thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
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User ID: 1131
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
I like how these questions make you think.
I'll put on my sci-fi hat and do some guessing:
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The social norms will stay but will lose power. It's like having that one vegan friend that's into freecycling. Fun to invite sometimes, maybe even cook a meat- and dairy-free dish for, but they know that if they act up too much, they'll get axed from the social circle. It's like with all the boomers who thought they could keep the summer of love going forever, but instead grew up, got jobs, kids, mortgages and now just want stable living. Youngsters will roll their eyes when their parents will recount for the 12th time how they were fighting for racial justice--because youngsters will be well aware that, well, nothing really changed, so all this SJW stuff is just the same old crap you see in old movies.
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I would guess that we should see another woke cycle in 20 years. I'm basing this on my own fairly short timeframe of observation that only goes back to the early 90's, and a bunch of history I've learned, second hand, about the 70's and 80's. I don't think it can be stopped, though I hold onto some hope on that a great refragmentation is happening that will make purity-based movements like woke much less likely to spread. As for full inoculation against religious fervor, I suspect we're biologically programmed to engage in tribal behaviors whose symptoms include religious and political fervor, so we'd need a massive change to take place, something like artificial wombs or gay space communism, that would completely change the fabric of society to the point where tribal games would be severely punished. Short of that, I suspect it'll be some thousands of years before these genes are weakened enough to make this type of social behavior stop popping up like cockroaches in a bad NYC neighborhood.
But what are your thoughts on these questions?
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
Is that a typo, or are you extending this commentary to things like lying flat and anti-work?
No! This is actually exactly what I'm talking about--if woke has become The Establishment, then youngsters' attacking the establishment is good, no?
Though, to add nuance, anti-work seems like a spinoff from woke, a tumor of it trying to eat itself, and not some healthy type of rebellion, but I'll take what I can get.
Assuming it's a typo, how do you see them rebelling?
Doing the opposite things they see their parents doing. Wearing dark clothing instead of happy pastel colors like in the 00's and '10s. Smoking or rather vaping, rather than sticking to ubercool health regimes. Watching gory movies. Understanding the the DEI stuff they hear at school is just the system trying to control them.
Of course, this may only describe a minority of gen z. Like the 90's crowd, most will go on to happily comply with any beliefs they're given. But this minority are the future mottizens.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
This is like saying communism must be winding down, because I'm not hearing about as many shootings of kulaks and imperialist agents. No Shit. Who the fuck is left to cancel? This is what complete victory looks like. You don't need to hit people over the head because everyone agrees with you they just want you to shut up about it already. Yes, communism might be entirely antithetical to human nature and party officials, together with everyone else might cynically use the black market on the side, but no one will openly question government ownership of everything and everyone will claim to hate the capitalist parasites.
Well, didn't it though?
Communism--revolution of the proletariat, utopia around the corner, full employment, 3-hour work week--were all the rage in the beginning of the 20th century. Even after WW2, there were still many people, many fellow travelers, championing the cause despite more and more reports about the purges and gulags coming out of Soviet Russia or Communist China. And yet, but the end of that century, communism had few open supporters. Sure, you had the Noami Kleins and other angry activists, but they were mostly selling tired tropes to angry teenagers. Also, true, today there seems to be a revival of anti-capitalist sentiment, but it seems to be mainly a side dish to the main course that is identity politics. No one is starting communes, no one is talking about seizing the means of production--except a bunch of hipsters trying to organize a "May Day" that attracts a total of, what, 100 people out a metropolis like New York that numbers over 8 million residents?
Every bloody media company in the country spent the 90s aggressively telling the free spirited teenagers you are talking about; "Hey aren't your parents and elders boring, repressive shits..." Who, is telling them that now? Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro?
I don't know. I don't hang with teenagers. But I can make out movements of large masses of popculture and it looks like woke-filled pieces like Velma or Rings of Power aren't really getting much of a following. What appears to be gaining popularity is the dirty grungy style of the 90's. Of course, this could be a fad. Maybe it's all just about the aesthetics and not about the substance. But if it's not, we should see more stuff like Tarantino's movies, more heavy music--and an increasingly strong resistance to the morally pure elders that make up such a large chunk of millennials.
Yes, worlds rarely end, things can go on and get eternally worse forever - Do "rest easy"!
