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magic9mushroom

If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me

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joined 2022 September 10 11:26:14 UTC 

				
User ID: 1103


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
magic9mushroom


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 10 11:26:14 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1103


					
					
					
				

			




		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


may have told her his own company's private secrets




Jensen Huang was also an important Trump advisor, hence possible bad advice and/or passing on stuff Trump told him. And, yeah, chip smuggling.




although there is no evidence of it?




More correctly, you (and I) have not yet seen any solid evidence that Jensen Huang was knowingly doing the bidding of the CPC. (I do not believe we've seen evidence that he wasn't, either - the guy did spend years aggressively lobbying to sell chips to China, and interfered with a government investigation into a Chinese spy.)


I will also note that QF said that Huang might go down in history as the worst traitor since the Rosenbergs, which acknowledges that the Rosenbergs were worse (and that he might not be considered such a traitor, if for instance he was merely duped).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The second part is about the smuggling and espionage aspect, where the implications, if true, would be much worse, an actual criminal offense, than merely a consenting couple having sex (albeit involving the CEO of the largest publicly traded company in the world), yet the lax reaction by Washington is weird.




You're misinterpreting this as a "lax reaction by Washington". What it is is more correctly a "lax reaction by Donald Trump"; Congress is investigating. Donald Trump is probably relying on his "corruption isn't that bad" and "(almost) never back down" heuristics, presumably due to still not fully grokking the government world and/or early-stage dementia. As I said in the previous subthread, this could well get Trump impeached and convicted.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What does it mean obviously and no point?






are we supposed to decide what is true and worthy to pursue by obviousness and having point?






Can I say that Cartersia Demon obviously exists and thus there is no point having discussion, ending in some post-modern nihilism?




Essentially, if a Cartesian Daemon is messing with your mind, contemplation (individually or in groups via discussion) can produce arbitrary answers with no relation to what is true (a Daemon that wants to ensure you conclude X, or wants to prevent you concluding Y, can definitely do so by messing with your cognition).


So, let's break this down into cases.


Case 1: Cartesian Daemon. Discussion intended to achieve truths (which philosophical discussion - philosophical meaning "loving of wisdom" - is) will fail, so we might as well not do it.


Case 2: No Cartesian Daemon. Discussion might achieve things, but since there's no Cartesian Daemon we don't need to discuss that particular possibility.


Morton's Fork: both Case 1 and Case 2 imply that discussing Cartesian-Daemon scenarios is pointless, so since one of them's true this is true unconditionally.


I assumed (apparently falsely) that this proof was sufficiently "obvious" that you would immediately grasp it and thus I didn't need to belabour the point by stating it.


As for having point, um, yes, we should choose courses of action based on whether they achieve our goals? If you want X, and Y will achieve X, you want Y.




Whatever it is, it is your presupposition even in this naive and unexamined form.




Okay, look. There's this pattern I've seen you fall into with others, and you're falling into it now.


    

  1. Your interlocutor says X.
    2. 

  2. You respond to your interlocutor as though he's saying Y, presumably because English isn't your first language and you honestly misinterpreted him.
    3. 

  3. Your interlocutor responds that he's not saying Y, and is in fact saying X.
    4. 

  4. You insist that your interlocutor is saying Y, and sometimes insult him (as I just quoted).
    5. 



Steps 1-3 are fine. English not being your first language isn't your fault, so I can certainly make allowance for some degree of misinterpretation. But step 4 is not fine. That you occasionally misinterpret me isn't my fault either, insisting that I'm saying things I'm not saying is not productive, and insulting me is not justified. You need to understand that you are frequently misinterpreting others, and that the proper response to this is to ask for clarification rather than insulting us.




Sure, I can present it here in this context as there are more transcendental arguments for God, including Kantian one. I mean it in this sense.




Okay, thanks. Do you believe these premises? Premise 2 appears very obviously to be an error by Kant, due partially to his life being before the theory of natural selection was created by Wallace and Darwin and thus a materialistic explanation of 3/4 of those was devised, and partially due to privileging the Christian hypothesis over e.g. deism simply because there are more Christians than deists.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Mirror life itself isn't especially dangerous, and IIRC we actually do have the ability to build mirror bacteria. Life 2.0 is, however, extraordinarily dangerous.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
They don't benefit the people cyberattacked by them!


(Also, they look set to stop releasing weights sometime soon; the cyberattacks are starting to make the CPC nervous.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A mostly-innocent one is that Huang (at some point in the affair, perhaps when she asked where he kept the nuclear wessels) suspected he was being honeytrapped, went to his buds in the administration, and they told him to keep it going to feed her disinformation, and in fact did so.




That would mean that the administration thought that feeding Alice Huang disinformation was worth selling China $4.3 billion of contraband AI chips and following through on policy proposals that seem to have been CPC-approved. This seems both unlikely and scandalous in its own right.




Another mostly-innocent one is that the CIA knew she was a spy, Huang did not, but he was just screwing her and didn't actually give her any information.




