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erwgv3g34


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From chapter 1 of Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck, "Inadequacy and Modesty":




I once wrote a report, “Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics,” that called for an estimate of the economic growth rate in a fully developed country—that is, a country that is no longer able to improve productivity just by importing well-tested innovations. A footnote of the paper remarked that even though Japan was the country with the most advanced technology—e.g., their cellphones and virtual reality technology were five years ahead of the rest of the world’s—I wasn’t going to use Japan as my estimator for developed economic growth, because, as I saw it, Japan’s monetary policy was utterly deranged.


Roughly, Japan’s central bank wasn’t creating enough money. I won’t go into details here.


A friend of mine, and one of the most careful thinkers I know—let’s call him “John”—made a comment on my draft to this effect:


How do you claim to know this? I can think of plenty of other reasons why Japan could be in a slump: the country’s shrinking and aging population, its low female workplace participation, its high levels of product market regulation, etc. It looks like you’re venturing outside of your area of expertise to no good end.


“How do you claim to know this?” is a very reasonable question here. As John later elaborated, macroeconomics is an area where data sets tend to be thin and predictive performance tends to be poor. And John had previously observed me making contrarian claims where I’d turned out to be badly wrong, like endorsing Gary Taubes’ theories about the causes of the obesity epidemic. More recently, John won money off of me by betting that AI performance on certain metrics would improve faster than I expected; John has a good track record when it comes to spotting my mistakes.


It’s also easy to imagine reasons an observer might have been skeptical. I wasn’t making up my critique of Japan myself; I was reading other economists and deciding that I trusted the ones who were saying that the Bank of Japan was doing it wrong… … Yet one would expect the governing board of the Bank of Japan to be composed of experienced economists with specialized monetary expertise. How likely is it that any outsider would be able to spot an obvious flaw in their policy? How likely is it that someone who isn’t a professional economist (e.g., me) would be able to judge which economic critiques of the Bank of Japan were correct, or which critics were wise?


How likely is it that an entire country—one of the world’s most advanced countries—would forego trillions of dollars of real economic growth because their monetary controllers—not politicians, but appointees from the professional elite—were doing something so wrong that even a non-professional could tell? How likely is it that a non-professional could not just suspect that the Bank of Japan was doing something badly wrong, but be confident in that assessment?


Surely it would be more realistic to search for possible reasons why the Bank of Japan might not be as stupid as it seemed, as stupid as some econbloggers were claiming. Possibly Japan’s aging population made growth impossible. Possibly Japan’s massive outstanding government debt made even the slightest inflation too dangerous. Possibly we just aren’t thinking of the complicated reasoning going into the Bank of Japan’s decision.


Surely some humility is appropriate when criticizing the elite decision-makers governing the Bank of Japan. What if it’s you, and not the professional economists making these decisions, who have failed to grasp the relevant economic considerations?


I’ll refer to this genre of arguments as “modest epistemology.”


...


I once heard an Oxford effective altruism proponent crisply summarize what I take to be the central argument for this perspective: “You see that someone says X, which seems wrong, so you conclude their epistemic standards are bad. But they could just see that you say Y, which sounds wrong to them, and conclude your epistemic standards are bad.” On this line of thinking, you don’t get any information about who has better epistemic standards merely by observing that someone disagrees with you. After all, the other side observes just the same fact of disagreement.


Applying this argument form to the Bank of Japan example: I receive little or no evidence just from observing that the Bank of Japan says “X” when I believe “not X.” I also can’t be getting strong evidence from any object-level impression I might have that I am unusually competent. So did my priors imply that I and I alone ought to have been born with awesome powers of discernment? (Modest people have posed this exact question to me on more than one occasion.)


It should go without saying that this isn’t how I would explain my own reasoning. But if I reject arguments of the form, “We disagree, therefore I’m right and you’re wrong,” how can I claim to be correct on an economic question where I disagree with an institution as reputable as the Bank of Japan?


...


The converse side of the efficient-markets perspective would have said this about the Bank of Japan:


CONVENTIONAL CYNICAL ECONOMIST: So, Eliezer, you think you know better than the Bank of Japan and many other central banks around the world, do you?


ELIEZER: Yep. Or rather, by reading econblogs, I believe myself to have identified which econbloggers know better, like Scott Sumner.


C.C.E.: Even though literally trillions of dollars of real value are at stake?


ELIEZER: Yep.


C.C.E.: How do you make money off this special knowledge of yours?