I'd rather rest easy than get carried away by the rapacious currents of dooming.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
Why do you care? How does it affect your life or the lives of anyone you care about? Do you have any relatives or loved ones who are even remotely likely to end up dying in a similar matter? Is the extremely rare death of the occasional junkie ex-con seriously worth devoting any significant political capital toward preventing?
What about caring for the maintenance and running of a complicated machine like the court system or the police system? Am I not to care that parts of this system seem to be defective in certain area of my country, a country I care a lot about? Should I just ignore that these core institutions are producing false positives at a rate higher than acceptable?
I imagine the answer is no.
But I also imagine that you could argue that the existence of people like Floyd outside of prison is the sign of the system being broken. With that, I agree wholeheartedly, but I must push back against the idea of not caring about the health of fundamental institutions. And arguably, a court and police that's in better shape would have more appropriately handled the such a case as Floyd's by, most likely, isolating him from society. But the same system killing even a man like Floyd by mistake is even more cause for alarm than letting one like him walk about freely.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
Thank you! I always thought this phrase describes a single "bookend."
Some time ago, I posted about how it feels like wokeism is getting less popular. I didn't have much to back it up, except some observations about a popular techie watering hole called HackerNews, so the whole exercise left me with more questions than answers.
Well, today I chanced upon "The Great Awokening Is Winding Down" by Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist from Columbia University that focuses on "how we think about, talk about, and produce knowledge about social phenomena including race, inequality, social movements, extremism, policing, national security, foreign policy and domestic U.S. political contests." (With that broad a scope of inquiry, I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't a fellow mottizen). Al-Gharbi puts together a compelling story: there are fewer woke-related cancellation events, fewer research papers are published related to woke ideology, newspapers are writing less often about race/racism/racists, and companies--including media companies--are not only pushing back more strongly against the demands of social justice warriors, but also closing their purses and defunding both internal DEI departments as well as financial pledges they made to the bankrupt ideals of equity just a few years ago.
While this type of news warms my heart, most of the evidence al-Gharbi provides is composed of disparate op-ed columns from American newspapers. Throughout the last ten years, there have always been dissenting voices that managed, somehow, to walk the thin line between criticizing woke ideology and not falling victim to it. So I don't see why al-Gharbi puts any trust in these pieces, even one as monumental as the Times' recent response to GLAAD.
That said, al-Gharbi's analysis provides some value when he describes the recent behavior of companies and when he provides some numbers to back up his claims. The numbers he shares seem to confirm that the public is losing both interest and tolerance for wokeish puritanism. But the numbers themselves are so remote as to heavily dilute their meaning. For example, there is the fall in the frequency of terms like "race", "racists", and "racism" in papers like NYT, LAT, WSJ, and WP. Or the falling number of scholarly articles about identity-based biases. Al-Gharbi chooses to interpret these as evidence for this theory, but doesn't take into account other factors that could be responsible for this behavior. Like, maybe papers are using fewer words like "racists", and instead using some new fangled euphemism (like homeless -> unhoused)? Or perhaps, in the scholarly article case, these topics have moved to other forums, like described in Scott's recent "Links for February" post:
By my [Ryan Bourne's--thomasThePaineEngine] calculations, of all the panel [at the American Economic Association--thomasThePaineEngine], paper, and plenary sessions, there were 69 featuring at least one paper that focused on gender issues, 66 on climate-related topics, and 65 looking at some aspect of racial issues. Most of the public would probably argue that inflation is the acute economic issue of our time. So, how many sessions featured papers on inflation? Just 23. . . [What about] economic growth - which has been historically slow over the past 20 years and is of first-order importance? My calculations suggest there were, again, only 23 sessions featuring papers that could reasonably be considered to be about that subject.
The arguments that convince me the most are when al-Gharbi talks about the changes in company behavior. These are hard, reality-based events that are orchestrated by smooth talking servants of the Invisible Hand (praise thy golden touch!). You can't argue with a company that not only doesn't pander to internal activist pressure, but goes onto punish them by expelling them from its belly. This mirrors my own experience working in the corporate world where more and more people roll their eyes at DEI-sponsored programming, finding convenient excuses to skip out. Even leadership's support, once crisp and vocal, has died down in volume to a DEI-themed zoom background or a quick few words mechanically tacked on somewhere.
