campfireSmoresEaten
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User ID: 2560
campfireSmoresEaten
6mo ago
I do kind of suspect that eventually the voters will get at least some of what they want if they continue to win elections. That may be naive of me.
campfireSmoresEaten
6mo ago
Well, people who want to build more housing could secede from the government. That's the obvious solution when you have a minority of voters who feel very strongly that the majority is fucking them over.
It remains to be seen to what extent voters understand that development being illegal is the problem though.
campfireSmoresEaten
6mo ago
"Reality being that AI is not going to become superduper post-scarcity fairy godmother or paperclipper"
Do you understand why people are not convinced that superintelligence won't happen just because AI is being used for military purposes?
The arguments around superintelligence have nothing to do with whether or not AI is being used for military purposes. It's completely tangential.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
I'd like to think that if I was a fighter pilot I would be able to look on the bright side and appreciate it, even if I never got to engage enemy fighters or whatever. But maybe it's the equivalent of "if you'd be satisfied with a million dollars you don't have what it takes to make it".
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
There is a niche for that, but there is also an empowered activist vanguard who wants to destroy those niches, among other objectives.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Reminds me of this great Etgar Keret essay:
https://etgarkeret.substack.com/p/boohoo-to-you-too
(Israeli short story author, one of his stories was adapted into an indie movie called Wristcutters: A Love Story which you may or may not have heard of)
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Fat women can be charming, within a certain threshhold. They have a certain gravitas about them (pun not intended, believe it or not).
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
The Rationalists would tend to regard that person as the Superior Being, taking for granted the relativity of Beauty and dismissing the importance of a Noble physiognomy and charisma to civilizational achievement.
No I wouldn't. Not necessarily anyway. It's not easy to quantify, and it's not all one thing the way IQ is, but sanity/wisdom/rationality/whatever-you-want-to-call-it matters as much as IQ. If the short weak ugly guy is full of contempt for others and wants to see the people he dislikes suffer and the tall handsome guy is somewhat empathetic then that counts for a lot in my book too.
If you could wave a magic wand that would make you attracted to your wife regardless of her weight, would you? You could still be concerned about the health side of things, just the attractiveness wouldn't be an issue.
It's important to the hypothetical to know that the magic wand has a resale value of $3500 and you can sell it whether you use it or not.
Edit: also don't do any hint dropping. Don't be direct either. The most you can do is go on walks with her and organize healthy meals. But there has to be plausible deniability. Not just plausible deniability, probable deniability.
Women don't like to be told! Chapter 87 of HPMOR, Harry and Hermione.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
I think it's probably not a coincidence that Russia waited until after Trump left office to invade Ukraine. I realize that sounds crazy to most MSNBC watchers. At the very least, it seems like they were unaffected by who the US president is.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
But that only started once it became clear that Russia was belligerent. The US didn't want to destroy Russia just for the sake of it, they wanted to do that because Russia was a threat to the system of the world.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Also Transnistria! Break-away state from Moldova supported by Russia! I don't know the full story so I don't know if the details are similar to what happened in Georgia. I gotta look into that.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
I don't consider NATO an alliance of puppet regimes, I just consider it an alliance. So as far as I'm concerned there's nothing to feel guilty about there.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
It's the difference between living a block away from a vicious criminal with one leg and living a block away from a vicious criminal with no legs. Every bit of extra disability is nice.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
I don't think it's fair to say that Ukraine antagonized Russia. They insisted upon their sovereignty. They refused to be bullied. They refused to be conquered. That's not antagonizing, that's sticking up for oneself.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
It's bad when criminals steal priceless things. If you can't prevent them from doing so, you can at least make them pay a high price, and deal them a grievous wound which will make it harder to do the same thing again.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
Russian aggression has a lot to do with why Ukraine's economy is doing so badly, I should think.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
But then there would be a huge retaliation from NATO that would make NATO's support for Ukraine look rather restrained by comparison (and maybe it kinda was).
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
The difference is that Russia is still doing it. And to a lesser extent so is China.
so what will they do?
How hard do you think it would be to decapitate or disfigure the regime without nukes? Like a heart attack gun, but for a country. Drones, lasers, hacking, etcetera. There are many ways to escalate, NATO only has to convince itself that just one of them doesn't require that much courage to pursue. The plans probably already exist, just as a framework, created as practice in the art of developing tactical plans rather than out of expectation that they would ever be used, but they do exist. I'm not saying this will happen, but if Russia does push NATO too far then these options will be seriously considered.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
My experience is that most people don't have a good enough understanding of how housing costs work to point blame at anything other investment funds for high prices.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
There are many British WWII movies. I assure you. Many many.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
What's more embarrassing, watching Blackeddotcom or watching Hollywood movies and commercials?
That's a joke. But here's my point: I have an adblock, and I don't watch movies unless I expect to like them. And I don't watch many movies in theaters. It's not that I avoid movies with interracial couples or whatever, it's just that I haven't been watching many movies lately. As such, I am to a large extent not exposed to the phenomenon you're describing.
The downsides of eschewing pop culture exist but aren't enormous the way that the downsides of eschewing/being shunned from other stuff are. Pop culture is a pretty small part of culture. The more people read non-pop culture the more powerful it will be and the less powerful corporate dreck will be. That's something I think the right and the left can agree on.
campfireSmoresEaten
7mo ago
I think the vast majority of Americans of all stripes don't care about Brits playing Americans. If they care they care only very slightly and it's mixed with acceptance that Brits are just really good at acting.
Do you think they'll mellow out as they get older and become libertarians? Or will they just be consumed by nanobots along with the rest of the human race?
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