MathWizard
Good things are good
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User ID: 164
MathWizard
Good things are good
10mo ago
The standard Blue Tribe perspective is not that this is the default, but that this is somehow the fault of society/capitalism/racism or something else. That these people are victims of their environment, and therefore are owed welfare as compensation. That if they're causing problems it's our fault and therefore our duty to fix their problems.
Not that they are inherently violent schizos by default and welfare is a useful way to suppress their violent tendencies, that's a utilitarian center-right position, and a fairly uncommon one (though one I partly hold, though I'd like to see more emphasis on mental health treatment and less on enabling.)
MathWizard
Good things are good
10mo ago
I'd put myself somewhere in the middle. I treat all of my stuff with some degree of respect. I'm not like super cautious and offended if they get some wear and tear, but I'm not going to deliberately damage them.
Someone who cuts their books in half is comparable to someone who cuts their furniture or plates in half. Like, you're allowed to do that, but unless you're doing a very specific project that requires this, why would you? Now you have torn up damaged stuff instead of nice new stuff.
MathWizard
Good things are good
10mo ago
Modelling the other sex is very difficult, people fail at it all the time and we should try to do it less.
I was with you up until the very last clause. Shouldn't the conclusion be the opposite? Modeling the other sex is very difficult, people fail at it all the time and we should practice it more. In fact, the number one issue seems to be that people aren't even attempting to model the other sex, they are simply typical-minding and assuming the other sex thinks how they think but with the opposite sexual orientation.
I don't think modeling the other sex is easy at all, I'm certainly no good at it (though I'm not good at modeling other people of any sort), but trying and failing and then updating your models iteratively is going to get you way closer than not trying at all.
MathWizard
Good things are good
10mo ago
My opinions are mostly the same as yours, but there is a potential issue in that it's difficult to exist on the internet with literally no presence.
That is, pervs who never interact with children directly are still clicking on and watching certain videos that fulfill their criteria for desirable content, which boosts the metrics on those videos according to the algorithms on the website, be it Youtube or Instagram or something else. This both makes said content more visible to other people, and provides positive feedback that this is the sort of content that becomes popular. People who care about being a "successful influencer" pay attention to popular content from other people, and also popularity of their own content, and are more likely to replicate things that were successful. In a certain respect it's sort of like AI training but in other people's brains.
Therefore, an army of pervs attempting to be stealthy but still being caught by the algorithm still end up incentivizing young girls to produce less appropriate content, even if the girls themselves don't realize why said content is popular.
MathWizard
Good things are good
10mo ago
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Gun rights are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, that makes them a Federal issue. Now, perhaps the exact wording and definition of what regulations constitute "infringement" or not are up for debate, but that is a debate about the meaning of the constitution itself. Once we've defined what is and is not infringement, no State has the right to make laws stricter than that. It's out of their jurisdiction. This is not a pure 100% Democracy, the electorate and anyone they elect do not have the legal authority to infringe the right to bear arms, even within the borders of their state, because the constitution does not give them that right.
Again, it's open for debate what does and does not count as infringement, but the legitimacy of getting involved in other state's business is present on this issue, and not other more progressive issues, because it's directly and clearly established in the Constitution.
MathWizard
Good things are good
11mo ago
The Goal of the Futurist Right is not to create some new orthodoxy that can take the people who put us in our current predicament, and align them properly with the interests of our society.
As a Christian, I must reject this. For the Atheist Right this may your goal, but this is decidedly unchristian, and likely bad even from an atheist utilitarian perspective. Jesus came to save the sinners, taught to love our enemies, and spent his time teaching and hanging out with the lowest scum of society while the experts in the law mocked him and ultimately killed him. The easiest way to become evil is to be so sure that you are good and your enemies are evil that any acts against them are justified.
