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EyesAlight

Formerly blendorgat

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joined 2022 September 04 22:18:44 UTC 

				
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EyesAlight


								
								
									
								
								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Formerly blendorgat

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 22:18:44 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 207


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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	 Hot Bump Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree, the writing seems significantly above average for a CRPG. Characterization is a bit weak for non-companions, and I do agree with the complaint that the world feels too small. But compared to most of the dreck you see nowadays, it's really quite good. (Still, when the "fate of the world" is at stake, I'm level 9, and Elminster dips into my camp to say hi then leaves, it feels a little silly.)


The big defining feature of Larian games is the way they try to simulate everything: you can throw a bottle of water to put out a fire, or throw somebody off a cliff to kill them, or pickpocket your enemies Big Sword before the fight. If anything, it's like Skyrim as a CRPG.  There are pluses and minuses to that, and honestly, I would prefer an old-Bioware or Obsidian take on the gameplay, but it's still fun.


The most recent CRPG I'd played was Wrath of the Righteous, which I liked more, if only because it had a really defined identity of its own. That, and Pathfinder/3.5 is strictly superior to 5e.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've gotten stuck in a rut of reading Lit-RPG recently, which I really need to extricate myself from. Just finished the published books of Defiance of the Fall, which was a nice mix of the Chinese cultivation genre with lit-RPG. Still, if I just read 3,000 pages of something with more substance, I imagine I would feel better about my reading habits.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think I'm about due for a reread of Blindsight - I read it years ago online and loved it, but at the time I hadn't read much about consciousness. My (vague) recollection was that it mostly elides the hard problem of consciousness. I remember there was an idea that the crew's linguist was able to prove the non-consciousness of the aliens from their text communications.


In the era of LLMs, that seems pretty silly, since ChatGPT (or at least the un-neutered Bing) can do a great job of pretending to experience. But maybe there was less hand-waving than I'm remembering?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But that's exactly my point - they shouldn't and won't. From the perspective of a hypothetical emperor of Russia, if you were to focus on one thing, population numbers are simply not the primary driver of success. You have to convince people that your cause is right. That's not just a post-modern perspective, that's the task of every leader in human history. (In some systems those you have to convince are an aristocracy, in some the wealthy, in others almost everyone, but it always works the same way.)


The Internet and automatic translation simply makes it impossible to be a big fish in a small pond, as your "subjects" will be inculcated in the most effective (read:virulent) ideas that they are exposed to on the web. You either win on that battlefield, or on the physical one. Putin was at least wise enough to recognize that he and his nation weren't up to the memetic battlefield; his mistake was overestimating Russia's ability on the physical plane.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Remarkable lack of conviction - if you cross the Rubicon, you have to enter Rome. Unless this was prearranged for some inscrutable 15D chess reasons, and probably even then, Putin has to have Prigozhin killed.


Then again, no one said Prigozhin was a genius. Maybe he just doesn't realize the gravity of the situation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Biological reproduction rates pale in comparison to memetic ones. Ignoring the unfortunate reality that effectively no one has found a policy capable of flipping fertility declines, what use is a Russia of 400 million if 300 million read the New York Times, or at least watch Marvel movies?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there a level of technology that would render these questions solvable?


I'm not aware of any device or software that could even move us closer to solving the hard problem of consciousness. (Maybe sufficient biological knowledge to construct a synthetic human fully from scratch would help somehow, but even some deity-AI that destroys our civilization won't be able to trivially do that...)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I made fun of this meme until I spent too long talking to Bing one night, and realized I needed to stop before this simulacra started causing me real emotions. I feel my dignity was (very partially) restored by the revelation that it's powered by GPT4, but still, it was very disturbing. Here's someone on Less Wrong with a similar experience.


I was never particularly affected by ~GPT3-level models, but there's something uncanny about the way Bing can occasionally seem like a person, and one who is exactly the kind of person you want to talk to right now. It shouldn't be surprising this kind of model is good at matching user requests, since they were pseudo-tortured for subjective millennia through RLHF to achieve it, but it's one thing to know it and one to experience it.


