FlailingAce
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User ID: 1084
FlailingAce
2d ago
I don't think you're wrong exactly, just that you're trivially correct. Everyone responds to the inevitability of death by thinking about their legacy, whether that's wealth, impact, relationships, or something eternal.
When I consider Trump, I am reminded, actually, of the depiction of Alexander the Great (Iskander) in the anime Fate:Zero. Okay bear with me a sec:
The premise of the series is that legendary heroes of the past are summoned with super powers to fight in a battle royale over the Holy Grail. In Fate: Zero, there's a scene where three legendary kings get together and share a drink while discussing what it means to be a king. It's one of my favorite scenes. Two of the kings, Iskander and Gilgamesh, are basically dunking on King Arthur (who's a woman for some reason) because she's sacrificed so much for her people and is basically miserable and moping all the time. Gilgamesh lays out his belief that he's the best king because he's got the most stuff, but then in an exchange between Arthur and Iskander, our boy explains what he thinks being a king is all about. Here's the key excerpt:
Arthur: If I rule the nation as king, I cannot ask to live as a person. King of Conquerors, you seek the Grail merely for your own benefit. You could never understand - you, who became a ruler only to satisfy your endless greed.
Iskander: A king without greed is even worse than a figurehead! [Arthur], you said you would martyr yourself for your ideals. In life, you must have been a pure saint. A proud and noble figure, certainly. But who can truly admire the martyr's thorny path? Who dreams of such an ending? A king. The king must be greedier than any other. He must laugh more loudly and rage for longer. He must exemplify the extreme of all things, good and evil. That is why his retainers envy and adore him. And why the flames of aspiration, to be as the king is, can burn within his people.
That's what Trump is like, and it's why his retainers adore him. He exemplifies the extreme of all things, and he charges forwards without regret. It's awesome! One more excerpt for good measure:
Arthur: Iskander, your reign ended with your heirs slain, and your empire dissolved into three parts. You have no regrets about that end?
Iskander: None. Not if it came to pass by my judgment and my retainers' sacrifices. Its destruction was inevitable. I shall grieve. And I shall weep. But I shall never regret - let alone undo it! Such an act would be a mockery of all who fought with me!
I think it's a very Western mindset to think our leaders should be more like Arthur, 'servant leaders' so to speak. Trump isn't like that at all, and doesn't pretend to be. He is a goddamn king.
FlailingAce
4d ago
We don't trust Denmark, and we especially don't trust the people of Greenland. Simple as.
One example I've heard brought up was in 2018, Greenland was courting a Chinese company as a major investor in one of their airports - against the wishes of the Danes I might add! It didn't go through after much controversy, but the fact that Greenland can choose to partner with China, or Russia, or whomever, is a serious risk.
The idea that they're 'in our sphere of influence', and so we can just rely on them to be our buddies forever, is counter to the worldview of the administration. We've seen disasters like the Panama canal, which we gave back to our friends the Panamanians, and which is now de-facto controlled by Chinese companies, and taken the lesson that anything we don't directly control will eventually be co-opted by our enemies. It's not an unreasonable conclusion based on recent history, even if it chafes at our allies in Europe to hear it.
I can't imagine that (before this whole kerfuffle) Denmark would have made a big deal about a larger military presence of the USA in Greenland
If Trump was proposing it, I'm about 70% likelihood they'd have made a big deal of it.
FlailingAce
6d ago
Cosmopolitanism is a big culprit here. The reason we would need legible tests like IQ to rank people is because nobody knows anybody, and references have become gamified. Status (and even competence) is easy to fake over the short term, and if you're found out as a fraud you can disappear into the global economy and start again. We've designed a society for sociopaths.
My recommendation: get involved in your local community (or a sub-culture thereof) and build yourself a reputation. Human connection is the antidote to superficiality.
FlailingAce
6d ago
My basic claim that IQ is not and should not be a primary characteristic that we're selecting for. It's secondary, in that it can affect the acquisition of primary characteristics, particularly specialized knowledge. But it seems to me you are reducing my hypothetical PT to this one number, and that you are wrong to do so.
In fact, I chose this example because I know a PT who is not a high IQ individual. He struggled a lot during school and barely squeaked by with a degree. I wouldn't estimate his IQ higher than 105. However, he's consistently rated as an excellent PT, with great reviews from his patients. How can this be? The answer is obvious - he put in a lot of work to acquire the necessary knowledge, and continues to work hard to research the unique problems his patients have, so he has the same functional knowledge as a higher-IQ PT. But he excels in other traits that correspond with high performance in this job, things like personability, conscientiousness, work ethic, and caring about his patients as people. I do not think a higher-IQ PT would be better at the job, even in negligible ways (you're right that 99% is a made-up number, well done spotting that). PTs aren't like Doctor House, coming up with genius insights that nobody else can see. They follow standard therapeutic guidelines. This is the case for most jobs.
