Imaginary_Knowledge
No bio...
User ID: 1255
(Moved to correct thread)
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
If we can make a phone, we can make AI killbots. If we can't make a phone, we can't make killbots. The Chinese can make both. They will win the next war if they have killbots and we don't, and it won't even be close.
We need domestic electronics manufacturing capabilities. All the pain-free ways of building them have failed. Tariffs might have worked. They probably wouldn't have, but they might have. And we didn't give them a chance because we cannot endure short term pain. That means we're fucked.
I'm not sure I'm getting my point across. You're still talking about the object level impact of the tariffs. I'm talking about the ability of the state to translate will into action when the action involves short term pain.
Did Trump have a sincere change of heart? Did Dimon convince him on the merits of the ineffectiveness of the tariffs in achieving his stated goal? Or did Dimon instead point out that Trump wouldn't last long if he kept doing this even if it was good for the country?
It looks to me like a chunky soup of unnamed elites was unwilling to suffer these short term consequences and blocked Trump despite their having no formal authority and Trump having all the formal authority. That they were able to do that is what doesn't bode well for the country.
How are we supposed to solve the problems with elder care and entitlements if we're unable to endure pain? It tells me we're going to just give up the Pacific the first time the Chinese sink an aircraft carrier. It tells me we're in for another episode of high inflation, because every other inflation solution involves pain. A man or nation that cannot endure pain is weak and not long for this world.
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
I believe Trump believed and still believes that tariffs are effective for causing import substitution and bootstrapping new domestic industry. He also wanted and probably still wants the US to be able to make phones. There are good reasons for a country to be self sufficient in strategic technologies.
Trump was forced to undo this policy, either through political pressure or his own assessment of the impact of the policy on his political capital. I don't think his mind was changed about the merits of the policy. I do think this reversal is evidence that the US is incapable of doing hard things.
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
It doesn't matter whether they would have helped at the object level. What matters is Trump believed they would and had the mandate of the people to exercise his judgement in making policy. We just can't get stuff done. Yes, I'd have been hungry without breakfast yesterday although I had it.
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
What an awful sign for our civilization --- Trump's reversal reflects our lack to accept short term pain to achieve long term objectives. For my purposes here, it doesn't matter whether the tariffs on phones would have actually helped: what matters is that Trump believed they would, that he was the duly elected head of state, that imposing tariffs was within his legitimate authority, and that he had a majority in the legislature as well.
He still couldn't do it. If he couldn't, nobody can. And if our societal time preference really is this high, we are fucked.
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
It's also possible that this behavior, while annoying, can't be stopped at any positive ROI. We're talking about a policy of the mods restoring posts people have consciously deleted. I think the safety valve of post deletion makes people feel safer being bolder and so enlivens discussion. If breaking deletion is what it takes to stop this guy, then maybe stopping this guy isn't worth it.
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
There is a moral order
Is there? I find myself unpersuaded by assertions of morality divorced from their effectiveness in achieving real world aims. Moral statements are nothing but polite fictions for aiding collective action. If this collective action amounts to escalating protection and promotion of falsehood, of what use is the polite fiction? Democracy is "good" because it's worked (better and for longer than it has had any right to work) for solving collective action problems. Now that it's stopped working, is it still good?
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
Forget object level considerations. There are only narratives. There are no moral facts. No timeless principles except the laws of mathematics and natural selection. Whatever is, is right.
If the right seizes power, it will have factual raw material sufficient to build a "power narrative" sustaining its rule, just like every power structure has. It's impossible to say whether Trump "is" justified: there's no objective righteousness evaluation function. What matters is that if he tries something and wins, he's able to post hoc rationalize it in a way that allows the losing side (or enough of them) to internalize the change and operate within the new power structure.
Google after all did change Google Maps to read "Gulf of America".
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
Yep. And each time power changes hands, even more norms will become irrelevant. The process will escalate until there's one final undeniable rupture of the old system and a new one emerges.
So why risk the other side winning? Why wait? The rupture is inevitable. We're inside the event horizon of political chaos. The only thing accomplished by adhering to the remaining rules is risking ultimate and permanent defeat. Better to act decisively, now, and win.
