sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
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User ID: 636
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
While the aussies seem largely uncaring or sick of this government grovelling
Depends on the Aussie. People I've met from Melbourne were devastated when the voice referendum failed. I doubt they mind land acknowledgements.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
Living in a high trust society is awesome precisely because you can trust people who aren't related to you by blood.
Who's at the top of trust rankings? It's not the Arab world. The highest ranked Arab country is Morocco at 17% of people saying that people can generally be trusted. The US is at 37% and the top spot is Denmark at 74% (inb4 Denmark is an Arab country).
Structuring society around kinship networks is a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that your countrymen are bastards and is correlated with living in an impoverished country. It's certainly not how you get and stay rich.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
but yes, you should strive to do more commerce with people closer to you, and less with those further away.
See the Arab world for how this pans out when you take it to the logical conclusion. As an American you have the luxury of professing this belief because the entire world around you is made possible by trusting strangers and you, too, benefit from this enormously. You're not actually going to go live innawoods with your cousins and live off the fatta the land.
That trust is a superweapon is exactly why those who can effectively cooperate with more people are more prosperous than those who are stuck with kinship networks. De Beers revenue is $6B. Walmart revenue is $650B.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
My man, surely you've visited a pizza joint that isn't an international chain?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
American unemployment is at something like 4% which is pretty good historically speaking (yes there are other measures of unemployment, no they don't show a crisis of unemployment). This despite jobs constantly getting offshored, automated, and otherwise eliminated over the past two hundred years. Where are the farmers who used to make up 80% of the population in the 18th century? Where are the spinsters and weavers who used to make up almost the entire female population? Are their kids going hungry in the streets? Obviously not, and neither will the kids of the longshoremen. Are we better off with abundant food and textiles? Obviously yes (I don't consider obesity to be a compelling counterargument to material prosperity).
Looking at it the other way - why should we prioritize buying American? Wouldn't it be better if Californians bought Californian instead? Of course my interests are more aligned with Americans than indians. But they are even more aligned with Californians on account of being surrounded by them. And in fact, why shouldn't I restrict all my economic activity to my blood relations? Those are the people closest to me of all.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
Automating the ports is pro social. It's just not pro-longshoremen, who account for 0.01% of society. What kind of costs should the rest of us pay so that they can keep doing this generation after generation? I'd be happy with some kind of lump some payment plus forced retirement so this danegeld situation stops. Otherwise it's just another of the absurd frictions that are eating away at American prosperity.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
What growth is there without consumers (i.e. people)?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
Surely this is the worst argument against AI? Shouldn't we burn the backhoes and go back to digging ditches by hand to ensure employment opportunities for our children?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
There's peculiar people at every part of every company. IME people at deep mind are not more peculiar than those working at other parts of Goog, and I certainly wouldn't describe them as cultists. Can't speak for the other labs.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1mo ago
Of course you did expect us to share! That's why you said "obviously fantastic" and "we can conclude".
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
That (important) buildings should be beautiful appears to be the consensus opinion throughout human history and across cultures wherever humans have been able to build anything more grandiose than a mud hut.
The burden is on the postmodernists to convince us that a five thousand year old architectural tradition is mistaken, not the other way around. They must prove to us that everyone had somehow missed the point until a few French and German intellectuals of the 20th century figured it all out.
So far I've found their arguments lacking.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
Isn't the point of CICO that it should always give you predictable results, and that if your results are wrong, it's because you made a mistake or are lying?
Well, yes. The problem is that CO is not directly measurable outside of a metabolic ward. That's why successful CICO approaches dial in CI (which is measurable) to hit a certain rate of weight change (also measurable).
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
This is more impenetrable pomo, but I guess I'll try to respond anyway.
Not really. OOO recognises that buildings-as-real-objects fade into the background in a Heideggerian sense when they become tools,
Yes really - the whole point of the article is how architects can prevent their buildings from fading into the background, i.e., horror of horrors, fitting in to their environments. That's why it literally ends with endorsing Lovecraftian architecture as the wave of the future. If architects can pull off building stuff that looks disturbing and maddening, it will surely not fade away.
