposite. I figure we're at least halfway to the asymptote, and probably much more than that — that most of the gains from intelligence came in the amoeba → human steps, that the majority of problems that can be solved with intelligence alone can be solved with human level intelligence, and that it's probably not possible to build something that's 'like unto us as we are unto ants' in power, no matter how much smarter it is. (When I present this position, the aforementioned people dismiss it out of hand, seeming uncomfortable to even contemplate the possibility. The times I've pushed, the argument has boiled down to an appeal to consequences; if I'm right, that would mean we're never getting the Singularity, and that would be Very Bad [usually for one or both of two particular reasons].)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
When is it acceptable to pee on the side of the road?
Per my Alaskan upbringing — including a childhood where a 6-7 hour roadtrip across 220+ miles of road (one way), much of it winding two-lane mountain roads where it can be 80+ miles between gas stations, and there's often nowhere to pull off the road except the occasional gravel pit, was a common summer weekend activity — the answer was "whenever you can get far enough into the trees/bushes that someone on the road can't readily see you're doing so."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
So, there's a recurring criticism I see in many spaces regarding various right-wing projects in building parallel institutions, alternative ideological frames to that of the left, cultural resilience, and so on (ranging from critics of "Benedict Option" strategies, to Neema Parvini when talking about why "American nationalism" does not and cannot exist), which is that the thing in question is "a LARP," or "LARP-y," or something similar. Which is to say that it is "performative," that the actions aren't backed by some sort of deep-down "genuine" belief.
To which I say: so what?
First, whence this idea that the "deep-down" internal mindset of a person is more important than the actions themselves? Do a person's deeds carry so little weight, compared to their mental state when doing them?
But more importantly, isn't this how anyone gets started with something? I mean, a lot of the examples that come to my mind are things that I'm only familiar with second-hand, but I'll try to explain.
I'm old enough that back in the first few grades of elementary school, they made us stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day. I think back on us as first graders, doing that. Were we actually earnestly pledging our undying allegiance to the Republic and its flag? We didn't even understand all the words we were saying. We were just reciting what we were told to recite, the way we were taught to recite it, because we didn't want to get in trouble. It was all fake, all performative, all "a LARP."
Those of you who grew up religious, did you really understand every hymn you sang, every element of each ritual you participated in, from the very first time you did it? Or was there at least some "going through the motions" and mimicking your elders, with true understanding coming later?
In one of the replies to that Twitter post on the "homeschool prom" linked late last thread, someone described school dances as "a LARP" of the actual 'courtship' scene/process. Well, how else do people learn?
One common criticism of Pascal's Wager is that, even if you buy the argument, it only serves to persuade you that you should believe God exists, and there's a clear gap between thinking "I should believe God exists" and thinking "God exists." I mention it, because Pascal himself addressed this point shortly after introducing the Wager. And his answer is LARPing. Once you're convinced you should believe in God, then start acting as if He exists. "LARP" as a person who believes in God. If you do it thoroughly enough for long enough, Pascal argues, you'll start to actually believe it.
I've seen similar arguments in everything from job interview advice to dating advice — picture the person you want to be, and then act as they would, even if it's "all pretend."
It all comes down to the same classic piece of advice: "fake it till you make it." And what is the "fake it" stage, if not "LARP-y"? If not "performative" and, well, fake?
The reason given for this strategy is that it rarely stays fake forever. Maintaining a performative pretense, saying and doing one thing all while constantly going "this is silly, this is stupid, this is fake, this isn't me, I don't believe any of this" in your head is hard (at least for non-sociopaths). It's why governments have made citizens recite propaganda slogans over and over, why they made us say the Pledge of Allegiance over and over — because many times, it doesn't stay fake, doesn't stay merely performative. Again, it's fake it till you make it.
And even if an individual never "makes it," never achieves real belief no matter how long they perfectly maintain "the LARP"? Well, when we're talking about a long-term project involving a significant number of people, you have to consider future generations. Which gets to a concept mentioned here on the Motte before: generational loss of hypocrisy. Even if the first generation never get rid of their inner "this is so fake" thoughts… well, the next generations — whether that's new recruits, or their literal children — can't see those inner thoughts, only the outer "act." The LARP will not be multi-generational. To quote @WhiningCoil again:
I'm reminded of some joke about the difference between a cult and a religion. A cult is all made up by people. In a religion, all those people are dead.
So, to sum up, the accusation that a project of this sort is "LARP-y" is kind of irrelevant. Yes, it'll be LARP-y to start with; it kind of has to be. That's how things work. It's a phase — a necessary phase in the process of becoming something more, and if the people involved stay determined enough, and keep it up long enough, that phase will pass, and it will become something more.
Fake it till you make it.
(I'm hoping this isn't too incoherent, and isn't too low effort for a top-level post.)
Are their any non-religious organizations whose members take vows oaths of celibacy, a la the Night's Watch or the Maesters from ASOIAF?
(I'm pretty sure the answer is "no," but I'd like to double-check my bases so I can be more certain in replying as such the next time someone "advises" me to "go join the Night's Watch" or similar.)
(Edited per @FiveHourMarathon's fine pedantry.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2mo ago
If you want to hold sustained political, you'll have to find a formulation that meets as much of your goals as possible without alienating lots of voters.
Only if you keep holding elections. If you go all Augustus or Napoleon, it doesn't matter how many voters you alienate.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2mo ago
The entire political spectrum moves left with the new median voter, maintaining equal winning chances. Show goes on.
I hate this attitude to politics (as I have written elsewhere on the web many times). It treats it like modern professional sports, where you pick your "team," and all that you care about is how often your team "wins." It treats "[insert party here] wins elections" as a terminal goal, rather than an instrumental goal.
I do not care that the Republican party would "maintaining equal winning chances" if it has to move leftward to do so. Because what I care about is where we are (and which way we are moving) on the political spectrum. I care about "my party winning" as an instrumental goal, as a means to that end.
"The entire political spectrum moving left" is a long-term loss for the right, regardless of whether or not some body called the "Republican party" wins or loses elections.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2mo ago
If anyone who is right-leaning engages with violent methods, people will make an example out of him
Does that include Trump sending in the Marines? Or a future President Vance rolling tanks into Harvard yard a la Yarvin?
Because what would I use it for? None of the common use cases I hear people here put forth for AI are anything I do with any frequency.
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