The_Golem101
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User ID: 548
The_Golem101
24d ago
I mean I'm not impressed with Musk, Rubio or Vance on Twitter, and all of them seem a bit deranged on it - they're suffering from brainrot from the medium it seems to me. Though I did include some other points which are more not liking their priorities and policies, some of that also seems to be them playing to the social media crowd - maybe I'm wrong there however.
The_Golem101
24d ago
Is Vance not pretty heavily rotted from online discourse too? He seems to have gone a deep end in some ways at least.
I saw his interview on Joe Rogan and thought he was someone who could actually be good: a moderating influence on Trump, an adult who can get some things done while being stabilizing in general versus Trump's more insane flips. I really liked his book too, and thought he might have some of the right instincts. I haven't been impressed so far, and his behavior in the Zelensky meeting and in general on social media have been the opposite at least in my perception, it seems to maximize for heat vs light in the real world.
Twitter shitposting seems to be highly contagious in general, with Rubio recently wading in to shout at Poland, which wasn't my idea of diplomacy. Seems like a clown show in general, rather than showing strength as I assume they intend.
I'm really interested in the opinions of others though... what do you all think?
The_Golem101
1mo ago
Certainly Russia claims Ukraine violated the agreements, and they shouted about it loudly and at every opportunity, but didn't they attack Donetsk airport with heavy regular forces (including TOS-1 thermobarics), which was why Minsk 1 collapsed, and launched cross border artillery strikes plus regular army commitments throughout both agreements (while naturally denying everything even as the craters smoked)?
It seems harsh to describe Ukraine resuming fighting following these breaches and putting the agreed reforms on hold as critical violations, but not mentioning the Russian actions prior that the Ukrainians used as justification (right or wrong). That would be serious memory holing too right?
I certainly agree removing Russian as an official language was a huge own goal. Plus, the reliance on Azov plus other militias due to the weakness of Ukraine's regulars in 2014/15 was very poor optics.
In any case, the real devastation of the population across the Donbass seems to have happened post 2022, with mass conscription into poorly equipped units (the mosin brigades) and people fleeing en masse from the advancing Russians. The region seems pretty much wrecked now, in the arms of Russia but not seen as proper Russians - at least as per Strelkov (though he certainly liked to doompost - hence his arrest).
The_Golem101
1mo ago
It's a fair point that famines are far more complex than straight up shooting your political opponents - but I think you're making a historical error to include things like the Bengal famine and even the Irish potato famine in with the holodomor uncritically - especially using the same term for both Ukraine and Ireland.
The Irish potato famine has lots of history - but basically it was the confluence of the potato blight interacting with a growing industrialization (meaning people no longer had craft activities to fall back on) and pressure from population with limited land rights (their small plots could only grow potatoes on the marginal zones at yields to support their families). The economic and support system at the time was "laissez faire" - although there were some direct transfers from British during the first blights, this dried up later in 1847/48 ish as a liberal government came in during a time of recession (I think, it has been a while since I read about it all here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781315708522/famines-european-economic-history-declan-curran-lubomyr-luciuk-andrew-newby). Interestingly the areas that kept exporting typically did better: support was paid out of the wealth of local landowners and those who were exporting higher value cash foodstuffs (cattle for example) could afford to cover the cost of importation of famine relief foodstuffs - the exports weren't typically the key issue. The real key issue was the laissez faire attitude of the British in general to social support at the time leading to little support from Westminster, the changing economic model giving people no diversified income and the fact that both the central government and local landowners had little connection to those they ruled. They didn't need their votes (they didn't have any), there was a local surplus of labor and they didn't feel a brotherhood. It was horrible, but not a holodomor - it was pretty medieval attitudes to smallholders and those you rule over hitting industrial realities.
