non_radical_centrist
No bio...
User ID: 1327
non_radical_centrist
20hr ago
I think it's entirely plausible Hanania will pump and dump and have 0 guilt over it, because anyone who invests in a meme coin deserves what's coming to them
non_radical_centrist
8d ago
You know what, you've convinced me that China militarily going into Taiwan would not be bad because "wars of expansion are bad". They could fairly call it a police action in domestic territory or whatever. I still think it'd be really bad because China is a dictatorship and Taiwan is a functional democracy, and I want more functional demcracy and less dictatorship.
non_radical_centrist
11d ago
The US does not control Iraq in everything but name, and did not control Afghanistan in everything but name. There were legitimate elections.
So also China invading Taiwan would be entirely ok since most countries recognize the one China policy and Taiwan as part of China?
Everyone knows they're separate even if there's a legal fiction otherwise
non_radical_centrist
13d ago
Iraq was a bad war, but not expansionist. I think there should be a norm against invading to remove dictators, but it's okay that that's weaker than the norm against conquest.
I'm not sure which other wars you'd be referring to.
non_radical_centrist
13d ago
Lex Fridman always dubs foreign language podcasts in english, and the process is quite smooth. I don't think there'd be any fewer listeners. Especially because Zelensky did spend a lot of the interview speaking Ukrainian. And in his own justification to Fridman, he said it was about the symbolic and nationalist value.
non_radical_centrist
13d ago
Exactly. I could not ask an Ukrainian to die fighting for NATO. But if they wanted to do so anyway, I'm more than happy to provide them the weapons to do so.
non_radical_centrist
13d ago
Tell that to Putin then, cause that's exactly what he did
non_radical_centrist
13d ago
It's in the US' best interests to punish rogue states that engage in expansionist wars. Providing weapons to Ukraine is a relatively cheap way of doing so. Better to hold the line here instead of next time Russia expands into an US ally. Better to make an example of Russia than to let Iran or China think they could get away expansionism too.
non_radical_centrist
13d ago
The language of a single podcast of course isn't the sole hinge on which Putin's justifications turn. But it is a small piece. I think Putin's casus belli is made very slightly more valid if Zelensky speaks Russian. And very slightly less valid if he doesn't. Putin talked about the medieval history of Ukraine and Russia being one country to Tucker for so long because that type of thing does matter to Putin, and to many other Russians.
non_radical_centrist
14d ago
Putin used that cultural and language similarity as an excuse to invade and kill Ukrainians. I think artificially exaggerating the cultural and language differences so Putin has less of a cassus belli and ends the war, and doesn't pursue future ones, is very valid.
non_radical_centrist
14d ago
Fridman's job translating his guests is pretty good. Plausibly his behind the scenes management, making getting on his show a seamless experience and other such hidden work, is where he shines compared to other podcasters. But that's just speculation
non_radical_centrist
14d ago
Summary of the Lex Fridman-President Zelensky interview
https://youtube.com/watch?v=u321m25rKXc&t=1142s
This interview has attracted a lot of controversy in the weeks leading up to it, as Fridman has said that he wanted to conduct the interview in Russian, which they both speak fluently. Zelensky did not want to conduct the interview in Russian for symbolic reasons that are probably quite easy to understand. In the lead up of the interview, Fridman has a 10 minute introduction in which he tries to justify why wanted to speak Russian, and then the first ten minutes of the real interview is him trying to convince Zelensky. His main argument is that if Zelensky speaks Russian, an interpreter would not be needed, and more of Zelensky's wit and dynamism would come through, and that there wouldn't be a 2-3 second delay in their communication. Fridman even made a warning popup saying "2-3 second delay!" when Zelensky began speaking Ukrainian and it was being interpreted. I've only seen one other Lex Fridman interview, with Milei, but there were no such warnings and disclaimers despite how it was live interpreted between Spanish and English. Zelensky does say he can explain some concepts in Russian if Fridman wants clarification but refuses to do the interview in general in Russian. Zelensky says he's also fine if Fridman speaks in Russian the whole time or switches between Russian and English. Also Fridman does understand a bit of Ukrainian himself but is not fluent.