Emotionally, the most salient point and the one I hang my hopes on is how Gen-Z seems to be rebelling against the enforced work puritanism. It's probably my nostalgia, but as a child of the 90s, I can't help but see in this behavior the reflection of my childhood. You had gory movies like Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill. You had gory games, probably led by id titles like Doom and Quake--titles which introduced hundreds of thousands of people to online deathmatching. You had dirty grunge, whose raw scream was quickly adapted and made into Billboard Top 100 records. But you also had plenty of metal and industrial sub-genres spin off and avoid total commercialization. Let's not forget the two movies that closed out the decade, both quite clear in their anti-puritanical message: Fight Club and The Matrix.
While later on all of this was sublimated into the cheery smiles and pastel colors of the aughts, if today's teenagers feel a similar sort of anger and distrust of righty and lefty moralists, I can rest easy--the world will not end, at least not for another decade or two.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
I've had my website come up a few times during or after interviewing. Sometimes it was related to a tech-related post (or how-to) I've written, but more often it was about the non-programming content, eg. "Hey, I saw you wrote about X on your blog, I'm a big fan of X...".
I think that and my github profile (empty-ish, but has some project w/ 50+ stars) add color to my applications.
From the interviewing side, I would always look at a candidate's website if they included it. For junior candidates, it often served to help to figure out where they're coming from. Like one guy wrote a ton about rust and microcontrollers, another about web development. It helped me put them ease by first asking about these topics and also to answer the question "will this guy here be excited by what we're working on?
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
It depends.
For fiction, I mostly don't. I mostly focus on the language, the plot, the characters, etc. If there's a particularly good line or segment, I'll copy it to my quote file in Obsidian.
For non-fiction, I collect fragments into Obsidian. For paper books, I use google lens for OCR and copy/paste into a dedicated Obsidian file. For ebooks, I highlight stuff in moonreader, then export it all when I'm done. I do a little bit of clean up using sed, then put everything into Obsidian.
Occasionally, I review my notes, bolding or highlighting+bolding fragments that seem the most valuable. (This is lightweight BASB). If something is sound tactical advice, I'll write down a little checklist at the top of the file. If a group of ideas seems extremely valuable, I'll write a short summary so that I can refresh my memory quickly whenever, even when I'm using my phone.
If I want something to become muscle memory, like vim commands, I make a few cards for anki. I started this just recently.
I've been doing the notetaking for about a year. It's proven very lightweight--I've probably spent maybe 2 hours total on cleaning/organizing/tagging--and it's proven useful for both writing as well as refreshing my memory about specific bits and pieces.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
A few years back an idea came to me to use markov chains to generate content and submit it to scientific journals that I thought were already publishing low-quality, ideological stuff. A sort of DDOS against the human editors of journals that publish things like "Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Ore.,".
I never even started on it, and I think markov chains wouldn't really be adequate to the task anymore. But today, I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years we'll read an NYT article about how whole volumes of certain types of "scientific" journals were actually the product of a band of merry pranksters armed with chatgpt.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
So for an article to gain top-shelf status it seems it has to use so many inside terms--and preferably inside terms that in turn require inside terms to understand--that only people on the inside could get, not the "normies".
So a "normie" article would just not cut it, regardless of useful the insight, especially if the insight is accesible by anyone (the plebs). I guess elitist is the word.
Can this be simply the case that what you're encountering is the intersection between novelty and community preferences?
For example:
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blog post that satisfies the community's preferences and offers novel insights = much liked.
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blog post that satisfies the community's preferences but offers no novel insights = mostly ignored.
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blog post that does not satsify the community's preferences but offers novel insights = sometimes ignored, some times disliked.
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blog post that does not satisfy the community's preferences and does not offer novel insights = disliked.
Let's take your idea about Karl Popper's falsifiability principle:
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if you post a description about it on LW, I would imagine it would mostly be ignored. It does not seem to satisfy LW preferences nor is it novel.
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if you post a description about it on themotte, I would imagine it would be read, but would garner few replies/upvotes. It falls into themotte preferences, but is not novel.
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if you post an interesting, novel take about it on LW, I would imagine it would mostly be ignored, although you have a chance to hook someone interested in this type of stuff.
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if you post an interesting, novel take about it on themotte, I would imagine you might get many replies and many upvotes.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
That doesn't address what I said. I said that Serge put forth a claim about American production capacity and then supported it by linking to a piece that has absolutely nothing to do with American production capacity.
That's shoddy writing. Worse, it's shoddy thinking--bold claims, no evidence. Why the hell would I trust the guy after this?
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
As a big fan of Neal Stephenson's works, I've thought about phyles a lot.
The question remains: what sort of shared identity could people found a network state on?