This is related to though perhaps a slightly different spin on Scott's Guided by the Beauty of Our Weapons. Perhaps a moral rather than rational/bayesian version. If you attempt to ruthlessly crush your opponents, and they attempt to do the same to you, then the stronger one will win with no correlation to who's actually correct. And to what end? You're no more likely to be on the correct side, and if you resort to evil methods in your pursuit of victory then you can rule over an evil society with you on top instead of them on top, I guess.
But if you do what's right, and you are more good and more kind then you will draw people to join you and simultaneously gain strength and build a better world. If you try to convince people that you are right, and they try to convince you that they are right, then if you are actually right you will be more persuasive on average.
Now, it's important not to be naive about this. We don't need to fill our streets with radical leftists and/or Islamists who seek to destroy us and build their own subcultures where they reinforce their beliefs and never convert. Survival as a society and culture is an important goal. But converting other people is also an important goal, not simply because they will be allies and help us but also because they are human beings who matter even when they do evil, and helping them to be better is the right thing to do. Marginalizing people might be positive as a instrument towards disincentivizing their behavior and limiting the damage they can do, but it is negative as an ultimate goal and the actual end goal should be conversion.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
Think of a group of people you don't like; if you were able to advocate appropriating their assets, even if it wasn't of any direct material benefit to you, wouldn't you?
No, not because I wouldn't want to or wouldn't feel a satisfying feeling of karmic justice if they lost everything they own, but because I recognize those thoughts as selfish and anti-social and thus would not publicly advocate them. This might be one of those things that's being lost as Christianity declines, but people seem to be losing the perspective that you, yes you, are filled with evil and some of the things you want are actually bad and should be resisted. I hate people that I hate, I would be happy if they died, and I recognize that as wrong and if given the opportunity to secretly push a button that caused them to die I would recognize that as wrong and choose not to press it. (With exceptions for people who have done heinous acts that would be sentenced by the death penalty if caught but have so far escaped justice, making their death for the greater good of society rather than my personal feelings)
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
I've lived in America my whole life and have never clogged a toilet. I tend to have soft poop though, so maybe that's why? Or maybe it's being average weight instead of obese.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
I think this still demands a distinction in different contexts, especially between respect in ones physical capabilities, and one in their mental capabilities. I respect a lion as a powerful beast and I would avoid trying to fight one in unarmed physical combat. I do not respect a lion's intellectual abilities, and would happily trounce one in a game of chess if I could play in safety from its aforementioned physical prowess. Further, I do not respect the physical abilities of lions as a whole in comparison to humans as a whole, because we have guns and missiles and they do not. They simply do not pose an existential threat to humans as a species, while we do pose such a threat if we cared to wipe them out (and maybe even if we half-heartedly try not to).
Bringing this back then, I respect the physical threat of a jihadi in a similar way to a lion, they're extremely lethal if you face one underprepared, and I would personally try to avoid them, but I do not respect them as an existential threat to my people, we have nukes and they do not. But this is a separate consideration from the original issue of respecting their conviction. On the moral front, I do respect the specific integrity of standing up for one's beliefs, but overall do not respect their general moral character, because their beliefs are evil and selfish. Even from a classical sense, they don't exhibit honorable behaviors worth respecting. If they stood and fought against overwhelming odds and died for their beliefs, I could respect that more. But guerilla warfare, hiding behind civilians, and terrorism are incredibly dishonorable and unrespectable. If their beliefs tell them to do that, then they're just standing up for dishonorable beliefs. If you're going to respect that you might as well treat the hypocritical Christian as someone who believes in being a hypocrite and respect them for being so good at it.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
I think there's a difference between being enemies as a result of material circumstance, which can allow for mutual respect, versus fundamental ideological differences, which I don't think do, or at least severely cap the amount.
