pro_sprond
4mo ago
So do you think things are that terrible in America? Because honestly things don't seem that bad to me, especially judging by historical standards. I'm not happy with everything in the US, but overall my life is pretty good and the parts of it that are bad would not be helped by the execution of tens of thousands of elites.
pro_sprond
4mo ago
Out of curiosity, do you have any examples of a country where a leader rapidly and publicly executed tens of thousands of elites and things went well afterwards (e.g. the country did not descend into civil war and standard of living did not decline substantially)? I ask because my inclination is to believe that such an action would have horrible consequences and typically only occurs in countries that are (or are about to become) basket cases—the French revolution or the USSR in the 1920s and 30s. However, I am not knowledgeable enough to be certain my impression is historically accurate.
pro_sprond
4mo ago
I think she's a genuinely terrible person, combining vacuousness and disinterest in personal conviction with a thirst for power. The only thing she truly believes is that she should be in charge.
I think this is true of many, perhaps even most, politicians. Some of them just do a better job at hiding it.
Relatedly, I think an underrated force in politics is that the job of being a major politician, along with the process required to get there, is genuinely very unpleasant. Not only is the pay low and the workload high relative to other options, but people are constantly criticizing you, mocking you, scrutinizing your every word for a way to use it against you and combing through your personal life for damaging stories. You also have to do a lot of personally awkward things like call all of your friends and ask them to give you as much money as they possibly can just so you can be elected. Without the motivation of either intense ideological commitment or extreme megalomania, it seems to me that it would be very difficult to remain in politics for long, especially on the national level.
pro_sprond
4mo ago
I think the default explanation is just that he's still pretty sick and not in good condition to give a speech.
pro_sprond
6mo ago
It's been pointed out before, but I think it's worth saying again: the default hypothesis for why there are so many influential Jewish people in the history of progressive thought is that there are disproportionate numbers of Jewish people in just about every intellectual movement of 20th century America and Europe. It's not as if there is a shortage of Jews on the right. E.g. Barry Goldwater and Milton Friedman to name just a couple. The fact that so many on the alt-right have Jewish heritage is just another manifestation of this phenomenon.
pro_sprond
10mo ago
I really should have included the depth of housing problems at Berkeley (see page 10 and following).
Just wanted to mention that the stats on homelessness of Berkeley students and postdocs at the link you included seem somewhat misleading to me. The definition of "homeless" being used seems to include things like "living in an airbnb for a month while looking for long-term housing." They claim that around 20% off postdocs have experienced homelessness which seems crazy at first (postdocs aren't wealthy, but their salaries aren't that bad) until you notice that more than half the postdocs who say they've been homeless were living in an airbnb or motel during their period of homelessness. And 95% of them were homeless for under 2 months, which really seems to fit the pattern of living in a short term place while looking for a long term rental because you just arrived in town and didn't have a chance to visit and look for housing beforehand.
pro_sprond
10mo ago
Thanks for your original post and your reply to my comment. I think we agree on a lot and your take on the situation is perceptive.
I'd also point out that the University predates the city; the city is there because of the University, which makes claims that the University is ruining the City, in a way, confused.
Great point.
On the one hand, the homeless people are there in the area around the University already; they're just outdoors. On the other, I absolutely see what you mean.
Yeah, but having homeless people in the area is a bit different from literally living next door to a homeless shelter. None of the existing dorms is as close to People's Park as the proposed dorm would be to the proposed shelter and that's bound to make some students and parents nervous. I did notice that the proposed development is apartment style housing for students so it probably wouldn't be freshmen living there, which might help.
This is a hell of a compromise; more than half of the space will still be a park (an actual park, this time), and there will be more homeless/formerly-homeless people living on the site after the project is complete. It's a testament to just how ideologically committed the left-NIMBYs are that none of these concessions even registered.
To be fair to the activists, there are plenty of homeless people who for one reason or another prefer to live in an unregulated homeless camp than in a shelter. So if your position is "you should never say no to homeless people" then it makes sense to be upset about the development of People's Park and the concession offered by the university might not look very appealing. But I agree that from the perspective of the university, this is a massive concession.
I don't think they're insincere
I'm not sure. Carol Christ and the other high level administrators of Berkeley are not dummies and they must realize that (1) having a homeless shelter next to a dorm is bound to be a source of headaches and (2) there's a chance that the housing gets built but the shelter does not (maybe for the reasons you cite). Perhaps they are not explicitly planning on only building the housing but I suspect they wouldn't mind at all if that was the final outcome.
pro_sprond
10mo ago
To add a bit to the comment about alternatives to People's Park: some of the alternative sites are currently serving as parking lots. It should surprise nobody that there is a notable parking shortage around the university (albeit not as severe as the housing shortage) and so I imagine the university is wary of getting rid of those lots, especially if there is a chance that between destroying them and building new dorms, their development plans may get stuck in years of lawsuits, leaving them with less parking and no extra student housing in exchange.
pro_sprond
10mo ago
The origins of People's Park are a little more complicated than you imply. The area was originally obtained by the university by eminent domain, forcing homeowners to sell against their will after which the university bulldozed the houses and then left the site vacant for more than a year (see here). I think those original homeowners at least had a legitimate reason to be pissed off at the university.