Plausible, but doesn't absolve Trump for continuing to consult Jensen Huang; even assuming Trump knew that Jensen Huang was not actually pillow-talking and that he wouldn't start pillow-talking, there's the "she potentially tapped his phones" problem.




It's also possible Huang was leaking her some information, and the CIA found out much later... but now wishes to pretend they knew all along to cause China to doubt the information they got. In this case... well, you gotta sell it.




This plan would seem to necessarily include Donald Trump agreeing to play (secondary) fall-guy to the media. This does not match my model of Donald Trump.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In this argument you posit that debate is meaningless if stable reality does not exist and if it is fucked up by Carthesian demons and similar stuff. I assert that meaningful debate exists. Therefore meaningful and stable reality exists, and no Carthesian demon shenanigans are real.




No, that's not what I'm saying. There is some probability that Cartesian-Daemon shenanigans are occurring. There's just obviously no point in discussing that scenario or even contemplating it, so we might as well act as if they're not.


There is a difference between assuming something and asserting it. I assume that AI will not destroy the world when I'm making plans for the long-term. This isn't because I think AI will definitely not destroy the world (I think it's about 30% we all die); it's just that you can't actually execute on plans, or collect on investments, if you're dead, so that chunk of possibility-space is not useful to plan for.




Transcendental Argument for God




I have not found you explaining what this is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


UK lawmakers are probably aware that some children will see porn from their adults' screen...but should be aware that some children will see their parents having sex, and the correct course of action is obviously not to ban sex, but threaten such parents with neglect.




This is Chesterton's Ruins; we know plenty of societies - literally the majority of humans that have ever lived - did and do allow this with nothing bad happening. It would seem pretty stupid to call exposing kids to something that won't hurt them "neglect".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Simulation hypothesis doesn't ruin everything as long as you're not being fucked with mentally and as long as the simulation is, like the Matrix, a full world rather than just a trick for you that doesn't model the parts you're not interacting with. Given those stipulations you can still come to conclusions about the simulation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So, um.


Trump just admitted that he knew for the last year one of his top advisors was dating a Chinese spy, and that he doesn't regret his decision to neither ask Huang to dump Huang nor stop consulting him, and that he wants to continue using him as an advisor.


I can honestly believe that Trump is too inexperienced at this whole "national security" thing (or too demented, or a mixture of both) to realise that this is not how you're supposed to do things. But this seems like the sort of obvious NatSec breach that might actually get those 11-13 Republican Senators to vote to convict.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But we don't know what that looks like and cannot really tell a dyson swarm from ordinary interstellar dust that covers a star.




Yes, we can, actually. Look up Tabby's Star, where they found something like this and used the differential blocking of different wavelengths to prove it had to be dust and not macroscopic objects.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


For example, if there were a civilization comparable in sophistication to Renaissance Italy 150 light years away from us, right now, how would we even know?




Renaissance Italy, maybe not (although we're making progress on our ability to detect even that). But "Renaissance Italy" is a tiny slice of time compared to the amount of time a civilisation could persist at Kardashev II (unless Late Filters are a thing, which seems like something we want to know about!), and K2 likely would be visible to us over much of the galaxy - Dyson Spheres are not stealthy and deploying them en-masse is even less so (antimatter rockets are also pretty obvious, although solar sails admittedly aren't).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A new paper is out(https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404)




That paper is eight years old.


Also, this is one of the better papers in the "claims to dissolve the Fermi Paradox" genre (I remember reading at least three) in that its thesis, if proven true, would solve the Fermi Paradox. It's still not actually good; for one, their estimates are basically a lot of irrelevant set-dressing on "if you assume that there's a 40% chance abiogenesis is a universe-scale Great Filter and that there's no panspermia, you'll find that there's a >40% chance that we're alone in the universe" (yes, almost all of it is that one element), and for two, saying "the Filter might be abiogenesis" doesn't actually solve the Fermi Paradox - people have been saying that since before I was born, and I remember September 11. Solving the Fermi Paradox, for real, requires positively identifying the Filter, not saying "a Filter exists and it's probably either abiogenesis+no-panspermia or one of the increases in complexity between minimum-viable-lifeform and tool-users that can take over their planet" (note that "Earthlike planets are rare" used to be a live option, but we've proven that one wrong - this is what real progress on the Fermi Paradox looks like, and it involved a lot of fiddling with telescopes).


(Betteridge's Law strikes again.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You need to put the word "(North)east" before "Asian" to be technically correct (I'm not saying that there aren't lookers from the rest of Asia, but there are definitely those I'd rate well below 8). I think white women can push a bit higher than that, also.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
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Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. There is a legitimate tradeoff for the programmer when deciding which language to use. It is sensible for people to pick one for some things, and another for others - and for this division to differ between people. A restriction one imposes on oneself cannot be unreasonable.


If there were some movement to arrest everyone who didn't program in Rust, that would be insane (within organisations gets more complicated; there are moral hazard issues), but @ZorbaTHut does not appear to have been ordered by anyone to use Rust.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
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Yes, the "context" link used to work. I thought I said that, but maybe I wasn't clear.