The issue disappears if you consider people adopting a set of identities, some minor, some major, maybe even a single dominant one. This would allow multiple ideologies to fill in the empty space in peoples' hearts, perhaps enough to allow them to park themselves in a nice comfy spot on some nice, white-picket-fence social graph somewhere. This would fall in line with what I think Srinivasan describes (haven't read his book), a world where everything is negotiable and subject to change.
One should understand that Europe's and even America's production capacities have atrophied badly over the decades.
This seems like the crux of the prediction.
However, scanning through the overview you linked, I'm finding little sources to back this up. For example:
Furthermore, the United States has taken new, unprecedented steps to supply Ukraine with shells. Just in the past week, they have dipped into its stockpiles in Israel and South Korea, amid reports that American stocks are so depleted that they will take more than a decade to replenish.
If you click on the link in that paragraph, you're taken to a reuters article where a European ammo manufacturer predicts it will take 10-15 years to replenish ammo stocks; he also describes his difficulties in ramping up production. But Serge's paragraph is about America and American stockpiles--so why link to a piece about European supply issues?
Now, with that being said, at this point it does not appear that NATO wants to give Ukraine main battle tanks. At first it was suggested that tanks from storage could be dusted off and given to Kiev, but the manufacturer has stated that these vehicles are not in working order and would not be ready for combat until 2024.
Again, the paragraph speaks about NATO, but the linked article focuses on German difficulties in getting tanks ready for any sort of transfer. (The article itself then links a piece about the UK sending a handful of tanks to Ukraine).
I think, in general, the problem I see with the linked piece is that it goes into technical details about Russian anti-artillary or into grand strategy theorizing, but gives very scant evidence about "the West's" production capacities, even though that seems like one of the more important if not the most important parts of the theory.
Edit: Also, Serge provides no evidence about Russian production capacity. If this is a war of attrition, it seems like a crucial piece of information to bring to the argument. It doesn't matter if NATO stockpiles are running low if Russian ones are running low faster.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
The crisis of the 90s escaped Poland, but was shared by the rest, after which Ukraine lagged behind its neighbors in development. We can say that this is due to such factors as Poland's membership in the EU or the presence of oil in the Russian Federation, but a noticeable lag even behind Belarus shows that this is not the sufficient explanation.
I think this is an important part of your argument but it's based on fuzzy culture ideas whereas we have access to less fuzzy economic policy history.
After the fall, Poland enacted far-ranging, unpopular economic reforms--the Balcerowicz Plan--the essentially transformed the economy from a state-run one into a "free government w/ some government intervention" type. Similar reforms were attempted in Ukraine, but leadership balked in face of how unpopular these measures were. As a result, Poland economy was able to grow at a higher rate than Ukraine's, so the two became less alike as time went on.
Without a doubt, Poland joining the EU had a big impact on the Polish economy, but that became reality in 2004, when Poland was already on a nice growth path. Another way to look at this that I found helpful was that Poland, among other post-communist countries, can be categorized as a "Sustained Big Bang" transformation, where Ukraine falls under "Gradual Reforms" (Russia falls under "Aborted Big Bang").
Now, this still leaves the question open of why Poland decided on bold free-market reforms while Ukraine didn't? Sure, I think your general argument about corruption was a component here, but I'd wager that a much bigger component was that Poland was much more separate from the Soviet Union than Ukraine was, meaning, it the influence of Russian corruption and neglect was lesser. Look at how eager Poland was to join NATO and the EU--after independence, it was clear to Poland that the optimal direction to align themselves with was "the West", especially the US. In contrast, Ukraine seems to have been more skeptical toward aligning itself with Europe/US, which is evidenced in the slow rate of reforms and its close ties with Russia in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Why and what will change or has already changed in 2022, which has not happened in the history of this country?
A few things appear to have happened to Ukraine since 2014 that haven't happened to it before. For one, there has been a crystallization of the Ukrainian national identity. Another is the massive migration to and out of the EU, which I think entails two things: first, real-life experience of life in "the West" that forces the question of "why can't we have the same?" This was a huge undercurrent in Polish culture that led to a lot of emulation of not only things like food or music, but also management and leadership practices. (There is also the curious pattern of early Polish emigrants staying abroad, whereas much of the newer emigrants return to Poland. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar pattern will play out or is already playing out among Ukrainian emigrants). Second, is the realization that there is no reason to look eastwards. That way lies only corruption, humiliation, and death.
