campfireSmores
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User ID: 539
campfireSmores
1yr ago
This exchange reminds me of this sketch:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9kB7Byoe_Uo
I should write a blog post about the philosophy of sketch comedy or something.
campfireSmores
1yr ago
Well ultimately one's reaction to OP's story rests partially on how much you take his description at face value.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
I haven't seen it, but some people speak highly of the 2018 Tomb Raider movie.
Edit: there's also this scene from the 2007 Postal movie
campfireSmores
2yr ago
Well I think it's fine to borgify characters that no one on earth cares about, like the protagonist of Comix Zone. They're also developing Toejam and Earl and Space Channel 5 games, btw.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
I don't think the initial story is small potatoes. The initial story is the VP of the US trading money for influence.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored
Hunter Biden was employed in highly paid positions despite being a very unstable guy. Joe Biden was a partner or possible partner in Hunter's business deals. Hunter Biden wrote in the emails insisting that most discussion of Joe Biden's involvement happen not in writing. We know that Hunter said that Joe Biden was going to be paid for his involvement in at least one business venture, although we don't know if that deal was ever completed. We don't know that it wasn't completed either. There may be other Joe-Hunter joint business ventures that weren't featured in the emails because of the aformentioned desire for them to be not-in-writing.
It seems like Hunter was getting money from these companies in exchange for favors from the VP of the US.
One such favor:
Concurrently, Biden was involving himself in ousting the Ukranian General Prosecutor for alleged corruption, an action that benefited Burisma.
"how Biden could justify expending so much energy as Vice President demanding that the Ukrainian General Prosecutor be fired, and why the replacement — Yuriy Lutsenko, someone who had no experience in law; was a crony of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko; and himself had a history of corruption allegations — was acceptable if Biden’s goal really was to fight corruption in Ukraine rather than benefit Burisma or control Ukrainian internal affairs for some other objective."
"Third, the media rush to exonerate Biden on the question of whether he engaged in corruption vis-a-vis Ukraine and Burisma rested on what are, at best, factually dubious defenses of the former Vice President. Much of this controversy centers on Biden's aggressive efforts while Vice President in late 2015 to force the Ukrainian government to fire its Chief Prosecutor, Viktor Shokhin, and replace him with someone acceptable to the U.S., which turned out to be Yuriy Lutsenko. These events are undisputed by virtue of a video of Biden boasting in front of an audience of how he flew to Kiev and forced the Ukrainians to fire Shokhin, upon pain of losing $1 billion in aid."
"But two towering questions have long been prompted by these events, and the recently published emails make them more urgent than ever: 1) was the firing of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor such a high priority for Biden as Vice President of the U.S. because of his son's highly lucrative role on the board of Burisma, and 2) if that was not the motive, why was it so important for Biden to dictate who the chief prosecutor of Ukraine was?
The standard answer to the question about Biden's motive -- offered both by Biden and his media defenders -- is that he, along with the IMF and EU, wanted Shokhin fired because the U.S. and its allies were eager to clean up Ukraine, and they viewed Shokhin as insufficiently vigilant in fighting corruption."
I'm having difficulty summarizing. Just read the article.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
I was not being sarcastic about anything. I'm not sure when you think I was being sarcastic.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
You can submit questions to the candidates.
It's election season at Wikipedia. If you want to ask ArbCom candidates about whether or not they think Wikipedia is biased and vote accordingly, you can. It might simply cause the most die-hard progressive ideologues to be elected in the short run, but in the long run it could shed light on something not often discussed. What was that thing where the Wikimedia foundation was giving grants to some CRT-type charity that people thought was highly dubious? I think Yudkowsky retweeted about it. You could ask about that.
Edit: of course, whether or not these candidates care about AGI X-risk is more important than their politics.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
^LOL, I don't know what to say about that. I can only hope they get what they want.
Laughing at people protesting against tyranny is cruel and small-minded. In my opinion.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
Well you should read up on the evidence.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
https://psmag.com/news/kings-garbage-76228
The article's sub-headline: "In 1993 the Anti-Defamation League was accused of espionage, illegal surveillance, theft, and the treasonous sale of classified information to a foreign government. I was one of their victims."
The crimes of the ADL go beyond simply spreading child knife-rape.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
File under "the world would be better if people understood basic economics".
