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MathWizard

Good things are good

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joined 2022 September 04 21:33:01 UTC 

				
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MathWizard


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Good things are good

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 21:33:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 164


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8yG0N6HnOy8g/2d3c25c3-b784-4c9c-454f-14d8d304ee00/w=1350


There are billions of humans on the planet. There are going to be billions of humans on the planet for the next hundred years. A tiny blip below replacement means the number might shrink very slowly for a decade or two. It is concerning economically for a society built around the assumption that each generation will be exponentially larger than the previous one. It is concerning culturally for ethnic and cultural groups which are below average and worried about being replaced by groups which are above average. It is NOT an existential risk to the human race. There are a bunch of people who have lots of children, and if low birth rates become an existential risk to certain groups then the ones having more children will become more prominent and more confident in their belief structures that cause them to have more children. (This includes but is not limited to minorities. See Malcolm Collins and the pro-natalist movement).


Humanity will adapt and survive, as it always does.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for August 21, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I could be wrong, but I think I recall Aella's studies (or maybe someone else's?) suggesting peak physical attractiveness for women is somewhere around 16, which matches my intuitions.


But I think there are a couple of dynamics going on that distinguish a "celebrity 10" from an individual 10.


    

  1. 

    They have to be a celebrity at all. While there were plenty of girls at my highschool who I would have rated as 10s, definitely more attractive than most celebrities, none of you will ever agree with me that they are 10s because you never saw them and don't know what they look like. Short of sharing facebook photos (many of which have been deleted since then), which I wouldn't do anyway and violate their privacy, I have no way of communicating this properly. It isn't shared knowledge, they are not valid candidates for "the most attractive women" in popular discourse, because they are not famous.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Broad appeal. A woman with a specific look that some men really like and others don't might end up a 10 for 10% of the population and a 7 for 90% of the population. Meanwhile another woman might be a 9 in basically everyone's estimation. If you look around you you might find 10% of women have the specific look that appeals to you and conclude they are more attractive than the universal 9, but lots and lots of men are going to agree that the 9 is attractive, so when people average scores together the universal 9 might end up at the top while each of the niches end up lower on average (and then when we grade on a score the 9 curves up to a 10)
    

    3. 

  3. 

    Aging gracefully. Due to social concerns and/or cognitive dissonance, a lot of men are not going to admit that the 16-year-old is a 10, even if they are physically attracted to her. So the set of 22 year olds are going to get a lot more external praise and validation. Therefore, a woman who retains a higher fraction of her teenage peak appearance into her 20s is going to be at the top of the ratings as far as people say them out loud, even if in literal terms she is less attractive than other 16 year olds or even her own 16 year old self.
    

    4. 



So I think 22-year-old Megan Fox is considered peak due to hitting all of these points. If she were not famous, few men would genuinely treat her as a 10 in terms of preferring her over the top 5% of women they've ever met in real life. But she is famous, and has broad appeal, and was attractive in her early 20s, so the discourse goes the way it goes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But those other bottlenecks also create externalities for everyone else, essentially increasing the prices of any products they use anywhere down the distribution chain. Given a long enough time-span with stable demand the supply could catch up to meet it and regular consumers, but with AI advancing so rapidly we're not really giving anything any time to settle down.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for August 21, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think she's really hot in that one screenshot of Transformers (you know the one). But that's largely down to the pose/lighting/situation, and in general don't think she's all that hot (above average for sure, but not a 10). But I also think most Hollywood actresses aren't as hot as they're made out to be. I don't like the overly made up aesthetic that they're going for.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mostly agree, but would point out that there is a slight difference in adjusting the contributing goals of the justice system. Psychologically defective individuals are less responsive to incentives, and therefore punishments should be more tailored towards incapacitation and less towards deterrence. Additionally, rehabilitation attempts, if possible, are more likely to be through psychological and pharmaceutical help rather than education or time to reflect on their behavior.


I think on balance this probably should result in longer jail sentences rather than shorter, but it probably varies on a case by case basis. If someone can figure out what's wrong with this woman, get her on medication, sterilize her so she never has children again, and never let her alone near anyone else's children again, she might be safer in society sooner than the average triple-murderer. On the other hand, if they can't fix her condition then she might never be safe in public again. The optimal length of her sentence varies based on how fixable her mental state is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not in principle against accepting a tiny fraction of unusually virtuous and sympathetic people on the furthest edges of the edge cases. Similarly, I would be willing to befriend a murderer, even one who had never been caught and punished, if they were unusually virtuous, repentant, it had happened a long time ago, and they were in every other way an upstanding member of society.