Churchill and the Bengal famine we don't have enough time to cover in detail, but it does seem like he's unfairly smeared - unlike the governor at the time (Victor Hope) who deserves serious sanction for taking the word of others that everything was fine and not being at all proactive. Contrary to routing supplies away, Churchill did the reverse, constantly raising it with Roosevelt, unfortunately the pressure from the Japanese and the ongoing demands of Operation Torch (the US landings in North Africa, which needed huge logistics) meant that he didn't get much help and British shipping was tied up or depleted. However, again it was a case of failing to divert enough aid to the region and act fast enough, rather than requisitioning food out of hungry mouths. The central source (I think only?) for Churchill being a shit in the crisis comes from the private notes of Wavell - who took over and was really annoyed at the lack of action. We only have his account, which might be accurate but it doesn't seem to match up with what we have documented about Churchill's actions and that Wavell didn't know about, for example how much effort was going on behind the scenes to bring grain in - although too little too late.
The Ukrainian Holodomor however is much worse than those two examples above, and represented something between a complete indifference to millions of deaths in order to secure export earnings and a deliberate attempt to use famine to break the resistance of Ukraine and other zones to the Soviet Union. Soviet agriculture was a mess, they wanted to industrialize and needed money for that but the prices they were paying to farmers didn't encourage them to sell, which led to things like the "Scissors" crisis of the early 1920s where they just stopped selling to cities given the prices the Soviets offered and they couldn't be compelled via force, they could hide the food or plant less. On top of that, Ukraine and outlying regions were more anti Soviet, especially in rural areas where industrialization was non existent. Once the Soviet state was powerful enough to force the issue, Stalin collectivized the farmers (pushed them all onto standard plots where output was more legible). This reduced sharply reduced yields for several reasons, but meant that everything was controlled and could be seized, from now on the famines fell on the countryside rather than the cities, and famines became much more common. Then, the real killer was the forced export targets to earn foreign currency, which were impossible to meet in bad years of which there are many.
We can argue if the holodomor was genocide (many of Stalins actions were - like to the Crimean Tartars), but it's using famine as a tool to break political opposition and knowingly creating one to achieve a target of industrialization, unlike those above where it was a failure or indifference of a colonial authority to provide enough aid to a region rather than using famine as a club. Both the Bengal and Irish potato famines were a serious black mark on the British empire, the Irish one was a large rallying cry for independence (Bengal less so, Indian elites at the time looked at their share of the blame and didn't think it tactical to focus on at the time) - but they weren't premeditated like the Holodomor and efforts were taken to offset them, just badly.
However, the colonial cases point to the fact that people who lack representation and who the elites just don't need are in a really shit position famine wise (one of Sen's positions), and conditions like theirs combined with a technological shift can create terrible results. Hopefully never relevant for AI. Hopefully.
The_Golem101
2mo ago
But your Ukrainian deaths are the Russian ministry figure? No one else is close to that - surely ending up at Russia's figure is just trusting them with extra steps as a result given there's no other source?
Mediazona's (that you trust?) confirmed dead estimates are something like 60k for Ukraine and 120-160k for Russia as of Jan 1st 2025, why do you believe their Russian dead but then think they've lowballed the Ukrainians by nearly an order of magnitude? Sure you can claim they're an underestimate and you've added your own research, but aren't all these other organizations doing actual research too? Could that flip a 2:1 ratio in favor of Ukraine to a 1:5 in favor of Russia? Wouldn't you have to bump Russian dead estimates up too anyway on the same logic?
The_Golem101
2mo ago
Thank you for your answer, like you say, we shall see in time once the fog of war lifts. It's certainly interesting how different two different views can be, even with the same events being played out in front of them.
I know this is close to the end of the thread's life, but could I ask why you find the Russian statements and figures to be trustworthy (for example, that they're achieving a 6 to 1 death ratio), while the others are clowns? Why not distrust them as well, if you have serious concerns over the accuracy in information in the war in other cases? What is it about the Russian information that makes it more trustworthy than other sources?
The_Golem101
2mo ago
Yes, there's not the same database of these videos vs say tank kills, but there's at least 70-100 videos of Russians either killing themselves or asking their buddies to kill them (as of a count done in late 2024 ish - I'm going from other forum discussions here) - and that's just where a Ukrainian spotter drone happened to be watching. I'm not sure if I can link them on this forum for obvious reasons - each one has a person dying, often via holding a grenade to their face or chest, but you can find them.
