RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12hr ago
I saw a chart that showed the people with huge incomes had high (by first world country standards, so around 2.0 or 3.0) fertility, but they're quite rare. It was a U-curve chart, not a diagonal chart.
And it's certainly not commensurate with Niger's 6.4 TFR.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
16hr ago
And to the extent that this "conflict" does have a basis in reality and isn't purely virtual, it's largely a good thing anyway, as its primary effect is to prevent evolutionarily unfit individuals (largely male) from reproducing, while more fecund and vigorous strains are unharmed.
Max Anders the glasses-wearing nerd makes six-figures at his software infrastructure job keeping the city running. But because he has a nerdy and uncharismatic personality and poor facial structure he will never reproduce.
But Slaggern Thundercock has eight children with three different women because he has strong cheekbones and a violent alpha personality? Vigorous by the definition of the 10,000 BC tribal warrior is not really what we need.
Stacy Smartbook is clever and hardworking - she lives alone, her demanding job, lengthy education and high expectations for a partner leave little room or time for a partner or children.
Salmonella Sarvesian is stupid and abusive, raising her brood of children badly. Many will go on to be crooks. She's on welfare and doesn't care, or maybe she works a few hours at a low-income job.
On a global level this is exactly what's happening. The most talented and proficient are not reproducing. We have the statistics on fertility by region, by demographic, by city. We can read a chart. We can see what's happening in front of our eyes. This is a bad thing, at least for those of us who value a high-quality human civilization. In some places it's worse still, the Korean race will vanish from the South if it keeps on this path of TFR going straight down - no genocidal foe is needed.
It is perfectly natural for nations and civilizations to die out. It has happened many times in history. While natural, it is not very pleasant for those who live in a dying nation. We should take steps to avoid this. It is natural for cars driving towards a cliff to sail off, the driver should swerve rather than burn.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
17hr ago
Firefighters arriving after the fire starts is perfectly fine.
However, if the firefighters are wandering around with petrol and matches before the fire starts, then we have problems - especially when it comes to paying them a hefty bill for their services.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Any attempt to do something about the kid before his crimes escalated to international aeroplane theft would have been based around a CPS investigation, because realistically there was nothing else the police could do about him.
The law is far too soft around young children who commit serious crimes. Deadly carjacking by under-age girls? Death penalty!
Not:
The 15-year old received the maximum sentence allowed by law and was remanded to the care of a youth agency until deemed rehabilitated or reaching the age of 21; the younger girl (age 14 at time of sentencing) received the same sentence on July 6, 2021.
If swift use of the death penalty returns, people will be amazed at how quickly the random stabbings of 3-year-old children ends, how these violent carjackings and armed burglaries get squelched. These 'mentally deranged' people rarely try stabbing attacks or pushing-onto-the-tracks against 190 cm bodybuilders or big, tough construction workers. They go for women and children or they bring weapons. They know what would happen, even within their esoteric, legally fortuitous 'unable to understand the consequences' mental state. They do understand consequences, we just don't inflict the necessary punishment.
If all else fails, the death penalty will cull the problem people out of the population.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Do you know what happens when you go on /pol/ and make a sincere and relatively novel argument in favour of the Holocaust being real? (That it is absolutely not difficult for a Germany that killed 20 million armed Soviets and conquered Europe to wipe out a few million mostly unarmed Jews, that even poorly organized states like Pakistan or the Ottoman Empire can pull off genocide, plus Nazi Germany certainly had the motivation and will to do it). I can tell you.
People accuse you of being a bad-faith actor because everyone knows that /pol/ is a 'It didn't happen but it should've' board. Few are interested in debate. It's a partisan environment. And there are many paid employees pushing various angles. Bluesky is the same. Reddit is, for the most part, the same.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
If US big pharma is so great, why is US life-expectancy declining? Not just since the pandemic but even before then. Biotech and pharma shares were making huge gains in that period 2014-2019, yet life expectancy was stagnant at best. We can toss Tabarrok's thesis that pharma shares = life expectancy straight out the window. Consider US life expectancy compared to peers: https://x.com/The_OtherET/status/1857207679011180938
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/djuspr
https://www.investing.com/indices/nasdaq-biotechnology-components
Why are there umpteen billions going into a massively drawn-out and complicated drug research process that barely seems to produce many good new drugs - and pennies for anti-aging research?
Why was there a massive opiate crisis, founded in part due to dodgy advertisements and concealment of risks?
Why is such an enormous proportion of the US population on anti-depressants? Why are so many children on ADHD medications and adderall? Overmedicalization has been linked to all kinds of problems.