Everyone I've seen, including Zelensky and myself, has seemed rather confused/upset by Fridman's very strong desire to do the interview in Russian, since the symbolic concerns seem to obviously outweigh those. Especially since using an interpreter is not really a big deal. Especially for a Lex Fridman interview, his interviews are known for him getting really excellent guests, but he just asks them a few vague guests and do 95% of the communicating themselves. There's little benefit to Fridman understanding Zelensky slightly better when all the listener's are going to get it dubbed anyway. Adding more fire to people thinking Fridman is a Russian sympathizer, in his introduction he goes out of his way to emphasize the nuance of the conflict and that he just wants peace for both sides. Many people would call the Russia-Ukraine war a fairly one sided war of aggression by Russia where peace could be achieved whenever Russia decided to withdraw from Ukrainian borders.
Points:
- Zelensky talks about Odessa, how it's a beautiful city, and fairly transparently tries to build sympathy by talking about how great and Ukrainian it is. Not that I can blame him.
- Zelensky talks a bit about how his father fought in WW2, and about how WW2 began. He compares Hitler to Putin in how they both are aggressive expansionists. Also Fridman continues small digs throughout the interview- "It took me a second to catch the joke", or Zelensky says "bullshit" while talking and Fridman says "I understand, I caught that one word". Fridman continues that passive-aggressive behaviour a few more times throughout the interview, I won't mention every time. And again, he did nothing like that for the Milei interview, the translation and dub was very seemless for that interview. You could miss that it even was translated if you started halfway through and didn't notice that lips were desynced from words.
- Zelensky talks about how in the beginning of the way, he had to make fast decisions and do a lot. They started distributing weapons to regular civilians in the capital. He also spent a lot of time communicating to the citizens of Ukraine, appearing in videos he could share through the internet, and that it was very important digital networks weren't disrupted. It was important because from day 1 there really was Russian disinformation, claiming Zelensky ran away, but he could show videos of himself just walking outside his office.
- In the beginning of the war, Zelensky, with the help of media contacts, would speak Russian in videos directed to Belarusians and Russians and other Russian speakers, asking them to speak out against the war and protest. He is upset about how Russian speakers seemed to have ignored him and weren't not interested in resisting Putin at all. That's part of why he doesn't want to speak Russian now, because in his experience speaking Russian doesn't actually convince any Russian speakers of his cause.
- Lex Fridman is confident this video will reach Russian speakers and will help, that it will spread over the internet even though youtube is blocked, that even Putin will see it. Zelensky calls Putin deaf, "even if he speaks to you".
- Zelensky talks about a meeting he had with Putin, I believe this one in 2019. Zelensky says he had a conversation with Putin where Putin offered a ceasefire deal, Zelensky did that math on the numbers Putin offered there and told Putin it would take 20 years for all soldiers to withdraw given those terms. Zelensky says that made him realized that Putin was not actually deeply involved in the details of what it'd take to make a withdrawal happen, that if Putin was serious he'd already have been constantly briefed on these numbers and know how to make things happen. But instead Putin was not serious or interested in a withdrawal.
- Zelensky says three things were agreed upon at that meeting. A deal for Germany to continue buying gas from Russia, a hostage exchange deal, and a ceasefire agreement. Russia violated the ceasefire after a month, and Zelensky called Putin in response to ask what happened. Putin didn't explain anything, there were more calls with Putin over the next few months, Putin eventually stopped responding. Zelensky wanted to make a ceasefire happen, Putin was not interested. Russia was talking bullshit, and meanwhile sending snipers into the contested areas.
