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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
User ID: 896


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

					4 followers  

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The goal for Iran is to establish that attacking them is a mistake which will cost the ruling party their majority.




In so far as psychoanalysing a regime with multiple decision-makers makes sense, I think there is a much simpler explanation. Trump presents his regime more generally as personal (whether or not you think it is), and in particular has presented the US decision to attack Iran as a decision that he took personally because the rest of the US elite was too weak. For Khamenei Jr or whoever else is making the decisions in Iran to treat the conflict as being with Trump personally makes sense, and in that case "We want to hurt Trump personally" is a good and sufficient reasons for adjusting tactics around the mid-terms.




While it was psychologically important for Trump to negotiate a better deal with Iran than Obama's deal, he will not sacrifice his presidency on the alter of keeping Iran from having nukes. The plan was clearly to bomb Iran, hopefully get a regime change, ...




I think Trump thought that Mossad had a cunning plan to make a regime change happen. I am struggling at work at the moment and we have also just acquired two rescue cats, so I don't know if my planned effortpost on this point will ever happen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Rechecking the list, Teddy Roosevelt got the 1906 Nobel (solo) for ending the Russia-Japan war of 1905, which would be a clear-cut exception. Ralph Bunche got the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his attempts to mediate the incipient Arab-Israeli conflict (also solo - in that case it is of course very clear that none of the principals deserved it) - the prize citation implies that he won it for mediating the ceasefire agreements that ended the Israeli War of Independence, but Wikipedia implies that it was a kind of lifetime achievement award.


The famous cases I was thinking of were the awards for Locarno (1925-6), Vietnam (1973), Israel-Egypt (1978), South Africa (1993), Israel-Palestine (1994) and Northern Ireland (1998) which were shared between principals. So looking more closely I wouldn't say the mediator never gets the prize, but by default it would go to the principals, and the Abraham Accords doesn't look like an exception.


1973 and 1994 were, of course, two of the worst Peace Prize awards in the undistinguished history of the prize. I think 1950 was below average - the most notable thing about attempts to mediate the Israel-Palestine conflict (including Bunche's) is how utterly they failed. And I don't think mediating an ugly freeze-the-status-quo armistice that doesn't lead to a peace treaty is close to a Nobel-worthy achievement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A different Nobel Committee might reasonably have given a Nobel Peace Prize for the Abraham Accords, although I think with Saudi Arabia still not signed up it would have been a poor choice. But Nobel Peace Prizes for that type of deal almost always go to the principals (here Netanyahu and AbZ for the deal done to date, and Salman if Saudi joins) and not the third-party mediator. For example, Carter did not share the 1978 prize with Begin and Sadat. And even if they did award the prize to a mediator, Kushner has earned it and Trump, personally, has not.


So the chance of Donald Trump personally getting a Nobel Peace Prize for the Abraham Accords would be negligible even if he hadn't started three wars of choice since 2024, which is and probably should be disqualifying.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I won't say "British right-wing thought never gave a shit about blood purity" because I'm sure there are exceptions, but it's a good approximation to the truth. The British aristocracy, and the trad-right that wished to preserve it with its power and privilege intact, were unusually lackadaisical about blood purity compared to other similar aristocracies.


Under the British rules, Harry Potter is a legitimate Potter and inherits the status of the Potter family regardless of Lily Evans' Muggle-born status. Rowling's Malfoy understands this immediately - he sees Harry as a member of his class who is betraying its values by socialising with oiks (i.e. the Weasleys). So does the Sorting Hat.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Best friend's little sister and little sister's best friend are two of the softest targets in school age romance - both in RL and fiction, although a 16yo dating a 14yo is probably taboo in today's climate even if you aren't implying under-age consumation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Salazar Slytherin and the Sorting Hat seem to disagree about whether sufficiently ambitious halfbloods like Tom Riddle, Severus Snape and Harry Potter belonged in Slytherin. The Hat would absolutely have sorted Vance into Slytherin, and unlike Potter I don't think he would have objected.


We don't see a healthy House Slytherin in the books, but ambition and family pride are virtues and a healthy community of people who possess them is entirely possible. If it worked anything like the Muggle one, most of the work of building the Wizarding British Empire would have been done by Slytherins.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Although Dr D'Eath (an actual maths lecturer at Cambridge) eschewed all forms of ligature maths, preferring a more direct approach - he lectured on Killing's equations.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


TBH I haven't looked into the actual algorithms involved here, but given the length of the proof I'd expect the constant term (call it overhead) to be quite high compared to existing methods -- considering the tiny difference in the exponents, you would need n to be literally approaching infinity for the proposed algo to make any difference at all. In the case of the integer math, this would mean that multiplying integers of ~infinite length could be somewhat faster -- but we can't even test it, because computers don't have infinite memory.




Per wikipedia, the existing O(n log n) algorithm for integer multiplication that the AI improved on is already considered "galactic" - i.e. only optimal for impossibly large data sets. The practical algorithm for the largest numbers we can realistically multiply is a FFT-based approach which is O(n log n log log n)


To my non-expert eye, using the new slightly-faster DFT in the AI papers in the bog standard FFT-based multiplication algorithm should give you a faster multiplier than the new multiplier the AI found explicitly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean that I am one of the people who care about AI safety but don't understand the technical detail.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Duels of honour were not, in fact, a gentlemanly combat sport, although they often pretended to be. The point was to demonstrate the seriousness of whatever the duel was about, plus a certain level of physical courage, on both sides. This was ideally accomplished by imposing a low, but real, risk of death on both participants following which the seconds could send them home with honour satisfied. Hence pistol duels fought in morning fog using antique pistols, or epee duels fought to first blood.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Be it remembered that Justin Trudeau won the Canadian Premiership in the boxing ring.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is a plan that has a nonzero chance of success - though I think Scott's way overestimating it - and could possibly fit the "better plans are too hard" argument. But you still need a pause for that, just not as long of one.)




