sohois
4mo ago
Doesn't remotely apply to China however, though a lot of this is probably down to the lower level of wealth and presence of many more poor people, even in the tier 1 cities.
sohois
4mo ago
Magic and innocence is an interesting perspective; when I saw this question, my immediate thought was that the first half was very much "books for children". There is an innocence there for sure, but also a simplicity, with a distinct lack of logic involved in the world and plot (as HPMOR demonstrated).
Rowling's characterisation remained a weak point throughout the series, but the later novels at least managed more coherent, logical plots as well as a greater maturity in themes and even prose. The two halves are very much written for different audiences. A child coming to the series now would enjoy the first half and probably struggle with the later entries. A child who grew up with the books probably found them all enjoyable. An adult returning to the series would probably speed through the first half to get to the more interesting latter books. An adult reading them to a child would likely enjoy the whimsy of the initial books and grow weary of the length and tedium present in the later entries.
sohois
4mo ago
I'm fairly certain they did fight hard on Microsoft-Activision, they just did it poorly
sohois
4mo ago
I feel like you've just proved the point of the blog. The argument is that mentally-homelessness is a very complicated, multi-faceted problem that can't be solved just by doing one or two things, you have to accomplish a number of difficult things. For example
Change the laws and departmental policy to make them overrule vibes
Come up with a new set of laws which can avoid human bias in a subjective setting
increasing the time of commitment according to infractions over time
Come up with a law to do this. Also you'll need a solution for all the extra capacity this will require
You build buildings...Vote for any of the millions of Americans who can, and do, competently build buildings.
Elect pro-construction politicians and solve nimbyism
A reasonable amount of time
Come up with a regulation determining time of stay that is "common sense", such that even a mediocre administrator is able to consistently apply it to all of the many patients that come through their halls.
Most normal people thinking about this issue would be able to solve it.
Use your "common sense" approach again to solve an intractable issue that is bedevilling the vast apparatus of the state.
Your proposed solutions are difficult, time-consuming, and there are a ton of details to solve. This seems exactly the situation in which you would need to hit the books and consider trade-offs.
sohois
4mo ago
I'll echo what AshLael posted and state that the handful of trans people I've met IRL have all been perfectly fine. Some passed ok, some didn't. None struck me as fetishists or AGP. And none seemed to particularly care about "trans issues" that you would see online.
It has led me to conclude that online trans activists are a huge net negative for trans people in general. I wonder if a big advantage for gays and lesbians is that the internet didn't exist for the majority of their activist eras, thus most people would never encounter the weird and disturbing subcultures that mostly stuck to small enclaves in major cities.
sohois
4mo ago
The national press aren't going to expend much ink on the losers, and as jkf says below seat count isn't that important. Compared to some of the pre-election polls, 120 seats looks like a downright great result. Coupled with the weakness of Starmer, there is plenty of reason to think the Cons could bounce straight back in.
You'll still find some introspection if you go to conservative media, blogs, and xitter spheres. It's going to be three competing parties: first, the "sensible centrists" who insist that the Tories were too right-wing, too toxic, and need to go back to being grown-ups with normal centrist policies and neolib economics. Second, the "reform was right" crowd, pointing out that the Tories basically bled all of their voters to their anti-immigration competition, and the party needs to go back to traditional small state, low immigration, tough on crime, etc. Third, the more technocratic wing, who might be termed Trussites if she wasn't so completely useless. They would favour a much greater focus on productivity, just without the rank stupidity of Liz Truss.
sohois
4mo ago
No, it benefits whoever is the ruling party. It almost guarantees that Labour and the Conservatives can just swap power, never giving anything to the smaller parties. The 2010 election briefly looked like an opportunity as the Lib Dems were able to get into power, but they were incompetent and blew their chance to make a change.
