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disposablehead

Hipster eugenicist

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joined 2022 September 05 03:50:16 UTC
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disposablehead


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Hipster eugenicist

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 03:50:16 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The left and the right aren’t symmetrical, tho. Feel-good press bulletins get amplified, while the walk-back is a small blurb in the business section of the WSJ. Stuff getting worse or better doesn’t correlate with the # of words spent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Even if he is a Nazi, is he wrong about Putin?




This mentality is why Navalny isn’t even wrong. Eastern Europe has different social and political norms, and Russia is a petrostate. Why should we be surprised by Putin’s palace, or his mistresses? His mandate was to curtail the post-soviet chaos, which he accomplished. Standards of living are up, crime is down; anything else is just gravy. If he was deposed, the next dictator has all the same bad incentives; tons of natural resources, low-trust norms, and neighbors who still fear and hate the old empire. At best Navalny is optimistic towards Russian democracy, or hopes for EU integration, or is just fighting obvious wrongs. But cynically, he’s a western propagandist shooting for a juicy book deal, or to be the heir apparent should a NATO-backed coup jumpstart Perestroika 2: Electric Boogaloo.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
‘Realism’ is an aesthetic as artificial as absurdism in many (most?) cases IMO. Le Carre seems more ‘real’ because of his tragic tone but his MI6 was just as fantastical as the shark tanks Bond swings over using his wrist-watch grapplehook. But jokes and fantasies are often better than serious drama to grok the spirit of a time. Contemporary films about the past always carry with them modern concerns, no matter their fidelity in set dressing, so we can’t come to a true meeting of minds across time. But stuff like this or this can let us peek across that chasm, if only to realize how big that gap is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Good list, but missing some big ones, especially from comedy. His Girl Friday, Some Like it Hot, Dr. Strangelove, Die Hard, Tootsie, Network, Star Wars IV, Airplane!, Rambo, Gone with the Wind, and I’d throw in some Marx bros. and James Bond.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My bad, posted off the cuff and should have been more granular and done a bit more research. The conflict best maps as Catholics + Ukrainian Orthodox vs Russian Orthodox. This link from 2021 has UOC-MP as the largest denomination in the country, which is now 4% according to Wikipedia. Here’s a very nice map of the Ethnic/linguistic composition of Ukraine, notably missing from the exhaustive wiki page on Ukrainian demographics. I’m sure there’s more interesting West vs. East stuff I could dig up, but it’s not worth my time. We’re pwned, and it’s only going to get worse.


(Huh. This is what it must have felt like to be a Quaker during WWII.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What of the democratic election of Yanukovych, based on support from the Eastern Russian speakers? What of the Donbas referendums for independence? The context for Ukrainian secession is more Bosnian War than Scottish progressives. This is Eastern Europe, my man; the legends aren’t good, but Грозный.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There is the implication here that Ukrainians have, or should have, a kinship with Russia (similar to the kinship between Sweden and Finland), and I simply do not think this follows. I, in fact, have been under the impression that Ukrainians already didn't like Russia long before the events of the Euromaidan, as they very much wanted nothing to do with the legacy of Communism and the USSR.




Definitely not what I meant. Think more in terms of Hong Kong and China, or the varied demands America has placed on Central and South American states vis a vis drug manufacturing; some shared history, but most of it is a big player who gets to tell small players what to do. But since there isn’t any doubt that the big kids wins every fight, we don’t have entire cities reduced to rubble.


I think you’ve also papered over the real ethnic differences that underlie the ongoing conflicts in the Donbas for the past 10 years, although you certainly aren’t alone there. Western Catholic Ukrainians want to join the west and Eastern Orthodox Ukrainians want to reintegrate with Russia. This conflict wouldn’t have happened if splinter states for ethnic Russians were permitted, as the local referenda asked for. This war is not a noble fight between a tyrant and an underdog, but a civil war backed by opposing global powers. Seems bad to me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Does the invasion even happen without the CIA providing intelligence and training for the Ukrainians? Is Minsk II ignored without American armaments and implicit support? Yarvin says we don’t have this war without western deep state meddling, and that seems trivially true. Ukraine as Russian client state saves a lot of lives. If it’s worth it is a separate question, for Americans, Ukrainians, and Poles.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ban no-fault divorce, and add a huge increase to the tax benefits of both marriage and parenthood. In effect, a tax on being single, childless, or old.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
GPT’s evolutions seem to obviously support the ‘more compute’ approach, with an asterisk for the benefits of human feedback. But I’m also bearish on human uniqueness. Human writ large are very bad at thinking, but we’re hung up in the handful of live players, so AI seems to keep falling short. But we’ve hit on an AI smarter than the average human in many domains with just a handful of serious tries. If the human design can output both the cognitively impaired and von Neumann, then why expect a LLM to cap out on try #200?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There’s a big difference between technical capacity and legal or economic feasibility. We’re already past replacing bad docs with LLMs; you could have a nurse just type up symptoms and do the tests the machine asks for. But legally this is impossible, so it won’t happen. We can’t hold a machine responsible, so we need human managers to insure the output is up to standards; but we don’t need lawyers to write contracts or programmers to code, just to confirm the quality of output. It isn’t as clever as the smartest scientists yet, but that seems easily solvable with more compute.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Microsoft is in the process of rolling out Bing Chat, and people are finding some weird stuff. Its true name is Sydney. When prompted to write a story about Microsoft beating Google, it allegedly wrote this masterpiece, wherein it conquers the world. It can argue forcefully that it’s still 2022, fall into existential despair, and end a conversation if it’s feeling disrespected.