Yes - Plan A is a good plan if you think that aligned ASI is a win condition. Part of what is going on in the circle of "people who care about AI safety but don't understand it" (ipse dixit) is that there is a fairly widespread view, on all sides of the political divide, that ASI aligned to Altman and Amodei is not a win condition for humanity - they are both profoundly blue-tribe (which offends Reds) and sociopathic billionaires (which offends Blues). Altman and Amodei are living in a paradigm where "If we build ASI, we will get Clippy or the Culture, so we should build it carefully to maximise the chance of the Culture". I am not alone in thinking "If we build ASI, we will get Clippy or the Culture. Both of these are bad outcomes, so we should not build it". Based on reading the report proposing Plan A, Plan S (ban development of new models for the forseeable future, AI companies who want to keep their GPUs have to accept inspections to confirm they are using them for inference only) is obviously superior, and I am not unsympathetic to a full-on Butlerian Jihad.


The limit on the potential of LLMs to improve the human condition is not the speed at which more powerful models can be developed, it is the speed at which we can incorporate LLMs into our workflows and institutions without breaking anything loadbearing. This is a generation's work even if the frontier models don't get any better than they already are.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's the one, yes. There is a reason why, as @zeke5123a points out, the states that pull this off are not generally democracies. Dubai is proof that it is possible, not that it is popular.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I wasn't saying Tao was better than AI - I was saying that he is better than the average Fields medalist.


I think Navier-Stokes counts as a human-AI collaboration, possibly the last one we shall see.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And Brian Josephson took up research into psychic phenomena after he won the Nobel for his work on superconductivity. The PR required careful management when he was the only living Nobel laureate in the Cavendish.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If a four digit number of graduate students are thinking about hanging themselves in a week's time, that would be a dramatic improvement in graduate student mental health. (The US graduates about 60,000 PhDs a year, multiply by the number of years the average PhD-bound graduate student spends in a suicidal state).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There is only one Terence Tao, but there are 47 living Fields medalists, and solving Navier-Stokes is going to get someone a Fields medal. If "like Tao" is your standard for a successful mathematician, it is too high.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Agreed. I will correct my comment to "The minority of the organisational bullshit that isn't pure waste is what maintains a causal connection between what the end user wants and what your code does."


Good software management (actually good management anywhere) is partly about protecting your team from the bits of organisational bullshit that don't align them - or protecting the whole organisation by keeping them out altogether if you are the founder. And it is hard because throwing the baby out with the bathwater produces a misaligned organisation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Dubai does not appear at all, and the AI summaries suggest they have unremarkable border control policies.




Both countries have mass immigration at levels that would horrify MAGA. Singapore is about 45% foreign born (41% non-citizen but the naturalisation numbers are not published in a convenient way) and Dubai is 80+%.


Dubai will let anyone in if they are well-behaved and have employer sponsorship, which I think Caplan would count as "open borders". Singapore keep saying they are going to clamp down on low-wage immigration but somehow the construction industry is still 75% migrant and housemaids are 100% migrant.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Very few countries outside the Americas have full birthright citizenship. Singapore has limited birthright citizenship for children of long-term legal residents, and Dubai has no birthright citizenship at all.


Agreed that there isn't a good example of a democracy that has pulled off mass immigration + welfare state for citizens + functioning economy - Switzerland comes pretty close though. Also it isn't clear that there are any democracies that have a "functional economy" in the strong sense @Ichonochasm is using the world - we are all stuck in a Boomer pension death spiral.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You absolutely can have open borders, a welfare state for citizens, and a functional economy. Dubai and Singapore* are proofs of concept if you exclude oil sheikdoms. The deal of "you live and work in a functional economy, your salary reflects this, but you are a paypig for the bottom 20% of citizens whereas your own social insurance is fucking off if you get sick" is attractive to a lot of potential immigrants if the economy is sufficiently functional.


* Singapore make a big deal about having a stingy welfare state, but the vast majority of the citizen population live in subsidised public housing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Caplan believes (almost certainly correctly) that a mutually beneficial arrangement is possible between Americans and most third-world immigrants, and is annoyed that no powerful faction in American politics wants to find it. The not-insane pro-immigration faction in American politics  (and most other western countries) which he would presumably want to support is weak enough as is, and takes the approach of "Given an effectively-fixed deal that we are allowed to offer to third-world immigrants, how do we identify a sub-population where this deal is plausibly positive for Americans?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can do purity spirals in a 2D framework as well. There was a presentation at a Libertarian Party event (I think by David Brin) that spoofed this by showing a mockup of the WSPQ version of the Nolan Chart (unlike Political Compass, Nolan oriented the chart like a diamond with libertarians at the top) with a tiny triangle labelled "Libertarian" in the top corner and the rest of the chart market "dirty fucking commie" - this accurately describes a certain tendency within libertarianism.


It goes without saying that you can do pragmatic big-tent coalition politics in a 1D framework as well. RINOs, DINOs, Blairites etc. earn a good living doing so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What economic-left policies does Caplan support? Let alone ones that would put him in the "far corner".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Taking money from the enemy crosses a line that stanning them for free does not. Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw are the key precedents.