- Zelensky says any ceasefire needs security guarantees, because lives are at stake, and Russia can't be trusted to keep their word on purely diplomatic deals with no military backing. Zelensky wants a security guarantee like partial NATO membership, and/or an arms aid package that would only be used if Russia violates the ceasefire. Zelensky is certain that if any ceasefire happens without security guarantees, Putin will just come again after three months.
- Zelensky wants more sanctions on Russia too, particularly on Russian energy. Zelensky wants to see the world buying more American oil instead of Russian oil.
- Lex Fridman's first idea for peace is "What if Ukraine and Russia are both accepted into NATO".
- Zelensky thinks security guarantees without the US's involvement would not be enough to stop Russia from breaking a ceasefire. Europe being involved in peace talks and Ukraine's future is important too, but the US by itself outweighs the rest of NATO/Europe combined in Zelensky's eyes.
- Zelensky seems to lose patience with Fridman as the interview goes along. Fridman keeps talking about Zelensky, Trump, and Putin sitting down together to strike a peace deal. Zelensky keeps trying to explaint that Putin is not a good faith actor and that strong security guarantees from the US are necessary for any peace.
- Another of Zelensky's security guarantee suggestions was for the US to give Ukraine Russia's 300 billion frozen assets, and then Ukraine buys American arms with that Russian money. Another suggestion is non-NATO alliance like what Israel has, where countries like the USA, France, Britain assist to shoot down missiles.
- Zelensky praises Trump a lot. Probably just politics because he knows he needs to brownnose Trump.
- Ukrainian elections will probably only be held after the war ends, because of all the difficulties with occupied territories voting, all the millions of Ukrainians who are abroad, the risk of cyber attacks. Zelensky hopes the war will end in 2025 and elections will then be held immediately. He is unsure if he'd run again himself.
- Ukraine has been fighting hard against corruption, it has set up sophiscated and independent anti-corruption agencies, but Ukraine is not corruption free yet
- The US has lots of weird, arguably corrupt, strings about how weapons purchases can happen itself. For example, Ukraine wanted to transport weapons from the US to Ukraine on its own fleet of cargo jets. The US said no, that if Ukraine wanted the America to send it weapons, they'd have to pay for American jets to move those weapons.
- One time in 2019 Zelensky was visiting the white house and he wanted to go for a morning jog, but US security policy would have a bunch of bodyguards in suits jogging alongside him, and he felt too awkward to make them do that when he was just in athletic wear.
In general, I got the impression Zelensky was trying hard to flatter the people he needed too and put Ukraine in the best possible light. Not that I can blame him, given his position. Lex Fridman seemed really weird in how he seemed very sympathetic to Russia but not outright saying that, despite how obvious it was.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
If the gap between the best women and the best men in soccer is smaller than the gap between the best women and best at basketball, that is evidence for the biological advantage men have over women in soccer is smaller than it is for at least one other sport. To see if women have an actual biological advantage and not just a smaller disadvantage, it'd have to be compared to competitions where you knew there was no phsyical biological gender differences, just mental biological differences.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
Yes, I was talking about muscle biology advantage. The neurological biology advantage in my model would still be with men
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
I might be way off base, it's just the general impression I get. Even Olympic athletes have lives and don't spend all their time training. I think the most elite men cut out more non-training time than the most elite women do though.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
I looked at this list of records for the Badwater Ultramarathon. The women are fairly competitive with the men. That would never happen in something like powerlifting, or intellectual sports like chess or esports, or sprinting.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
I did mean men are more competitive on average, I know there are lots of very competitive women out there. And I'd assume a lot of the athletic and most competitive women would go into fields they're at minimum roughly equal biologically to men in, like long distance running or gymnastics. But I expect at the very highest levels of competition, like Olympic-tier athletics, the best men are putting in more hours/more intensity than the best women. But I do know there are vast numbers of women who put in more hours and intensity than I do at anything.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
It's not a very strongly held belief of mine. A combination of experts and highly upvoted/liked posts in ultramarathon communities agreeing women are just worse would probably be most convincing.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
I believe men are innately vastly more competitive than women. A man who trains for 50 000 hours will probably beat a woman who's trained for 5 000, even if she has a biological advantage.