Allegedly some North Koreans killed themselves rather than be captured, but most of these videos are where someone has taken a shrapnel wound and decides to kill themselves. The crazy thing is how fast they make that choice, this isn't people who expect any degree of medical care or support in being evacuated. It really seems like that at least for some Russian units on some sectors if you're badly wounded you're a dead man, and they know it, meaning that their casualty ratios must be WW1 tier for killed vs wounded, or worse.
Obviously we can't know the exact figures, but there hasn't been anything comparable released for the Ukrainian side reported or shown. Russian drone operations are more rudimentary than Ukraine's, so maybe they're just not getting the footage or sharing it, but there does seem to be a serious difference between the two sides in this regard, partly due to NATO support both in and out of country for the wounded. It's certainly telling that when Russian TV showed what they alleged was a Ukrainian killing their buddy they had to use footage of a Russian shooting their friend with the watermarks taken off (https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-killing-soldier-drone-video/33041837.html), they didn't seem to have better footage to show.
The_Golem101
2mo ago
We're unlikely to come to a consensus on this forum, there is simply too much fog of war over the conflict.
However, I would suggest that those Ukrainian casualty figures are far too high - they're the Russian figures and don't seem to be that credible versus observations. For example, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of extended periods where Ukraine is at a higher casualty ratio on the front. Firstly, the ratios of verified destroyed equipment mean that is pretty unlikely. Secondly, from internal Russian comments/leaks such as when Prigozhin went mask off about the Donbass front it seems certain they're taking heavier losses vs the Ukrainians in the key sectors, although they had more meat to spare. Lastly, casualties like that for Ukraine would lead to events we have not yet seen. For example, Russia lacking manpower early on led to the rout at Izium when Ukraine found gaps in the line, and nothing like that has happened in the reverse. While we have uncertainty over the exact figures, we can see their shadows at least, and that can bound the range.
I would also guess Russian casualty clearing is abysmal - there's no similar footage of Ukrainians killing themselves when wounded vs the abundance on the Russian/NK side, so the ratio of dead per casualty taken for Russia must be pretty horrific.
Overall we'll have to see. Ukraine may see collapse this year, but Ukraine is not yet fighting like an army defeated, and Russia's materiel/economic losses might compound first slowly then all at once - big classes of military equipment are functionally archeotech for their defence sector and their stocks aren't infinite. Like Wellington said: "Hard pounding this, gentlemen, we'll see who pounds like longest".
The_Golem101
2mo ago
By tactics I meant that those beliefs could actually have utility under some circumstances. Again I'm sure that people believe that classes of their opponents are deluded or illegitimate, it just doesn't really help much and launching a war on the belief your opponent isn't a real country anyway doesn't stop them fighting back.
The_Golem101
2mo ago
That's certainly part of people like Strelkov's views as per "85 Days in Slavyansk" - and I agree that denying your opponent nationhood/legitimacy is a useful tactic that many groups have made use of, no disagreement there.
I just don't think it makes much sense to argue historical word games around it when the fake people in question have sunk a good chunk of your Black Sea fleet, routed Guards divisions and your economy is in real trouble as your new BRICS buddies aren't buying any exports other than gas. Ukrainians certainly now feel like a people, and you're unlikely to argue them out of it with a new paper - he has to get his economy back on track and do something to sort out his horrible attrition ratios if he's going to apply his will to them by force.
The_Golem101
2mo ago
I think you might have missed a bit of why the Lex interview focused on the question of Putin's reliability and goals - what is looming over the current game board is the upcoming negotiations for ceasefire conditions, that's why it consumed all the oxygen in the room. It does make sense in this context for Ukraine to lay out its position that Putin has made and broken treaty commitments before, and they need security guarantees to make sure that a ceasefire isn't just a way for Russia to sort out its force generation issues and have another go in a few months. That's their minimum position, and while they won't "concede" territory, they may well agree that they aren't getting all that they want there, and a deal will be thrashed out. It's very important for their security and therefore survival that they get this, and so they will raise it as a key talking point.