ELIEZER: I can’t. The market also collectively knows that the Bank of Japan is pursuing a bad monetary policy and has priced Japanese equities accordingly. So even though I know the Bank of Japan’s policy will make Japanese equities perform badly, that fact is already priced in; I can’t expect to make money by short-selling Japanese equities.


C.C.E.: I see. So exactly who is it, on this theory of yours, that is being stupid and passing up a predictable payout?


ELIEZER: Nobody, of course! Only the Bank of Japan is allowed to control the trend line of the Japanese money supply, and the Bank of Japan’s governors are not paid any bonuses when the Japanese economy does better. They don’t get a million dollars in personal bonuses if the Japanese economy grows by a trillion dollars.


C.C.E.: So you can’t make any money off knowing better individually, and nobody who has the actual power and authority to fix the problem would gain a personal financial benefit from fixing it? Then we’re done! No anomalies here; this sounds like a perfectly normal state of affairs.


...


But the Bank of Japan is just one committee, and it’s not possible for anyone else to step up and make a billion dollars in the course of correcting their error. Even if you think you know exactly what the Bank of Japan is doing wrong, you can’t make a profit on that. At least some hedge-fund managers also know what the Bank of Japan is doing wrong, and the expected consequences are already priced into the market. Nor does this price movement fix the Bank of Japan’s mistaken behavior. So to the extent the Bank of Japan has poor incentives or some other systematic dysfunction, their mistake can persist. As a consequence, when I read some econbloggers who I’d seen being right about empirical predictions before saying that Japan was being grotesquely silly, and the economic logic seemed to me to check out, as best I could follow it, I wasn’t particularly reluctant to believe them. Standard economic theory, generalized beyond the markets to other facets of society, did not seem to me to predict that the Bank of Japan must act wisely for the good of Japan. It would be no surprise if they were competent, but also not much of a surprise if they were incompetent. And knowing this didn’t help me either—I couldn’t exploit the knowledge to make an excess profit myself—and this too wasn’t a coincidence.


This kind of thinking can get quite a bit more complicated than the foregoing paragraphs might suggest. We have to ask why the government of Japan didn’t put pressure on the Bank of Japan (answer: they did, but the Bank of Japan refused), and many other questions. You would need to consider a much larger model of the world, and bring in a lot more background theory, to be confident that you understood the overall situation with the Bank of Japan.


But even without that detailed analysis, in the epistemological background we have a completely different picture from the modest one. We have a picture of the world where it is perfectly plausible for an econblogger to write up a good analysis of what the Bank of Japan is doing wrong, and for a sophisticated reader to reasonably agree that the analysis seems decisive, without a deep agonizing episode of Dunning-Kruger-inspired self-doubt playing any important role in the analysis.




When we critique a government, we don’t usually get to see what would actually happen if the government took our advice. But in this one case, less than a month after my exchange with John, the Bank of Japan—under the new leadership of Haruhiko Kuroda, and under unprecedented pressure from recently elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who included monetary policy in his campaign platform—embarked on an attempt to print huge amounts of money, with a stated goal of doubling the Japanese money supply.


Immediately after, Japan experienced real GDP growth of 2.3%, where the previous trend was for falling RGDP. Their economy was operating that far under capacity due to lack of money.


Now, on the modest view, this was the unfairest test imaginable. Out of all the times that I’ve ever suggested that a government’s policy is suboptimal, the rare time a government tries my preferred alternative will select the most mainstream, highest-conventional-prestige policies I happen to advocate, and those are the very policy proposals that modesty is least likely to disapprove of.


Indeed, if John had looked further into the issue, he would have found (as I found while writing this) that Nobel laureates had also criticized Japan’s monetary policy. He would have found that previous Japanese governments had also hinted to the Bank of Japan that they should print more money. The view from modesty looks at this state of affairs and says, “Hold up! You aren’t so specially blessed as your priors would have you believe; other academics already know what you know! Civilization isn’t so inadequate after all! This is how reasonable dissent from established institutions and experts operates in the real world: via opposition by other mainstream experts and institutions, not via the heroic effort of a lone economics blogger.”