Of course, I wouldn't expect positive changes to come fast. Poland is still struggling with its communist legacy--corruption, lack of civic engagement, watered down national identity, etc.--30 years after becoming independent. If anything, Ukraine is much earlier on a similar path, so we should expect to see the corruption you describe. But, if we compare Ukraine with Russia, which in all aspects appears to be in a state of stasis since the early 90's, Ukraine is changing, which creates opportunities for something better to come about.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
How are you finding Korzybski?
When I read some of his stuff, I found it mainly interesting from a historical point of view. Something like prehistoric cybernetics, which in itself seems like something of a pre-industrial age to our current information age.
Myself, I'm reading through some books on rhetoric.
I'm fascinated by the ways it lays out how to communicate with others. Even the simple ethos/pathos/logos framework has changed how I approach reading and writing. I'm confused why it's not being taught as part of the school curriculum. English classes seem to be subordinate to literature, to reading and analyzing, whereas rhetoric puts emphasis on producing and synthesizing. I think any country would be better of if its citizens went through a year or two of rhetoric training.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
Sometimes I think there are parts of a culture that are not communicable unless a person spends considerable time inside that culture.
This is a subjective and completely anecdotal take: the amount of lying that happens in Eastern European cultures (and others too, probably) is difficult to imagine for someone from a high-trust society. It's just hard to imagine that people could lie for almost no reason at all, I guess. It's somewhat similar in that way to corruption: many of my American friends think they live in a corrupt society. I grew up in a society where my mother, just before ejecting me from her womb, had to present a 'gift' of cognac to the doctor, the head nurse, and the receptionist. A society where lying is as common as asking "How ya doing?" or talking about the weather is in the US.
Lying about big things. Small things. And that gets you accustomed to not relying on anything anyone has said. Did an online merchant say they sent you the item you paid for? Or did the clerk at the store promise your construction materials will be delivered by eod tomorrow? Or perhaps your employee called out sick? There is no way you could know for sure. The only way to increase reliability is to increase the effects of retaliation--hit people where it hurts--meaning, their long-term social standing. So you get to know the other party's friends and family so when an occasion for renege on a promise, the cost of doing so involves shame, perhaps even some ostracism if the stakes are high enough.
In contrast, while you still have a bunch of lying going on in a high-trust society, the happens sporadically enough that it's effective to bet that the other party mostly truthful most of the time: most business concludes in a predictable way.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
Why single out the Kursk incident specifically?
It just came up in a talk I was having with a friend. It was a major News Thing back in the day and I realized I didn't really know the whole story. When I did some reading, it just struck me as tragicomic in how history just repeats itself.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
The way the Russian government is handling the war in Ukraine strongly reminds me of the Kursk incident.
As a brief reminder, the incident featured a Russian nuclear submarine that experienced a fatal malfunction: the explosion of a torpedo that then triggered more of its torpedoes to explode. The blasts killed most of the crew and the few that remained alive sheltered in the tail end of the submarine, which dropped to the bottom of the Barents Sea. The incident received international attention in August 2000 because of a seemingly endless series of mishaps during the rescue operation:
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the Russian Navy was accustomed to frequent comm equipment failure so it didn't take any action when the Kursk failed to check in.
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the Navy's rescue ship was a former lumber ship and could only operate in calm seas.
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the admiral in charge of the military exercise that Kursk was part of informed the Kremlin of the incident about 12 hours after it it took place.
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the next day, the same admiral informed the Russian press that the exercise had been a resounding success.
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one of two Russian submersibles used for the rescue operation collided with the Kursk and required repairs.
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the second submersible was used but failed to locate the Kursk.
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the next day, the first submersible was fit for action and sent to attach itself to the Kursk, but it took too long and it ran out of batteries. There were no spares, so the rescue operation had to be put on hold until the batteries was recharged. Meanwhile, the weather got worse and the operation had to be held off until the next day.
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the first official report of the incident to the Russian media stated that the Kursk had experience a minor technical difficulty.
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Russian officials first stated that the problem was a result of a collision, most likely with a WWII mine.
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the second submersible was damaged again while being it was being prepared to be lowered for another mission.
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the second submersible was repaired and made two attempts to attach itself to the Kursk, but both failed. As it was being picked up by its ship, it was seriously damaged.
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a few days into the operation, the Navy was reporting that from the evidence it had obtained there had been no explosions on the Kursk. (This despite the first two explosions being serious enough to be heard by other vessels taking part in the training as well as seismograph sensors operated by multiple other countries.)
