lagrangian
5d ago
I'll take the principled stand here. I don't like cancellation of anyone* for passing remarks online (or in person, but especially online).
*: unless acting in an official capacity for their job, or in a role to which your moral standing is central (pastor, maybe teacher).
This all not withstanding that I'd like at least small employers to be able to fire for literally any/no reason. My objection isn't to the firing itself, but to the random selective enforcement caused by crowd sourcing the firing. In the day of LLMs, do you really want someone programmatically reading social media, cross referencing with Linkedin, and contacting employers?
If leftists genuinely believe that he is harmful to the country, and they'd like to celebrate the cessation of that harm - even by glibly conflating the harm with the man himself - let them.
If some day there is signed a peace treaty for the Culture War, I can imagine nothing sweeter than it reading "we, the undersigned, agree to disagree."
lagrangian
9d ago
Agreed. I'm not sure I've heard of him before today, and I read here religiously. I absolutely could not have told you anything about him.
I'm not sure how much to trust themotte's search box, or site:themotte.org google searches, but there's not a lot on either prior to today.
The death of woke has been claimed many times. I'm not convinced.
I'm still afraid to admit to being centrist, maybe slightly right thereof, in social settings and certainly in work ones. A bit left of the modal Mottizen (someone, link the song, I've long lost it!). My close friends know, but I'd never casually admit to even a lack of antipathy for Trump in front of new people. And that's all as someone in many ways immune to censorship - I'm relatively old and well established, take me or leave me.
Concrete questions: when, if ever, will it be acceptable to express even the blander motte views in polite company? Was it ever?
"Trump? A little grating, but the country's doing fine, I don't mind him." "Trans? I mean...you do you, but you ain't a chick, and stop pushing books into the elementary school curriculum."
lagrangian
17d ago
High quality, low quantity. Just banflam and I.
lagrangian
17d ago
In general, the handful of Mottizens I know well enough to share names and faces with have done nothing to disabuse my trust.
+1. We really are a magically small place.
lagrangian
20d ago
Just the two of us, but feel free to still show up!
lagrangian
20d ago
Nice!
lagrangian
23d ago
Is it an open coworking space in addition to the bootcamp? Or what is there to check out here?
-I've never been to an IRL Motte/SSC diaspora meet up but I've always figured you'd have a chance at getting some of the paranoid opsec types with an open invite to some location instead of a direct "lets meet up." Food for thought?
Excellent idea. I will be at Gebhard's Beer Culture in the upper west side, this Saturday (8/30) at 5pm. Happy hour runs until 6. I will stay until at least 7. First round's on me.
I don't know NYC well, so if that's a terrible pick, suggestions are welcome.
I'll be in a black tshirt with shrodinger's cat on it.
Related question: are there any rationalist discords/meetups etc in NYC?
lagrangian
23d ago
Going to explore New York (city) for a week or two (starting ~now). Any advice on what to do? Anyone around and want to grab a beer?
lagrangian
28d ago
I can't magic male role models out of nowhere
Is there some variety of tutor/coach you could hire that suits any (special?) interests of his? This is about as close as it gets to magic, if it's an option financially. College students work pretty cheap. Math, piano, programming, personal trainer?
lagrangian
28d ago
I enjoyed it thoroughly, thanks for posting. I don't think it fits better in any other thread. All the sentences to me are "welp, probably time to kill myself." It's fascinating that they try that hard to tweak the sentences those little bits.
Any suggestions for books to learn more about the modern conflicts in Israel, especially wrt Gaza? I figure that requires some amount of covering history, but my actual objective is to be able to understand the modern state of affairs, rather than to understand history for its own sake. Maybe 2-3 suggestions, to capture a range of political viewpoints.
Podcasts/blogs would be OK too, but I'd rather books.
For bonus points, please describe the political viewpoint of the book (left/right, or pro/anti Israel, etc)
lagrangian
1mo ago
Was there a specific use-case for the highly strict clock synchronization?
It's the underlying magic of Google's Spanner database, allowing it to say fuck the CAP theorem.
lagrangian
2mo ago
For anyone else wondering, this is not about a new assassination attempt. This is about last year's, which was one year ago today (where his ear got clipped).
lagrangian
2mo ago
Why? Writing essays is the most directly applicable skill I learned in school, moreso than AP Computer Science (java) - and I'm a backend java dev. Concise, precise communication is a critical skill. Design docs are super important. (At least to the promotion committee.)
That said, I'd love if we make the essays be on more useful/interesting/self-selected topics, have more persuasive/technical writing, etc.
lagrangian
2mo ago
DM me if you'd like a (free) practice interview + feedback or just general advice. (I'm a FAANG SWE.)
lagrangian
3mo ago
not with Catholic women. I think the issue is my heterodoxy.