The fact that women show up in the top ranks of ultra-endurance competitions at all, where as for the vast majority of other competitive events the top ranked woman will often be ranked like #203 or somewhere thereabouts, I think is strong evidence they have a real biological advantage.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
People making closed-source software that requires connecting to their server (rather than yours or one you choose) hate you and hold you in contempt.
Tbf, a lot of apple users deserve to be held in contempt, technology wise. I think it's fine to have a phone that's designed around minimizing user-agency so they can't fuck themselves. All the smart people should just use a different phone.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
how do you suppose Republican voters would react come 2028?
They primarily blame Democrats for blocking progress. I'm still a big believer in median voter theorem, probably whichever candidate can succesfully market themselves as more moderate wins 2028.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
Sapiens. I like the subject material a lot but it's a bit too pop pop sci for me, but I don't have other books I really want to read more at the moment.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
I've heard Wilson's translation is supposed to emphasize readability over poetic language, and also emphasize the grimness over the glory of war in its translation. Its focus on readability over poetic language makes it an easy target for tweets to mock it as a step down from previous translations, and a lot of right-wing twitter is very pro-glory over grimness. Plus she has been promoted as a girlboss, progressive translator, and that makes her an obvious cultural enemy.
I haven't read any translations myself, just retellings in various mediums. I don't feel a particular urge to get closer to the source material.
non_radical_centrist
21d ago
It's hard to trust Scientific American when they mix communicating real, good science with blatant contradictory nonsense. Their article on Man the Hunter being inaccurate makes great points about how women can be excellent endurance runners, outpacing men over long distances. But then it also has a this paragraph about gender vs sex.
Before getting into the evidence, we need to first talk about sex and gender. "Sex" typically refers to biological sex, which can be defined by myriad characteristics such as chromosomes, hormone levels, gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. The terms "female" and "male" are often used in relation to biological sex. "Gender" refers to how an individual identifies—woman, man, nonbinary, and so forth. Much of the scientific literature confuses and conflates female/male and woman/man terminology without providing definitions to clarify what it is referring to and why those terms were chosen. For the purpose of describing anatomical and physiological evidence, most of the literature uses "female" and "male," so we use those words here when discussing the results of such studies. For ethnographic and archaeological evidence, we are attempting to reconstruct social roles, for which the terms "woman" and "man" are usually used. Unfortunately, both these word sets assume a binary, which does not exist biologically, psychologically or socially. Sex and gender both exist as a spectrum, but it is difficult to add that nuance when citing the work of others.
How many pre-historic humans would actually have any seperation between the concept of a "female" and a "woman"? Not to mention they way they actually bring up "women in social roles" doesn't acknowledge their own distinction- you're never going to get a pregnant trans women, but you could get a pregnant trans men. We don't know anything about "gender" as progressives view it in pre-historic societies- we only know about sex, what we observe through things like skeletal remains and inferences from behaviour of human-like animals. The article would've done better to solely use female and male the whole way through and not try to seperate sex and gender.
Later, there's a paragraph about how athletic studies don't do enough research on females that wasn't relevant to anything else in the article. A non-sequitor that wasn't relevant to the article since we do know enough about female biology to determine their relative advantages and weaknesses at physical activities compared to men.
The article does have some good informative material in it.
Important for the purposes of this discussion, estrogen also improves fat metabolism. During exercise, estrogen seems to encourage the body to use stored fat for energy before stored carbohydrates. Fat contains more calories per gram than carbohydrates do, so it burns more slowly, which can delay fatigue during endurance activity. Not only does estrogen encourage fat burning, but it also promotes greater fat storage within muscles—marbling if you will—which makes that fat's energy more readily available. Adiponectin, another hormone that is typically present in higher amounts in females than in males, further enhances fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrates for future use, and it protects muscle from breakdown. Anne Friedlander of Stanford University and her colleagues found that females use as much as 70 percent more fat for energy during exercise than males.