But in most cases I think allowing or even entertaining edge cases just muddies the waters of incentives. If you tell people they can get a better life here if they manage to stay hidden for five years, they will sneak over the border and try to stay hidden for five years. If you tell people they can get a better life here if they manage to have enough children first because deporting the children would look bad, they will sneak over the border and have children.


I suppose, in the furthest cases, if you tell someone they can get a better life here if they manage to live here for 2- years, work under the table for 20 years as a nanny for various families and as a kitchen staffer, then if we get people sneaking over the border to do that it won't be so bad. But we could just allow people to do that legally, in limited numbers that are economically viable. Whatever type of people we want, in the numbers we want, we should issue exactly that many legal papers to the right kind of people. If we need cheap labor to pick the fruits, we should issue visas that let people in to pick the fruits as cheap labor.


And to the extent that our legal visa screenings aren't that good and can't always perfectly detect the right people, I don't trust whatever shaky edge case deportation system to do any better. There is an effectively finite amount of space for limited and sustainable immigration that allows and encourages foreigners to integrate into our society and become American (or whatever other country, since this is not a uniquely American issue). A soft cap after which the marginal costs in lost cohesion and economic effects outweigh the marginal benefits. Every illegal immigrant effectively steals one of these slots from a legal immigrant, in that we are forced to lower the legal quota to compensate for them. I wouldn't even be strongly opposed to a program which deports illegals and trades them for legal immigrants on a one for one basis. "Erthics of proximity" strikes me similar to a lot of "medical ethics", in that it's a huge pile of anti-utilitarian biases and virtue signalling wrapped in a thin veneer of genuine ethics. People should do the right thing, not the thing that sounds good on paper.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I broadly agree, with the exception that I consider illegal entry/overstaying to be sufficient criteria for "unwanted" on its own. If someone attempted to follow the law and filed their paperwork wrong, then I am willing to be forgiving and fix those issues without deporting them. But if someone literally crossed without permission, on purpose, knowing they did not have permission, I want them gone. No statute of limitations for them, maybe like 50 years for their children or something so we aren't pulling up ancient archives and deporting extended families. But illegal entry to the country IS a crime, they are a criminal, they have demonstrated themselves to be the type of person who is willing to break the law for selfish reasons if the benefit to themselves is great enough. An illegal immigrant who appears to be a well-behaved member of society is simply one who has not yet been caught, or not yet faced a second opportunity where they find the cost/benefit ratio appealing enough to break the law again. But clearly they have a criminal mentality or they physically wouldn't be here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree that it's important to understand this distinction as it exists in people's minds, but think that once you factor in incentives, most of the distinction is mental/bias/illusion and trying to be pro-stock but anti-flow is largely pointless and hypocritical. That is, I agree with your assessment that most normal people are pro-stock anti-flow while most politicians are either pro-both or anti-both, but I consider the normal position to be the fallacious one.


People respond to incentives. Millions of illegals flock to our shores because they expect a better life here. They expect a better life here because they we have implemented policies which will enable them to have a better life here even if they cross illegally. Every dollar of welfare, every dollar earned under the table at a job, every anchor baby, every forgiven crime, is another reason to come. If people who spent months making their way to the border, taking risks and spending their last money to sneak across it, were met with immediate detection and expulsion, they would not come. If people who managed to avoid detection had to spend their entire lives living in fear because the instant anyone found out about them they and their entire families, including children would be immediately deported back to their home country even decades later when they had no property or connections there anymore, they would not come. I admit that doing this to actual families would carry with it a high cost, so does dropping nukes on someone. But once you do that and people see you do that, they wise up and do whatever it takes for that not to happen to them. It's status quo bias to look at all the illegal immigrants and imagine us being ruthless to everyone like this forever, but the long term outcome of anti-illegal immigration policies is that we will almost never have to do it because people will stop crossing illegally in the first place. We don't have to punish anyone for crimes they don't commit, but it requires punishment when they do, and more importantly it requires consistency. We can't have half the presidents being harsh on illegals and half being lenient, they have to all actually enforce the law.


