@VoxelVexillologist's banner p

VoxelVexillologist

🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist

1 follower   follows 0 users  
joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC 

				
User ID: 64


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
VoxelVexillologist


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist

				
				
				

				

					1 follower  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC
				


				
					

					
No bio...

				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 64


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
‎

			

				
				

					Hour
					Day
					Week
					Month
					Year
					All
				

			


			
‎

			

	
	

	 Hot Bump Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Farm land stays fixed while food demand falls. Food becomes cheaper.




IIRC we have quite a bit less farmland than a couple generations ago, but produce quite a bit more total with it because of efficiency scaling.  There is a lot of no-longer-under-plow land out there, although much of it wasn't very good for farming anyway.


Food is still cheaper, although I don't think your point is completely wrong.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The average IQ on the internet has dropped a point a year since 2010 I'd say.




We're still stuck in the Eternal September of 1993, when the powers that be decided to allow regular people, not just university students and researchers, onto the Internet.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


For opsec reasons I wasn't actually willing to upload the spreadsheet and have Fable one-shot it




I think "opsec reasons" are ultimately one of the big limiting factors for OpenAI, Anthropic, et al: lots of situations will really prefer something in-house, or at least an ironclad contract about confidentiality.


In the past I've wondered about the long-term market for server-side AI: I'm sure it's non-zero, but I suspect any organization of sufficient size will find themselves rolling out internal hardware and models in the medium term unless the big players keep sufficiently ahead of the commodity models and hardware prices stay high.  I've heard of it being done with open weight models already.


Even without seeing the content the AI models see, I've been curious how much intelligence Google (or governments, presumably) could glean from search queries on an aggregate basis.  Hypothetically, "Wow, internal Microsoft searches about WINE and Linux are up 100x in the last month, I wonder what they're working on?" gives away potential insider information.  Querying the local AI server doesn't give that away.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Relatedly, the UK countries compete separately at the World Cup (it's England specifically, although I think Scotland and Wales have qualified before), but as a combined "Team GB" at the Olympics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


it’s natural fodder for jokes that the French team be so visibly un-French in background




Doesn't France use a definition of "French" that looks more like the American self-definition?  I suppose I can't speak to how widespread the view is within the country, but at least from here it has a reputation, far more than the rest of Europe, of considering France to be a meme, and its adherents to be French.


I guess I'd be interested in hearing a real French perspective on this, if someone is willing to volunteer one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the example of Jews here is complicated because of events last century: "there are fewer Jews than there should be" is a sentiment that I've heard expressed multiple times even as an outsider, and seems broadly believed in the community (willing to hear closer accounts, if anyone wants to offer).  That's a hugely pronatalist meme that probably outweighs things like urbanism and education.


It's unclear that there would be such a consensus on the issue without that shared generational trauma.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think that's a terrible definition, but it still ends up bounded by the amount of information in the environment available to feed into your intelligence.  A third eye would give humans "more information", but probably wouldn't improve our intelligence substantially.  I'm sure there are some perfectly capable blind physicists out there.


The other question is what a bunch of Von Neumann clones could do today.  IIRC the idea of an atomic bomb was at least known before the Manhattan Project started.  It's hard to know in foresight what sort of advances could be made in the next five years, and which will prove intractable.  It'd be awesome to solve fusion power, but it's taken well more than five years so far.  I'm not sure that the geography of "the possible future" is well enough known to make great claims about what could be there: not all advances that can be seen are inherently terrible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I remain unconvinced about (1): it reads as plausible, but I don't think the existence of "superintelligence" is obvious.  It seems just as likely that if intelligence is, say, predictive ability, then it could be bounded by the scale of input data with diminishing returns.  As an idea, we can train a human to a decent fraction of what cutting-edge models do without needing anything near the scope of training material that the Big Kids are crunching, and with under a hundred watts for 20 years or so.


But first we'd need to iron out what intelligence is, which seems murky still beyond "I'll know it when I see it" a la the Turing test.  Is it essentially connected to consciousness (what is that, too)?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maybe related: the "contact us" page has a warrant canary saying no warrants have yet been received in 2023.


Probably just forgetting to update, it, but you never know.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for July 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The US Navy in WWII lost quite a few ships and aircraft to typhoon storms in the Pacific.  Typhoon Cobra sunk three destroyers and killed 790 sailors, but there were a few other storms too.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Would I be wrong to think that an artist in Eastern Europe would be more likely to recognize such symbols than a random US tattoo joint?  I certainly don't have a good feel for the zeitgeist on the ground there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


While solar power is plentiful in space, computing turns the energy consumed into heat, and radiative cooling is not very efficient, especially if you want your chips to run at 400K and not 4000K.




This is at least a solvable design problem, if not a trivial one --- terrestrial temperatures being generally comfortable compared to the extremes of hot and cold in space.  It's a bit different for LEO because the Earth is a big object in view, but otherwise the Sun is hot and dark space is very cold.


The entire planet sits in (mostly) thermal balance between solar radiation, terrestrial energy, and radiative cooling to space.  No particular reason a satellite can't do that too, although again not as trivially as "slap a heat sink and fan on it" that works down here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is that still true? I'm unconvinced "but every Tesla sold could be uploading it's driving camera data over 5G" is quite the win here.  Waymo has a lot of vehicles these days, and could be sneakernet-ing all their data (including LIDAR as a source of truth to train video models) nightly too, just without the bandwidth limits.


