cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
12hr ago
This is a significant part of why I like and enforce the low effort posts rule. The discussion would always be better off starting with what you have here.
cjet79
15hr ago
Ah my bad, I misunderstood what vibecamp is. Thought it was EA oriented, not just random event.
In that case carry on for EAs but personal reputation for people that attend still applies.
cjet79
16hr ago
It doesn't have to be a shaming campaign, an in person or on twitter convo of "ya this is weird please keep it separate from EA stuff" would be sufficient.
Or they can wait for something to hit the courts when someone sues or some DA sees an opportunity to rack up easy child sexual assault charges. I'm sure the PR for that will do plenty to hurt the EA cause.
cjet79
1d ago
Yes I already have to worry about that enough through standard life misunderstandings, I don't need to add to it.
Also if you were just at the event with a sex tent and that fact gets blasted onto every news channel, are you comfortable explaining to all of your friends and family your presence at the event?
They are actively filtering out normies.
cjet79
1d ago
It's not that they are failing to start a cult, or run a charity MLM scheme. It's that they are turning off people like me who are fully sympathetic to the idea by being weirdos that I don't want to associate with. And if this makes you think something like "well do you even care that much about EA if you aren't willing to tolerate some weirdness" and the answer is no I don't really care about it that much. I have other ideologies I'd rather spend my weirdness points on.
When my main exposure to EA stuff was through Scott Alexander I was so on board I was basically calling myself an EA. And then I learn stuff like this and it has me noping backwards as fast as I can.
They aren't failing to trick normies who are against the values into being EAs. They are failing to convince normies who are lukewarm or even positively disposed into being EAs. And I totally fail to see how having a weird sex tent and nudist colony next to a playground is necessary for EA to be all the things that make it EA.
cjet79
1d ago
I believe you, but those ordinary EAs should probably be siding with Thomas and trying to police their weirdest members.
cjet79
1d ago
Is exposing yourself to a minor not a crime in the location they are holding it?
If it is a crime then they are being very dumb. It would be an easy way for a DA that doesn't like them to basically round up all the nudists and event organizers and get them all labelled as sex offenders and put on the list. And being on the list will fuck up their lives so badly. But hey maybe if they have a sex tent at their event they just like getting bent over and having things rammed up their ass all the time.
I'd personally avoid this event like the plague.
In general I think people are allowed and encouraged to have some number of weirdness points. They can have weird beliefs, pets, sex lives, religion, activities, etc. Normal people are weird in one or a few ways, weird people are weird in many ways. If you want to be weird that's fine. But if you have ideological beliefs you want other people to adopt you must be a normal person. You basically use up your weirdness points on your ideology, and any weirdness beyond that is just doing harm to the cause of selling your ideology.
EA and rat sphere seems filled with people that want to be weird. Which makes the "effective" part seem like a lie. Lots of charity involves convincing normies to give you money, and they basically suck at that. They are claiming all the weird people though, so maybe that is them just serving a market niche that no one else was serving well. They don't seem to have the awareness that this is what they are doing.
I am a huge nerd compared to most people around me, but hearing about these people's antics always makes me feel like a bully jock that wants to humiliate the socially incompetent nerds for shits and giggles. I dislike that feeling, I wish they'd stop being weird people.
cjet79
1d ago
I think that goes too far.
There are some cultural issues where I do believe the government exerts significant cultural force.
It tends to be on issues that question the legitimacy of the state, the tax apparatus, and democracy itself.
But there is plenty of cultural leeway on things they don't care much about. And there are things they sort of care about where they exert some minor pressure.
I think natalist stuff is something they sort of care about. They prefer you having kids that go to government schools and drink the cool aid of system indoctrination. Homeschoolers fought an uphill battle, but have mostly been slowly winning in a bunch of states.
Child tax credits didn't have any major detractors. "Pro choice" doesn't call themselves pro abortion or anti natalist.
I just don't think the model of natalist culture as a government defended cultural view is accurate.
cjet79
1d ago
It seems backwards to me that you think cultural changes are harder to implement than policy changes. Its a form of Democracy propaganda that I see often enough that its worth addressing.
Changing culture is hard and slow, it involves talking to a lot of people, convincing them, having role models to hold up who are paragons of the change you want. If you are pushing against specific incentives or people then they will try to reverse the cultural changes you are making.
How do you get a democratically elected government to change policy? You have to change base cultural desires of the people so that they change their voting habits often and consistently enough. And you need to tailor the policy to make it survive through whatever political process exists in the country.