It is not economically feasible for us to perfect police the border with no leaking. We have to stem the tide at its source: the incentives. You cannot meaningfully be anti-flow while dangling the carrot of American Citizenship to anyone who thwarts you, even if it feels bad to take the carrot away after they've stolen it. Suck it up and do the right thing, and stop letting superficial proximity biases distort good policy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would not call it "equally" ignoring. People who consider second order effects are generally capable of understanding the concept of third, fourth etc order effects, as it's essentially the same concept extrapolated forward. Now, quite a few people are biased and discount the effects opposing their favored position, and there's people like this on both sides. But a biased person can still comprehend the nature of arguments and weigh them and think about them. There's a large contingent of people who literally do not consider second order effects. They're vaguely aware that there might be such a thing, but they don't really understand it, or think about it, or consider them "legitimate" or worthy of consideration on the same level as first order effects. And again, there's people like this on both sides, but the left seems specially tailored towards catering to them (by emphasizing first-order niceness above all in their policy choices), and so there's a much higher prevalence there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I would like to propose another possible developmental milestone that some have reached and others haven't: the complete inability to generalize a proposed solution outside of the narrow specifics of the problem it's intended to solve.




I think this is a specific symptom of a broader and more fundamental developmental milestone which is something like the inability to perceive/consider/predict second order effects. Things like:


-People who want open borders (First order effect: helps poor immigrants. Second order: causes economic hardship, cultural clashes, crime, etc)


-People who want to be soft on crime (First order effect: helps poor people who turn to crime to survive. Second order: massively increases crime)


-People who want to raise the minimum wage (First order effect: poor people get more money. Second order: prices go up, unemployment goes up.)


-People who want to massively raise taxes on the rich (First order effect: you get more money. Second order: rich people leave and you get less money.)


And so on. It's kind of the same thing as what you said, but I think this framing is a better way of thinking about it. There's the Game Theory thing where one person does a thing and then someone else responds to that and then someone else responds to that, etc, and things only ever settle down if there is a stable equilibrium (or mixed strategy). And some people don't even consider this, that someone might respond directly to the change rather than their behavior being predetermined. It's not that they can't imagine something changing, it's that they don't consider change as part of a causal chain which can be induced by themselves in opposition to their desires. It's the failure to disentangle intention from real outcome. If the Goal of doing X is to cause Y, then any increase in Y is attributed to X, and any decrease in Y from second order effects is attributed to the most direct precursor to Y, and not to X which is further away causally.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for August 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've been playing Quasimorph. It's sort of a hardcore roguelike thing with guns in space. I use the term "roguelike" rather than "roguelite" because it has the core grid based movement with the numpad, although combat is usually from a distance with various guns. It probably doesn't count as a true roguelike though due to having short missions and most progression occurring between missions. It kind of reminds me of Cataclysm DDA in some ways, although way less complicated. It's got a lot of inventory management, wounds you take requiring long periods of time and medical items to heal (and in severe cases getting amputated), and you can't leave a map until you finish the objective, often leading to doomed scenarios where you slowly bleed out (or starve) even after you killed the guy who got you.


But it's got a strong meta progression element. Your people are disposable, and even though their level and skills reset and you lose all their items if they die, you have a dozen other semi-unique characters and classes to choose from, and can equip them with any stuff you've brought back from previous missions. I tend to die about half the time, and escape half the time with cool new stuff, some of which is more gear for future missions, some of which is rare meta-progression items you can use you upgrade your ship and unlock new features.


Edit: (It also kind of reminds me of XCOM. Not sure why I didn't think of that comparison earlier. Less meta-punishing roguelike XCOM.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not really sure what the point of this post is aside from getting people to gang up on and dogpile about "immigrants bad". It's a bit of a hot topic for smallscale question sunday, but a bit devoid of true value for the culture war thread. The majority of people here, myself included, have some variation of centrist (some leaning left, some leaning right), or very right wing take on immigration, and if any don't and for some reason decide to respond I fully expect a debate to break out.


I am not a mod, I am not formally accusing you of breaking the "Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity" rule. But I am going to gesture at it disapprovingly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think overstaying a tourist visa by a few days due to unforseen circumstances or something should be treated with leniency.




