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VoxelVexillologist

🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist

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joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC 

				
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VoxelVexillologist


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 18:24:54 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 64


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


these types of arguments are increasingly looking like the ones used against self driving cars




As someone peripherally close to this field, I think there is a categorical distinction between a self-driving car tuned to drive against random road occurrences and an adversarial model that is actively looking for weaknesses and forcing the worst decisionmaking situations.  As a concrete example, self driving cars of today probably don't worry about murals of tunnels adjacent to roadways (Roadrunner style): it's not a common occurrence.  But in war you'd absolutely want your self-driving tank to not drive into such traps, and you'd expect your enemy to mass deploy paint to make it happen all at once.


A bunch of traffic cones on hoods seems able to stop Waymos, for example.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How many "unanimous" rulings have happened because one or two Karens made up their minds and then hen-pecked everyone else into agreeing with them using social tactics instead of logic and reason?




Isn't this dynamic just the plot of Twelve Angry Men?  It's not strictly bad in the context it's played in, nor is it necessarily gendered.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's worth noting there has also been the additional "end of history" meme where people seem to broadly think "wars requiring a draft" are a thing left behind in last century.  Obviously there are examples like Ukraine even today, but I don't think the modal Western man realistically fears being called up by the draft board.  And I'd like to think that such fear would be misplaced --- obviously the ending there is not yet written --- and it seems drones may fill a large fraction of that role going forward (see Ukraine).


In that context, specifically, "but men have the draft" seems a hard-to-win equality argument.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


siphoning of scarce youth labour to subsidise the abundant elderly,




This seems like the start of an argument to means test Social Security, which has historically been a very unpopular argument.  But it may be one that has to be made, absent Fully Automated Gay Space Communism happening within my lifetime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Citation needed, for such a bold sweeping claim. I have taught CS at a fairly high-tier US school for a long enough period of time, and we did not hand out As if you just "turn up".




Maybe not at your school, but Harvard (hardly a no-name example) currently awards something like 85% of its grades as 'A's.  It's gotten bad enough that the faculty plan on capping the number of 'A' grades handed out starting next year, which has spilled a nontrivial amount of ink in arguments back and forth.  Yale is also considering similar actions.


I don't think it's quite universal (it seems more an issue at top-tier schools), but it is often acknowledged as a problem.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Iran's drone and missile arsenal doesn't depend on the power plants and oil refineries.




Not in the short term, certainly, but it would impact the long-term economics of a future regime pretty negatively.  IIRC Iraq didn't manage to fully rebuild its damaged infrastructure from 1991 until after 2003.  Missile factories require power and raw materials.


But actually destroying it isn't cheaply or quickly reversible, and makes a friendly future regime less plausible.




Even if they don't get killed after surrendering, they would probably get Maduroed, their lives as they knew them over.




If anything, it seems the Trump doctrine is more flexible with this than the Bush era: the rest of that regime is still running Venezuela, with the, uh, implication leading to some foreign policy changes, not "we're bringing democracy and planning elections".


And honestly the changes being requested don't sound that onerous to me: stop funding proxies and instability in the region, stop enrichment, and probably tone down the rhetoric on US/IL and internal jackboots, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.  Not saying it's an easy ask, but it doesn't seem to include "submit to international war crimes/human rights trials".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly Finance Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


in a scenario where banking and payment infrastructure is shut down entirely, what problems am I trying to solve with cash?




I think this is a worthwhile question: I don't use cash often, but a few times I've needed to settle up things like group meals ("no split checks", ugh) it's often a hassle to deal with change since nobody has much.  Can't pay $27 with just twenties, but people aren't ready to round to the twenty.  Few carry enough smaller bills to break a twenty.  We usually end up doing Venmo or whatever.


Not sure what to suggest, honestly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Barrel-aged spirits are a classic example: scotches are not infrequently in that age range.


On the other hand, I've heard a lot of people in the business remark that it makes starting costs pretty overwhelming.  At best you can start selling gin and vodka, or reselling out-of-house product while you wait for yours to age.  Depending on jurisdiction you get to pay inventory/property tax on it too while you wait.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The rest is just a slow grind towards bureaucratic inertia and shipping pace has fallen off several cliffs.




It has been my observation that engineering productivity often scales sub-linearly with team size.  Coordination between developers isn't zero-overhead, but it can still be "faster" (to market) overall than a small, dedicated team.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
IIRC there is a good amount of data suggesting that engineering teams have shrunk substantially in the last few generations: with computers (spreadsheets, CFD/FEM, digital control systems) product development from bridges to aircraft is at least abstractly more productive.  Gone are the days of big rooms of draftsmen, in are a couple of CAD technicians (and they're better about answering "will it fit?" questions), and the parts themselves are getting optimized and closer-packed.  Compare a car engine bay from the 60s to today, where there is almost no free space left (does make maintenance a pain sometimes, though), and efficiency is hugely up.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Isn't that loosely true of everything following from division of labor?  We get more out of farmland when we ascend the technology ladder and start building cars and tractors, not when we maximize the number of field hands.


There seems to be some assumption of "big AI central planning", when adapting existing (market) distributed consensus mechanisms is a possible, and maybe even more plausible, route.  Maybe we need hundreds of agents (previously human) compiling The Beige Book regularly and distributing it, not a single Five Year Plan from a hallucinating AI.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think I'd push back on that: the general examples of high-trust societies that get brought out are often either totalitarian (by American standards) and/or have very different (looser) privacy norms than Americans are used to. Singapore bans chewing gum, and is happy enough to cane tourists caught being mischievous with spray paint in ways I suspect apply to locals too.   The Nordics require a degree of financial transparency that would at least make most Americans I know a bit uncomfortable.  And most of these also depend heavily on distributed public stigma for violating social norms in ways that look rather like a panopticon.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Now we fight a new fight, one of cypherpunks against totalizing surveillance and enforcement.