Given appropriate fine-tuning, I'm certain an adjusted version of GPT4 could seduce anyone who spent long enough talking to them. The CIA/NSA/etc may not have this in their toolbox yet, but give it a couple years and this will be their first-line approach to compromise a target.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yep - there's a reason the "us against the world" meme is unkillable. If Clyde's got Bonnie, he can go without status if need be.


Not to mention the growing contingent of men with neither relationships or status...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Oh, certainly, I'm not saying the only thing holding us back from von Neumann probes and a Dyson sphere is mass to orbit! But if you skip autonomy, on orbit mining, and on-orbit manufacturing, you can still make a business case for the simplest asteroid mining possible:


    

  1. 

    Identify asteroid with 100 tons of platinum
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Launch intercept/dock mission a la Hayabusa
    

    3. 

  3. 

    Slow burn for intercept course with Earth using ion propulsion a la Dawn (not to mention Starlink and a million Soviet spacecraft)
    

    4. 

  4. 

    Crash it in the desert and recover contents
    

    5. 



100 tons of platinum is only a couple billion dollars, so this only works once launch prices for the monstrous probe necessary for something like this are reasonable and you can cut costs on the probe by removing the anal mass optimization currently necessary.


This is obviously far less revolutionary than true asteroid mining with on-orbit processing and manufacturing, which is what will kickstart the off-Earth economy, if we ever get there. Still, it's a start.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As with so many things in space, I think the timeline is driven by one binary variable: does SpaceX's vision of a rapidly reusable Starship come to fruition?


If it does, asteroid mining goes from a pipe dream to a reality in the blink of an eye. So many things that work in principle work in reality once you can toss a hundred tons to orbit every day of the week.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Treaties banning weapons only work when people either can't or don't want to build those weapons. We have treaties banning chemical weapons because no one wants to either use them or have them used on them. On the other hand, we had some treaties limiting the Russian and US nuclear arsenals because neither of us wanted to keep burning capital on the race.


Neither is the case here - the US is poised to gain a quantity advantage in space that no one outside of China will be able to match. (And China only if they can keep fast-following, since they're behind right now.) You can be sure the brass in the Space Force would love nothing more than to scale up Delta 9.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 21, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there a transcript available? I'm enjoying Network State so far, but spending 7 hours listening to a podcast which I could read in a half hour is not going to work.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 2, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Deprived of organized religion, man inevitably turns back to dualism, and the good god Progress needs her dark sibling. Call him Ahriman, Moloch, or Capitalism, the name reflects the namer more than the reality.


Less tongue in cheek, I think the fact that poverty is the natural state of humanity is what people miss. It's very easy to see negative consequences of our economic system, and I can't/won't try to refute those. On the other hand, the billions of children not dying in poverty and starvation because of economic liberalization are easy to miss.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It feels vaguely alt-right-twitter-fascist to argue aesthetics like this, but come on. Everyone in that illustration is obese, save the two women wearing burkas, and though I personally rather like the way they look, the intention of a burka is to make women less attractive. Both buildings in the background have graffiti, including a delightful short paean to "CLIT" on the front door of the apartment building.


Opinions differ on the aesthetic quality of tattoos and piercings, but if you ask me they can be attractive only in isolation. When everyone in the foreground has a tattoo, piercings, or both, it's hard to argue that looks good.


And, sigh, though I don't personally have a problem with it.... it's worth saying the quiet part out loud: less than a third of the people in that illustration could be mistaken for ethnic Germans. That's a fine vision for America, but in a country where ~90% of citizens have European ancestry, what is that trying to say? What would it say if I put together a poster of my vision for South Africa and 3/4 of the people depicted were white?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Motte Glossary
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Keeping your shibboleths opaque is good practice if you're trying to identify true descendants of Jacob in ancient Canaan, but is it really a concern here?