Speedy deportation with minimal hassle seems like the best way to handle this. They're no worse off than they would be if they had just left when they were supposed to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sometimes I wonder if all of the problems with modern politics are tied to cheap transportation and communications technologies. People care about status. They want people to like them. Noblesse Oblige is founded on making the people like you. If public officials lived in their communities and interacted with people in their communities, then doing good deeds for the people and saving them a bunch of money would be a vanity project! The status and validation and pride that the mayor seeks for themself ought to be from the people. But if they just fly around on jets talking to rich people and politicians from other cities then the status turns into big ostentatious displays that rich people care about.


Somehow we need to ground politicians, their status, and their emotional state to be related to the people. If the majority of the time they spent socializing was with random people from their districts then they would automatically seek to make the people happy because that would be what flatters their egos.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hmmm. Okay so it won't endlessly funnel taxes into shoplifter, it will just go out of business due to shoplifting and/or vandalism for the same reason all the other grocery stories in the area did (as far as I can tell that's the main reason food deserts occur).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's still some limit. There can't not be, because money comes from somewhere and capitalists gonna capitalist. Stores that take fewer losses than it would cost to hire security mostly don't bother. Some stores do hire security (There's a Walmart near me that we call Ghettomart because it's in a poor neighborhood and sees all sorts of poor people, and has security guards near the front). Stores that take enough losses to outweigh their profits close down, because they're not profitable. Not arresting the criminals and doing literally nothing isn't the same, the closing down is just a lot more subtle and less obviously connected to the crime from the outside.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The way I see this going is for it to end up being a giant shoplifting subsidization scheme. If there's no profit motive, none of the employees or managers have any reason to care about shoplifting, and any politician who doesn't want to be seen as an alt-right fascist isn't going to want to crack down on it either. I expect the shelves to be emptied out by looters just brazenly and without even trying to hide it walking in, loading up bags, and walking out, leaving the store barren and useless until the next time it restocks. This is just going to be a massive welfare scheme that siphons taxes into the pockets of thieves.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The issue here is the incentives though, especially with regard to the 4th amendment but also including any other rules. If we assume the police want to convict people they dislike, and violating rules results in a slap on the wrist, then the police are incentivized to violates rules to gather more data. Which is less about protecting the actual criminals and more about violating the rights of the dozen of innocent people they get along the way.


If the police illegally storm and search a dozen homes with no warrant, and one of them has drugs, then that's one additional drug conviction. Even if they've technically broken the law, the prosecutor can choose not to pursue the issue and the police chief can secretly congratulate the violators and they've got their extra conviction. If, instead, that extra drug conviction is completely invalid for the police to benefit themselves or the prosecution by violating rules. The point is not that that one drug offended deserves to go free because the police didn't catch him the right way, the point is that a dozen non-criminals got searched in the meantime and we want to remove any incentive for that to happen. The small injustice of messing with jury evidence is a means to align the incentives and create more justice in general.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am skeptical of how much of it sounds too good to be true, but I think that if the theory holds it would be good. Ideally, to actually test it empirically, and to avoid shocks with suddenly crashing land prices, I'd like to see something like 1-2% increased LVT (and ~1-2% decrease in every other tax simultaneously) every year on an ongoing basis, and then we'll have decades to actually see how it works, what goes wrong and what doesn't. But I think the economic theory is very sound and needs to be actually tested in real life to actually verify or debunk, and to refine and see what epicycles it might need to avoid the possible problems that a naive version would cause that a clever version might not cause.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Developers do need incentives and one of them is land appreciation




There's an important distinction between internalized land appreciation and externalized appreciation from other people. One of the reasons I consider myself tentatively Georgist and not a full member is because I'm not entirely convinced that all of them have a perfect solution to this, however


1: I think solutions can exist if you're clever and experiment with what works.
2: I think the benefits would be worth the costs even if some small inefficiencies resulted. LVT is the "least bad tax", because all taxes have deadweight costs but it seems to have the least due to the inelasticity of land.


If someone buys up a bunch of land and develops it all, then it doesn't make sense to raise their taxes to absorb the increased value. People should internalize as much of their products as possible. LVT already attempts to separate the land value and the improvement value and only tax the inherent land value, so a more sophisticated version of this could count local improvements directly made by a land owner as their own improvements and thus tax deductible.


