Tractatus
1hr ago
You're not allowed to countermand sworn testimony by relying on your "experience" though. And no, "expertise" isn't allowed, just general experiences. Doing so introduces unsworn testimony that the opposition has not had the opportunity to cross-examine.
Tractatus
1hr ago
Wait, did you just take my post from last thread - where I used that very example to mock people claiming it's impossible to prove intent - and "YesChad" it?
No, that is not the MA standard, because that's not what "beyond a reasonable doubt" means. If it were, then every defense attorney practicing in MA for the past 60+ years should be disbarred for gross negligence by not using this One Weird Trick to get every criminal defendent off the hook. That this has not happened, that no-one has apparently discovered this One Weird Trick to Get Out of Jail Free in all these decades should cause one to question whether they truly understand what "beyond a reasonable doubt" means, right?
Tractatus
1hr ago
actual experts... What? The defense called 6 psychiatrists, the prosecution 3. Not a one said her behavior was consistent with post-partum psychosis, or any psychosis, for that matter. The hospital declined enrollment in a post-partum program because, you know, the diagnositc criteria is 4 weeks, not 8 months/3 years/5 years/whenever and whereever a woman feels like claiming it. Reddington, a lawyer, was the one who floated post-partum depression/psychosis
Any "experts" claiming this was psychosis are either a) lying about their expertise, or b) shamelessly lying (a la Sapolsky on neuroscience) about the state of the field for ideological purposes.
No, they aren't The utter refusal of EA's to actually look at what happens after they implement their policies, and update accordingly, is breathtaking. It's amateur hour "reasoning from 1st principles" all the way down: Malaria is devastating! Malaria nets are cheap and easy to use! Give Africans Malaria Nets! ← stop here, completely refuse to think if there are any second order effects to take into account, or consider what, if anything, could go wrong, then loudly insist that you are, in fact, very smart.
Austin doesn't strike me as a lunatic but the way he writes about her reeks a bit romantic. Oh no!
This will come across as "uncharitable," but show this announcement to 100 of your normie coworkers and 100% of them will answer "They're fucking. No doubt about it."
Edit: Hold the phone, this is the organization that got $500k from FTX, and is currently fighting to not have to give it back? We're well past "good optics"
Tractatus
22hr ago
Liberal White Women have always folded to the rest of the Progressive Stack, including Black Men. The only cohorts they're able to put up a fight against is White and/or Asian Men.
Tractatus
1d ago
The point of the Caesar comparision is an allusion to Spengler's description of the end stage of all Cultures, rule by oligarchs that can only be overthrown, however temporarily, by charismatic populists harnessing the grievances of the masses to bypass the existing power structures, of whom Caesar is the go-to example. "But Trump has no military victories" is missing the point entirely.
Tractatus
1d ago
Link, as the exchange that prompted the tweet is vital to understanding it; this is not some uncharitable slagging of a strawman, it is a response to man who has had reality patiently explained to him, ad nauseum, yet can do nothing but repeat, as though programmed, with "But I did have breakfast this morning!But I don't want to spend the money!"
This money has already been appropriated. You can no more avoid spending it than I can wake up to discover I've won the lottery, and can now spend the rest of my days attended to by a harem of busty women. In fact, it is infinitely more likely that I could, as however eye-watering the lottery odds are - what are they now, 1-in-300-million? - there is still a chance, whereas this money will not, cannot, be unspent.
Ditto the crying over the $5k "Trump Dividend" checks (that will never come to pass). Should the Dems sweep during the midterms, we're gonna be spending a whole lot more than $1.3 Trillion, and "principled conservatives" won't see a dime of it.
Tractatus
2d ago
Yes, we can all agree that women provide no value to society if they're not running up credit card debt so she can look good while girlbossing at 40 hour a week email job. That way, she's contributing to GDP 2-fold; her earnings, then paying a nanny to raise her kids instead of her.
You guys get that when Samuelson said that "if a man marries his maid, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) actually goes down" he was making a joke, not an earnest policy proposal, no?
Tractatus
3d ago
"...independently..?" Are you shitting me? He showed proof positive they stole his work, and you're trying to frame him as the scammer?
Just utterly embarassing. AI fanbois are a cult, this thread is proof.