Meanwhile, Putin's position is crazy town, he still wants full war goals, which is a bit of a "lol, lmao" position for someone whose military position is as weak as it is currently (they are struggling to source any tanks and tubes for the first time over sections of the front, meaning that their fires superiority will have to come increasingly from an expansion of air, which seems impossible medium term) and whose country is starting to seriously suffer under the economic pressure. For example, "Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded to the initial reports of the Turkish peace proposal, stating that "freezing" the frontline is "a priori unacceptable" for the Kremlin and that Russian President Vladimir Putin's previously stated conditions for ending the war — which amounted to full Ukrainian capitulation — remain "fully relevant." - that includes Ukrainian disarmament and massive additional territorial transfers.
Zelensky laying out a solid but reasonable ceasefire position to Trump and make Putin seem crazy is 80% of his US facing work currently, and he's doing a reasonable job of it I would guess. Some evidence of that is that his official position is pretty close to what you predict as the end state, without throwing out all of his haggling chips before he even starts.
A better interviewer would have drawn out far more interesting quotes with far better questions of course, but we had the interviewer we had, who sadly was Lex. There have been a lot of people who have talked about the different positions on the war over the years, and Pro vs Anti Ukrainians have written books on the topic, it's certainly not under discussed. We could discuss it here if you're interested, I have some opinions - but Putin's positions on the topic are certainly curious. He genuinely believes that Ukraine is a historical fiction, there are plots everywhere to split them off from Russia and that they need to forcibly reunited and driven to a satellite status - that was his interview with Tucker (I'm less impressed by his choice to devote all his airtime to ahistorical ramblings on Vladislav the Wise than you there) and his really odd paper in 2021 (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181). The problem of discussing his position is that... it isn't internally consistent, though it's certainly a mistake. For example, even if it was true (rather than bad historical fiction) his invasion was the perfect way to create a national identity, I literally couldn't plan anything better as a creation myth for Ukraine.
However, would you like a summary of roughly what the Ukrainian positions are vs people like Strelkov? It won't be why Russia launched the invasion (Prigożyn was pretty clear on that, and I think he was telling the truth), but it would give a steelman for both sides.
The_Golem101
2mo ago
Russia's untapped capabilities here are pretty much just nuclear, their conventional force isn't enough to disable any significant section of Ukraine's industry - that's rather why we're here. And any strike on a nuclear facility is not a trivial act, it is one that would lead to incredible blowback - literally - across Europe. It would be very difficult to prevent all these small countries from acquiring weapons outside of diplomatic pressure, which abandoning Ukraine and thus undermining all your other commitments would remove any leverage across all these small non nuclear states.
It's unlikely to be a key factor in the current war anyway - Russia is likely to win or lose over the coming year conventionally and nuking your way out of sanctions isn't going to change that. It's more setting the scene for the next war - security guarantees or nukes I guess to underpin Ukrainian security. Russia has them, and if America does not wish to pay for Ukraine's guarantees isn't this the better option for thrifty US isolationist nationalists without a dog in the fight?
The_Golem101
2mo ago
Nuclear latency (the time taken to acquire a nuclear weapon if a blank ish cheque is given and the government says go) is low for any country with nuclear reactors. Ukraine has several, as does much of East Asia. Under a year most likely, though there would be external signs that other powers would pick up on, probably.
As a general comment, a lot of commentators seem to miss that other countries than the US/NATO have agency, and this is one ways this crops up. If the US truly throws Ukraine under the bus, as some suggest would somehow both be the moral thing to do and in the USA's own interests, both Ukraine and other non nuclear powers would need to look to their full defense within a short period. Nuclear weapons might well be a part of that, and other countries are watching too. Zelensky himself may also have limited room to resist those calls either, Ukrainians I know have settled into an awakened wrath of Kipling fame, including those actively in the conflict, there's still a lot of fight there.
"I was surprised by the reverence the United States has for Russia’s nuclear threat. It may have cost us the war. They treat nuclear weapons as some kind of God. So perhaps it is also time for us to pray to this God." Oleksii Yizhak - who apparently was dropping rhetorical fire too.