Not to mention the entire Street View corpus, which seems likely to cover much of the available value there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What exactly is the profit motive?




Notionally, space colonization removes the shackles of terrestrial resource limits for mineral resources, energy, and space.  The long-term possibilities seem open-ended, but you're not wrong that capitalizing on those within a reasonable time frame from a finance perspective seems questionable.  Can corporate structures handle payoff periods longer than a human generation?  Maybe some of the closer-term prospects (asteroid mining, space data centers), which are all still not close, can make it viable sooner.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
True.  But if you're confident in them, the horizontal scaling is also such that making tens of thousands of them is comparatively cheap, but despite clearly having the ability to do so (literally a factory), they haven't, and there are more Waymos in the area, and Waymo has been scaling aggressively.  The only obvious reason there is that the technology isn't really ready and reworking lots of units would be expensive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was taught that si means if, while sí means yes.  The accent mark is meaningful as written, although not IIRC pronounced differently for single-syllable words.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's at least plausible that in 30-50 years, games like these will be sufficiently "retro" that there isn't enough money in the market for anyone to even bother the lawyers to object.  Already there are games I played as a kid that can't be purchases legitimately (the first two Civilization games, for example), but they can be played online for free and nobody has bothered complaining.  I assume those aren't even worth packaging up (and sorting out licensing, which may be complicated) and selling for 99 cents on Steam, or it'd have been done already.  Other games of that vintage are still sold, though (LucasArts ones, for example).


Related: does anyone care about the licensing implications of passing on an iTunes MP3 library?  The kids are all using Spotify and streaming these days anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I was always under the impression that a core part of the Rationalist project was rejecting prior societal judgement of things and instead autistically determining effectiveness through experiment and first principles.




This seems to be true in practice, but plenty on this forum (and I'd put myself in their number) would consider Chesterton's thoughts on fences to be quite rational as well in the general case.  There is probably room enough to argue that both can coexist as "rational", but that us humans tend to smuggle in our prior value systems at any opportunity:  Left-leaning rationalists (in the Bay Area) find leftism completely rational; right-leaning rationalists (here, I suppose?) find rightism completely rational.  I'm not sure either can really claim a monopoly on "rational truth".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There are also smaller 222mL soda cans, but they are less ubiquitous.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


bona fide private mail delivery company




Isn't this illegal under federal law?  USPS has a granted monopoly on letter delivery.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Isn't "Finance" a pretty wide axis?  If you include everything from angel and VC investors who are looking at such  radical startups all the way to traditional banks evaluating local business cases for loans to highly risk-averse bond funds, it's hard to call it all anything in particular.  SAAS is perhaps overweighted, but that is something that gets acknowledged, and there are some advantages to the model (easy scaling, low up front costs) that make it attractive.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What do you do about an adversary who is willing to aggressively abuse the legal system for the sake of his own agenda?




In the past, the entire federal civil rights infrastructure was in part constructed because local law enforcement couldn't be trusted to fairly apply the law, through some combination of local law enforcement looking the other way, jury nullification of certain outcomes, and so forth.  This isn't a new problem, but this particular avenue seems to be so.  I can't speak to whether Section 1983, for example, could be applied to this case.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for June 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


imposed on radio and television broadcasters




One thing that's often missed about the Fairness Doctrine is that it only ever applied to broadcasters licensing RF spectrum on the basis that it truly is a limited resource.  We can't all start FM stations in the normal band or we'll just interfere with each other and nobody gets radio.  Location, carrier frequency, and ranges/power of transmitters matters a lot for a usable network, and so are already regulated.  If the maximum number of radio stations in a city is maybe a dozen, it makes sense to apply some bounds on the general public interest to what those are transmitting.


The rules do not, and as far as I'm aware, never have applied to point-to-point connections.  Cable TV isn't a limited resource: not only are there more channels on cable, you can just run a second set of wires everywhere and get even more channels.  Fox News and CNN don't have government-issued semi-monopoly status, and you can comparatively easily start your own.  The Internet is also point-to-point routed: everyone gets their own packets, and you can just start your own website.  Not that the economic case for either here is trivial, but the stated reason for non-content-neutral rules on broadcast in the US exists purely because of the monopoly status, and probably don't pass a 1A bar otherwise.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The mistake here is to assume there's widespread ethnic consciousness among native Brits.




From my (American) perspective, this seems like half the problem: the race/immigration elements are obvious, but the intra-Anglo class elements seem just as insidious, and less commented on.  These complaints were, in part it seems, discarded because the girls in question were lower-class and "that's just how they are".


It feels at least a bit like how the opioid epidemic in the US was ignored as long as it stayed in rural areas and effected poors: "that's just how they are".  Even today, it's not hard to find comments from Coastal Elites (tm) expressing indifference to outcomes in "flyover states" or "MAGA country".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for June 17, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Am I correct in seeing that Miami and Monterrey are probably the hottest outdoor venues?  Houston and Dallas both have covered stadiums, but I wouldn't even want to sit around watching at an afternoon outdoor game at either this time of year.  Probably just as dangerous to sitting out-of-shape fans as active professional athletes.


It looks like the Monterrey games are very late in the evening.