Like, if I found myself in a family/tribe/guild/nation, and someone else is in another, and we both want the same land/resource, or are fighting for sovereignty or global hegemony, then we could have approximately the same values but still be at odds against one another, because we each want what's best for our own group to the exclusion of what's best for the other group. Similarly, I can respect an opponent who has different factual beliefs (provided they're not absurd and obviously false such that no respectable person would be wrong in the way they are). Maybe we both want what's best for everyone, but disagree on what course of action is best to do that. Or even with slight ideological differences there can be mutual respect. Like, if there's an opportunity to tradeoff freedom points versus security points at a 1:1 ratio, and I value freedom at 6 utils each and security at 4 utils each, while person B values freedom at 4 utils each and security at 6 utils each, then we're going to end up on opposite sides of the issue of the tradeoff despite both valuing freedom and security. Ideally, neither of the latter two scenarios would lead to war, but maybe they would.
But if the other person's ideology is just straight up evil then no, I can't respect that. Or rather, the sum of my respect would be all of the other traits about them that might be respectable, minus the massive loss from them being an evil person. I don't think it's respectable to be evil, even if you're loyal and devoted to your evil ideals. To the extent that Rommel wanted what's best for the German people and genuinely thought that he was helping them, I can respect that. To the extent that Rommel turned a blind eye to genocide in as a sacrifice towards that end, I lose a decent amount of respect. To the extent that Rommel might have genuinely believed in genocide as a means itself, if any (it's not entirely clear) I would lose a ton of respect for him. I would have much much more respect for a counterfactual Rommel who had pulled a coup on Hitler, stopped the genocide, and then tried to conquer the world, because it would have shown more moral fortitude than someone who's blindly loyal.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
Since I aim to be sincere in my beliefs with minimal delusions of convenience, I respect such adherents more than insincere mealy-mouthed Cultural Catholics or the "moderate" Muslims who eat pork, smoke and drink while nominally calling themselves Muslim. Do I get along better with such people than a Hamas operative? Of course, doesn't mean I don't respect them less.
This only makes sense if you are assigning respect entirely based on honesty/loyalty/commitment, and not at all on things like caring about the welfare of other people. That is, the amount of respect I lose for a hypocrite is less than the amount of respect I lose for a murderer. Even if an honest and committed terrorist Muslim is more respectable for their commitment than a terrorist atheist who just kills for fun, it's less respectable than a Muslim who realizes that murder is wrong and chooses not to do it, even if they reduce themselves to hypocrisy in the process.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
At which point the suicide would seem more understandable. Still not necessarily the best option, but I would find it harder to argue against. And maybe that secretly is exactly what happened and his wife was going to leave him. But frequently that's not the case, and people kill themselves based on the derivative of their quality of life, not the actual level after the decline.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
Even then, I think people underestimate the quality of life you can expect as a poor person with an intact family. If his entire industry went under and he couldn't adapt and was stuck flipping burgers for minimum wage he could still provide for his family. They might have to downgrade their home and lifestyle expectations, but they're not going to starve to death or end up homeless. And I suspect that the actual quality of life for his daughter would be higher poor with an alive father than rich with no father.
If you have serious mental health issues rendering you completely unemployable, then the object level might be unfixable, but for everyone else it's more a question of lowering standards and struggling to do as well as you can and fix as much as you can even if you can never return to the wealthy lifestyle you were expecting.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
Yeah, my understanding is that most of the therapy techniques were designed based on female patients, and therefore focus more on things like feelings rather than solutions to object-level problems. However competent ones exist, and will tailor their style based on the needs of their patient (or at least identify when they aren't a good fit and refer them to other therapists with a better-suited style). A suicidal man seeing Jordan Peterson isn't going to get a bunch of mamby pampy nonsense about "aw, I'm sorry to hear that, how does that make you feel?", they're going to get "that sucks, life sucks, but your life isn't over, let's come up with an actionable plan for how to make it suck less" and then having an actionable plan helps fix your mental state because you have a goal you can work towards (and once you enact the plan your life is objectively improved and that helps your mental state). Even a good therapist can't unilaterally fix your life for you, but they can help convince you to fix your own life and figure out how instead of wallowing in self-misery and inaction.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
Points 2 and 3 basically contradict each other. That is, there's the object level struggles of material providing, which therapy would not have helped with, and the irrational misperception that these issues were irreparably unsolvable to the point that suicide was the only way out. In-so-far as therapy and suicide prevention could have helped him figure this out, they would have been useful (in-so-far as some therapy and suicide prevention are lefty mental health stuff made of empty-sounding words that don't improve rational consideration of object level issues, they would not have been useful)
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
So where is the disagreement, exactly?