RR is saying that it doesn't anymore, and I can confirm (I got served immediately after making that post, and indeed used the workaround I stated).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
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Surely there's a type I/type II error dichotomy there, where you know you have some chance of accidentally writing something unintended (e.g. "goto fail"), and so there's a legitimate tradeoff between protecting you from those (which is serving your intended expression) vs. stopping you from doing things you actually intended? It seems reasonable to have various options in that regard lying around - even leaving aside personal differences, there are task differences in which is more important.


Unless it stops you from writing politically "bad" code? Does it stop you from naming variables "nigger" or something?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think there are basically two assumptions that one kinda has to make in order to have a philosophical discussion:


    

  1. 

    No Cartesian Daemon fucking with our ability to do logic and philosophy.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    The world exists - not necessarily "for real", but still as a whole. If we are brains in jars being fed simulated sense data, the simulation does at least model Earth and thus it is possible to deduce things about the simulation.
    

    3. 



You need assumption #1 because if there is such fuckery, then it fatally undermines any attempt to search for philosophical truths, so what's the point?


You need assumption #2 because if the world doesn't exist, you (or from your perspective, I) probably don't exist and the discussion would again appear pointless. Also, because a deus deceptor even restricted from directly messing with our ability to do philosophy closes off huge swathes of questions to anything beyond "well, I dunno".


You do not actually need assumption #2, though, to prove that 2 + 2 = 4. Proof:


2 + 2 = 2 + (1+1) = (2 + 1) + 1 = 3 + 1 = 4.


First step is the definition of 2, second step is the associative property of addition, third step is the definition of 3, fourth step is the definition of 4. All of these are axioms (as is the transitive property of =). Maths is only ever asserted to be true with respect to some set of axioms; sure, this isn't true in Tropical but we're not talking about Tropical. Either my ability to do logic is being fucked with, or 2 + 2 = 4, no empiricism required.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
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Remind me, what is it that makes people consider Rust "captured"? Do they have some sort of control over who can legally compile with it, or something?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
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Who said it was intentionally hidden, but the "context" link worked, and the context is frequently relevant.


I will note that hiding the "context" link doesn't actually prevent people from figuring out whose it is, as it's possible to Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V the post into the search bar in another tab.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We would have no beef with China if not for South Korea.




What? All else aside, the alliance with Japan is a far-bigger deal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Midterms Megathread
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not American, so you're right that I've never voted Republican, but I'm probably going to vote National (our conservative party) at the Victorian election in a couple of weeks.


(Our hardcore-SJ party, the Greens, have gone psycho and want to ban our alt-right party, One Nation, so they're on the NOPE list. Our neoliberal party - the Liberals - won't be running a candidate in my electorate due to being in coalition with the Nationals. I'd be willing to vote Labour - our centre-left party, although with more SJ than I'd like - or One Nation if either had a civil defence policy, but they haven't got back to me yet and One Nation has a couple of positions that annoy me like wanting to ban abortion and build new coal-fired power plants (they have some good policies, too, but the Liberal/National Coalition has appropriated most of them).)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What you've described is basically just "one sin (defeat), one grace (victory)", though, and there's a reason that that saying is put in the mouths of a group called the Legions of Terror. I wouldn't say that they're never words to live by*, but the only typically-accepted reason is emergency - total war, human extinction, that sort of thing. To engage that mentality outside a true emergency is a mark of delusion or evil, and usually results in atrocity.


*I have to admit to holding that mentality with regard to stopping AI, because yeah, I believe basically anything's justified to prevent the end of the world. I'm not a terrorist, and I recommend against terrorism, purely on practical grounds (i.e. I cannot come up with any terrorist acts - at least in present conditions - that both are plausibly achievable and actually lower P(Doom)).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for October 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I put that down mainly to the Motte having an unusually high quotient of neo-Nazis.




I'd generally object to the categorisation of "choosing a partner based on genetics" as necessarily "neo-Nazi". There's a pretty-clear distinction here between the HBD-believers (the majority, including me) and the specific neo-Nazis, the Jew-exclusionary white supremacists (a subset and a minority, who catch a fair amount of downvotes and probably a larger amount of eye-rolls). The main thrust of that post is not specific to Nazis, and I imagine a lot of non-Nazis upvoted/AAQCed that post.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	




	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree that the specific Rat community tends strongly to have a particular set of views on those topics (though I'll note that I do go to LW meetups), and the Rat community is the most active in trying to stop/align AI.


My point is that the Rat community isn't identical to "the set of people who think AI might kill us all". Trump is pro-AI; much of the alt-right is pro-AI for tribal reasons. Actual conservatives... I know one IRL, and he's got a higher P(Doom) than me even if he doesn't use that term. One can hate the Rats and also hate AI.


(I mean, sure, "existential" in this sense is to a fair degree Rat jargon and will mess with your poll results compared to "is it possible AI will kill us all", but I understood you as making a point about people's predictions of worldstate, not about vocabulary.)