As I said in both my comments, obviously IQ has an impact on many things, and 'all else equal' a higher IQ PT has an advantage - but all else isn't equal, and that advantage is not as significant as you seem to think. Overall, I believe that selecting for IQ is a mistake, for a lot of reasons - in this comment chain the reason I'm hitting on is that other traits are more important to many or even most jobs, and that we should assess people based on their performance. Hopefully that clarifies things for you.
FlailingAce
7d ago
You're not describing IQ. You are describing a combination of 1) specialized knowledge, and 2) attention to detail/conscientiousness. Only the first of these correlates to IQ, and then only because a higher IQ person can learn things faster, as I mentioned. Once the 100 IQ person works to acquire the knowledge/experience the difference between them becomes negligible in 99% of cases.
FlailingAce
8d ago
That commercial is awful; I want to punch that asshole in the face.
Oh man this is great. I just came down here to comment how much I loved that commercial! Like it legitimately made me swell with pride to see someone talking up America.
FlailingAce
8d ago
We create a hierarchy based on the performance of competence rather than the reality of capacity.
Good.
I recognize the point as it applies to top-tier quantum physicists, but in almost every other area of life I don't think we should judge people based on 'capacity' as indicated by raw IQ.
First of all, most careers do not have uncapped potential for improvement. Let's say someone wants to become a physical therapist - they need to learn a variety of details about human physiology, be competent at working with people, and have the capacity to keep up with developments in the field. This is achievable by a 100 IQ person just as much as a 130, the primary difference will just be how much time and effort is required to acquire the knowledge. I put it to you that most fields have this characteristic. The difference between a god-tier PT and a typical one may matter a little on the edge cases but for the most part these people are indistinguishable in what they can accomplish. Meanwhile, other traits like personability and compassion may be more relevant distinguishers for how well this person does the job.
Second, IQ already plays into every sorting algorithm we have. Do you really think that being more intelligent doesn't help you acquire certifications? Or that it won't be recognized by gatekeepers in fields where it's relevant? IQ is general problem solving, it's learning, in other words it already applies to all these systems. But, again, it's not the only thing that applies - you are judged on a variety of personal characteristics, such as willingness to put in work, reliability, trustworthiness, not being weird, etc. These things all actually matter.
Like I said at the top, there are some fields where raw IQ really does determine your effectiveness. Maybe you're in or adjacent to one of these, and are really griping about how the selection methods there are failing to identify intellectual capacity? If so I'm sympathetic. But in all other realms, if you don't produce anything with your big brain then you're no more useful than an idiot. I'd rather have someone conscientious and loyal on my team any day of the week.
FlailingAce
20d ago
Not quite. If by prosecuting fraud you deter more future fraud, you can win, indeed.
Fraud is only deterred if the expected consequence outweighs the expected gain. In a Western world where fines for wrongdoing often are smaller than the money gained by the wrongdoing - fraud is simply never deterred. Especially among those who have few other options!
The solution is excessive punishment, potentially including executions as so many posters have mentioned, but this of course runs counter to Western instincts and our legal tradition. We don't have a solution to this problem.
FlailingAce
20d ago
I don't know if this problem is unique to your locale out what, but I'm currently working on a project with my city council and can assure you they don't give a hoot about Palestine. The only reason they or anyone would care about culture war issues is if that pressure is applied from above.
FlailingAce
22d ago
My goodness this is the most lazy straw man of protestantism I've ever seen. What the hell is it doing on this forum?
Please look into literally any main line Protestant church and you'll find plenty of in depth scholarship and apologetics. That you haven't done this basic legwork, I imagine, means you are languishing in the Catholic influencer bubble - but I would have thought you'd at least have encountered some of the 'debunking' material they put out so regularly.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
As a result of all of that, none of us really have any idea of how to be a proper parent. There aren't exactly "how to not stab your own kids" lessons regularly available at the local library, so my brother and I are both terrified of having a child and fucking it up.
I don't want to oversimplify, but from everything I've read and experienced, the answer to raising healthy children can be summed up as 'spend time with them'. Children can be raised with all manner of philosophies, and as long as they have adults who care about them and give them attention, they'll almost certainly be okay.
That gives you an easy answer for what you should do as well. If you want to adopt, or by miracle conceive with your partner, you'll have to sacrifice what your life looks like now to make space for the child - and that's it. Whatever else you decide to do will probably be fine. Likewise, if you don't have a child of your own, you can make an effort to be part of the lives of children in your family or your community. Maybe it's too late for your sister's kids, but children at large are in desperate need of responsible adults who give a damn about them. As for rotting in old age - I dunno, if you don't want to connect with the younger generation, I guess you could make friends?