OOO questions whether it continues to be valuable for the practice of architecture to load potential buildings under a multiplicity of these relations (to zoning, environmental impact, situation within the street, ad infinitum)... Architects should become more comfortable with the vibes and ineffables, and the limited accessibility to underlying reality of objects.
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. Obviously buildings have to take into account the physical reality of the place they are built.
Reading this gives me vertigo. How did architecture become entirely centered around philosophical navel gazing? We'd all be better off if architects put down the continental philosophers and started again with firmitas, utilitas, venustas.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
Because people have a responsibility not to shit up the urban commons. That's before we even get to questions about who is paying who's salary, which is a consideration I admit applies only to public buildings.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
Killing Simplicity
Under the banner of OOO, architecture has the responsibility to emerge from the careful study of - absolutely nothing.
Great, we've gone from actively villainous architects to those who simply advance a kind of architectural nihilism (yes, I know he denies the charge of nihilism in the next sentence. No, I don't believe him). To the extent that I can glean a point from this, he seems to still be advocating for buildings that are in some way ugly or broken so that people notice them so that they don't merely "fade into the background." This is not so different from Eisenman's perspective of discomfiting people on purpose.
Architecture continues to suffer from "notice me!" syndrome. I don't care one iota about the self actualization of architects or about Heidegger. Architects should be seeking to make beautiful, harmonious buildings. Instead they are writing pomo nonsense and Ctrl+f beauty zero results. So it goes.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
I think a lot of people out there in ugly places are genuinely insensitive to that ugliness.
This isn't because they have room temperature IQs, it's because of the hedonic treadmill, plus the fact that most people have other things going on besides noticing the buildings. When you're visiting a place and you see some awful cement shitshack of a building it's a terrible affront. When you pass that building twice a day on your commute, you simply accept it and move on.
Which is not to say that it doesn't matter if buildings are beautiful or ugly, simply that the beauty of a building is not always salient. I talked to a guy living in Vienna about what a beautiful city it was, but for him it was just boring.
In general I seriously doubt that appreciation of beauty is tied to IQ, and in fact it might be inversely related to IQ. One of my smartest friends, when faced with some postmodernist affront to the senses and forced to evaluate its beauty, will squirm and change the topic to its "interestingness". He's used his intellectual faculties to conquer his innate sense of what is beautiful and what is ugly. Meanwhile polls of the hoi polloi consistently find a preference for buildings that our ancestors would have considered beautiful. I also suspect that even non-human animals experience beauty, but I admit this is speculative on my part.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
In that case, why am I (and I’d imagine, your average American citizen) not familiar with these terrible slave trades and exploitations of labor while I’m reminded of American black slavery nearly every day?
Because Chinese median income exceeds the white median income, and the black median income does not. Simple as.
My historic understanding of the facts in my other comment may have been incorrect but I think the broad philosophy behind it is sound
The philosophy is based on the facts, right? Otherwise you wouldn't need to mention them.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
they both reflect subtler processes and qualities that have an impact on both.
This is assuming the conclusion.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
I'm curious if any Republican candidates have run on cutting SNAP. I suspect not.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
You can't, but it is what the RCC estimates- and I know enough to say that they might be misestimating, but they're definitely not knowingly lying.
The Rabbinical Council of California?
More to the point, one of the major roadblocks to addressing clerical sex scandals was that they were often covered up internally by being listed as 'disciplined for violating celibacy- heterosexual prostitute/adult girlfriend', which indicates that while there are gay priests, it's not some 9/10 supermajority.
I don't immediately understand the connection between the coverup documentation and the rate of gay priests. Are you saying that if 9/10 priests were gay the sex scandal would be internally listed as "homosexual prostitute" instead?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
Great point. Who would win in a fight, a silverback gorilla with his 1.25 inch (erect) micropenis or a human with a 6 inch monster cock?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
2mo ago
I'm not saying that a motte contrarian can't talk himself into it. I'm wondering if it's actually "mainstream conservatism" given that people want to win elections.
What I'm saying is, I'm not sure that your imaginings of cocks and physiques actually has any bearing on reality.
If it's the same guy I don't think that there is anything to even discuss here.
What is the evidence?
This is the perfect microcosm of the female vs the male view of reality.
Has a guy ever asked you out by saying that he likes spending time with you and leaving it at that?
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