The way you phrased things, and still to some extent now, seems to be implying that race is always useful because information is too costly. My premise is that information is costly up front for strangers but accumulates automatically over time such that race becomes less and less useful the more you interact with the same individuals. If you agree with that entirely then I guess we don't have a disagreement other than with phrasing of things, but the fact that you phrased it the way you did makes me suspect that there is some underlying disagreement even if I'm not sure what it is. Because I wouldn't say that the existence and importance of friends and coworkers whom you can accumulate significant amounts of information on over years are compatible with
in practice you don’t get to have enough evidence to ignore this prior, because evidence is not free.
The usefulness of the prior asymptotically approaches zero over time such that, although it might never literally reach zero, after a couple years of knowing someone it's probably close enough to ignore (though this will vary by how much you actually interact with the person, since knowledge is not gained via the literal passing of time.)
Or maybe we both entirely agree on its usefulness in both the stranger case and the friend case but you are considering the stranger case to be "typical" and I am considering the friend case to be "typical" and we are each dismissing the other as an exception to the rule.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
All priors collapse towards each other in the face of increasing amounts of evidence. Maybe you start 7% vs 33% that a random white vs black man is a violent criminal, and then if you learn they dress well and speak proper English it drops to 4% vs 5%. Or if you learn they have anger problems and are covered in tattoos it might go to 55% vs 60%. Given that genes have no almost direct causal impact on behavior except indirectly through other means such as IQ, personality, and cultural upbringing, it seems pointless to consider them when those things can be observed directly.
I agree with you that for random people on the street signals are more costly than they're worth and race can be useful as a quick hack to ballpark guess, I said as much in my previous post. But none of this implies that it
carries immense amount of residual predictive value even after controlling for more direct predictors.
It only serves value in that it lets you guess at the direct predictors more quickly and easily than costly signals would. No priors carry immense amounts of residual predictive value even after controlling for more direct predictors. That's what makes them priors. The direct predictors are what we actually care about, and race is only useful in-so-far as it might be a faster way to guess at them if you don't already have them and don't want to spend the time and effort to acquire them properly. Which sounds reasonable for strangers, but less so for people you actually know.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
Pretty much all legitimate justifications for racism rely on inaccurate proxies for other things we actually care about. I think you can make arguments in favor of using it in the absence of better knowledge, but once more direct signals have been acquired the race no longer serves a useful purpose.
Since I am white and was raised by white parents among mostly other white people, I can reasonably expect that the average white person is more likely to be similar to me than the average black person. We'll be more likely to have similar cultural knowledge, values, habits, etc. But my black neighbor who I actually know and happens to be a christian pastor has way more in common with me than the average white Californian.
In the past race was a very strong proxy for nationality, culture, and loyalty. In modern times it is a weak signal unless you live in a predominantly monoethnic country.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
racismschool.tumblr.com links to a user on tumblr named "racismschool". It appears to be empty now, though I can't tell if that's because they deleted everything or because I don't have a tumblr account. Presumably they're the person who made the thing that he's referring to in this post.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
But it specifically applies pressure against negative behaviors, at least according to the subjective perceptions of the mocker. X behavior is stupid/bad -> Y group of people mock it -> Z group of people care about Y's opinion and/or avoiding mockery in general and do X less or fail to start doing X -> less X exists. If the mocker has good subjective opinions and targets, then this is a net positive since it reduces the prevalence of stupid/bad behaviors. If the mocker has bad subjective opinions and targets, then this is a net negative since it reduces the prevalence of good behaviors that have been mislabeled.