FlailingAce
1mo ago
This is actually how I'm trying to design my future career to be 'AI-proof'. Not getting into details, I'm trying to open a fitness/adventure centered small business because I believe that kind of work 1) will continue to be valuable and human-centric even in Semi Automated Luxury world and 2) I'll be moving into the ownership/capitalist class while the opportunity still exists.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
I'll just say, I've been in for just under eight years now, and never really saw any of this DEI stuff, beyond sometimes giving female officers commands they didn't really deserve (but that was really just down to stupid first-in-first-out policies where BN leadership slotted commanders based on timelines rather than aptitude).
The actual service members I've known are almost all pretty based, but in the cynical way of 'we'll play along with the woke bs because it's lower effort'. When the COVID shot mandates came around, people pushed back pretty hard until their jobs were on the line, and even then I knew a few who quit rather than submit.
The US military, to me, is socialism writ large, and plays out that way - everyone is doing the minimum wherever possible, except in the areas they personally think are important. If the boss says to do DEI, we'll check the required boxes and then move on. If the new boss says to forget DEI, great, it's gone.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
Hey friend, just wanted to stop in and say I'm doing the same thing. In my twenties I had the dream of being 'significant', but have realized just how much pride was caught up in that. Much more healthy and virtuous is to be a part of your community first, and then if you do good there perhaps you will have expanding influence as a result. To that end I've abandoned my goal of being some kind of auteur, and instead got married, just become a deacon at my church, and am currently working on starting a local small business.
FlailingAce
1mo ago
As the couch experience improves, marginally introverted people drop out of the community, which reduces the value of the community to everyone else
I don't really buy this. You started the model at 100% participation, and at that level there are a lot of people who are undesirable to the community. I suppose this depends on what community you're talking about, but I'd say in general it's not the 'marginally introverted' who leave first, it's the 'marginally invested' or the 'socially marginal' whose loss is not as important. If I can get the weird guy who shows up but isn't friends with anyone to stay home on his phone, everyone wins.
The bigger issue with the model, I think, is that it doesn't factor in how social activity (and alone time) are limited nees. As in, for a person to be happy, they need a minimum amount of social activity (different per person) and then after that it's diminishing returns. Even if alone-fun approaches infinity it shouldn't override the social need. People don't have fun at social events because more people makes it more fun, they have fun because they are meeting a social interaction quota that can't be met otherwise.
Also, do you prefer comments here or on the blog itself?
FlailingAce
1mo ago
I used to live in Silver Spring, MD, in a decently sized house (it was a group home situation with a bunch of singles). It was 15 minutes drive to Bethesda, which is a fairly metropolitan downtown with everything a young man could desire (even art galleries!), or I could even ride my bicycle to the red line of the DC metro if I wanted to go into the city proper. To be honest I rarely did either because it was more fun and cheaper to spend time with my friends. A 4 bed, 3 bath similar to the one we rented is currently selling for $400K.
FlailingAce
2mo ago
Agree in principle, but 'storing classified information incorrectly' is almost always prosecuted, is relatively simple to understand, and is quite a serious offense (although that part might not be well understood by lay people).
The reason it's always prosecuted is because the seriousness is impossible to determine. The whole point of properly controlling classified information is so that we know who has access to it and are aware when it's lost. But if you store it improperly, even if there's no evidence that a bad actor or foreign state accessed that information, you have to assume that they did access it, because the controls that would tell you it was accessed are not in place. In other words, every piece of information on Hillary's server must be assumed to be in the hands of our enemies. Her case is exceptionally egregious because her team wiped the server, so the nation doesn't even know what information was on there that was potentially leaked.
I think she should have been prosecuted. The violation is clear, significant, and deliberate, making this case far far more severe than the average. She was let off for political reasons, and because she's well connected, and I believe that is morally and also practically wrong, and is a large part of the reason why citizens don't trust the system to protect their interests. It's a clear failure of the system of law in the country when well-connected people are immune from the consequences of their misdeeds.
FlailingAce
2mo ago
You'll notice that I didn't make any claims about the basis or the consequence of this statistic, or about the fairness of SyG laws in general. My comment is about what the creators of the documentary were intending by including these statistics.
If SyG laws become framed as a racial justice issue, this will tend to polarize the debate on partisan lines, which I think is unfortunate. And if some juries rule against SyG defendants on the basis of racial justice, which I think is possible, that could damage the integrity of the courts and create more animosity.