That said, I find myself deeply irritated by the actions of local protestors in the decades since. I see no reason why the university has an obligation to maintain a homeless camp which was involuntarily forced on it in the first place, especially when there is an acute shortage of housing for students (the actual paying customers of the university). Some context is useful here: for many years the university has had a severe lack of housing for students. Most undergraduates live off-campus after their first year and even then, the university has trouble accommodating just the freshmen and transfer students who are guaranteed a spot in the dorms. A few years ago they were housing some students at Mills College about 10 miles away and at times have also housed students in the lounges of the dorms (which were not intended as bedrooms). By the way, the increase in enrollment that led the student housing situation to get this extreme was not unilateral action on the part of the university, but rather part of a University of California system-wide deal with the state to freeze tuition and enroll more in-state students in return for an increase in funding (see here for example).
I'm also annoyed by protestor complaints that the university should has plenty of alternative sites to People's Park and should use one of the those. Not only are some of those alternate sites much smaller than People's Park, most of them are already in use by the university (unlike People's Park) and developing them would likely face neighborhood anti-development activism of its own. Moreover, why can't the university develop multiple sites at once? The student housing shortage is so severe that even adding another 1000 beds (which the People's Park development is expected to do) would not come close to fixing it.
On another topic, I'm really skeptical about the university's plan to put a homeless shelter right next to a student dorm in the proposed People's Park development. I imagine most students would prefer not to live next to a homeless shelter, many parents would be freaked out by the idea and it would likely create a chronic source of problems for the university, especially if there are any altercations between homeless people living in the shelter and students in the dorm. Perhaps the university is simply planning to build the dorm first and then drop the homeless shelter idea once the dorm is already fait accompli.
pro_sprond
11mo ago
I was insufficiently clear in my comment. Singer seems to acknowledge they had a sexual relationship and that he has had sexual relationships with other women as well. However, accepting that fact does not seem equivalent to accepting all of her claims. For example the claim that he used the promise of professional reward and the threat of professional punishment to control their relationship seems like one of the most damaging accusations and it is not clear to me there is any evidence for that other than the word of the accuser (though it's very possible that I missed something). Likewise her claims that Singer has done similar things with many other women.
pro_sprond
11mo ago
I agree it seems likely that Peter Singer acted poorly in his relationship with his accuser (though it also seems likely she acted poorly as well), but I feel you are a little too trusting of her narrative. You really can't imagine any other facts that would change your judgement of Singer? What if the accuser misled him about her own relationship (e.g. telling him she was polyamorous, etc)? I'm not claiming that it's likely that happened, but it does not seem impossible.
Is there any evidence about Peter Singer's alleged infidelity that is not ultimately based on the word of the woman who sued him? I looked at the websites you linked to in your post and did not notice any other evidence, but I did not watch the video so if some additional evidence is mentioned there I may have missed it.
If it's really true that the only public evidence is the word of the woman who sued him then I'm not sure how confident we should be about her allegations. Yes, it would not be shocking if a powerful male figure in a field used his status to seduce and/or coerce women into sleeping with him. On the other hand, it is also not impossible that someone would either exaggerate or even make up accusations against a powerful and controversial figure in their field. I also find it slightly suspicious that the accuser's blog post you linked to spends much more time talking about Peter Singer's ideological faults than his sexual bad behavior. The accuser hardly seems unbiased.
Edit: Additionally, I find some of the claims in the accuser's blog post and lawsuit hard to believe. She claims he has either been sexually involved with or made his sexual interest clear to all of his female coauthors from 2002 to 2020. Peter Singer has published a huge number of articles, op-eds, etc in that time, many with female coauthors, and it is hard for me to believe he has really propositioned all of them.
pro_sprond
1yr ago
Great post. This whole controversy is pretty fascinating but also seems like something you could sink dozens of hours into learning about without coming to any clear conclusions about what actually happened, who's telling the truth, etc. Nevertheless, here are a few things that come to mind after reading a bit about it.