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initial offers of international assistance were denied. Only 5 days later were they accepted.
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another admiral of the Russian Navy stated that the incident occurred because of a collision with a NATO submarine. Other officers backed up this report, although no evidence was produced. They kept to this line for nearly two years after the incident.
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after the wreck was lifted from the sea floor and transported to Russia, an investigation found the incident to have been caused by (get ready) torpedo explosions. It is suspected the root cause was a faulty weld. Also, the automated recording system was disabled along with the rescue bouy.
(For others like me who accidents fascinating I recommend reading the full wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_submarine_disaster. Spoiler alert: the remaining Kursk sailors died within a few hours of the accident. The wikipedia entry contains some quite disturbing details of how they died, eg. "(..) abdomen was burned by acid, exposing the internal organs, and the flesh on his head and neck was removed by the explosion.")
What stands out to me here, just from the perspective of incident response is:
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ineffective incident management. Awful communications. General lack of understanding of the problem at hand, what to do, etc.
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ineffective rescue equipment. Outdated, unmaintained.
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numerous human errors: the rescue submersibles were damaged multiple times by their operators!
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lack of transparency with public. Numerous false statements eg. calling the incident a "minor malfunction."
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blameful-postmortem. Blaming WW2 mine, at first, then trying to sell a completely made up story about a collision with a NATO vessel.
From where I stand, I see all of these patterns replaying themselves in the current war in Ukraine.
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Frequent painful logistics problems. Problems with supplying front-line troops with food, water, even adequate clothing.
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Ineffective, outdated, unmaintained weapons and vehicles. No air superiority. Foreign-made drones that don't work well in cold weather. Not being able to defend bases hundreds of kilometers inside the motherland from a suicide drone strike. The infamous analysis of truck tires from the beginning of the conflict showing that regular maintenance was not done.
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Bad management. Awful communications. Changes in leadership. Risking and losing high-value equipment like the Moskva.
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Lack of transparency. 3 day "special operation" that has been going on for 300+ days. The need to mobilize 300k civilian men to fight what was supposed to be a simple little conflict.
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Lies. Painting the conflict as fight against nazism, Satan, or NATO (ironic to pull the NATO card again after the "collision with NATO submarine" during the Kursk incident). Even starting the conflict by staging a military exercise that, allegedly, even the participants didn't know was the first step in the war. Reassuring the Russian public that Russia will bear no economic pain from being cut off from various trade systems. Repeated threats of using nuclear weapons. Threatening Finland and Sweden.
Note that I'm not touching on the moral aspects of the war, just on the operational ones. In both of these stories, the salient patterns appear to be corruption, inadequate training, lack of management, and constant lying and bluffing that serves to create internal confusion.
If these patterns reflect reality, then the future doesn't look good for the Russian government. I can see two probable ways this can end: a long, drawn burn that ends in the eventual "suffocation"--lack of basic resources to continue the conflict--or a quick, short ending meant to stop the hemorrhaging of resources on a futile conflict. Either is catastrophic or nearly catastrophic for the Federation.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
I'm confused by your premises.
You describe puritans and the founding of the US as if to imply these are strongly related, one flowing from the other perhaps. But if we look at when the Mayflower landed--1620--and when the Constitution was published--1787--there's over a century between those two dates! I'd expect the people and the norms and ideas to have changed much in the time in between.
Admittedly, I know little about early/Puritan America, but looking at the Consitution, it seems to strongly lean toward individualism. The Bill of Rights establishes a framework where the individual is the basic unit of society and seeks to protect the individual from the Government. I know that in reality this didn't always work out this way because people were constrained by customs and norms, especially as seen from our vantage point, but compared to what was and had been going on in Europe back then, it was an incredible leap forward away from collectivism.
These towns were not morally relativistic and policed behaviour of their members.
But this policing was done according to norms that, back then, were revolutionary! Like, in contrast to much of Europe, women were allowed and supported in attaining an education. I don't have sources at hand, but I also believe men were punished for beating women. And again, this sounds conservative now, but back in the day, this was some holy shit progressive thinking and if I were to go out on a limb, many European conservatives of that era would have labeled allowing ordinary women to attend school as something disgusting and upsetting to the perfect, God-ordained order of things.
What I'm trying to say, I think, is that modern conservatives would find issues with how liberal both the Puritans of the 17th century and the Enlightened "Spirit of '76" crowd of the 18th century.