When I was younger, this seemed a fun sort of ideal.  Now that I'm older, it sometimes seems like the only thing keeping our moderate-trust society from falling into a low-trust society is that digital everything makes the verify in "trust but verify" cheap.


A few decades back you'd see "no out of town checks" because nobody knew if your bank out of state existed.  Today, merchants (maybe excepting tradesmen who have other recovery options and dislike merchant fees) often dislike checks and prefer credit cards, where the system can verify available balance before completing the transaction.  The technology is certainly fallible in its own ways, but better than poorly-trained human operators is a low bar.  That said, the line between "high-trust" and "totalitarian panopticon" isn't completely clear in my mind, and people occasionally call out analog high-trust societies as stifling and such.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Caused" is a bit strong, but "failed to deter" is a plausible view if you point to non-reactions to Georgia (in fact, pulling out a "reset" button accepting it) and that "The 1980s called and want their foreign policy back" line at the debate when Romney claimed Russia was a potential adversary merely 2 years before Crimea.  Frankly, the flip from that to Russia-gate makes me take the left's positions on international relations as deeply un-serious.


Although the other side seems to have never met a proposed intervention they didn't like, which is its own failure mode.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is Trump's aura just that legendary that even the suicidal Ayatollah would give up his primary ambition of the last half century just because of the orange man mogging him?




I think there is a semi-coherent argument that the Iranian revolution's ability to "mog", as you say, the Carter administration is a large part of how the regional relationships worked out the way they did.  From allowing the Shah to get deposed, to the return of the Ayatollah in a sealed train car Air France charter plane, to the embassy hostage crisis (and Eagle Claw), much of the regime's legitimacy plausibly comes from American own-goals.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly Finance Thread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What do you think the chances are that we are currently in a large (AI related or not AI related) bubble that will pop?




The last few tech-related meta cycles have both changed everything and not consistently boomed or busted from a stock price perspective.  Personal computing in the '80s took over everything, but even Apple's stock has been up and down and looked like a loser before Jobs returned.  The Internet around 2000 looked like it would change everything --- and it did --- but my pets.com shares were a bad idea.


I'd bet AI is similar, and picking a specific single winner is improbable.  Weak predictions: local models can do most of what people want; big models don't scale much past human abilities, but enough to be game-changing; AI doesn't think truly creatively well enough to replace human cultural achievements, but it's consensus-centering output may be a pragmatic counterbalance to rage-seeking social media algorithms.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


He’s an idea of a person, and has successfully convinced Democrats that the idea he is projecting will win and therefore allow them to acquire more power.




Is this intended as a Nietzschean "will-to-power" joke?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for May 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Most of the advice I've seen suggests that injuries like this are a lot more common if you're really pushing limits.  The advice I see on sport-specific fora (lifting for other sport fitness, not lifting qua lifting) is to avoid small maximal sets, and that 1RM measurement isn't worth the injury risk.


Strength training is good, but it can be good enough much better than sitting on the couch without hitting an exertion requiring grunting or even breaking (much of) a sweat.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Imagine this justification used for crimes:


[state]: pay the fine for running a red light


[person]: but i didnt run a red light


[state]: Well someone ran that red light, and we can't let it be known that running red lights will go unpunished. You were nearby and I've already captured you, it would be too much work to go get the real culprit if it turns out it wasn't you.




It's not quite analogous, but IIRC some states have written their traffic laws such that the owner has strict liability, regardless of whether they actually drove the car through the light.  "I didn't run a red light" "But someone you lent your car to (you didn't report it stolen) did, so pay up" isn't that Kafka-esque.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm sure at least a few folks have had to sit through a threat brief involving not falling for a loose rewording of Cunningham's Law.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Of course excluding "military secrets but art", "private personal information but art", etc.




I'm old enough to remember the first few bytes of the leaked AACS master key (09 f9 11 ...) because people made so much art, some of it decent, out of it.  Controversy over that was a big part of the downfall of Digg, but you're not wrong that I'd probably feel differently if it was nuclear launch codes and not content protection keys.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I haven't played that one, thanks for the example.  I have played BioShock (and Infinite) and Dishonored, though.  Maybe I just missed that one: I'm not a PS gamer, and missed the PC release and don't really play that many single player games anymore.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This trope feels very gendered: I can't think of any comparable examples where the player ends up playing dad to a boy.  I'm uncertain if that's a fundamental type difference (sons grow up and become protectors themselves, daughters narratively always need protectors -- not agreeing with the position, just observing the trope), or a difference in magnitude that protecting daughters has a stronger emotional valence and makes a better story.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Also there exist unfalsifiable yet anonymous algorithms for digital vote counting where you could be sure your vote was part of the count via a hash...




I don't think any of these systems have solved the last-mile "assigning digital IDs to people" in a practical way.  We've had enough trouble getting RealID drivers licenses for things like flying that I doubt we could enforce smart cards for voting any time soon, and I bet both sides would oppose it today for different reasons.


ETA: and that's all before you get the fun chance to explain the cryptography to the median voter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.




CS Lewis had a point there, I think.