Capitalism is not an unalloyed good. I believe in the market system. I believe it's generally superior to central planning and state-directed approach. But there are roles for regulation or state enterprises. Of course regulation can also create perverse incentives which I suspect is a big contributor to the problem. But free market fundamentalists like Tabarrok are nearly as bad as banocrat regulatory fiends and communists.
The fentanyl dealer on the street is nearly universally considered a social malefactor, I doubt Tabarrok would defend this particular class of entrepeneur. What about the pharma exec who launders standard human behaviour (unsatisfaction with a boring life or children not sitting still in class) as a disease, intensively advertises a 'cure' which is only partially effective and causes all kinds of side-effects later down the track? Regulation is needed to confront both of them.
The whole US health system is a Gordion knot that needs to be decisively cut through by some Alexander.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Enough money to make a good-sized newspaper headline, maybe a million dollars? That's not much for a billionaire.
We should try to cultivate a pro-social atmosphere where hospitality is rewarded, where people are generous and helpful to strangers.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Prices are important in the weighing up of costs and benefits. When it comes to prostitution, I am sure that most women would sleep with a man for a high repayment in money or power. Would it be rational to turn down billions of dollars that she could use to vastly improve her life and her loved ones? Would it be rational to marry a charming and pleasant life-long loser who lives in his parent's basement, as compared to a somewhat more boring but well-off computer technician? If that's whorish behaviour then the standard is awfully high.
Marian Tompson wasn't saying she was opposed to male breastfeeding just because it is unnatural but also because it is a distraction from the core goals of the organization. She also says that there's no long-term research into its effects on the child, which is basically a steelman of unnatural.
Women are the ones best equipped for breastfeeding, it should belong to them. If there is a bucket of time and effort for breastfeeding work, women should get all of it since they're better at it. Raising children is complicated, it's not really understood and we have many more important areas to invest resources in than helping men breastfeed.
Likewise, men are best suited for war. Men are stronger and more martially inclined, war should be their prerogative. History has shown this, let's keep it that way.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
It's funny how fuckingfascists is clearly a sincere left-wing operation - not a hint of anime.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
I think putting 'mothers breastfeeding their children' in the same category as cholera, dysentery and smallpox is a bridge too far.
Technical interventions that remove lethal diseases aren't the same as qualitative shifts in the operation.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
The Chinese state comes off as super-sanctimonious, it's all 'you're racist oppressive imperialists obstructing our peaceful multilateral world order with your provocations and cold war mindset'. But internally you see a wide-ranging hatred of many foreign countries, especially Japan (not an unreasonable grudge, all things considered). They made some drunk captain a national hero when he rammed into a Japanese coast guard ship and caused a diplomatic incident. They constantly bitch about Japan releasing mildly irradiated water from Fukushima.
If they ever get the upper hand, I'm very glad to not be Japanese.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
I dunno about the monitor lizard but there sure does seem to be a lot of it: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/almost-5-lakh-animals-became-victims-of-crimes-in-last-10-years-in-india-report-1770190-2021-02-17
Pakistan certainly doesn't cover itself in glory either, on the rape front.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
- Sexual harassment. There are all these newspaper headlines coming out of India about animals being raped to death, women who go there instantly regretting their decision. Or on university campuses at home women complain. We are the ones who invented #metoo and expended great effort getting Afghan girls into university, this does not go down well at all.
- A certain attitude. The Chinese probably do much more scamming than India but they're stealing turbine information, IP, software, schematics. They don't tend to go after grandma's savings saying they're from Microsoft. China comes off as threatening (nearly every day we have war propaganda in TV and newspapers against China). India is not threatening at all. But there's a certain kind of boasting/hypernationalism that you can see sometimes online, a certain level of entitlement to other people's money. Kitboga has done immense damage to India's reputation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6m8Ln1yqeJE
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
From reading the wiki page, I'm having a hard time figuring out why anyone would mouth-froth over the idea of her having any position of power.
She says she was put under surveillance in the airport for some reason, agents follow her on planes:
https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-tsa-terrorist-watchlist-1985527
So there's clearly not much love lost between her and intelligence goons.
Relevant: Dominic Cummings complaints about the UK government and its clownish bureaucracy
For the first year of Gove’s time in the DfE (May 2010 – spring 2011), ministers were up until the early hours proofreading officials’ drafts of letters and rejecting about nine out of ten because of errors with basic facts, spelling, or grammar. When I got embroiled in rows about this in Q1 2011, some MPs had been sent no reply for six months. Despite several complaints to senior officials, nothing happened, shoulders were shrugged – ‘cuts, we need more resource, lack of core skills, all very difficult’ and so on.
