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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
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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
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Part of the issue I have with Trump is that if he goes senile or has a stroke, but does not clinically die, he's unlikely to 25A himself and it's not immediately obvious that Vance and his cabinet would dare to invoke 25A section 4 given their voter base's immense personal loyalty to Trump (cf. "Hang Mike Pence").


Of course, this mostly matters to me because my P(WWIII) is high; outside of that scenario, it's not as big a deal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for October 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Failed my duty as eldest sibling to continue the family line (and my younger brothers certainly aren't going to do it).




I assume this means acquired infertility. There's research going on about making sperm out of stem cells, and that should circumvent all forms of infertility (except being dead).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
    

  1. Elon Musk doesn't actually own a majority stake in Tesla.
    2. 

  2. My understanding is that Tesla and SpaceX owe a significant chunk of their value to Elon Musk's leadership, which means one can't just steal them out from under him without causing much of that value to disintegrate.
    3. 

  3. As @Corvos noted, at the governmental scale money is less relevant than power, and there's power in Twitter (which is, of course, why Musk bought it in the first place). There is particularly power in Twitter to make or break a full set of the big platforms for censorship purposes - in other words, if one supports or opposes SJ (though in the latter case, one presumably would be cheering Musk; as Zvi put it, "Musk spent $44 billion dollars so the rest of us didn’t have to. That’s pretty sweet").
    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
First one seems pretty unlikely*; what's the lizardman's constant for Manifold?


The second one... well, the obvious motivation for somebody (not necessarily the USA) to arrest him would be "to get enough leverage on him to get him to sell/give Twitter to someone more pliable" (this being akin to rubber-hose cryptanalysis or the Pierre-sur-Haute fiasco, and lawfare without custody being insufficient to the task due to his fuck-you money), although that would be such a huge heel move that I couldn't even begin to guess at the repercussions.


*The problem is that to resolve positive, the SCOTUS has to rule him disqualified, and that means they have to pack the court in less than three months (because this SCOTUS won't do that unless he commits obvious treason, which he has no reason to do as President-elect, and if Trump takes office the court can't be packed against him).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Would you mind giving me confidence levels on your predictions of:


    

  1. Trump won't be declared the winner;
    2. 

  2. If Trump is declared the winner, he'll not take office;
    3. 

  3. If Harris takes office, Elon Musk will be arrested in the next year?
    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
His nominal net worth was less in early 2024 than it was when he bought Twitter; it's somewhat more now, but it's still nothing compared to the ridiculous rate at which it grew before that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The literal Fair Game notice was/is a Scientology term; L. Ron Hubbard would declare someone "fair game", and this meant "use any and all means to ruin this person" (frivolous lawsuits, slander, illegal spying and leaking to tabloids, framing for crimes...).


There seems to be something akin to a Fair Game notice (though presumably not with that exact name) in place against Elon Musk following his purchase of Twitter (and gutting of its censorship bureau); loads of different federal agencies have done things to screw over unrelated Musk businesses (the one I recall off the top of my head is the FCC retracting the rural-Internet grant to Starlink, on the basis that it hadn't met the target yet, despite the target not being due for another couple of years; there's a dissent from that order which lists a bunch of others, though I don't know all the details, as well as noting that Biden was fairly open about this). My understanding is that this is half of the reason Musk's star has been waning recently (the other half being that Twitter isn't his sort of business and it's distracting him).


As noted, due to Twitter being among other things a news service, this is in direct opposition to freedom of the press (as well as impartial justice). You can plausibly argue that this is significantly worse than Watergate due to the sheer scale of the corrupt operation (the Sedition Act was still worse, but that was 225 years ago). But, uh, this seems to have not been a huge scandal, which has disturbing implications about the USA.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I mean, of the Trump-voters here, I'd say probably about 30-40% are also living in Trump-world (which totally explains their intentions to vote for him), and the rest are so shit-scared of Kamala Harris that they think Trump's still the lesser evil*.