We're well on the well-trod path of democracies experiencing escalating norm violations that spiral into physical violence and the breakdown of traditional understanding of power divisions within the government. No country can operate solely according to a written constitution. Functional government always requires tacit understanding of proper rules and order of subordination. When a figure within the government tries to exercise merely textual or positional authority in violation of these tacit agreements, then (even if he's in the right by the rest of the law) the result is strife, unpredictability, and retaliation. Norms break down. The Overton window widens. Eventually, it widens to include physical violence, which starts with street thuggery and ends with proscriptions.
We are on Mr. Gracchus 's wild ride and there is no way off. The only thing that matters now is which faction wins. The norms are broken and can't be fixed. Sulla couldn't restore the norms and we can't either. There's no point getting nostalgic about them. The only goal now is to win.
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
Are you under the impression that object level considerations matter? We're looking at a power struggle not a high school mock trial. It's zero sum. One side will win and the other will lose. One side has a lot more soldiers. How many divisions has Roberts?
At this stage in this country's political evolution, which rhymes with the end of the Roman Republic, the executive is absolutely justified in crossing the Rubicon, just as Caesar was.
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
There it is: a casus belli for ignoring the supreme court. Trump has the perfect narrative: he needs to keep the country safe and the court is letting philosophy and activism stop them seeing it. SCOTUS chose violence by trying to override what is obviously executive branch prerogative. Now all Trump has to do is find his cojones.
Imaginary_Knowledge
5mo ago
Acceptable collateral damage. Trump's election gave us a preference cascade and stopped wokeness ascendant. I'll take that any day over optimal trade policy.
Imaginary_Knowledge
7mo ago
Judicial power ultimately relies on popular buy-in. The courts don't have very many divisions. The energy of this moment is so intense that an attempt by courts to stop it would do nothing except damage the legitimacy of the court. A few more "Hawaiian judge" rulings and the administration will begin covertly defying the court. A few more after that, and the administration will openly and brazenly defy the court. This is a civilizational moment and it can't be stopped by some guy in a robe.
Imaginary_Knowledge
7mo ago
They're racist. Now what? They're racist in a way that's extremely common if you observe how people actually behave. Most people won't in practice date outside their race. This guy just admitted it. A healthy society is structured such that people don't have to lie all the time in public about their honest preferences.
Imaginary_Knowledge
7mo ago
Why is it a problem for certain professions to require safe stimulants for the highest tier of success? Your post treats the wrongness of this idea as self evident, but I don't accept it. We require that athletes train, after all.
human capital to pretend like their drug use isn't a crutch for a gappy upbringing.
And there it is --- the puritanical idea that people experience unavoidable suffering because suffering is good for the soul.
Imaginary_Knowledge
7mo ago
Might it be possible that you don't need all that ceremony and can just do things?
Imaginary_Knowledge
7mo ago
What would go wrong if you just deleted the department of education?
Imaginary_Knowledge
8mo ago
The pipeline absolutely differentiated. Maybe URMs didn't formally have to meet a lower bar, but if one of them failed the bar, recruiting would send them back through the loop to collect more "signal" until that URM passed. Given that interview performance has a random component, what tech did is statistically indistinguishable from lowering the bar for URMs.
Imaginary_Knowledge
8mo ago
Look at what happened after COVID: influential people who get things wrong don't admit they were wrong. They instead avoid the whole subject, act confused when you bring it up, and pivot to the next serious person thing.
That is --- unless the law. I imagine that thousands of white male tech workers will have good cases for suing FAANG companies for a decade of bigotry.
Imaginary_Knowledge
8mo ago
Even criminals need a competent defense. I mean, you and I might not agree that murdering everyone who disagrees is an optimal strategy (or at least not a Nash equilibrium) but is it so bad for someone to take the other side and at least have the discussion?
Imaginary_Knowledge
8mo ago
What's funny to me is that all the "splitters" magically become "lumpers" when we're talking about hominids
Imaginary_Knowledge
8mo ago
Oops.
Drives honed by billions of years of natural selection.
We have drives. They're complex and fuzzy. They arise from a mixture of genetically installed circuits and early socialization. So what?
Conscience isn't a concept well enough defined to be part of a meaningful factual assertion.
Those are both lefty charity perspectives. The religious zealot believes he's charitably saving souls.
I'm not denying that morality as a powerful force exists. It obviously does. I am saying it is not an independent object worthy of philosophical analysis. What you call morality, this powerful force shaping affairs, is merely evolutionary psychology writ large, not something independent and eternal like mathematics.
More options
Context Copy link