Correspondingly, the muscle fibers of females differ from those of males. Females have more type I, or "slow-twitch," muscle fibers than males do. These fibers generate energy slowly by using fat. They are not all that powerful, but they take a long time to become fatigued. They are the endurance muscle fibers. Males, in contrast, typically have more type II ("fast-twitch") fibers, which use carbohydrates to provide quick energy and a great deal of power but tire rapidly.
Females also tend to have a greater number of estrogen receptors on their skeletal muscles compared with males. This arrangement makes these muscles more sensitive to estrogen, including to its protective effect after physical activity. Estrogen's ability to increase fat metabolism and regulate the body's response to the hormone insulin can help prevent muscle breakdown during intense exercise. Furthermore, estrogen appears to have a stabilizing effect on cell membranes that might otherwise rupture from acute stress brought on by heat and exercise. Ruptured cells release enzymes called creatine kinases, which can damage tissues.
But then later it had this infamous paragraph:
Inequity between male and female athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes but of biases in how they are treated in sports. As an example, some endurance-running events allow the use of professional runners called pacesetters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women's events because of the belief that they will make the women "artificially faster," as though women were not actually doing the running themselves."
I had never seen that paragraph in context before. Knowing the context, that they just explained the inherent biological differences, then denied them right after, makes it worse! Right after they broke down in detail how females have hormones and muscles built for stamina over power! The reason why male pacesetters aren't allowed for women's endurance running is because the male pacesetter would be setting the pace too fast for the women, who are built for going a longer distance at a slower pace than men, as they had literally just explained earlier in the article.
They also downplay the evidence that "Man the Hunter" was accurate, but at least they include it.
Males living in the Upper Paleolithic—the cultural period between roughly 45,000 and 10,000 years ago, when early modern humans entered Europe—do show higher rates of a set of injuries to the right elbow region known as thrower's elbow, which could mean they were more likely than females to throw spears. But it does not mean women were not hunting, because this period is also when people invented the bow and arrow, hunting nets and fishing hooks. These more sophisticated tools enabled humans to catch a wider variety of animals; they were also easier on hunters' bodies. Women may have favored hunting tactics that took advantage of these new technologies.
In conclusion, their own conclusion perfectly demonstrates their own double think:
Female physiology is optimized for exactly the kinds of endurance activities involved in procuring game animals for food. And ancient women and men appear to have engaged in the same foraging activities rather than upholding a sex-based division of labor. It was the arrival some 10,000 years ago of agriculture, with its intensive investment in land, population growth and resultant clumped resources, that led to rigid gendered roles and economic inequality.
They claim at the same time that females are biologically optimized to perform certain activities better than males, but also that females and males performed the exact same activities in an egalitarian society.
A lot of old anthropology like the original "Man the Hunter" article this article is a response to, is flawed. But at the same time, modern anthropology is just as if not more biased than the anthropology of the 60s. Their intro has a line saying,
Bystanders might be left wondering whether portrayals of women hunters are trying to make the past more inclusive than it really was—or whether Man the Hunter-style assumptions about the past are attempts to project sexism backward in time.
The reason why bystanders are so confused is because that's exactly what organizations like Scientific American are trying to do. If they really were just trying to correct a mistaken historical record, bystanders who don't do deep dives into human pre-history could safely trust pop sci and wouldn't be so skeptical. But when Scientific American blatantly tries to push an agenda, bystanders rightly grow skeptical.
I think the general Rationalist subculture still plenty sizeable. Maybe not at its peak size, but certainly not a dead online community. Commenting on astral codex ten and participating on the SSC are still fun uses of time imo.
My personal favourite non-Scott blog is putanumonit.com, I recommend looking through his archive/best of page. I got into the community through the fiction, Unsong was how I found Scott, and HPMOR was what really cemented my membership in rationality.
More options
Context Copy link