(I'm not a Trump-voter or a Harris-voter, because I'm not American. I'm grudgingly hoping Harris wins, but my main concern is totally orthogonal to any "normal" politics concerns; I'm concerned about WWIII and Trump's advanced age, although I'd far prefer Vance to Harris as leader of the free world.)


*If I had to point to a single thing as "if it were anyone but Trump opposing her this would be a slam-dunk", I'd point to the Fair Game notice on Elon Musk in retaliation for his uncensoring of Twitter. This is an ongoing attempt to censor the press for direct partisan advantage by use of government force - the sort of thing that can easily spiral into one-party state via media control - and it happened under Biden who's known to be more moderate than Harris. Frankly, I'm deeply disturbed by the extent to which this hasn't been a massive scandal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the steelman basically looks like "Trump was living in Trump-world where there is massive fraud, and in Trump-world his actions were justified because the alternative amounted to the end of democracy, so it wasn't unvirtuous for him to try it though it was correct for him to get slapped down".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 10, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Just been prescribed (dilute) nitroglycerine cream for haemorrhoids, and it sure does hit like a truck. Pounding headache within a minute of sticking it up there, although thankfully it ebbs fast.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
IQ selection is one of the less-dangerous possibilities in this field, except insofar as it potentiates any mistakes made WRT personality. Selecting for Dark Triad (intentionally or not) and/or selecting against Asperger's seem like the most obvious traps; they've mentioned they won't let people directly do the former (which, well, good) but the article's unclear on the latter.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This might include, for example, a pre-event propaganda campaign providing initial narrative buildup or international legitimization for the immeninent actions, particularly propaganda emphasizing the historical nature of rectifying the century of humiliation.




They've been doing that for decades, including to Western media with extortion via access to the Chinese market and diplomatically via bribing the countries that recognise the ROC to switch. Certainly, this hence isn't something that was in my court for "they're about to do it now" (and I didn't claim it as such), but I don't think it's in your court either as a sign that will be there but wasn't. It's a sign that is always there (well, I suppose it'll stop being there when they go for it and either win or get "you are not allowed to keep insisting that Taiwan isn't a country" rammed down their throats the way the Opium Wars ended with "you are not allowed to keep insisting that Western nations are barbarians begging for your scraps" rammed down their throats, but at that point this discussion will be moot), and I'm not sure what good it would do them to increase the amount of it that is going out right before an invasion.


Now, that aside: most of the things you mention are things I didn't check because I don't know how to/have access to check them, which means I couldn't take them into account before making my decision of whether to warn. If you had mentioned them to me at the start of this conversation rather than literally 100% of your first two posts' reasoning being (significantly-although-not-wholly-inaccurate) bulverism of my mental state and absurdity heuristic, I would probably have retracted immediately. And, if you either teach me how to find out such things, or agree to tell me such things if I get worried again, I can take them into account before deciding whether to issue warnings in future (though it will likely be some time before that happens)!


You chose to treat me as a drooling insane child rather than a reasonable person not in possession of all the facts. This was not only immensely rude, it was useless; we just went around in circles for six posts until you actually started saying something meaningful. What the fuck was the point of all that?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How would you go about getting more people to live rurally?


(I mean, the answer is going to boil down to "incentives", but I'm asking which incentives you would think most cost-effective, since you think this one isn't.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
By "the government's actual goals", do you just mean what they asked for, or are we talking bigger-picture like "get more people to live rurally"?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't want tax dollars given to Starlink, or anyone else, to subsidize rural broadband.




