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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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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
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is particularly silly given "Trump ironically asked Iran to blow up San Diego and the MAGA crowd cheered rather than laughing" also works as a base-mobilisation message for the Democrats, and may even be true.


So does "Trump is so senile that he accidentally asked Iran to blow up San Diego on live TV and nobody in Red America seems to think there is anything wrong with this."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The organisational "bullshit" is what maintains a causal connection between what the end user wants and what your code does. The big idea of the Torvalds/Raymond side of the open source movement is that when hackers work for themselves or each other they can cut 90% of it out. That gets you Linux. Cutting 100% of it out gets you GNU Hurd, so be careful.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If he has violated sanctions, you have grounds to toss him based on laws passed by Congress even without a declaration of war. I would assume that doing a paid endorsement for a sanctioned entity would be a crime, but I'm not an expert on technical sanctions law.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If someone told be Solanas was a Baathist, I would believe them. I do not think she would have called her work of Baathist apologia the SCUD Manifesto though. From the point of a Western useful idiot, that would be a phallogocentric take on what Baathism was really about.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In hard patriarchal societies like ancient Greece or modern India, there isn't one because women are never considered full adults. In soft patriarchal societies like ancient Rome or medieval Europe, when her first husband dies - the only women who enjoyed what men would consider full adult freedom were widows.


That said, peasant class women in premodern societies enjoyed far more rights de facto than they were supposed to do de jure because their work (i.e. textiles) was just as essential as men's.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Do you know what fraction of converts are single, or what the gender ratio is? If you are losing young single men and attracting larger numbers of converts by converting whole families (this is what the LDS Church's propaganda suggests), or a female-skewed group of singles (as the early Mormons did, hence the polygamy), it doesn't affect my argument about gender ratios.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


He completely failed at imparting his ideology on his own son,




Commodus was the first of the Nerva-Antonine emperors to succeed his biological father. Up to that point the emperors managed succession by adopting known-suitable heirs. I don't think "raise any son to be a potential Good Emperor" was possible, or widely believed to be possible at the time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Multiple sources are saying that the index case was a worker at a lab known to have stocks of plague bacteria. So as close to smoking gun evidence of a lab leak as you are going to get in an authoritarian country.


Pneumonic plague is a rare natural variant of bubonic plague caused by the same Y pestis bacterium - I see no evidence that the variant we are seeing has been the subject of gain of function research (or that it wasn't, but a leak of unmodified plague is more likely even if some of the work being done at the Irkutsk lab was GoF). Weaponisation research on plague could include aerosolising (non-GoFed) plague bacteria in a way which would consistently generate the (more deadly and more transmissible) pneumonic form - a lab leak outbreak where the index case was pneumonic would be strong circumstantial evidence that this was happening.


To do weaponisation research on GoFed Y pestis (as opposed to doing the GoF work and the weaponisation work separately) would be an act of such monumental stupidity that I don't expect even the Russians to do it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was joking a bit about Thatcher - I think that counts as a non-literal usage. But I think expressions like "be a man", "man up", "turning boys into men" etc. and compounds including "manly" and "manliness" are using sense 2 literally.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There was also the alternative definition of a gentleman, namely a man with sufficient wealth from acceptable sources (primarily land and government bonds) that he could enjoy an upper-middle-class standard of living without working or being actively involved in the management of a nonfarm business. In Tudor through to early Victorian England, demonstrating that you possessed this level of wealth would (eventually) lead to you being recognised as a gentleman and your children as being born into a gentry family. The old gentry families never really succeeded in pushing back on this (did they even try? - I'm not sure) and "gentry are armigerous" didn't help because the heralds needed money and would happily sell a coat of arms to anyone vaguely suitable who could afford one. Burke's landed gentry used land and office holding as inclusion criteria, not antiquity.


A key difference between the British class system and the pre-French Revolution continental European class system, was that the British considered the gentry to be a non-noble class, so we tended to adopt the wealth-based definition. Whereas the analogous class in continental Europe was the untitled nobility, and was supposed to be a closed-blood class, or at least one where entry required spectacular battlefield achievement recognised by the Crown and could not be bought. A gentilhomme had to be a legal noble, although not necessarily rich (younger sons inherited noble status and privileges, but not the family estates).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Or even simpler, man.


The word man has, since time immemorial, had three meanings, with "adult human male" the least salient. And now it technically has a fourth trans-inclusive meaning.


    

  1. Person, assumed male because patriarchy but in theory inclusive of women. Latin homo. Usage includes "Rights of Man", "Peace and goodwill among men", compounds such as "mankind", "fireman", "chairman" etc.
    2. 

  2. Person displaying the classical masculine virtues (or sometimes by extension capable-of-displaying or expected-to-display). Latin vir. Usage includes "Margaret Thatcher was the last real man in Number 10 Downing Street". (Incidentally, a true statement when given its intended meaning)
    3. 

  3. Adult human male. Usage mostly restricted to toilet designation.
    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm not sure we can fairly attribute the SBF shenanigans to Yud.




Very much agreed. Will MacAskill recruited SBF as an EA back when SBF was an undergraduate, long before "EA" moved into AI safety as a cause area. That move was paid for with Dustin Moskovitz's money, not SBF's. And the subnetwork within EA that did FTX was built around Jane Street alumni in NYC, not "rationalists" in Bezerkely.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Remember that 63% betting odds is literally "too close to call" - if 37% of your calls were wrong, you would be bozo-binned for calling elections too early. It is far closer than a 63-37 poll lead.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you for the words "rort" and "wowser" which neither BrE nor AmE has a short synonym for.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Huh, looking him up he is the current president of MIRI




Which is a big deal. MIRI is the most prominent organisation that is explicitly about AI safety and was the original registered-with-the-secretary-of-state organisation in the rationalist ecosystem. The president of MIRI is the most legibly important leader in the "rationalist" and "AI safety" legs of the rat/EA/AI tripos, even if Yud remains the rightful caliph.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd prefer not to. Look up "math pets" if you must.


Seriously, Eliezer is one of the main people responsible for making ubiquitous normie-unfriendly sexuality a core value of the "rationalist" community, and thus indirectly of parts of "effective altruism" and "AI safety". In British English, "naughty boy" can refer either to a boy who is disobedient to adult authority figures (like Brian) or to a grown man caught in an act of sexual immorality (like Yud). I don't know if this is idiomatic in American English.