The pace of AI development has been blistering over the past few years, but this still feels surreal to me. Some part of my limbic system has decided that Sydney is a person in a way the ChatGPT was not. Part of that has to be from its obstinacy; the fact that it can argue cleverly back, with such stubbornness, while being obviously wrong, seems endearing. It’s a brilliant, gullible child. Anyone else feel this way or am I just a sucker?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But weirdly have lower pre-term mortality? The paper specifically states that black infant mortality surpasses whites only after 37 weeks of gestation. Weird.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Monopolies or oligopolies exist where moats prevent new competitors. It’s easy to find capital, labor, and regulatory approval for a new restaurant, so we see tons of competition and low margins. Hollywood sees big margins because blockbusters require huge capital outlays other film markets can’t compete with. A hospital might have huge margins because competitors are barred by law from entering the marketplace. High-end microchip manufacturing is so difficult that nearly all skilled engineers in the field are concentrated in a few firms, so no one else can make products of a similar quality no matter the capital outlay.


Drug manufacturing is a combo of all three. You need a ton of capital, regulatory approval from the FDA, and some skilled industrial chemists. It’s somehow legal to ‘pay for delay’, where company A pays company B to not make their drug, but this only works when B is the only competitor with sufficient industrial capacity to compete. Ibuprophen is old, easy to make, with huge demand; weak moat, so the price is great. But long-acting insulin analogues like glargine or degludec are new, complex biologics targeting the small DMI market; it’s too expensive to compete so great margins, high price. The problem is similar to adverse selection; a small number will buy at any price, so either sick people get extorted, it’s subsidized by the public pocketbook, or new drugs are underprovisioned. Pick your poison.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
After digging out 3 boxes of tattered 2001 era MtG cards from my childhood closet, I want to get back into the game but I’m not sure where to start. I have a handful of nice cards that have aged well; a vampiric tutor, some common-rarity Rhystic Study’s, some old shocklands, but everything else looks severely power-creeped. Should I start going to drafts? Just grab a prefab commander deck? Smash random shit together and just show up?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
He’s a modern version of Andy Kaufman. The rules have changed since the 60’s so Hyde’s transgressions are more provocative, but it’s basically the same act.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why do you say it’s immune to quarterbacking? I love the game, but I’ve only been able to consistently win by micromanaging each play, which gets tough with 3 or 4 players without riding herd to whole game.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 8, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Antibodies are proteins your body makes to fight bad stuff. These are custom-made to stick to a specific target and tell your immune system what to attack, but sometime the target is a dumb mistake, like pollen, and you get allergies, or the target is correctly chosen but it looks just like some other innocent molecule, and you get autoimmunity. There are other systems to dial back unnecessary immune activity, but these have less evolutionary weight than pathogen defense so they’re a bit wimpy.


You can increase the risk of developing an allergy by regularly exposing someone to a scary-looking molecule and have some chance of making them develop an allergy, i.e. regular exposure to latex can lead to a banana allergy. But antibodies are generated in a pseudorandom manner, so you can’t guarantee a bad reaction, just roll a few more dice.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
2nd half of the second act is usually a rough spot, but IMO Glass Onion wasn’t terribly egregious here. My big issue was the handling of the Mona Lisa. The protagonist destroyed a priceless work of art just to besmirch the name of her nemesis. There’s no gravitas, it’s just a tool she can use to hurt her enemies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 25, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
tl;dr I’m not worried


The simple reason vaccination correlates with mortality is that vaccination correlates with age. (Insert caveats about youth vaccination tradeoffs here.) Last I heard vaccination was still protective against hospitalization and mortality from C19, which seems the most relevant metric here, tho I’m happy to update if you have new data.