However, if a hundred different people buy up a bunch of land and develop it all then they all improve each other's land. If all of the value of your land is derived from the efforts of the community around you, then that extra land appreciation rightfully belongs to the community. On a moral level, you are not responsible for it so you don't deserve it, and on an economic level if you are not causing it then taxing it has no deadweight loss because you're not the one raising your land value, other people are. Allowing land appreciation without your own developments being part of it are how we get land speculators who buy up land in areas they hope will get developed and just sit there and wait until other people do all the work and then sell it to the highest bidder despite not having contributed. We want to reward people for actually doing the developing, not people who squat.


And you can avoid a complete lack of incentives, and avoid overshooting if estimates are off, by making LVT like 60-90% of the assessed rent value instead of 100%.


I do think the more radical Georgists overlook some of the potential issues, and have gotten into many arguments of this sort on the subreddit for it. But I think an ideal system looks something like and 80-20 mix of Georgism and the way things are currently run, respectively, rather than 0% or 20-80.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
LVT would do this more effectively, efficiently, and fairly.


Ever since Scott posted his review of Georgism I've been increasingly on board as I keep seeing issues with not-LVT. It's not a perfect solution that would fix literally all of society's ills, but like 90% of anything related to taxes (and ~50% of anything related to housing) seems easily solvable with LVT.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In addition to what other people have said, make sure to consider the popularity/prevalence of the name you choose relative to your age. There's a bunch of names that are "old people" names because they were given to people born in the 1950s or 1960s who are now in theirs 70s and 80s, but almost nobody young has that name. And vice versa, if you're looking at baby names popular now you'll possibly be out of place with that name as an adult. I think any of those names are probably fine though if you're going for a southern vibe. They're all common enough that there won't be much connotation from any one individual that shares that name.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 31, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I played through Case of the Golden Idol after seeing @Vollerei recommend it a couple weeks ago, and am halfway through the sequel. It's not quite as good as Obra Dinn, but it scratches the same itch. I also really liked some of the plot points near the end which were interesting and not the way I would expect a story like that to go (Obra Dinn has some great reveals near the beginning/middle, but sort of peters out near the end). The puzzles are weaker and less intricate on average, but overall it's a good game. I am less impressed with Rise of the Golden Idol so far, but haven't finished it so can't give a full opinion (especially given how Case tied things together so nicely at the end that retroactively made earlier parts better and make more sense. I'm holding out hope for something like that here though it seems less likely to be as good even if they try)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Writing an effortpost carries with it a number of implications:


-This is a thing you know (or think you know) a lot about.


-This is a thing you genuinely belief, and each word in here represent your own thoughts on the matter.


-This is a thing you care enough about to type out however much you typed out.


All of which then inform the way people are going to reply, argue, comment, and engage in discussion with you and others. Someone who makes an effortpost with an LLM is much less likely to follow up in response to people who respond to them, and much less likely to make good responses. There's little point in debating a particular point they made if they don't even believe or fully understand that point. Cases where the essay was collaboratively put together and edited with an LLM are less egregious examples of this, but still carry some of the issues. If you only know or care enough about this issue to write 500 words yourself about it, then don't make the readers read a 2500 word post inflating it with unnecessary things.


Maybe we just need a weekly or monthly LLM containment thread. "Here is a thing I asked AI about and the essay it gave me and I thought it was interesting and worth sharing/discussion." Because I think there can be value to it, it's just not the same sort of value as the main human-human discussions here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm torn on how I feel about this for the same reason. The issue is not that books are actually sacred. I don't think destroying a non-rare book is any worse than destroying a wooden board or a plastic sheet in practice. But it is a cultural taboo, and demonstrates disrespect for culture and social norms in favor of sheer utilitarian efficiency. Anthropic has demonstrated here that they care more about being efficient and saving money than adhering to social norms.


I think I'm tentatively on their side here, because the public anti-AI crowd has so far demonstrated incredible levels of unreasonableness regarding AI "stealing art" or "wasting water". They're going to come up with something stupid to complain about and hate Anthropic no matter what, so there's little reason for them to respect any other taboos because they'll be hated either way. Crying wolf causes so many problems. I'm still concerned about what this implies about Anthropic's attitude as a corporate entity, but not upset at the event for its own sake.