Tractatus
5d ago
Murder 1 in most jurisdictions requires "subjective" proof of the perpetrator's state of mind, not merely physical actions. That's "intent," and it really isn't that hard to prove. Insisting that "sanity" doesn't fall under this strikes me as special pleading.
Tractatus
5d ago
Lindsey decided to kill herself...by supericially knicking her skin with a knife, then sliding out a two story window. No, that doesn't pass the smell test. What, the poor woman was just too petered out by the effort in strangling her kids to properly slit her wrists, or hang herself? No, that's not "plausible;" she tried to stage a suicide attempt, but fucked it up and ended up paralyzed (she probably figured a broken leg from the fall, at most.)
We've seen this story before. Lindsey was a narcissist, who thought she wanted to be a homemaker, but it turns out that having a loving and supporting family just isn't enough to combat a culture that invests untold billions into telling women that they are the main character. That's why her kids had to die, not some absurd fantasy of "not leaving the kids to be raised by a substandard mother," but because her ego would never forgive her kids being evidence of her failure.
Tractatus
7d ago
Which seems to me to be a really challenging standard, but that's the law there.
That's literally the standard in every criminal case. What about "beyond reasonable doubt" is confusing here? It doesn't mean "well, there could have been a .00001% chance martians did it and planted evidence," it's using the "reasonable person standard." Why are so many people pretending that's not well-settled law?
Tractatus
7d ago
The issue is not with MA law*, it is with your bizarre interpretation of "beyond reasonable doubt" which discards both the "beyond" and "reasonable" parts. The "reasonable person" standard has been well established for decades, it's not some subjective mystery.
I ask again, think about the consequences of what you are saying. Commonwealth v. McHoul has been the standard in Massachusetts since 1967. The Prosecution in this case presented expert testimony that "command voice" for around 20 minutes, interrupted by a phone calls with the spouse to ensure he would not be present to stop the act, they presented evidence of premeditation, they cleared any hurdle any reasonable person would raise.
Yet you insist they did not. This has consequences that you must account for. If what you are saying is true, then it is impossible for a prosecutor to ever defeat an insanity defense. As such, every defense attorney practicing in Massachusetts for the past 60 years who has not just had their client plead NGRI for the past 60 years has been in gross negligence. This is an absurdity, so one arguing in good faith should feel the need to re-examine their priors and question if perhaps their understanding of MA's Insanity Defense might, just might, be incorrect.
*Which, frankly, isn't as extreme as people are pretending it is. I'd agree that it's backwards, but it's not really a problem.
Tractatus
7d ago
If you object to anything in my post you quoted, you provided no argument for it. Have you been asleep the past 50 years? Canada has very much defined itself as being "not America" while avoiding being in outright opposition, and the latter has been less and less true for at least the past 20 years.
To claim Canada is not compromised by Chinese interests is to deny objective reality. If Chinese compute is stationed in Canada, then America would have no hope of succesfully montoring the development of Chinese AI, and would run the risk of having to decide to take military action against a putative ally, above the objections of international partners, based on incomplete information. It's isn't just "politically absurd," it's fucking retarded; it's even dumber than GWB's cabinent convincing themselves that the Iraqis will greet us like liberators, Iraq will be a shining beacon of democracy in the Middle East, that will bring peace on Earth and goodwill toward all men. It's an idea one could only come up with if one is profoundly ignorant of political reality, while steadfastly refusing to entertain the thought of "ok, but what if I'm wrong?"
Ditto American compute in Mongolia. Bordered by two hostile regimes, economically dependent on one (Mongolian economic trade is over 75% with China, last I checked), and we'll be obligated to include Mongolians in running the facility? Are you out of your mind? We have SCIFs in South Korea and Japan, and they've compromised those, repeatedly; we won't even let Japan in Five Eyes because we know, for fact, that Communists (not the Japanese Communist Party, which is of no real threat, but Communist agents aligned with China) have completely infiltrated the government, and anything shared with Japan is de facto shared with China (N.B. this is what Trump was hinting at in his response to the reporter who asked why Japan was not given advanced notice of the attack on Iran. Telling the Japanese government when and what was going to be targetted would have been no different than passing that info to Iran directly). These are allies, who spy on us, and we accept we cannot 100% stop them, but that's fine, it's just the cost of doing business as a global hegemon. But these guys would have us set up the most important project we'll ever take in the lands of a "neutral" party, in close proximity to, and deeply entwined with, a hostile government? There's no chance in hell we could stop Mongolian contractors from getting access to sensitive information that will 100% be passed on to China. This is as good as ceding the AI race to China
If this is what counts as "Serious People discussing Serious Matters, Seriously" to you, then I frankly do not take your judgement on their merits seriously.