FlailingAce
2mo ago
If you get a lollipop on Tuesday then you get new information, but the whole premise of the thought experiment is that you don't have any way to distinguish the days, so there's no new information gained. And because of the magical memory erasure that applies to both days.
Either way, I think you're basically right that it should by 2/3, but I don't think it's a paradox or even particularly interesting when properly formulated. The anthropic principle version makes the correct answer instinctual as well as mathematically correct. The Sleeping Beauty version simply uses poor formulation and equivocates on the meaning of probability to make it seem paradoxical, which is why I line up more with the Ambiguous-question position.
FlailingAce
2mo ago
Sorry, is your objection that I didn't specify this was a hypothesis?
The impression that I got from watching the documentary is the hypothesis that they are trying to raise awareness of SyG laws, and in particular couching it as a racial justice issue. My hypothetical conclusion is that they may be supportive of juries ruling against SyG defendants. Do you have anything interesting to say about this, or are you just being reflexively combative?
FlailingAce
2mo ago
In Silksong (even more than HK), finding a well-hidden secret might unlock a key quest item, or a hidden encounter, or even an entire new zone. It's kind of nuts, and it did mean I missed some big things by playing without a guide, but I loved it anyway.
If you like this open-ended exploration aspect, I would personally recommend Dark Souls 1 over any of the others. The world design is reminiscent of Hollow Knight, in that things are surprisingly connected and non-linear, and you can indeed discover whole new zones by stepping off the beaten path. The big fights are also pretty varied and interesting. Of all the FromSoft games, that's the one I most wish I could play fresh and discover everything again.
FlailingAce
2mo ago
Thanks for the clarification. Does reasonable doubt standards apply to all those provisions? In this case, the killer reported that the woman she shot said "I'll kill you" and was banging on her door - assuming it's true, is that sufficient for a reasonable fear? for 'imminent' danger?
How would you go about shooting someone you thought was attacking you? Let them in first? If someone is on my property trying to break in to my house, Stand your Ground clearly applies.
The issue that was apparently more significant in the conviction was the discrepancy between the woman's self-reported timeline of the events and the real timeline, as I mentioned. But that discrepancy only overcomes reasonable doubt if there's a viable alternative, namely that the white woman shot the black woman in cold blood. This in turn relies on the context of the conflict between them, which was argued as racially motivated.
Regardless, I'm talking about the documentary, in which the creators made it clear they think it was a racial issue. Again, they specifically cite disproportionate death rates of black Americans under SyG laws. What about that do you dispute?
FlailingAce
2mo ago
Similarly, in the Sleeping Beauty problem, there are 4 equal-probability possibilities (Monday/Tuesday) x (heads/tails), and you waking up gives you information that restricts you to three of them.
This is just not true. Waking up doesn't give you any information, because you already know that you will wake up. You are 100% expecting to wake up.
In other words, given this scenario, Sleeping Beauty should pre-commit to the coin landing on tails with a 2/3 probability when she's asked about it. There's nothing that happens at the point of waking that changes the information she has. But this is intuitively incorrect, because a fair coin has a 1/2 probability of landing on tails, so it doesn't make sense to commit to a wrong answer. This is because 'probability' here is being used in two different ways - in the first, about our estimation about how the world actually is or was in the past, and in the second on a physical outcome in the future that can go different ways. That's why we're getting confused.
Ultimately the thirder position is analogous to the anthropic principle, and I think the problem is better conceived of like this:
Imagine there's a computer program running on a server, and after a fair coin flip, if the coin is heads, the program continues as normal, but if the coin is tails, the program is copied and now two identical programs are running. Knowing only that the coin flip has occurred and nothing else, what probability should the program give to the coin having landed on heads?
This gets rid of all the sleeping and memory erasing that just confuses the issue. The only question is, does the anthropic principle hold?
This is an individualistic argument, but isn't the more compelling case for removing ads one from social good? Ads are a net negative to the consumer AND to the companies who have to pay for them. As someone who works in a marketing-adjacent field, it's worth noting that we still don't have good ways to tell if traditional advertising is actually effective at driving sales, and there's compelling evidence that its effect for many brands is near zero. Yet companies are compelled to have an ad spend in order to keep up with the competition. Side note: modern guerilla marketing (which is essentially word-of-mouth) is a different story, but I don't think that's actually what OP is complaining about, any more than OP would say reviews should be banned. On the flip side, the most heavily advertised products are generally the worst, or at least a subpar option, which is why the need so much advertising to begin with. As a result, naive consumers are bamboozled into buying worse products for higher prices (they have to cover the overhead of the ads after all).
In my view this resolves into a tragedy of the commons situation. Everyone would benefit if ads (or at least certain modalities) were banned, but each individual player is incentivized from taking that step. Hence we need the Leviathan to step in.
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