To clarify: is this because you want rural people to not have broadband (e.g. because you want to keep SJ away from them), or because you don't think this is something the government should be meddling in (e.g. because you think this is basically pork)?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'd suggest that both you and @TIRM (and maybe @jkf as well) read @gattsuru's reply to this top-level a few pages down below; there may or may not be issues with his info, but it seems highly relevant.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Uh, uranium's an actinide (and thus lithophile), the thing I just said is highly concentrated in Earth's crust (see e.g. here for Sol System vs. here for Earth's crust; note that this somewhat understates the effect because both are normed to silicon being 10^6 and silicon is mildly concentrated in the crust compared to undifferentiated rocky bodies/epically concentrated in Earth as a whole compared to icy bodies). Sorry if that wasn't clear.


The yellow region in the second graph is the highly-siderophilic elements (plus tellurium), which are strongly depleted in the crust, and indeed osmium's one of them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One thing about Mars I particularly want to preserve is the possibility of checking for lithopanspermia. There are a limited number of locations in Sol system capable of checking that hypothesis.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Obtaining rare earths in a place where the toxic lakes the size of Delaware don’t matter would certainly be a benefit for the environment. If we can stop being retarded about building nuclear uranium supplies might be worth it too.




I will point out here that lithophile elements are literally the worst things to get from space as far as relative difficulty of mining them goes. Atmophiles are found in much-greater quantity in the outer system. Siderophiles (which include literal gold) are far more accessible on asteroids because on Earth they sank into the core. But lithophiles (which include rare earths and actinides) are strongly concentrated in the crusts of planets; Earth is a great place to find them, only matched by other rocky, differentiated bodies (which have notable gravity wells and frequently atmospheres greatly increasing the expense of sending stuff back).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The world does not function as you think it does,




You seem to have been correct about this incident.


Is there some reason I should go with the hypothesis "Dean knows what the CPC is up to better than I do" rather than the hypothesis "Dean is a Rock Cultist who was right this time"? I'm open to persuasion of the former, but there are lots of Rock Cultists, including many smug Rock Cultists.


My model of the PLA drills around Taiwan is that one of them is not going to be a drill, and the rest are both practice runs and decoys to make people think the real one is another drill and thus gain tactical advantage. To guess which ones might be real, I look at various indications regarding their chances of success and consider whether enough of them point in the direction of "this is the best shot they'll get for a while". March/April/October is one sign, since those are the best months for amphibious operations (though they do have other options). Unusual/temporary weakness in US leadership is another. Unusual/temporary weakness in Western militaries is another. Mood in Taiwan is another, as I certainly accept that the PRC would rather take Taiwan peacefully, though this one's basically stuck in the "on" position at this point since it's now been years since the crash of unificationist sentiment to lizardman following the Hong Kong fiasco (i.e. they have had time to plan and prepare to follow "non-peaceful means" now that the "possibilities for a peaceful re-unification [are] completely exhausted"; quotes are from the PRC's Anti-Secession Law).


The 2024 US election cycle was predictable as a shitshow since 2021, so I predicted well in advance that October 2024 would be a solid time to invade. Biden going senile (and not seeking re-election) and the West re-arming due to Ukraine also create the potential of a temporary vulnerability. So I considered it plausible that this might be the real one; this is the best chance they have for a while (until 2027 or so, unless something goes very wrong in the USA, but even if it does that won't be predictable so to be as good a shot it'd have to be very bad). I knew that they might not do it, and I made that quite clear.


Vague mockery is not going to convince me. You have to be able to spot and explain a problem in the above argument if you are going to convince me that we didn't just get lucky.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Not only am I ignoring your warning, I am recommending for your own health- mental as well as possibly physical- to get some rest.






You are doom posting. Go sleep it off.




FYI:


Went to bed Monday morning around 4AM. Got up about 3:30 PM. Posted the top-level at 9:10 PM. Went to bed Tuesday morning at 3AM. Got up around 1:30 PM. Posting this at 2:45 PM. I do not retract my concerns.


I'm a night owl, not insane from lack of sleep.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


While Biden is an uninspiring leader, I don't see much improvement on the horizon. Kamala is singularly inexperienced and disrespected.