Cultural change also has the benefit of snowballing effects. If you have some good ideas and good culture it self advertises as it spreads. Democracy requires a minimum 50%+1 starting point. So good ideas and terrible ideas have somewhat equal chances to getting implemented.
cjet79
2d ago
It honestly doesn't seem like internet companies have good moat options anymore. A platform moat exists for all the current platforms. Creating a new platform moat usually means you need to take space from some of the existing platform. Alphabet seems to attempt to make a new platform every time they get a chance. They suck at it and abandon the ones that fail pretty quickly, but it is guaranteed minimum competition. Anything social media related is likely to be bought up by facebook. Anything shopping related is likely to be bought up by amazon (or at least have them move in on your space). Chat and video platforms both had to compete with microsoft. AIs have zero moat, with people happy to switch between them and use whichever is cheapest or best. They almost have an anti-moat, because quite a few AIs degrade in quality as the context window increases. Since the business model is tokens, consumers are better off spreading their token usage as far and wide as possible.
If AI gets better at helping programming projects, then the cost to copy other successful software platforms goes down. Which further decreases the moat software related incumbents.
And don't forget real world things can have moats too! North America has at least two moats that aren't going away anytime soon, the Atlantic and Pacific. There have been lots of court battles over Trump's tariffs, but they might become part of the republican platform in the future. That might only stop foreign competitors, but there is a real difficulty in spinning up brand new manufacturing areas. A much higher difficulty then spinning up a new internet business company.
cjet79
2d ago
I agree that there is no such thing as appeasement for the each the rich types. There are enough marxists that I've met in real life that seem to want CEOs and the wealthy lined up against a wall and shot. Their idea of "compromise" is to simply confiscate all their wealth and imprison them for the rest of their lives in some Siberian equivalent work encampment. These people were joyous to hear about the United Health Care CEO being gunned down in the street. They were also joyous to hear that it had made other CEOs worried for their lives.
The only people like this that I have seen mellow out got married, had kids, and held down a good solid career for a decade. Which obviously has nothing to do with the policies they espoused, but it was never about policies in the first place. Its gripes about their life situation disguised as a policy gripe. And just like you can't reason someone out of position they didn't reason themselves into, you can't appease a life situation gripe with their claimed policy solution.
cjet79
2d ago
The spacex IPO has happened and made Elon Musk a Trillionaire.
There are probably hundreds of potential topics from this story, feel free to go off on your own tangents.
What I am interested in is that this is a company that is building real world things, and not fake internet shit. It feels like a lot of new wealth and investment in America comes from and is directed to the internet. I think one of the main reasons has been that large investors are generally play-it-safe followers. They see which companies are newly striking it rich: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Apple, etc. And they are happy to invest in copy-cats.
I'm hoping the spacex IPO has a similar effect. That investors start chasing new copy cats. But this time copy-cats of spacex rather than copy cats of facebook or google.
cjet79
4d ago
I'd be happy to do writeups of underwater hockey practices, which simply doesn't have enough players to get beyond rec league performance. Not sure if you genuinely interested, or just making a point.
cjet79
6d ago
given the model of infidelity as driven by availability.
My model of some cheating is that its an easy way for people to initiate a breakup. Especially for young people. It was done to me by two different girlfriends, and two other girlfriends didn't accept my reasons for breaking up with them. I had to just persistently say "its over", and looking back on those instances it would have been easier to just tell them I cheated on them to get them to hate me.
cjet79
6d ago
Getting caught cheating is the coward's method of initiating a breakup. Especially during teenage years and early 20's.
I had two girlfriends cheat on me during that time, both readily admitted it and then didn't seem too upset when I broke up with them.
Single instances of infidelity are almost impossible to catch, and prolonged affairs are almost impossible to hide. Hiding is so difficult because humans are gossips and great at sniffing out who's fucking whom. Even if the affected partner doesn't figure it out, someone in their ~50-200 person social circle is likely to catch on. Way more likely if the "homewrecker" is in an overlapping social circle.
Big obvious takeaway from survey is that cheating is a common experience. Which is relevant to the original discussion about why Mr Brightside was popular.
cjet79
7d ago
Finally over the awful ear infection I had last week.
It was either the worst or second worst sickness in my life. It was like a constant 6/10 pain with spikes up to an 8 or 9. Tylenol and Advil barely did anything. Or maybe they were the only things keeping me from an even worse experience.
It mentally wore me down and I broke. Was a whimpering mess for an hour, before I pulled myself together enough to go to the ER in the middle of the night.
cjet79
10d ago
Anyone have any theories on the song Mr Bright side by the killers? Specifically why it's been so popular for so long?