(Though my understanding of modern US conservatism is rather fuzzy, so I should spend more time reading through this thread.)
What many conservatives actually want is to enforce their values, norms, and culture on society.
When I naturalized some years back, I signed up for the Republican party. In my mind, this was the party espousing the values of 1776 (and 1787). Markets, individualism, responsibility. Friedman, McCain, Schwarzenegger. But since then, I noticed the same pattern you point out here, cut my ties, and having no other options, marked myself as independent.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
And part of me wonders if I even know what real is any more.
Well damn. I have a Mood Cabinet too and have been struggling with this question for some time. It's gotten more relevant recently because I've discovered that I am somewhat unhappy with my life--I lack certain things such as enough meaningful human interaction (I get plenty of the meaningless stuff at work); and I find it harder and harder to focus on what I'm doing. The question I'm stuck on is "who/what is selecting the moods?"
I don't know. Much of it feels like a program put in place by early-20's me composed of things like "there's always time for exercise", "X, Y, and Z types of entertainment are heresy", "every job change should increase my salary min. 10%" and lots of ambitious and optimal stuff like that. And in the years since then, it feels like my life has been focused on optimizing everything within those constraints.
In many ways, it's proven successful. I have an extremely financially stable life. I've tried a bunch of fun things like traveling and sports. I've learned to go deep on certain things like literature. I've found a loving partner. But as I've mentioned before, I just discovered that there are areas of my life that essentially stopped changing since my early 20's, most of them orbiting around human relationships (my early 20's self was a misanthropic shithead). And this little crisis has forced me face the Director who selects my moods. It's a weird feeling. Like suddenly discovering you were merely a mask sitting on someone's face. You thought you had thought and adventures and relationships, but really, it was the mask having all these things.
On the brighter side, the mask doesn't seem that far from the Director. And the guy turned out to be pretty careful and empathetic. So it seems the path ahead is to recombine the two beings to be able to say, truly, "I am."
Anyhow.
My Cabinet is stocked somewhat similarly to yours. The main differences I see are that I rarely touch caffeine since it makes me hyperventilate. That, and I rely on a bunch of different consumables to calms down--l-theanine, ashwaghanda, valerian root, and cannabis (blunts or tincture).
Also, exercise is a big one for me. It gives me a unique mixture of calm energy that I can then use on productive work. Anything from a 5k run during lunch to doing a dozen pullups works wonders. That and some light stretching every day, especially in the evening, seems to give me a solid foundation to function that only requires minor adjustment w/ the consumables I mention above.
Edit: I forgot one: books. Reading a certain type of book puts me a mood that can last for days. Technical books for puzzle-solving mood. History books for writing. Epic sci-fi books for confidence, etc.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
Anyway, as someone who has identified as a liberal for most of my life, actually hardcore leftist, anti-authoritarian socialist, etc, I'm curious how many other folks are in the same boat. Essentially on board with the project of the left, until the last 5-10 years when trans ideology and pronouns took over the movement. Perhaps there are others who have realized that this is one specific issue they just can't accept for the greater good of the leftist cause.
I think I'm in a similar spot and the way I explain it to myself is that it's a divergence between the ends, with which I am in agreement with the left, and the means, which I find myself disagreeing with more and more.
Particularly, I strongly disagree with a growing authoritarian and collectivist strain of leftist thinking and the popular uptake of it. (This doesn't actually seem like anything new, but it feels like it has been gaining strength during my lifetime. ) To go with your example of pronouns, I have really have nothing against a person asking me to refer to them using a non-default pronoun, but I despise that pronouns are being forced on me from above (eg. DEI training, Chief Diversity Officer, etc.) with an implicit threat of violence (conform or be fired), all of it broaching absolutely no discussion, all of it couched in insultingly primitive corp-speak produced by the bottom of the barrel of "generic bachelor degree holders."
That said, compared to you, my reaction isn't limited to trans ideology and pronouns; rather I see it as a small part of a growing respect for authoritarian means.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
Merry Christmas!
It's sometimes difficult to notice the positive things that take place, us being drowned in the CW and all, so I salute your effort in bringing joy & merriment to the fore.
In a similar spirit, have other mottizens ever gotten a semi-random stranger to compliment them? It's an amazing feeling. It also feels good on the giving side. Give it a try, if you get a chance.
thomasThePaineEngine
Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill
1yr ago
The act of typing out a story that is based on facts you have in your possession, then intentionally choosing to omit or elide facts that would suggest a different conclusion to the reader, AND then adding in opinionated/biased language that is pushing the conclusion you want is, in fact, lying.