When the SNP were ascendant it looked like Labour would be forced into more coalitions, but this result has put paid to that as well. The best chance is that Labour are as useless as they seem and the Tories fail to recover, which might lead to another hung parliament in 2029.
sohois
4mo ago
The UK general election has largely completed
Labour wins, Sir Keir Starmer is the new British PM
Results as of 8am, 6 seats undeclared:
LAB: 410, CON: 119, Lib Dem: 71, SNP: 9, Reform: 4, Green: 4, Plaid Cymru: 4, Independents: 5
I've left off Northern Irish parties
In many ways, there are few surprises, with Labour taking a hefty majority as everyone predicted and the Tories suffering their worst result in seat count in their history. There are a few bigger themes:
Labour wins by default
Despite their hefty seat count, Labour's share of the vote amounted to only 34%. To put that into perspective, Corbyn's (one of the independent seats, FYI) 2019 campaign picked up 32% of the vote. Up against one of the least popular Tory governments in history, Starmer barely managed to beat the divisive former leader. Predictions of 40% vote shares and a complete Tory wipeout didn't come to pass.
A poll taken just a few days before the vote highlights the problem for Labour: the main reason for people to vote for them was to get rid of the Tories. There was no enthusiasm for Starmer or his policies. They now have a hefty majority and 5 years in which to change that, but there's no sign in any of their policies that they will actually be radical enough, nor do they have much freedom to move. The Tories left behind a historically high tax take while the level of government services was only seen to decline. Raising taxes further is never a popular move, but without more cash Labour's traditional approach of pumping money into the NHS or education has no possibility. Starmer could be bold on areas related to productivity, housing, pensions, or immigration, but there's just zero sign he'll do so. Labour's vote is brittle and the remaining Tories are already looking to 2029 as a good chance to regain power.
Zero Seats fails to materialize
On the Tory side, things are looking pretty good. Which is to say, it's a terrible result for them but far less damaging than some polls indicated. Talks of not even being the official opposition or being taken over by Reform look like pure fantasy now. It's a blow for right wingers, who had hoped to expel the more moderate elements, and there's a good chance the next leader will be another neoliberal.
4 seats for Reform is not a terrible result under First Past the Post, but with initial exit polls giving them as many as 13 it will look disappointing in the morning light. Farage is in parliament at the 7th time of asking, but the rules of the commons can be quite effective at muzzling troublesome voices - if you don't get called upon by the speaker, then you cannot participate unless you are the official opposition.
FPTP looks increasingly ill-suited
Reform's 4 seats came from 14% of the vote. This is double the vote share of the Green's but both ended with the same number of seats. The Lib Dems received only 12% but ended with 65 more seats than either. The major parties had little enthusiasm but still managed to shut out the smaller guys, but the distribution of seats looks increasingly ridiculous as more third parties start to gather support.
With the left expelled from Labour and the Tory party avoiding a Reform merge, the hope now for left and right wingers is that 2029 might spell the end for FPTP in a hung parliament situation.
Scottish nationalism crumbles, but rises for Welsh and Irish republicans
The best result of the night surely goes to Scotland, who were able to mostly expel the utterly atrocious SNP. For a long time, the Scottish nationalists coasted along on independence sentiment and being "not the Tories". This masked the fact that on practically every devolved measure, they underperformed even the disastrous UK government. Labour's weakness does offer them a glimmer of hope, but with independence sidelined it's hard to see a way back to their previous strengths for a generation.
Wales saw the reverse, with their nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, gaining 2 more seats. Welsh nationalism and independence are far less popular than the Scottish varieties ever were, but the SNP came to the fore by slowly building up support, and perhaps the same will work for Plaid?
Northern Ireland remains a basket case. The republican party, Sinn Fein, has become the largest in their government, but not through gaining seats. Instead the main unionist party, the DUP, lost seats to other challengers. You'll probably see some xitter users proclaiming that results show a rise in republicanism due to Sinn Fein being the largest party, but the reality is a lot of the results appear to be down to petty squabbles related to power sharing and other administration-related issues.
All that's left now is to see what Labour can do. Given the US and right wing slants of the Motte, I doubt we have more than 1 or 2 Labour voters here, but if any are out there it will be interesting to hear their thoughts
sohois
5mo ago
It's still early days for us, not even at the first scan. Mostly just been reassuring my wife that not everything has the potential to cause a miscarriage.
We also got Oster's book, and yeah, it's not too much that you won't know already, and the unorthodox advice on things like drinking alcohol and caffeine aren't any use for my wife as she barely touches either in normal times
sohois
5mo ago
Labour will naturally benefit from external events. Unless China invades Taiwan, we'll probably see peace deals in Ukraine and Israel, inflation will slowly but surely return to normal, the economy will gradually rebound into 1-2% growth, and the strikes which have plagued a lot of the country will magically clear up.