The problem with Western governments isn't that they literally can't find people who know how to spell, or fix lifts, or avoid idiotic wars.
There are plenty of smart people in government and even more who are theoretically available. The whole institutional structure doesn't prioritize doing things correctly. As a collective, they pursue vibes of what they think might be popular amongst their peers (see Team Kamala's decision of why not to go on Rogan). They try to strengthen the power and control of their class and subdue any threats (this is their highest shared priority). They try to deflect all bad outcomes away from themselves. And they like to plot and play politics, diverting national resources for their own internal factional interests. That's how they rise up the ranks.
The key thing isn't scrapping programs or reducing spending but changing the whole incentive structure and culture so that stupid programs aren't initiated and wasteful spending doesn't emerge in the first place. Politicians and officials must not feel safe going 'let's invade this country for made-up reasons' and creating a mess. They must not feel safe wrecking national industries. In the private sector, if you wreck and blunder you end up sinking your company and getting removed from the leadership pool. Ideally you're sifted out through competition before you get into any high-ranking positions. You can't really wriggle out of that (though some manage it).
In the public sector, it's very difficult for even the most effective wreckers to completely destroy a country. Competition between states is quite limited in most places. Responsibility is so diffuse they can lay blame elsewhere. The culture gets more corrupt under the lesser competitive pressure.
To take a less contemporary example, consider Admiral Yi of Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_Sun-sin
He was an incredible leader on the battlefield but he was constantly getting imprisoned, tortured and demoted by his jealous rivals and nervous superiors. The Korean governance culture was inferior, it squandered enormous amounts of talent. We can see a similar kind of suppression (albeit much less severe) on Musk under the old regime, despite him clearly being an incredible strength for America. Presumably his European equivalent got suffocated before he even got started.
That's what needs to be changed, the entire mindset. This is very hard to do, creating good institutions in the first place needed hundreds and hundreds of years of bloody wars in Europe. Maybe we could try introducing fearsome anti-corruption commissions and merit-based promotions like they have in China. But even then, there are problems with people gaming the rules: 'if the mayor is fired when a disaster kills 36 people, then all disasters will be reported as killing 35'. That example may not be specifically true but it gives a general impression.
Only a clear and inescapable need for true performance can really get it done. I don't know how to achieve this, apart from warfare or international races to achieve a certain goal.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
I think the most palatable change would be something akin to banning those under age 16 from having social media accounts.
They're trying to legislate this in Australia right now.
Does everyone need to show their ID to get a social media account up? Do I need to show ID for this website? Who is storing my information and where is it going? What about VPNs (every second youtuber is shilling them, kids could easily set one up) to bypass the ban and log in from a more permissive jurisdiction - ban them? What about 4chan or its derivatives - they can't be bothered to do age-verification (and don't have the resources) - ban them? Xbox and Playstation have online chat, thousands and thousands of games have online chat. Are they all social media? In a stroke online privacy is greatly diminished, along with all small web forums.
At least in crypto you have marginally higher chances of making money and it's not inherently rigged against you. Down with sports betting, up with Shiba and Doge.
Societies' restrictive energies should remain focused on drugs, they cause much more harm than gambling does.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
There are beginners playthroughs on youtube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CgBnpbaQFo4 or https://youtube.com/watch?v=_f-pwq6cKwk?list=PLs3acGYgI1-vw-A3LHOb_BDQxKNtv1tze
There's a text guide here (this would be the best IMO for getting started, in terms of efficient reading): https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/beginner-help-the-basics.648469/
There's a slightly more advanced tactic/strategy guide here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/sisiutils-strategy-guide-for-beginners.165632/
The game manual is here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/civ-4-manual.12753/
The map is pretty straightforward. It's all about getting three resources - food, commerce and production. There's a little button you can press on to show the per-tile yields, another one that highlights special resources.
You get the most value in making cities near food resources so they can quickly grow and get pops working other tiles: hills, mineral resources and forests for production or luxury resources/coast/rivers for commerce. Commerce is wealth, culture, espionage and most of all research, you control where exactly it goes with sliders.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
https://www.pcworld.com/article/1364477/nvidia-rtx-4090-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090.html
The GeForce RTX 4090’s $1,599 MSRP is significantly less than the $1,999 whopper of a price that the RTX 3090 Ti launched with. It’s also $100 more than the original RTX 3090’s debut $1499 price. Good news, however – the RTX 3090 Ti has dropped to a much lower $1099 for the Founders Edition, and sometimes can be found for less. The 3090 can often be found for under $900, and even closer to $700 if you’re OK with a used graphics card.