The_Golem101
4mo ago
I think it's the correct thing to do.
First, it's far from clear that we're in the 11th hour here, though the war is moving towards an endgame. Russia's stated conditions do not align with the military reality on the ground, for example from the ISW on the recent talks in Turkey: "Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded to the initial reports of the Turkish peace proposal, stating that "freezing" the frontline is "a priori unacceptable" for the Kremlin and that Russian President Vladimir Putin's previously stated conditions for ending the war — which amounted to full Ukrainian capitulation — remain "fully relevant." ". A frozen front with protections for Ukraine aren't enough it seems for the Kremlin, they want far more, which means that this war is not ending in the next weeks or months. This is true for Biden, and this is true for Trump, unless you accept that the Ukrainian military is about the rout, which I don't. You may think so, but if that assumption is not accurate a lot of things you're confused about might slot into place.
Next, Russia has now received direct support from North Korea, which was taken as an escalation in the eyes of Biden's administration, which stated as much. Not only Russia gets to set red lines and act, and the US wants to show that Russia's dreams of forcing a full capitulation of a sovereign nation via escalating force isn't going to work. It seems likely that longer range strikes into Russia will have a marginal but material effect on the frontline - Ukraine has hit ammo dumps and airfields deep in Russia before, it's just able to raise the tempo now.
Ukraine is always the underdog, and now that Russia has got more meat into the fight vs mid 2022 there's unlikely to be sweeping advances into Russian held territory, but they're not out of the fight or broken. From the US point of view, the fastest way of setting the stage for peace might be:
A) Russia needs to understand that it has failed and will fail to achieve its full objectives, which were insane anyway. No escalation of force (further strikes on civilian infrastructure or drafting of their populations/the population of North Korea) by the Russian military will achieve this, and the US has solid escalation dominance in the conventional space if it chooses to use it.
B) Ukraine will be unlikely to see its 2022 borders at the end of the conflict, and needs to accept that unless the Russian military comes apart in its push (unlikely, but not impossible, their losses are staggering). However, a concession needs to come with serious support from the west attached, and the partnership needs to be maintained in order that Ukraine doesn't decide to take matters into their own hands and test their nuclear latency. Ukraine isn't a US puppet, they get agency too, and if NATO abandons them this is a more unstable scenario for NATO and Russia.
Honestly, Trump might well take similar steps when he is in if Russia doesn't accept point A), this isn't as clear cut a scenario as you think.
Finally, as a funny point given the length of all our posts, do we know that the US actually has authorized long range missiles? Nothing official seems to have come out, and the missile strike may not have been ATACMS. The fog of war is real.
The_Golem101
7mo ago
You may be missing some uniquely UK context here, being a late arrival to our fair shores and having no familial history of time we last stood alone in WW2.
It's not actually anything to do with Agincourt, it's from much later (possibly related to a cuckold's horns - calling your opponent a cuckold is an old sport - there's a brilliant banner from our civil war on the topic) but no one appears to have a definitive answer to its real origins other than the earliest photograph is from 1901 (it doesn't even appear in cartoons or drawings before). It was used a lot during WW2 as a more mocking form of the V for victory when we were standing alone against invasion, playing on Churchil's use of the symbol, and can be summarized as "Up yours".
It always signals disrepect, defiance (typically of authority) and a general "fuck off". It's not a number or related to archery, and it seems a bit... uncharitable to assume others are stupid here especially if you yourself are running off an urban legend yourself. The meaning is clear.
The_Golem101
9mo ago
I have to admit my belief in this being "bullshit porkbarrel politics" has dropped from a 80 to 20 on an indexed basis, based on your comments.
I do think that if Trump tried anything like this, especially following on from a similar policy being slapped down by the supreme court, there would be far more protests. However, that's kind of hard to prove.
Plus, loan forgiveness still seems a fairly bad idea, independant from if it's legal...
The_Golem101
10mo ago
That does sound more reasonable, is there precedent that the president does have the power to make this forgiveness without involving congress?