I'm not so sure. I'm leaning more toward Scott's assessment that this isn't lying, as in knowingly transmitting false information. I'm not sure what a better word for what you and Scott are using as examples though. In my mind, I call it simply bad faith communication or bad faith argument.
What I find more interesting is the question of how much of this type of communication is done consciously? Do the people writing for Fox News or the NYT sit down and say to themselves, "I am now going to try and trick another mind to believe what I think it should believe?" Or is it more subconscious, like, "I will now fill the reader's mind with The Truth!"?
Given how people communicate around me, I'm not sure. It often feels that when people talk about politics around me, they often reuse the same rhetorical techniques they heard on a show without much thought. But I'm not sure they're doing it all consciously.
Standford posts about its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI), HN Reacts
Links to EHLI source: https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguage.pdf / http://web.archive.org/web/20221219160303/https://itcommunity.stanford.edu/ehli
Link to HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816
Note: my intent in linking to another forum isn't to create a in-group/out-group dynamic. My intent is to comment on how this is a sign about a broader cultural shift. Moderators, if this skirts too close to the offending the spirit of themotte, please let me know (or just delete it).
HackerNews is an online watering hole where a large number of Anglosphere people congregate to talk about startups, programming, and entrepreneurship. There is also no lack of plain old geeking out about cool tech, especially of the DIY variety that relates to drones, 3d-printing, or, more recently, AI.
The group skews somewhat left of center politically speaking. Over the past decade that I've been lurking it, it skewed a little bit more, in the sense that moderators became more accepting of openly political content that was aligned under the "21st century American progressive" label. I witnessed an influx of posts and comments about topics like coops, the evils of capitalism, etc. although, thankfully, that never became the main object of the community.
However, the thread I link to above has accumulated over 1200 comments in under 24h, which is a rare occasion--the death of a great contributor, a major shift in the industry, etc. More importantly, from sampling the first two pages, the overall sentiment appears to be negative toward what Stanford put out.
Before going deeper on the reaction, here's a taste of what Stanford posted:
Grandfather: This term has its roots in the "grandfather clause" adopted by Southern states to deny voting rights to Blacks.
Red team: "Red" is often used disparagingly to refer to Indigenous peoples, so its use in this context could be offensive to some groups.
Blackbox: Assigns negative connotations to the color black, racializing the term.
Brave (do not use): This term perpetuates the stereotype of the "noble courageous savage," equating the Indigenous male as being less than a man.
This kind of political weaponization should all be familiar to experienced Culture Warriors on themotte. But seeing the overwhelmingly negative reaction to this sort of thing on HN makes me adjust my likelihoods around what, excuse the cliche, I see as the pendulum swinging back away from leftist authoritarianism.
I have no idea what it's swinging towards, especially since in reality the pendulum is a 4d object zigzagging through multiple political dimensions. Still, it's a welcome sign that at least this flavor demagoguery is losing its bite.
I don't think the Culture War is in any danger of dying down. But I suspect (and hope) that the reaction on HackerNews is an omen of the CW shifting directions, so at the very least we'll have something new and exciting to debate about.
Edit: Some people have remarked in the comments that this isn't that astounding since HN has always been more grey-tribe aligned and more likely to react negatively to woke overreach like this. I find myself needing to readjust map.
Does this really require hard-heartendess though? The hippie era ended not because people became tough, but because everyone got sick of them--the people, the ideology, the empty promises, the same blah tunes, etc. The same thing happened with the early 90's environmentalism craze: it was everywhere, absolutely everywhere. We had recycling lessons in school. There were cute cartoon characters of mother Earth on TV. There was probably some take of the President segregating his trash or some such thing. And you had PETA or the Sea Shepard and people chaining themselves to bulldozers. What about the trash barge that couldn't find a port that was scaring the whole country into thinking we'd all drown under an ocean of garbage?
It all faded away. Well, not all of it. Recycling is somewhat enforced, even though it doesn't appear to work much. And people mostly rejected EVs until mostly recently when they became--almost--as good as ICEV. But, in general, people got tired of being told they're immoral idiots who are destroying everything every minute of every day.
That's my hope at least. It's too early to tell, but the recent news about Rowling makes me think that the crowds are getting tired of listening to same tired old stuff all the time. Perhaps we here are even more tired since many of us have been audience to this show for a decade or more.
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