The 3090 price fell precisely because of the 4090, due to market forces. Today, the 4090 seems to be back up to around 2000 USD due to the AI boom and sanctions/sanctionsbusting. But anyone would rather have a 4090 for $2000 than a 3090 TI for $2000. In theory, you could get a 4090 for $1600 compared to a 3090 TI for $2000, which is a very good deal. Progress continues.
When the 5000 series emerges, the 4090 will fall to the $1000-1500 range too.
Secular falls in GPU prices (and heightened price/performance) are being suppressed by high demand but they're still observable.
If Nvidia's products have the same or worse price/performance ratio as 5 years ago then why are they the biggest company in the world today and a minnow five years ago? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
For some tasks, there's no difference. My favourite game Civ IV can run on 20-year old hardware. It runs a little faster on a modern CPU but that's about it.
The 4090 is not really for gaming, it's for mucking around with advanced image-generation, AI and training consumer-level LORAs. For some things the 4090 really is the cheapest way to run it, there is 0 performance per $ for anything below 24 GB of VRAM. Just like how there is 0 performance per $ on the Geforce 3 for most tasks. It doesn't even run modern OSes, you'd be better off with whatever comes with your CPU.
NVIDIA boasts 25x energy efficiency gains over the last generation for its flagship AI processors. OK, that's advertising - round that down to 10x or even 5x... That's still a huge improvement.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-au/data-center/gb200-nvl72/?ncid=no-ncid
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
UPRO doesn't seem to have performed that well.
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/upro
On 1/1/2020, it was at $36, now it's at $95. Tesla went from $36 to $335. Bitcoin did even better, going from about $7,000 to $88,000 today. Even Apple went from $74 to $224, it did better than UPRO (and pays dividends). Microsoft did similarly well.
It's not like Microsoft or Apple were unheard of back in early 2020, they're basically blue-chips.
ETFs are generally mediocre investments and have management fees, better to just pick out stocks or crypto specifically. If we look at just the 1 year, Bitcoin is up 140%, UPRO is up a measly 100%. UPRO might be a decent investment but it's not a great one.
A decent amount of volatility is good. You want to get in before the institutional investors, not after they've pumped the market up to high heaven. They're already all over ETFs.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
Moore's law has slowed down but his point is about a general trend of compute becoming cheaper per dollar, not a specific trend of transistors miniaturizing. He traces out a similar pattern of acceleration back to the dawn of life on Earth, long epochs of tiny creatures, followed by larger and more complex life. And then bang! It's the Anthropocene, goodbye to all the land mammal biomass that isn't us or ours. Even before transistors there was acceleration in compute capacity through electromechanical computing. Presumably acceleration will continue into photonics or some other method, perhaps with a delay period or sudden acceleration. You could argue that it's still accelerating, if you include the software and architectural improvements in the newest GPUs their effective compute/$ for AI tasks is rising faster than before.
I think his AI predictions turned out quite well - his original prediction was AGI by 2029 which looks conservative, if anything. Many today give a date of 2027, assuming all goes according to schedule. Singularity by 2045 is even more conservative. He was saying this back in the early 2000s, so clearly his reading of trend-lines has some merit to it.
His health practices however will probably not stand the test of time.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
He's saying that we'll have to scale up something else - inference time is the most obvious choice. Synthetic data is also widely used. Ilya wouldn't be founding his own 'making superintelligence' company if he thought it wasn't possible.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
The new Qwen 2.5 32B dropped, people are saying it's roughly as good as the newest Sonnet for coding. I don't know how easy it is to get access to Qwen but it is Chinese and should be cheap, it is open source...
Might be good to try out as a comparison, see if it's really that good or if they've just been benchmark hacking? But Sonnet is the most obvious pick IMO.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
If you jumped onboard 14 hours ago, you'd already have made 7-8% profit, which is what SPY might make in a year. It's at 87K now, rising to 88 as I write this post.
Untold riches for nothing is a very high standard that we've only ever seen with bitcoin and ETH (which was originally distributed to BTC addresses). There used to be BTC faucets where people gave them away, evangelizing to new users.
OK, the US military is not well-endowed with the cerebral sort. Many abstract tasks like strategy or military-political coordination elude them. They have produced some real masterpieces of silliness in past years: https://x.com/DefenseCharts/status/1321799395571097601
But the US military do have powerful radars and cameras pointed at the skies. They have lots of space assets, they are very interested in space. There's no way of getting to the bottom of this without their resources.
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