It seems risky if this becomes the norm from an outside view, and could well lead to tit for tat... is it just because they're technically loans (you owe the federal government) rather than a literal targeted payment from the federal government to a group chosen by the president? In economic terms they're kind of fungible, but I assume there's fewer special interest groups to neatly forgive so it constrains the president at least a bit...
One thing that confuses me as a non American is the details of how Biden ignored the Supreme Court here... did he find a loophole, or did just a drive a bus through the ruling and dared them to do something?
Surely it must be the first and its loopholery, but I'm not entirely sure how the rules work in these cases. For example it certainly seems like the court gets de facto ignored with New York gun laws, with high degrees of non cooperation from lower courts and law enforcement. To what degree can people just ignore the court and get away with it? That seems... odd.
The_Golem101
10mo ago
I mean, there's most of the rest of the Black Sea coast, including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Novorossiysk that doesn't get iced up. There are fully landlocked countries worldwide, they don't get to invade their way to the coast as a little treat. Now, moving the Black Sea fleet all there would involve expanding the port facilities, but that's not impossible (they already partly did it due to the constant Sevastapol attacks). Plus, they did already de facto have that warm water port and were in no position to lose it prior to their invasion.
Meanwhile, that warm water port is now being hit repeatedly by strikes, and the Ukrainians are working down the list of Black Sea fleet vessels one at a time, which are going to be a nightmare to replace. Fortifying its claims/access to Crimea were one of the aims of Russia's invasion for sure, it's just that it seems to have been totally counterproductive from a strategic point of view.
Possibly our difference here is that there's a different meaning to legitimate being used.
Firstly, it's probably obviously not legitimate for countries to just straight up steal strategic assets or resources from a neighbour, even if it's useful.
However, powerful countries cannot accept that their security would be at a partial or full veto from a small power, especially if they have the ability to stop it, so under this threshold some could argue Russia had a legitimate right to annex the port. Maybe the US response in the Cuban missile crisis was legitimate by that standard, and a similar case. However, my disagreement here is that Ukraine didn't have the ability to threaten Russia in any meaningful way as of 2022 or even 2014, other ports were available for the fleet, and Russia's navy is at best a very minor source of their overall security. It's hard to put this as a legitimate reason to launch a full scale war to annex territory and create a puppet state (their initial war goal at least), and in reality has been totally counterproductive, partly as Ukraine has a legitimate interest to fight back and sink most that fleet now, and NATO has a legitimate reason to help them. That's the issue with fuzzy or subjective legitimacy, both sides can seem to have it.
As a final spicy take to develop that prior point: their navy is kind of... crap? Pointless? Like, can it contest the waves versus a naval power equal or greater to Italy? What's it really for then? They can do expeditionary operations to friendly countries without it, they can't do expeditionary operations to hostile countries with it.
The_Golem101
1yr ago
So, perhaps this too much of a war question, rather than a culture war one, but I'm having trouble understanding why Iran is launching attacks on random cargo ships in the Red Sea via proxies in Yemen, and now apparently directly https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-67811929 .
Ok, at least some of the vessels are Israeli linked, and they're hitting at US warships, but my confusion is what this hopes to achieve. Operation Preying Mantis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis seems an apt concern for the Iranians as a repeat: they cant hope to exert serious pressure on Israel's economy, and the moment they sink or damage a warship they're getting hit hard surely? And is it earning them any friends?
Meanwhile Hezbolah is Iranian backed and maybe directly controlled, and has done little in the current conflict. If you want to apply pressure to Israel, isnt that the way, especially given that Hezbolah has resources Hamas does not and could seriously threaten another front that would need actual Israeli resources. Iran isnt going all out with its assets, or the assets in cases are refusing to for self preservation.
So why hit ships? Is it really all they can do? Do they assume the US cant respond? Maybe it earns them some respect from the muslim world for standing up, but it just seems... odd. I'm not exactly Bismark, but I'm clearly missing something.