- The original investigation by Ben Pace seems clearly negligent. Perhaps you could justify giving Nonlinear very little time to respond, but many of the claims in the original post are presented with evidence that seems to amount to little more than "Alice and Chloe told me this and they seem trustworthy to me (even though lots of people told me Alice is not trustworthy." The post also claims that "I personally found Alice very willing and ready to share primary sources with me upon request (texts, bank info, etc)" but often does not reference the primary sources supporting various factual claims that it makes.
- The original post also features almost no quotes or perspectives from other employees of Nonlinear. But if you are claiming that Nonlinear has an abusive work culture, such perspectives seem clearly relevant. There is one section labelled "Perspectives From Others Who Have Worked or Otherwise Been Close With Nonlinear" but this section is very vague and often makes claims that are not backed up with quotes. The quotes it does include are lacking context and it's often unclear who they are attributed to. For example, one quote is preceded by "Another person said about Emerson:" But we are not told who this person is or what their relationship to Emerson is.
- These people seem to have a pathological obsession with anonymity. I understand the argument for keeping some people's identities secret, but often so much information about people being quoted is removed that it is hard to tell how to evaluate it. One example is described in the previous bullet point. For another example, see the list of 28 times 'Alice' accused people of being abusive from the Nonlinear response post. It includes things that are almost impossible to evaluate like:
- Alice accused [Person] of [abusing/persecuting/oppressing her]
- Alice accused [Person] of [abusing/persecuting/oppressing her]
- Alice accused [Person] of [abusing/persecuting/oppressing her]
- Alice accused [Person] of [abusing/persecuting/oppressing her]
- More generally, it strikes me that both reports are very badly written. Compare them to basically any investigative report by a high quality news organization like the New York Times. No matter what you think about the NYT's bias, accuracy, etc, their articles are typically clear and easy to read. They clearly lay out the context for the story and the overall narrative and they manage to do so while supporting most of their claims with specific quotes from either named individuals or people whose role in the story is clearly explained and they typically include quotes from outside experts to contextualize things. Importantly, they also do so relatively concisely. Ben Pace's original report is about 10,000 words! And yet, it does a worse job providing context, evidence for its main claims, and a clear narrative than many 2000 word NYT articles.
- Part of the reason both reports are so badly written is that they spend so long on haranguing the readers about how they should feel about the evidence provided. The original report begins with a paragraph-long "epistemic status" and spends a huge amount of verbiage analyzing the author's (i.e. Ben Pace's) own opinions about how much to believe what he wrote. But these feelings seem to mostly boil down to "I think that Alice and Chloe are fairly trustworthy and feel that there is evidence supporting their accusations." But instead of spending so many words saying this, why not just present the evidence as clearly as you can? I understand that some of the evidence may be inconclusive, but then why not present it as such and let readers draw their own conclusions? To an outsider, the post has an atmosphere of "I, Ben Pace, am a responsible and trustworthy person and so you should trust that I have studied this issue carefully even though I won't present most of my evidence."
- Ignoring the truth or falsity of the various accusations, the whole setup sounds pretty crazy. Even if Nonlinear is not at all abusive, it seems like a terrible idea to accept a job where you'll be viewed as "part of the family" or "part of the gang." And why were they jetting around the world, staying in exotic locations in the Bahamas, etc anyway? Is that necessary or helpful in doing work on AI safety? I realize that Nonlinear was supposed to be at least partly an incubator, but to me it seems to have been much looser and blended work and personal life much more than most other incubators. Perhaps that's what some people want, but it seems to come with big risks (which this blowup demonstrates).
pro_sprond
1yr ago
Isn't 120k/144m more like 0.1% than 10%?
pro_sprond
1yr ago
Spending huge amounts of money for one year is very different from spending huge amounts of money every year, indefinitely. Imagine you went on a lavish vacation, staying at fancy hotels and eating at expensive restaurants for a week, and then your kid asked you "why can't we always live like this? After all, we just did so with relatively little difficulty for a week."
Just wanted to note that Orson Scott Card is Mormon, not Catholic and George Orwell definitely did not consider himself as a communist, but rather a socialist.
Edit: Also, imo, a book with a more interesting tension with Card's religious beliefs is Ender's Shadow in which the child genius main character has some extremely lucid thoughts about why religious people are mistaken.
pro_sprond
1yr ago
What's in some ways even weirder about this is that you don't have to look very hard to find examples of science fiction, from the same time as Kim Stanley Robinson or earlier, in which people in the future make radical changes to their gender. Around the same time as the Mars trilogy, Greg Egan published Distress which features a future in which there are seven different genders (including asexual) which people switch between based on their self-identification and in which such gender changes are accompanied by medical interventions and changed pronouns. Much earlier than Kim Stanley Robinson's work, there's Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon which features a society of people who have intentionally modified themselves to be gender neutral.
pro_sprond
1yr ago
I don't think it's obvious that $5 million per year is enough to support Wikipedia. Certainly it is enough for web hosting, but presumably they need at least a few employees (e.g. sysadmins, a few programmers and web developers) and it also seems like a good idea to retain some legal counsel and some people to manage the other employees, do the accounting, etc. This does not cost a huge amount of money, but could easily be a few million.