Tractatus
8d ago
As I mentioned on Twitter, people pleading "beyond a reasonable doubt" clearly have no clue what it means. If this case doesn't clear the hurdle of then it is literally impossible for any case, short of the defendent literally taking the stand and telling the Court "Yo, I'm actually perfectly fine, I'm just pleading Insanity because I know it's a Get Out of Jail Free Card. Blow me." and any defense attorney in MA not pleading insanity is guilty of professional negligence.
Tractatus
8d ago
The definition of "fitness to stand trial" is defined by law, not by psychiatrists; tossing this standard aside to give carte blanche to psychiatry - who's guild has publicaly announced opposition to the death penalty, btw - is rank injustice.
Yes, the "experts" are wrong, and in fact they are proud to be so.
Tractatus
9d ago
Is that site just one big shitpost? American compute being in Mongolia - so economically dependent on China, and easily crushed by them, that they can be seen as little more than a vassal state of China - coupled with Chinese compute being in Canada - increasingly opposed to American interests, and incredibly compromised by China - will ensure cooperation? That post might as well end with "I am very smart."
This is a profoundly stupid proposal that, if enacted, would guarantee Chinese dominance in AI, barring multiple, monumental fuckups on the CCP's part.
I am once again begging Rationalists to stop "Reasoning From First Principles;" you can't just pick a couple of assumptions, construct just-so stories from these, completely fail to ask any questions like "does the world look like this?" or "are there any possible perspectives I might be missing?" and insist you did the work.
Tractatus
27d ago
Because you staunchly refuse to acknowledge what's in front of your own eyes..
Oh, you're claiming that there is no difference between a doctor ending a patient's life by their own judgement is no different than the patient deciding to. What a spectacularly disingenous claim. But, yeah, we have the Canadian government on video browbeating patients to accept MAID even when they're just there for treatment; it was literally posted here. If you're not going to argue in good faith, why are you here?
Tractatus
27d ago
He texted them; no evidence of a hookup. The alleged hookup - other than his dead brother's wife, which is confirmed - was with his neice, also allegedly nonconsensual.
Tractatus
27d ago
Of all the things that make me realize I just do not see the same world as the rationalists - and there are many! - the reaction to "Sort By Controversial" is the greatest by far. To me, the meanign of the post was obvious, particularly in light of Scott being a fan of The Last Psychiatrist; people were so deluded by their own ideological bubbles that nothing, no act, no statement, could make them question it, and there was nothing that could be twisted to support the preferred worldview (this is part of the TLP definition of narcissism, in which the subconcious desperately tries to maintain the prefered narrative of one's own life, because to fail to do so would be worse than death, and in fact, death is preferred to confronting reality). Any statement, no matter how clear, could avoid reinterpretation to fit the preferred narrative. And yet, everyone else in the community took away that there exist magical superweapons that could cause strife just by their existence.
You mention the Henry Nowak case as an "anti-scissor" yet this did not change anything in the UK, did it? Has any leftist proposed immigration restrictions? Elimination of the exception to open carry of dangerous weapons (I saw a tweet the other day of a white kid buying a baseball bat from a store for a sporting event, and immediately upon exiting the store being violently arrested by a cop for "brandishing" an item still clearly bagged and sealed. No such footage exists of bobbies slamming Sikhs to the ground for their weapons). No? Of course not.
Tractatus
29d ago
Evangelical Conservatives apparently did have some qualms about Reagan; I recall my youth pastor talking about this in the 90's, that supporting a man who divorced his first wife, and signed no-fault into law, was a hard pill to swallow, only done after "significant prayer" (i.e. realizing that there were no better options). I myself was way too young to have any first-hand experience; I was barely a toddler when he moved into the White House, and spent his administration watching thinly-veiled advertisements for toys passed off as cartoons (that his own admin changed the rules on to allow!), but he really wasn't a Culture Warrior, and not much of a social conservative, when you get down to it. Evangelicals were really a cheap date for the Republicans at the time, and it wasn't until GWB that they even so much as got the Party to pass meaningless legislation (that they had no intention of vigoursly defending).