Biden is actually demented, which in case of war will immediately trigger a crisis over whether to 25A him in favour of Harris. That is a distraction during the crucial first few days. If they stick with Biden, he's not going to be up to the job, which will hamper the US somewhat. If they make Harris Acting President, she probably hasn't been briefed on things to a sufficient extent (as she's been focussing on the campaign), which will also hamper the US somewhat until she gets up to speed (or until the election, if she doesn't abort campaigning in order to concentrate). All of that's a plus for Beijing versus going during a pre-existing Harris presidency (at least up until 2028, and to some degree even then).




Is there an unknown unknown in Chinese culture that I'm not aware of? Some crisis within the leadership or population that makes this necessary?




They are starting to take reputational damage by not going for Taiwan. Entirely self-inflicted by their propaganda, of course, but the fact that it's their own fault doesn't change their incentives. I don't think that issue is at crisis levels yet (if they don't make the 100-year deadline they're in trouble, but that isn't for another 25 years), although their failure on COVID might make them anxious for a victory.




China has some wunderwaffen they feel will allow them to win the conflict, and wants to act before it is discovered or countered by the USA.




I mean, this isn't very relevant, but on this front I suppose there is the possibility of using TikTok/ByteDance to try to influence the US public away from intervention, which will (mostly) go away when the ban comes into effect.




Any other reasons to do this today, rather than continue to wait and watch?




XJP's ego (East Asians live a long time, but he's no spring chicken and he wants this to be his achievement).


(To be clear, none of this makes it a certainty. Like I said, this might not be the big one. I'm just noting stuff in the categories you asked for.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The wider narrative that I’ve seen, particularly among the media, has generally been that the failure was due to misinformation, and due to Peter Dutton and the Coalition opposing the Voice. Some commentators have suggested that it’s just that Australia is irredeemably racist, but that seems like a minority to me. The main, accepted line, it seems to me, is that it failed because the country’s centre-right party opposed it, and because misinformation and lies tainted the process.




While the "misinformation" angle was garbage (I appreciate being cited), I think Dutton and the Liberals were actually pretty important in the No result; the polls show a substantial signal when the booklets went out, Labour wanted to scrap them (and allow the government to run other pro-Yes material, WorkChoices-ads-style), and they'd probably have accomplished that if the Liberals hadn't called them out on it. His JAQ was also IMO pretty effective. On this point my only real disagreement with the people mad at Dutton is "I think the No result was good, actually"; it's possible we'd still have gotten a No, but it would at least have been much closer in the counterfactual.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Well, you're certainly demonstrating the classic failure mode of utilitarians, who struggle to conceptualize or deal with conceptual infinities and start doing irrational things on the basis of existential dread spirals.






No, the Chinese are not about to try and cold-rush Taiwan, or try to start a war via blockade that would be publicly jumped on by both US political parties for electioneering purposes. No, there isn't any particular grounds for panic-buying resiliency goods beyond the universal basis to have a stockpile for emergencies. No, the nukes (and the satellites) are not about to fall.






You are doomposting. Go back to bed and sleep it off.




You have the right to ignore my warning if you so wish. As I said, I might look paranoid in a few days.


(In case I don't, though, no memory-hole for you.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
    

  1. They might underestimate the West's willingness to fight. This is particularly exacerbated by the PRC's hypernationalism; overconfidence is the classic pitfall of such regimes.
    2. 

  2. Once combat starts between the USA and PRC directly, there's a constant threat of false alarms, particularly on the Chinese side. If it goes on long enough, eventually you're going to get an Arkhipov making the wrong call, or a Petrov incident or Duluth bear not realised as false in time. My estimate is ~1% per day, and an acquaintance in the business said that's the right order of magnitude. Also, once they pull the trigger, backing down would severely damage the CPC's legitimacy; their fundamental policy promise is that they'll bring China back to world leader status, and this is more load-bearing than most Western policy promises given the CPC's lack of democratic legitimacy. So they might not immediately pull back after it's clear the West is coming in.
    3.