On the plus side, I think people will slowly come around to dynamic pricing. It might become standard in 15 years or so, if the world lasts that long.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/books/review/charlie-kaufman-by-the-book-interview.html
"You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, living or dead, would you invite?
I’ve always loved this exercise, the imaginary dinner party! What fun! I see Oscar Wilde there, of course, Voltaire, Carol Saroyan Saroyan Matthau (wife of William Saroyan, William Saroyan, and Walter Matthau, and a writer in her own right), Hitler (not witty but quite a “get”), Edie Sitwell, Molière, Oscar Wilde (so witty I thought why not double him and place him on each end of the table so everyone could enjoy his witticisms?), Aristophanes, and Sir Kenneth Dover (to translate Aristophanes’ jokes for the other guests). That’s more than three, but one must assume there will be cancellations. Oh, and Jesus."
campfireSmores
2yr ago
Definitely true. I once talked with someone who realized circumcision was immoral but thought red vs blue stuff was more important. I don't think her calculation was fully rational. It could be that she wasn't willing to be a nonconformist.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
This would be a wakeup call for me if I thought all aspiring rationalists were operating at a level of rationalism too high to dig themselves into a hole like this, but I did not in fact have such a high opinion of this community (which I do like very much).
campfireSmores
2yr ago
People in Latin America are getting use out of cryptocurrencies. Does that not count?
campfireSmores
2yr ago
"Some have lasted over a thousand rounds, which is impressive, but military weapons last for tens of thousands of rounds. I’d imagine the FGC-9 acts like a modern Liberator pistol."
They're useful, I think.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
I'm skeptical that the real IQ of Arabs is 80. Arabs where? Arabs in Israel? Also... Sephardic jews have an IQ of 92? I'm skeptical of that as well.
A model of 3D printed rifle called the FGC-9 (which stands for F*** Gun Control) is being used by rebels fighting against the authoritarian genocidal military junta in Myanmar which regained power after a military coup deposed the democratically elected leader in 2021. If that's not enough, the government of Myanmar is not at all shy about killing civilians, from what I've heard.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/guns-are-being-3d-printed-myanmar-199401
https://observers.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20220114-3d-printed-weapons-myanmar-rebels
Apparently they've got 3D printers set up in guerilla jungle hideouts. The creator of the FGC-9 was a young German-Kurdish man named Jstark who died recently, possibly of a heart condition.
My thoughts: It's sad that some progressive organizations might be reluctant to bring positive attention to the rebels or the tools they use because it arguably hurts their cause or something.
If I was a guy like Jstark or Cody Wilson, and I was concerned about PR, I might say something truthful but strategic like "the most important thing to me is getting these files somewhere where they can't be taken down and where they can be accessed by anyone, because that's the only way for me to help rebels like these. I care about the downsides of making these guns available, but I've calculated things and it is greatly overshadowed by the upside." Or something. I didn't phrase that well.
Edit: A cleaner way to say it: "the moral benefit of 3D-printed guns to citizens living under brutal authoritarian dictatorships in places like Myanmar is so great that the harm caused to the rest of the world would need to be truly massive in order to outweigh it, and I do not believe it is so massive, if it is indeed a net harm to the wellbeing of other countries."
campfireSmores
2yr ago
There's currently a Request for Comment on the talk page for the Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People regarding this issue.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
I don't think that's quite what would happen but it's late at night and I'm tired. It seems like the right-wing/orthodox coalition would be pulled along with popular sentiment, and things would realign in a new equilibrium where the orthodox aren't be given the things that they were, but the right isn't disempowered.
campfireSmores
2yr ago
Interesting...
campfireSmores
2yr ago
I bought Alan Moore's new book of short stories and so far I'm not that into it. It's rare for me to not like anything Moorish. But I bought another book Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man by Steven Alpert and I like it a lot. Alpert is the highest ranking non-Japanese guy at Studio Ghibli and he's got lots of interesting stories about Japanese business culture and stuff. Did you know that most non-Japanese men speak Japanese like a woman? According to the book it's because most Japanese language teachers are women.
Also, here's the rationalist steam group, if you're interested:
I should point out that these sort of restrictions often end up killing people by causing inaction, as well as saving lives by causing inaction.
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