Tractatus
29d ago
That would be the Deep State; the FBI and CIA are lousy with Mormons, and gladly played a huge role in undermining the 1st Trump presidency. The "elite" Mormons are very solidly Blue Tribe, with some Red leanings.
Tractatus
1mo ago
Unless you are Methusala, this is patently false. Steak for Sunday has been my staple from 2005 through 2020, but after Covid lockdowns, I can't do it anymore. This has been broadly true for everything; I used to be able to afford a variety of nice deli meats to make sandwiches to take to work for lunch, now I buy the shittiest hamburger meat to make burritos with (the tortillas are kinda stale by the end of the second week, but them's the breaks). I didn't change, the prices did; good stuff is out of reach, switching to lower quality stuff has only somewhat aleviated the problem, and likely won't even manage to do that in a few years, even though I'm more financially successful than I've ever been.
Tractatus
1mo ago
seeing Mini-baby booms
Japan didn't. The US had a dead cat bounce around the late 90's-early Aughtsas the Boomers had half as many kids as their parents; note that this did not manage to reach replacement level, even at its peak, before collapsing downward again. The trend has continued down since. Ditto the UK. These "mini-baby booms" - and dramatic emphasis on "mini" - are artifacts of the Boom generations finally getting around to having kids, having both delayed and having far fewer children than preceding generations, and the trends for subsequent generations fit the pattern.
There's a reason why Lasch felt the need to publish The Culture of Narcissism in '79, as by that point the writing was sufficiently on the wall that it could no longer be ignored.
'Modernity' doesn't really fit as an explanation. After all, the 1950-70s were definitely more 'modern' than the 1930-40s, but that's when the Baby Boom happened. The Industrial Revolution (arguably the beginning of 'modernity') caused the global population to explode as it left behind the malthusian limits of agriculture.
As I mentioned in my post, the Post WWII "Baby Boom" was more a return to normalcy after the Great Depression and the boys being shipped out to war; total births peaked in 1957, and TFR peaked in 1960 (note the free-fall immediately after '60). Worth noting that the term "Parasocial Relationship" was coined in 1955; bored suburban housewives whose kids were in school all day and had no immediate relatives nearby began thinking the characters on the TV were their friends. This happened 60+ years before we started asking why kids thought Twitch streamers were their friends; the smartphone didn't do this, atomization did.
The Industrial Revolution caused the population to explode by dramatically reducing childhood mortatility and letting people live far longer; it did not due so by making Jack and Diane fuck more often than rabbits. In fact, cities still showed lower births per family, as they have always historically done. This is so consistent that Spengler mentions it as a law of civilizations in The Decline of the West, and he was basing this on antiquity, long before even television, let alone smartphones.
The most we can say about technology - and also the favored bugaboo, financial precariousness - is that it's not helping things, but it's not the cause. I'd go so far as to say tech is downstream of the root cause; we were already atomized, and demanded amusements be made for us
No, that would be silly. Maybe you can find some Twitter randos claiming as such - there's 8.5 billion or so people on Earth, and seemingly twice that many Twitter accounts, so I wouldn't be shocked if you could - but no, Asian men aren't white. They just aren't included, as a rule, in the Progressive Stack.
Don't make the mistake of thinking the Oppression Olympics are rigously defined, and subject to serious analysis, and for that matter, don't make the mistake of thinking they evolved organically, ground-up. The system decided it was in its interest to "Believe Women," when the target was "White Men*" but not when it came to "Black and Brown Bodies." Women aren't leaders, and won't be the ones making the call on who counts. As Orwell noted in 1984, women are the most ruthless enforcers of the rules, but they don't make them. They're** not going to go hard on this guy unless the system tells them he's fair game, that they won't be accused of "doing a racism" if they do.
*"White Men" being primarily men not in capital-P "Power," primarily (and especially) Red Tribe men, not literally every man of Caucasian descent. **Again, this is in the main; doubtless there'll be some women going off the reservation on Twitter, but not in numbers to matter, and they'll catch hell for doing so).
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