However helpful or unhelpful such remarks may be for guarding against inflated pride, however, they don’t seem to refute (or even address) the central thesis of civilizational inadequacy, as I will define that term later. Roughly, the civilizational inadequacy thesis states that in situations where the central bank of a major developed democracy is carrying out a policy, and a number of highly regarded economists like Ben Bernanke have written papers about what that central bank is doing wrong, and there are widely accepted macroeconomic theories for understanding what that central bank is doing wrong, and the government of the country has tried to put pressure on the central bank to stop doing it wrong, and literally trillions of dollars in real wealth are at stake, then the overall competence of human civilization is such that we shouldn’t be surprised to find the professional economists at the Bank of Japan doing it wrong.


We shouldn’t even be surprised to find that a decision theorist without all that much background in economics can identify which econbloggers have correctly stated what the Bank of Japan is doing wrong, or which simple improvements to their current policies would improve the situation.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But would you rather be a poor person now or a billionaire 100 years ago?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
CLEPs help (each exam costs $100 and is usually good for three credits, while a single credit at a state university like UF or FIU costs $200) but are seriously hampered by:


    

  1. 

    Limited selection. There are only 34 CLEP exams, most of them targeting introductory college courses like calculus (or, in some cases, high school courses like algebra).
    

    2. 

  2. 

    Credit caps. Most schools will limit the number of credits you can earn by examination.
    

    3. 



Using UF and FIU again as examples, you can see from their tables that CLEPs only award credits for courses at the 1000 (freshman) and 2000 (sophomore) levels, and are limited to a maximum of 45 credits. So, at most, you might be able to shave a year and a half from a four-year degree and fulfill your general education requirements by exam.


Still, I'd definitely recommend anyone doing a bachelor's degree save time and money by maxing out their exam credits, both CLEP and AP.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ozempic?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's not just the piece of paper: the school is also, in theory, certifying that you actually read the books, watched the lectures, and can answer questions about the material. Otherwise you get lots of "I slept through half the video and only have a facile understanding of a fraction of the material" cases. Good schools generally (in theory) require deeper understanding.




Does it cost $10,000 to give a test? Of course not. But giving such tests directly is illegal. And using the most general test that predicts your ability to learn the material before you even do so is most illegal of all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And maybe AI obviates the entire discussion, but the other fun bit is that AI is probably going to make college completely obsolete even if it never improves from its current state. You can now get instruction from the equivalent of the greatest professors in any given subject for like $20 a month.




This doesn't help. For decades you could already read books (e.g. The Feynman Lectures on Physics and watch lectures (e.g. Walter Lewin) created by the greatest professors in the world, at a fraction of the price of going to college. It made no difference, because what's valuable about university is the piece of paper, which is the only legal way to discriminate between job applicants.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Chile and Spain during their fascist eras were at least as bad as living under communism.




Hard disagree. Nothing Franco or Pinochet did seems comparable to the Holodomor or the Great Chinese Famine. Both embraced economic liberalization programs that led to high growth; Spain experienced the Spanish Miracle and Chile remains one of the richest countries in LATAM to this day. Meanwhile, communist countries are notoriously poor even when they aren't literally starving to death, because communism is the creationism of economics. Pinochet only killed a few thousand people, most of them literal communists; Stalin killed a million people during the Great Purge alone.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you're pissed at Trump for getting us into yet another middle-eastern war (and I am), the correct response is either not to vote, or to vote Libertarian. Voting Democrat is just telling the world that you want both war AND drag queen story hour.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But if you are a doctor, no matter where you go you are going to surrounded and outnumbered by nurses, most of whom are female, the younger ones in their early 20s; it's the ultimate target rich environment. Combine with the high status and high pay of being a doctor and I'd call it easy mode.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Have you read The Sequences? The AI does not love you, nor does it hate you, but you are made of atoms that it can use for something else.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If AGI is real, and it’s really less than a decade away or whatever, won’t ‘ it ‘ just magically make all these issues null with its magnificence?




This is true. But it's true for everything, not just for space colonization. All non-AI discussions should be assumed to be Current Rate No Singularity. Otherwise, we might as well close the Culture War Thread and replace it with an AI Thread. Who cares about Iran or immigration when the singularity is a few years away, and the most likely outcome is that it kills us all?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Military-Industrial Complex.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To be more precise, Star Wars is a two-part trilogy, where the original movie is made as a standalone, and its outstanding success results in two sequels made back-to-back that are better understood as two halves of one big movie than as two separate movies (The Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean are also good examples).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's actually from the movie, which reveals that Albert is Edmond's and Mercedes's son, and that she only married Fernand to provide him with a father (Fernand is unaware, so in this version, it is he who is cucked). In the book, Albert is Fernand's son, and Mercedes married him after eighteen months, having given up hope that Edmond would ever return.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, first of all, your premise is wrong, because Branches on the Tree of Time exists. Now, granted, it's only a fanfic, but in principle there is no reason why it could not be filmed and become the best Terminator movie since Judgement Day.