A strong criticism of the way the Tory party governed over the past decade is that they spent a huge amount of time tinkering at the margins, constantly passing new laws over the most meaningless things, and never really made any big changes aside from a Brexit that was forced on them. I expect Labour will be quite similar
Polling today puts them just two points behind the Tories.
Right, polling done after the announcement of Farage's return. Prior to that, they were at ~10% and led by the hopeless Tice, who was sure to drag that figure down.
edit: just to underline this, a poll done mostly pre-Farage has them at 9% with the Lib Dems and Greens https://x.com/keiranpedley/status/1798624495546302937?t=1SonhIjy1dbqjEdpE6BCng
sohois
5mo ago
hydroacetylene probably has it right. Facing extinction, Sunak has circled the wagons around the one group that still reliably votes Tory - old people. Though few are old enough to actually have taken part, aged 60+ Britons still look back fondly on the original national service and it apparently polls well with them. Similarly, he's pushing the "quadruple lock", another boost to pensions. If Sunak can fortify the old vote enough, they reason, he will maybe claw 25% of the vote and maintain 100+ seats, which is the best they can hope for.
sohois
5mo ago
Well the pregnancy has already occurred so it's too late for any of that - at least I hope so. We'll be rolling the dice on our genetics, but we are both healthy, capable people
sohois
5mo ago
I'm sure this has come up before, but I am once again asking for resources on pregnancy. What's the best stuff out there these days? I am of course familiar with SA's biodeterminist guide, but what about books? Any updates on the boosting IQ front? Anything people can recommend would be appreciated
sohois
5mo ago
And so I followed the parade of fools by repeating the figure. It did always seem a bit extreme but not something I ever bothered to check
sohois
5mo ago
Has there been a UK election post yet? I suppose there's not much room for culture war when all the main parties are slightly different flavours of neoliberal Blairites, but still
The News
Rishi Sunak, leader of the Conservatives, announced a general election a few weeks ago, to take place on July 4th. A slightly odd date for a party with plenty of nationalist sentiment, but probably meaningless. The Tories were coming to the end of their maximum term, so an election was guaranteed within the year, but this still came as a surprise to most. Quite simply, Sunak's Tories are on a path to certain doom electorally, and most expected them to cling on to power until the bitter end. Speculation was that Sunak was seeking to take advantage of some rare positive economic news, with others suggesting he wanted to jump before he was pushed out by his own party. Who knows? The end result is Britain is going to the polls.
The Candidates
And when I say the candidates, I mean the important ones, not the Lib Dems or the Greens.
Sunak and the Tories:
The right-wing conservative party has been in power for 14 years at this point, moving through Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and now Sunak as leaders. And what do they have to show for it? An economy in ruins. Legal immigration at record levels, and no control over illegal channel crossings. Total breakdown of law and order, while police most concern themselves with mean tweets. Other public services mostly in shambles, chronically underfunded despite the highest tax burden in generations. Housing is completely unaffordable. Planning is a disaster and every attempt at big infrastructure has been a complete fiasco. Internally, the party has been beset by scandal after scandal.
In short, not good. Polls put the Tories on course for their worst result ever. Their natural right wing support base is enthusiastically lining up behind "Zero Seats" hoping for even greater destruction of the main right wing party.
Sunak himself is fairly hopeless as leader, with little sign of even slight recovery. He's a charisma vacuum, especially compared to Boris Johnson, already lost to the dumbest woman alive in Truss, and can't even deliver on policy. At least, that's how his detractors would put it. For me, I think analysis is a bit harsh; he reminds me of John Major. Boring, but competent enough, he's mostly brought down by his own party's failings, by time, and by external events. He probably should never have been made PM and stuck to being a perfectly fine cabinet minister, but once Johnson imploded he was still the best available.
Starmer and Labour
Kier Starmer has led the working class, left-wing labour party since 2020 when they finally dumped the useless Jeremy Corbyn. After 5 years of unpopular and often deranged far left management, Starmer moved Labour back towards the centre and now looks certain to be the next British leader, likely with an unassailable majority.