The_Golem101
1yr ago
Germany declared war on the United States, which was very welcome to the UK and Winston Churchill. There was actually some debate in congress I believe about whether Pearl Habour meant that the US should get involved at all in Europe, and it may have hypothetically gone the other way. The Soviets did not declare war on the Japanese until late in the war, and visa versa the Japanese did not feel under obligation to declare on the Soviets when Hitler launched Barbarossa.
Hitler for some reason thought the US was weak and it was in Germany's interests to openly declare war, which was... bold.
The_Golem101
2yr ago
I agree, it's a different point I'm trying to make. You may be asked if you want to be poly or join a polycule at an EA party, some may claim it's better, but not nothing will be gated from you if you say no in my experience, the seniors (other than Elizer? Who isn't a central EA example) aren't.
The_Golem101
2yr ago
It's true - that possibly needs a bit of context. Broadly:
It was an EA party in a big city hosted by an EA figure (who wasn't poly).
I went, talked to people and socialized. Some of that was interesting in the context of their work (that a solid part of the challenge of cultured meat is not the science, but the law, that was my legal policy comment, but it's not a work setting).
There were poly people at the party, making out in one corner of the room. They were maybe 5 out of 100 people. More were probably poly there but not so... in your face about it.
I can see how it's a bit offputting, it was to me, but it's more "those crazy kids" than pressure to be poly from my experience.
The_Golem101
2yr ago
Without doxxing myself too hard, my experience of EA has been a bit different to what's described above in relation to polyarmory at least. N=1, but my perspective might be of use for a few people who have not experienced the EA subculture themselves.
It's possibly due to the fact I was not in AI risk or anything Bay Area related/rationalist adjacent, but the majority of people I've interacted with in EA are not poly. In addition, while younger EA parties have fair amounts of poly people (which can be a bit jarring, you're discussing legal policy with someone and four people of various genders are making out in lingerie in the corner), the high ranking figures who control donations and jobs I've interacted with are either explictly monogamous or they show no sign of being poly. The higher ups tend to be older (poly tends to be a young persons' game), and those with standard academic careers, lots of papers and titles tend away from poly as well (one girl rising in the movement who I know fairly well made sure she was not seen to be poly when dating as it would undermine her respectability, and is now in a mono power couple with another senior EA).
However, it's certainly possible I've missed out on the pressure from polycules, being male, already established skill wise and not just out of college, not living in a EA house, and now married. I'm not sure if there are any published figures on how many EAs are poly, I would be very interested to see them, but my guess is its far less than people expect, and it tapers off as you go up the ranks/experience.
The feel of EA orgs and their culture also varies hugely, from things like assessing grants/admin, to interventions and direct giving today, planning for unlikely but still grounded scenarios, all the way to the very theoretical work on philosophy, AI and X risks, EA is far larger than the Bay Area and its culture. EA orgs tend to be pretty male (maybe 70:30 by my guess), but I think that's mostly due to the nature of what is being researched rather than hostility to women, and are pretty desperate to appeal to as diverse a group as possible.
There a few interesting dynamics however - one is that there is far more smart grads right out of college who want to be EAs than there is useful work for them to do, unless you have some rare skills, experience or papers under your belt it can be hard to get a position, and that can eat you up and generate unhealthy pressure. Secondly, the nature of the work can make it very seductive and high pressure - you're working on catastrophic scenarios and some potentially very interesting and serious things - and that has burnt out good people that I know. They felt that if the catastrophe happened tomorrow their guilt that they had not done more would consume them forever: they would literally have damned civilization. The pay is lower than for other equivalent positions and the work life balance can be odd, especially if you only live in EA houses.
I worry we're getting lost in defining terms here, possibly my mistake.
Making incorrect statements and sticking by them certainly seems to be one type of brainrot (as per OP), but I think it's fair to broaden it out, and to be clear my definition of brainrot isn't "maximizing for heat", though that's part of it, it's also more generally that many people senior in the US government seem to be basically shitposting on twitter. That seems really odd to me, and I include Vance and Rubio in that shitposting category.
I honestly wanted to discuss with people why that might be the case, and if others agree with the shitposting accusation, but if you don't want to discuss that, that's fair too.
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