I like the song, it's good. I just don't know if I'd label it as one of the greatest songs of the last 50 years, which is what is implied by it's longevity in top song charts.
cjet79
14d ago
1st section: haha, take that nimbys 2nd section: ugh dont want to read 3rd section: a continuation? gonna skip 4th section: oh god canada has gone crazy.
actually maybe 4th section just sums it up in general
cjet79
14d ago
Your post confuses me. Which happens a lot in the bubbles of the internet. I don't really know what is going on cuz I barely follow anything closely enough.
My understanding is that this lawsuit was in part about the IRS targeting politically conservative groups. Which they were shown to have been doing back in the obama administration.
Why the stuff about cop beaters? I suppose that is in reference to people attacking cops during the Jan 6th thing. But I wasn't aware of many organizations that claim credit for that surviving until the modern day. I admit to not knowing the status of the proud boys. Though the FBI and CIA are still around and their funding is not linked to this, so that also doesn't make sense to me.
I think there is a very difficult political problem being pointed at here. Trump's involvement just muddies it all.
Government controlled by Party A has done things to wrong Party B. The judiciary is supposed to be an independent entity that steps in and arbitrates these disputes.
What exactly is supposed to happen if Party B does not realize they have been intentionally wronged until they control the government?
If they sue the government its just Party B suing the government they control. Of course they win. That is what happened in this case.
Options:
A. Nothing happens. B. Punish rule breakers. C. Reward victims.
I am heavily in favor of option B, but no one in power is in favor of that option. The people in power in party A that carried out the harm have a set of preferences like A > C > B. The people in party B that have been wronged have a set of preferences that generally looks like C > B > A.
Rewarding the victims is a good compromise option. Because the people that suffer are taxpayers, and who gives a shit about taxpayers? Republican politicians is apparently a fair answer for any who opposed this payout. Had the roles been reversed would democrats have done the same? I'm sure we will find out. (if we haven't already from some buried issue or court case that has been ignored for a few decades)
cjet79
15d ago
Back in 2013 I got the chance to meet Peter thiel at a students for liberty conference. He was fielding questions from students at the bar.
I basically asked him where he'd move or where he thinks the next good "liberty" place is. He insisted the USA was the best.
A decade is both a short and long time. Plenty of time for an individual to change their mind or their views to shift. But not very long for a country to go into the shitter. And not very long to verify that a newly successful country is going to stay successful. People seem to forget that Soviet Union had a few decades of apparent success. A single leader can make for a few great years, maybe even a decades worth of great years. But the systems, institutions, and culture of a country are slow to change on such timescales.
I think in this case the US has gotten worse, and Argentina has gotten better, but what has changed the most is not the US or Argentina, but Peter Thiel. It's the boring answer, but still the correct one.
cjet79
16d ago
Felt righteous at the time I wrote my post, but felt like a fool soon afterwards when the original story turned out to be kinda fake. Though I think the quoted bit is still true. At least it held up to some verification. Would like to know if it is false as well. Because I should know better than to trust feelings of righteous Indignation.
cjet79
18d ago
The city areas always felt pretty busy and active. But under the paint there isn't a whole lot to do most of the time.
I liked getting fast vehicles and driving them in the desert areas at full speed. Some of the country vistas looked pretty awesome.
I've never personally liked cities, so they bothered me with some of their gritty realism.
cjet79
19d ago
My life has felt similar. Was at a highschool that wasn't anything super special. But had enough well off kids that I was solidly in the middle of the top classes. Got into a large state school, but was in the honors program there. So again it was just me sitting in the middle of the top class. Got into the workforce and it felt similar. Was at a good tech company with smart people but I was still only in the middle.
Feels the same around here. If there is a group of people that belong in the top tenth percentile of users here I'd place myself in it. But I'm only in like the middle among that top 10th percentile.
One time I remember truly feeling dumb was playing a board game with Robin Hanson and another Econ professor at Bryan Caplan's house. Robin and I were new to the game, the other econ professor was not. There was a recognizable meta to the card game that I partly pieced together after having played it. Robin Hanson asked enough questions at the beginning that I realized afterwards he was piecing together the meta just based on the rules. I got slaughtered in the game basically playing according to the rules but without a useful strategy. Hanson and the other professor nearly tied, with Hanson losing out just barely. I only give myself partial credit for understanding the meta cuz of Hanson's questions, and some of his comments afterwards led me to 'get it'.
Well done. I'm heavily on the side of New York not violating the first or second amendment, but this issue feels exhausting. Democrat ruled states seem to have adopted the gish gallop approach to law on gun control, just keep throwing things at the opponents until they throw up their arms and give up or leave.
I'm curious what happens in the situation where someone buys a 3d printer in Texas or Canada and then moves and takes their jail broken 3d printer to New York? Is it the manufacturer that is still in trouble, or the individual bringing the printer?
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