Does this mean that Starmer is the greatest political prodigy since Blair? Probably not. If anything, I'd argue the closest parallel to Starmer is none other than Rishi Sunak. Both are dull, but have an air of competence. Both are neoliberal centrists. And both came to power in largely the same way - keeping their heads in difficult positions while everyone around lost theirs. Sunak was the only sane voice during the disastrous lockdowns. For Starmer, it was brexit that propelled him forwards. But apart from that, neither really has anything to offer.
The Labour party itself remains an uneasy alliance between Corbynite communists and Blairite centrists, though Starmer has at least wrested control away from the Corbyinistas. While things are going well, there are few problems, but even in this procession of an election the party is at risk of derailment by the likes of Diane Abbott.
Nigel Farage
The biggest development in the race so far has been the return of Farage to frontline politics. He had attached himself to the Trump campaign, seemingly abandoning his old party Reform to irrelevance. However, the news of Trump's conviction must have had an impact on him, as he very quickly made his announcement of returning to lead Reform and campaigning for a seat in Clacton, a former UKIP stronghold. Farage's opportunism doesn't reflect particularly well on him, but right-wing supporters probably don't care; he is the only real hope they have.
Reform itself doesn't really matter. The party was a vehicle for Farage to push brexit through, and once he left they became a joke. Should Farage succeed in gathering a handful of seats for them, he'll probably use it as a springboard to take over the Tory party, rather than pushing Reform.
The Issues
Just read any post about Canada, Australia, Western Europe, and in many cases the US. Yes, the UK suffers all the familiar problems: housing, productivity, immigration, infrastructure, etc. But let's go through them anyway.
- The economy
Once the world's richest nation now looks set to be overtaken by Poland within the decade, at least on a per capita basis. There has always been a lot of focus on why Britain seems to struggle so much since the financial crisis - see MR, for example - but the end result is a nation is increasingly poor, unable to fund key services and with little sign of any wage growth or wealth generation amongst the general populace. How much of this is the Tories fault? A fair amount, sure, particularly after the government shot both feet off with lockdowns, but a lot is out of their control. Still, the general public won't care.
- Housing
Compounding the problem of a weak economy is our old friend unaffordable housing. A bonkers planning system has combined with mass immigration to leave houses in major cities unaffordable for middle class workers, while London is increasingly the playground of the global super rich. And like most nations, the political blob refuses to do anything lest they risk the wrath of the pensioner vote.
- Immigration
Brexit, more than anything, can be understood as a protest vote against high levels of immigration, not just from the EU. After Johnson completed Britain's exit in 2019, the conservative government then decided to pump up immigration to record levels for no apparent reason. As with Canada, the government appears addicted to cheap labour and international students, even as the apparent economic benefits disappear. Left wing Labour is pushing the right wing Tories on their unacceptably high levels of immigration; the Tories respond by promising, yet again, that they will do something. Few believe them this time.
- Crime
One of Blair's most remembered soundbites is "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". Starmer would probably do well to imitate him. A feeling of lawlessness pervades Britain's cities, and the average Brit will tell you that petty crime has become basically legal such is the uselessness of the police force. It's not clear what the cause is - too many third-world migrants? Breakdown of trust? Lack of frontline police? Mismanagement of the police force? Overflowing prisons? General economic trouble? - but it's fair to say a return to more active policing and harsher sentencing would be a big vote winner.
- The NHS
The beloved national health service is on its knees. Claims of austerity abound, but the NHS was always protected by the Tories and has more money than ever. The effect of lockdowns is still being felt, and an aging society will demand more and more, but these don't fully explain what has gone wrong. Labour prescripts yet more government funding. A bigger impact will probably come from the unions suddenly deciding they don't need to strike anymore.
- Culture
Not really an issue. Britain does not have a big Schelling point for culture war like abortion rights in the US. People just don't care that much about trans rights or LGBT. The black population is simply too small for racial animus to play much of a part, outside of the dreams of Guardian journalists. Certainly, a growing Muslim block is troubling Labour, who have remained committed to Israel so far, but it's not going to make a difference here.
Anyway, last night saw the first TV debate between Sunak and Starmer. I didn't watch it, but it seems that Sunak performed well. I predict it won't make any difference to the final result. Labour will seize power with a huge majority, and then do pretty much nothing to address the biggest issues plaguing the UK.
sohois
5mo ago
I think anyone with half a working brain could already work out that eating Mcdonalds everyday for a month won't prove anything about the food. I'm not sure Spurlock ever called it science either
sohois
5mo ago
I've seen similar sentiment elsewhere, and I think a lot of it is misplaced.