Secondly, I am of the opinion that most sequels are bad, because they derail a complete, satisfying conclusion. The only thing that justifies a sequel is if the original is not so good, and the sequel is much better. Terminator 2 fits that description. Predator 2 does not.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, hence the joke about how there weren't any Matrix sequels.


On the other hand, there was a very nice prequel called "The Second Renaissance"; 20 minutes of animated goodness exploring the backstory to the movie's setting. The allusion to "Saigon Execution" goes hard.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Nobody hates Reloaded because of the action scenes (well, except for the highway scene that takes forever). We hate it for the shitty writing which takes a dump all over the original.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for February 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If he'd understood the social rules and played the game a bit better, he might have been able to navigate himself into a position where he really was able to make proactive changes to Google's hiring policies (in particular, avoiding hiring policies based on nakedly pseudoscientific premises).




This never happens. People who keep their head down and parrot the stated platitudes to survive never reach a point where they feel safe and confident rocking the boat. They either internalize their own helplessness and learn to submit for the rest of their lives, or, more likely, they start to believe to the ideology they are forced to repeat, the way people are likely to convert to a faith whose church they physically attend.


Being forced to tell obvious lies every day kills the soul. Nobody with courage and integrity thrives under such a system.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Terminator 1 is the neat, tidy self-referential loop. Terminator 2 had the "screw destiny" message and ended on a high note (Skynet was never created, Judgement Day was averted, John Connor grows up to become a politician and fights his battles with words instead of bullets, Sarah Connor has a grandkid, everything is fine).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Had to read that one for French class in high school. The way Edmond got cucked was particularly painful. But his revenge schemes were way too elaborate, and would never work in real life; man needs to learn that shooting is not too good for his enemies.


What I remember most is the way his cellmate promises to teach him "mathematics, physics, history, and the three or four modern languages with which I am acquainted" within a couple of years, in a prison with nothing in the way of materials. Which goes against everything I know of pedagogy. But, then again, Alexandre Dumas was a writer, not a mathematician or a physicist.


Good book. Public domain, too, so lots of adaptations, some of them great. Probably the standard modern version would be the 2002 movie with Jim Caviezel, but if you are ever in the mood for something a little more exotic, Gankutsuou is excellent (and particularly innovative for choosing to tell the story from Albert's POV).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Precisely.


No Iranian ever called me an incel.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Capitalism is systemic plunder of the poor" is not wokeness, it's good old fashioned communism. One of the main criticism the old left has of wokeness is that it leaves corporations intact as long as an appropriate fraction of CEOs are queer women of color. See rainbow capitalism, /r/stupidpol, Freddie deBoer's nightmare scenario, etc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We have all read Scott; we all know the quote. That's the point of a shared literary canon; you can allude to it without having to quote the whole thing. And, in any case, the Wikipedia page does include the story:




Chen Sheng and Wu Guang were both army officers who were ordered to lead their bands of commoner soldiers north to participate in the defense of Yuyang... However, they were stopped halfway in present-day Anhui province by flooding from a severe rainstorm. The harsh Qin laws mandated execution for those who showed up late for government jobs, regardless of the nature of the delay. Figuring that they would rather fight than accept execution, Chen and Wu organized a band of 900 villagers to rebel against the government.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Somewhere in heaven, John McCain is smiling.


Just what kind of power does the Blob have, that it manages to convince every president that blowing up random middle eastern countries for Israel is a good idea?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Only if you picked the right field, got internships and work experience, and either networked, did projects, research or went to the right school. The extra parts were just implied. No one smart ever thought getting an English bachelors or HR degree entitled you to a nice cushy job. The part about going to college, is that it requires you to also demonstrate you can think without being told to. Figuring out which jobs are flush with applicants or are low pay is fairly straightforward with some independent thought. The only lie that gen-z was sold was that it required no extra effort, no extra thought, just color inside the lines like you were told to, you good little lemming. And that's probably because that extra effort/thought is a costly signal. And why pollute the costly signal, the smart ones will figure it out, which is the point of a costly signal.




Yes, let's fuck over everyone who can't read between the lines. Then don't be too surprised when, ten years later, those same people are voting en masse for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.


When the system is out to fuck you, it's time to burn down the system.