Sounds right to me. Either don't bring it up until date two/three, or pick different women (, or find Jesus).
I agree with the rest of your post, but this I disagree with:
and absolutely no second dates!
What's wrong with that?
It indicates something is wrong here. It'd be one thing to not make it past a few dates ever, but to never get a second date means that after the first time someone actually met you at all, they didn't want to see you again. It suggests needing to aim lower when selecting first dates and/or figure out what you're doing wrong on the date.
The bar for wanting a second date for most people, myself included, seems to not be that high. The bar for wanting a third or fourth - much higher. One data point is not that much, so a first date's not necessarily sufficient to know what you think. And, first dates, especially from apps, are often coffee/etc to minimize the awkwardness if it's no good (which is often the case, and that's fine). So, if there's any promise whatsoever, I think people often give it a second chance.
If you're not even getting that second chance, something's wrong. This is in many ways good news: figure out what it is, and fix it. Throw a spreadsheet at the problem, get a trainer, or a shrink, or a stitchfix subscription. Yes, modernity is a shitshow, but the answer isn't giving up.
Finding your spouse is a numbers game. Get to the 'not the one' quickly to move on to the next. You just haven't found her yet.
This I agree with.
lagrangian
3mo ago
No. I'm a high decoupler - I do in fact value some of her writing, including on dating. And presumably she is too. But, I still know her reputation, and I don't even have twitter. Surely she does too.
lagrangian
3mo ago
Is it even remotely possible that she did not already know her reputation? She is pretty literally an attention whore, in addition to the normal kind, and this is more of the same. She talks extensively about the efficacy of advertising herself, on her substack.
lagrangian
3mo ago
any other fair ideas
Fine companies a multiple of the wages paid to illegals. This pays for itself. Do it aggressively. Illegals will not want to be here if there is not work for them to do, so they will self deport.
That is, as always: align incentives. Don't try to make people do what you want. Make people want what you want.
lagrangian
3mo ago
Call airbnb support, get told to fuck yourself, call credit card company, do a charge back, and go back to booking hotels ever after.
lagrangian
3mo ago
to the absurd ("speeding is actually safer because a vehicle that isn't keeping up with traffic causes more accidents when people try to pass').
I have always assumed this is true. The famous graph of it is called the Solomon curve, showing that the lowest rate of accidents occurs slightly over the mean speed of traffic. It's from 1960, so take it with a larger grain of salt than most studies even, but I don't see why it's an "absurd" claim that this is true.
Doing some further research, what I'm seeing is that the rate of accidents is, as per Solomon, lowest at the speed of traffic. But, that the fatality risk and injury severity if you are in an accident increase with speed. This makes it a non-obvious EV-maximization problem to answer what speed to drive at.
It is absolutely plausible that accident rate varies with # of cars passing you (or that you pass). My mental model is that the safe thing is to go the same speed as the cars in your lane. In principle if that were faster than road conditions allow (rainy, curvy, but somehow left lane is still doing 85), it's an unsafe lane - but probably still safer to travel at the speed of those around you.
I'm open to the idea that going at the +10 found in slower lanes is safer than going at the +20 found in the faster lanes. But, I think "going the speed limit is safer, in any lane" is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
I'm curious, Mottizens: what speed would you drive at in perfect conditions (straight, flat, sunny, minimal traffic), in a 70 mph interstate?
Afaik the main quote was:
This seems remarkably inoffensive to me. Even if it's factually incorrect - and it's not clear to me we even know yet - how is this bannable? What am I missing here? I can't find further statements from him that are worse, not that I can imagine what would be sufficient for me to support his banning.
I watched a Charlie Kirk video. Gotta say, don't like the guy. I was hoping the vibe would be "patient Mottizen explains things" or "Scott Alexander", but it was much closer to "Steven Crowder." Is he chiller in other videos?
I was particularly galled by the amount of appeals to religion (the resurrection of Christ is the most well documented fact in history, so Christianity is true, so its morals are correct) and abortion is bad.
Even worse, the use of blatantly untrue "facts" that I have trouble believing he could have not fact checked, as much as they were relevant to his soap boxes. E.g. the claim that no abortions are ever medically necessary for the health of the mother. Worse, he slimily hedged by saying this was "according to some gynecologists, I don't know if it's true, but they're experts."
This leaves me, as often, in the weird position of standing on my meta level principles despite their being in conflict with the object level. I dislike Kirk and his methods, but like (many) of his principles. I dislike Kimmel, full stop (I assume - I won't claim to have watched him much. I'm extrapolating from Colbert/Stewart, who are insufferable as of late.). But, I want Kimmel on air, and no one fired over Kirk. I really don't want the US going to the way of Europe, or worse, on free speech.
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