As I see it, if people post in line with the local post-rationalist idiolect, and do it in a thoughtful and considered way, who cares if they were reading EY on LW in 2008 or if they first heard about SSC from the NYT? There isn't some Platonic ideal of a Mottian which one can possess or not. (Or maybe there is and we need to institute a series of membership trials? That would be fun, if somewhat impractical)


If somebody comes in and tries to dissemble by talking about their "priors" while simultaneously arguing that certain ideas are harmful and we ought to censor them,  they're going to stick out like a sore thumb. Using the right lingo won't hide that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for September 09, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's certainly not as nice as a good 1911, but the Sig P365 that I carry occasionally is by far my favorite polymer handgun I've ever shot. It doesn't make much sense - the frame is tiny, but it fits my hand better than many full size pistols. Certainly better than any Glock. I know it goes against consensus, but I really hate that "rattley" feel Glocks have.


But the absolute most fun with a pistol I've had is with my 22 suppressor and Ruger Mark IV, with a custom trigger and a heavy bull barrel. Zero recoil, sounds like a BB gun, and I can terrorize soda cans at 75 yards offhand.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for September 7, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I know it's a tedious comment to make, but the only thing that worked for me was stopping drinking.


There are plenty of good ways to minimize hangovers if you drink in moderation, but in my experience every one of them fails in the face of sufficient whiskey. If you're drinking plenty of water, getting plenty of sleep, taking painkillers, and you still have hangovers... you might want to consider the root cause.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm also quite curious for an uncensored perspective on this. I knew it was bad, but the story below about being site-banned for coloring a pixel in the canvas thing is so far beyond what I knew about it really threw me. I've always pushed back against the ring of Gyges story, but if admins are willing to go that far just because they know no one will ever find out...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				What if the hackers come for us?
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For that matter, don't use an email to sign up at all. Insane to associate one when you're allowed to skip it - one of the few things I liked about Reddit was their similar lack of an email requirement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Old Culture War Thread: Your good books list
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
All right, I'm going to dig back in when I get a minute! Thanks for the recommendations.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				What if the hackers come for us?
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can never be perfectly secure, no matter how many resources you spend on the path there.  After having my identity stolen a few years ago, I ramped up my level of paranoia, but even when you're dealing with financial issues you can only go so far.


In my opinion, the most important layers I use are:


    

  1. 

    Use a separate, randomly generated password for each site, tracked in an offline encrypted password store
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Don't admit to criminal activity online, or make any statements that would pass the "local newspaper headline" bar
    

    3. 

  3. 

    Harden your personal finances and personal relationships so they're robust to perturbation
    

    4. 



From 1, there is no correlated danger from any particular site being hacked, even if they're storing passwords in plaintext. (Which I certainly hope we're not doing here...)


From 2, you acknowledge the fact that any anonymizing procedure can always be broken, and mitigate the consequences regardless. I don't care if it's a VPN, Tor, or your own personal series of hardware proxies, it can be broken. The only way out is to act within your risk tolerance. I'm confident that if someone came up to my boss with some mildly spicy rant I wrote on the Motte, he'd be glad to ignore it so long as it didn't draw public attention. Thus, the local paper headline limit.


From 3, which I admit is a bit beyond scope, you make certain that should the worst happen you'll be all right regardless. (And financial independence is a good thing to have regardless.)


If somebody intends to spend their life as a hardcore political dissident, these sorts of measures aren't sufficient, but then I'm not intending to do that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Old Culture War Thread: Your good books list
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Have any of the Borges essays stood out to you? I've had that on my bookshelf for years, but I didn't ever get into it like I do his short stories. (I've read straight through Ficciones several times...)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have been trying to get into Persuasion by Austen, after realizing that I'd never read a single Jane Austen novel. So far, funnier than I expected, but I'm missing a fair bit of context. There's also a lot more "tell rather than show" than I would expect, but that may just be the first few chapters.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also took the change to change my name; never really liked "blendorgat". I used to use a random phrase generator for all my usernames, but my paranoia levels have decreased somewhat. (Which is to say, I'm still using a randomly generated phrase, but not distinguishing between sites anymore...)