But if you have a detailed argument that Wikipedia could be run for $5 million per year I would be interested in hearing it (I mean this sincerely, it seems like an interesting topic).
pro_sprond
1yr ago
I think most people would consider "greatest" to be a pretty subjective judgement and usually one with significant positive valence.
Also, I tried comparing the Obama article on Wikipedia and on Conservapedia and I think it's again clear that Conservapedia is considerably more biased and subjective. Literally the second sentence in the Conservapedia article is "Elected as America's first "post-racial" president according to mainstream fake news media, Obama exacerbated racial tensions and left a dismal legacy of a divided America along Marxist class, racial, and "gender normative" lines." That seems substantially more biased to me than the Wikipedia sentence about Obama that you quoted. Just the phrase "fake news media alone" is extremely heavy-handed. The bias in Wikipedia, when it exists, is usually much more subtle (except for a handful of topics and even then I think it's much better than comparable topics in Conservapedia).
pro_sprond
1yr ago
It would be hard to get people to use a new, mirrored version of Wikipedia while the Wikimedia Foundation exists.
pro_sprond
1yr ago
That's an interesting point though it raises the question of why Wikipedia never tried in a serious way to become a profit-oriented enterprise. Once it got big enough it probably wouldn't have been hard to monetize. Perhaps some of what's happening here is that people in the Wikimedia Foundation are just picking up $100 million bills left on the ground by Wikipedia's failure to try to make money off of its product. People won't ignore that kind of money-making opportunity forever.
pro_sprond
1yr ago
Good point. Actually, after making my comment I tried looking at the Wikimedia Foundation's financial statements and noticed they listed about $5 million per year in returns on investments, which is about in line with a $100 million endowment. Arguably $5 million per year is not quite enough to keep Wikipedia running but it's probably close.
pro_sprond
1yr ago
One problem, on top of what other people have already mentioned, is that an explicitly conservative version of Wikipedia would likely be more politically biased than the current officially-apolitical-but-left-leaning version of Wikipedia. Wikipedia started out fairly apolitical and certainly not obviously left-wing (the founders met on a forum for discussing Ayn Rand's philosophy!) but over time has drifted in a leftward direction. Despite this, most articles are still fairly objective and accurate. Part of this may be because lots of text on Wikipedia was just literally written years ago (before the political bias became noticeable) and part of it is due to the composition of the population of editors and the cultural norms that have developed, which both have a lot of momentum and don't go from apolitical to extreme far-left in a few years. Moreover, at least conservative people are not explicitly banned or discouraged from contributing to Wikipedia and so there are probably more conservative editors than there would be if that was not the case.
Actually we don't need to just imagine a hypothetical "Wikipedia, but conservative." We can look Conservapedia, which was founded with the goal of being a conservative version of Wikipedia. Comparing Wikipedia and Conservapedia, I think it is clear that Wikipedia is substantially better and more factual than conservapedia. Take, for example, their articles on Ronald Reagan. Conservapedia's article describes him as "one of the greatest American Presidents and part of the conservative movement since the late 1970s" whereas Wikipedia says he was "a member of the Republican Party, his presidency constituted the Reagan era, and he is considered one of the most prominent conservative figures in American history." I find the second to be much more objective than the first.
pro_sprond
1yr ago
Here's an honest question: many people in the comments here are saying that Wikipedia could be run for about 5-10% of the donations it receives each year. Given that, it would only take a couple years for Wikipedia to collect enough donations to set up an endowment that would pay their costs in perpetuity without ever needing to do any fundraising again (usually one can expect to withdraw 4-5% of an endowment each year without eating into the principal). Is the Wikimedia foundation already doing something like this? If not, has anyone proposed it and has the Wikimedia foundation explained why it's not doing it?
I guess I should distinguish between two senses of "working well": first, working well for the leader executing their opponents and second, working well for most people in the country. I think you're kind of addressing both senses here, but I'm mostly interested in the second.
For Ivan the Terrible, do you have any reference explaining your claim that his ascent was probably good for the average Russian? I don't necessarily disbelieve you, but it's not a claim I've heard before. Also, how many people were actually executed during Khrushchev's rise to power? I know he was responsible for a lot of deaths during Stalin's purges and I know (as you mentioned) that Beria was killed, but I know little about Khrushchev so I don't know how bloody his rule was more generally.
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