Speed running.... makes speed running look cool? Like, maybe it encourages people to try really hard and dedicate themselves to a task, or peer into the underlying mechanics of games and pedantically look for flaws that they can exploit which maybe increases their ability as a hacker/programmer/anti-hacker? But the most likely outcome is that it makes people more likely to become speed runners. I suppose one could make a similar argument about a lot of hobbies, but a lot of hobbies have depth or broadly interesting components, while speedrunning is about pedantic details and weird edge cases.
Like, if someone has a hobby of using tweezers to arrange tiny colored grains of sand into beautiful artwork, that's kind of cool. I wouldn't do it, it seems like more time and effort than it's worth to me, but if someone else wants to do that good for them, and maybe at the end I'll look at the picture they make. If someone has a hobby of using tweezers to arrange tiny grains of sand into binary representations of the code to retro videogames, that's stupid. It takes similar levels of pedantic effort to perfectly arrange each grain of sand into the right shape, but in the end you have a bunch of dots of sand and the binary representation doesn't do anything because operating systems can't read sand, so it's functional equivalent to a random arrangement of sand. I suppose if someone had some property of their brain that makes this hobby enjoyable for them I'm not going to say they're not allowed to do it, but to me it's boring both to do AND to hear about or watch, while the colored sand piles are boring to do but might be worth watching a little bit. I feel that videogames are more analogous to the colored art sand: pragmatically useless towards survival in the real world but interesting to experience or view, while speedrunning is analagous to the binary representations: similarly complex in function but more pedantic and way less interesting.
All to say that pressure towards making people more interested in speedrunning is negative because it increases the amount of people with boring hobbies, which funges against more interesting hobbies that they could have. And while this is mostly a subjective opinion from me as someone who thinks speedrunning is boring, I think there is some way in which speedrunning is objectively worse than most hobbies, including broader videogaming, although I'm not entirely sure exactly how to formalize, hence vaguely gesturing at it via the above analogy.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
Is that actually true? Like, it sounds plausible that it could be true, but it also seems plausible that it helps shape culture and behavioral norms, because people are less likely to do things that lead to scorn and mockery. Granted, people probably spend an inordinate amount of effort talking shit on the internet above and beyond its actual value, but there is the potential for actual value buried in there.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
A very interesting read, thank you for posting this here. I think what I'm most interested in that was briefly mentioned but not gone into in detail is the nuances of being an unusually intelligent person within this group and the social dynamics that could result in. Did that make it harder to fit in because you're different from everyone else in some noticeable way? Is there stigma against intelligent people, or is it simply the stigma against perceived cowardice that correlates with intelligence? Did being a strong, competent, aggressive person like everyone else mean they respected you anyway and didn't care about you being smart, or did you have to prove yourself above and beyond what the more typical infantry people did? Or were you able to leverage your intelligence towards making your life even easier than everyone else?
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
I strongly suspect that having a sane, competent government and culture increases the probability of friendly AI, which will require care, cooperation, and long-termism not typically present in a society dominated by extremists (from either side).
As such, planting a tree restabilizing balance in arts and its impact in culture (not tipping the balance oppositely to give right wing extremists an edge, but a return towards balance) may in fact help our grandkids actually retain control of the shade it produces. It's unlikely to be the sole determining factor, but it's one more marginal weight on the scale.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1yr ago
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
This culture war has been happening for decades, it will likely continue for decades into the future. We need to do other stuff to help ourselves in the short term, but not doing this is just going to make the problem continue to get worse in the long run.
I think his point is something like, "Here's something simple, stupid but fun, and completely apolitical. You don't need to take it seriously, you don't need to be on guard against propaganda or hidden agendas, it's a music video that's actually just what it's supposed to be about: music. Why can't we have more modern culture like that?"
Which is a critique against modern media that's always trying to push an agenda and hide messages inside of other pieces of culture.
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