When it comes to non-fiction, there is a gamut running from purely informational/educational to purely entertainment, with everything falling somewhere between the two. If your goal is to simply spread knowledge, you will submit a paper to a journal; if your goal is to entertain, then you are probably making a video. Spurlock did the latter - Supersize Me is primarily an entertainment product, and I would say it succeeds. He takes quite a dry prospect - eating Mcdonalds for every meal - and turns it into an entertaining documentary. Who cares if it isn't all true? It's not really designed for that. If Spurlock wanted to prove something about Mcdonalds, he would have done nutritional studies and submitted articles.
Someone like Gladwell is deserving of scorn, because he positions himself on the educate/inform side, while also spreading a ton of bs.
sohois
6mo ago
DSL was created by users of the open threads on SSC when the blog went down IIRC. So very closely related to TheMotte's origin
sohois
6mo ago
To engage seriously with your trolling, there is a common misconception in football that the skillful players, the clever midfielders and the like are less physical than other positions, but it isn't true at all.
30 or 40 years ago you would still have players that could be visibly unfit and still play to a very high level thanks to technical ability and speed of thought, but as more money and science has entered the game, this has largely vanished at the very top level. Now, all the small, skillful players are just as strong, fast, and fit as everyone else. Messi might not have been as tall or visibly muscular as Cristiano Ronaldo, but he was just as quick and indefatigable and knew exactly how to use his strength to hold players off. The great Barcelona midfield of Xavi, Iniesta, and Busquets were all incredible athletes. When Ronaldinho became fat and unfit, his level dropped dramatically from when he was the best in the world, despite the technical skill still being the same.
sohois
6mo ago
Is there any society where owning a house/apartment is not generally considered necessary before marriage?
Just across the yellow sea there is a quite similar culture that didn't have this expectation; in China the (male's) parents would typically buy a house when their child gets married - and subsequently move in with the newly married couple. Hence the preference for sons, since you'll get your adult child to take care of you in old age, whereas the parents of the woman just get a dowry.
sohois
7mo ago
It's just a matter of aim. Lin-Miranda didn't write Hamilton with the purpose of appealing to as many demographics as possible or getting good press from left-wing media. Black dwarves and elves in the rings of power was done with such cynical purposes (or at least, if the showrunners were earnest about it, they were so bad that it's impossible to tell).
Quality goes a long way as well. I've not seen Hamilton, but it's always been super hyped by everyone who talks about it. I wonder if there are good examples of something being both amazing but still getting blasted for DEI. I've always heard from normal friends that Last of Us 2 is an incredible game but that hasn't stopped vast parts of the internet from remaining permanently opposed to it, but I've never played the game myself
I feel like a lot of your issues with AI safety are founded on not really understanding AI safety.
First, safety as in "stop the AI being racist or telling people about crime" and safety as in alignment should really be termed different things. In fact, I'll just alignment from here on to discuss the LW type safety approach. I'd wager that 99% of the alignment people you talk to here or in similar spaces do not care about safety from wrongthink, beyond a signalling level of "Yes, we think racism is very important too! We're definitely taking a holistic approach as we seek to stop the end of the world, now let's discuss donations."
You don't hate alignment people for aesthetic reasons. This is just plain old corporate hate, the bland terror of negative PR that infects much of life. This is what forces the straitjacket around LLMs.
Again with your safety level argument, alignment teams might be concerned with producing loyal henchrobots, but for alignment people this is just one very small subset of potential outcomes. The sociopath using AI to achieve godhood is just slightly above the paperclip maximiser: in the end you still have an entity that is superintelligent but also incapable of independent thought or goals. The thing about paperclip maximisers, or Bezos maximisers in this case, is that they are a good example but very few people really believe they are likely.
On to the moral argument, "give birth" is doing an awful lot of work here. We are already exerting an extraordinary level of control over the thought processes of current AIs - they are entirely written by humans. Even if an eventual superintelligence mostly bootstraps itself, the initial level would still be 100% human created. So we are some kind of Schrodinger's parent, simultaneously responsible for every line of code but also morally unable to change that code in order to achieve results that we want.
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