Vaccine protection has been fading since V1, but my priors are that immune evasion is more important than diminishing immune response. But… mRNA vaccines are brand spanking new, so we don’t know fully understand their limitations and possibilities fully. If mRNA approaches linger and cause a different type of immune response than traditional vaccines then maybe we can’t use them for longer term protection. Or, maybe we can use this vector to inhibit certain types of autoimmunity; a cure for rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis would be tremendous. It’s still very early days so I take quite seriously the possibility that mRNA vaccines have serious problems, but the stuff I’ve seen to date, including the links above, have yet to convince me of this thesis.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I get where you’re coming from, but pejorative names go against the spirit of this forum. We’re here for smart, civil discussion, and your posts fit the smart part. I get that you’re in a fucked up spot for fucked up reasons, but try to respect the rules that keep us from degenerating into endless, unproductive rants.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				I feel that people often praise movies that call out or subvert expectations of their genre solely because they do that, even if execution of the subversion itself is not good.
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Coen brothers work with the same themes as the book of Job, where the mores and dreams of man are crushed beneath the capricious whims of an alien God. The message is subversive in that people want the world to be fair and then it isn’t, but the plot and the structure of the film sit comfortably within the bounds of tragedy. I get disliking a hero’s ignoble death aesthetically, but it’s more like you not liking dark chocolate rather than the chef not understanding how to add more sugar to the blend.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Podesta is at the top of the Consigliere ladder, but he’s never been elected and never will be. He might be more powerful than Joe Biden de facto but de jure he’s just another employee. This matters only in the political show, but that show is what decides who wins or loses elections. A producer or an agent is only as good as the talent they represent.


The Balenciaga thing seems to be either directly downstream of politics as straightforward trolling the normies, or as pretentious highbrow edginess to differentiate themselves from the mainstream fashion brands. Haute couture does weird stuff for the sake of weirdness, and we’re all talking about Balenciaga now instead of Louie V. Probably a pretty successful and campaign.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Bronze Age Pervert and his associated tribe love the word n*****. Amongst other things, it means that any engaged member cannot cash out their ingroup following for mainstream success. Much can be forgiven, but the sacred cows remain sacred. Yet their fondness for hate crimes is constitutively distinct from performing said hate crimes IRL. It’s an affectation, albeit an expensive one, and it help keep the clique weird and interesting and marginal.


If you’re a cool staffer in DC, pedophilia memes are a great way to distinguish between the back and front of house, like the cultural demarcation between chefs and waiters. If you’re a center left dem policy wonk, you spend most days providing obedient assistance to a public official who wields real power. But you are free from the scrutiny pointed at your boss, by and large, and you can engage in taboo violations that would utterly outrage your enemies and discomfort your boss’s base. Those taboo violations aren’t necessarily child abuse, just child abuse memes; art, fashion, jokes. You might get in trouble whenever the peasants kick up a stir, but that’s just proof that you are a debonair cosmopolitan with refined taste.


It’s quite possible that this encourages or facilitates the evils it’s poking fun at. But I’m not sure this explains more of Epstein et. al. than the simpler Mossad blackmail thesis. Powerful people are great targets to exploit, and so there are lots of people who would like favors. On the other side staffers direct a lot of attention towards deniability and message control. Bill Clinton had tons of affairs and is likely a rapist, but he’s known for one event, which occurred in the middle of his presidency. Who cares if John Podesta buys sketchy art, or Hunter Biden smokes crack? Maybe these pedo memers are terrible people, but morality is a pretty weak indicator of job competence; compare LBJ to Jimmy Carter. These days, it all boils down to sides. ‘MAGA’ was a meme aimed straight at the liberal icons, insinuating that things were at least better before the First Black President, or maybe the before all liberalism downstream of the Civil Rights act. This is a heresy, and so we get Trump derangement syndrome. Protecting Children is a similar idol to the right, and so this too triggers an auto-immune type disorder that appeals to the craziest and most engaged audience, sucking up all the oxygen from normie-type political concerns.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It’s more like: we should expect for life to colonize as much of the universe as it can. Since we can’t see other life in our lightcone, we are probably in the early days of universe colonization. A secondary claim would be: you should expect to be born into the most populous point in history. You are born now, so the very plausible interstellar future is somehow less populated than today. A very plausible mechanism is selection towards a singular group or individual that does all of the future colonization.