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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1979 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 10, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I hate how my brain works.

Alright Motte, here's your odd question for the day;

There's a term that I've apparently forgotten, that refers to the idea that 'a single random sample from a data set is likely neither unique nor uncommon'.

I first recall hearing the term and phrase when reading about arguments for the likelihood of life on other planets and solar systems, utilizing Earth as the lynchpin of said argument.

So... does anyone have any idea as to what term I've apparently forgotten?

Anthropic principle?

Or related terms like the self-indicating assumption.

Neither. I finally answered my own question after going down a long train of research involving statistical probability, Bayesian mathematics, the German Tank Problem, and finally found what the term it is that I was thinking of.

For the curious, it's the Mediocrity Principle. Which is pretty much the inverse of the Anthropic Principle.

Thanks for the help, though.

For what it's worth, ChatGPT gets this answer in one shot if you just paste your original comment into it.

So, what are you reading?

Still on Future Shock, Galactic Patrol and Crystallizing Public Opinion. Taking another stab at Freinacht’s 12 Commandments.

The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya and rereading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for the first time. I was too young to pick up on it the first time, but the pre-incident life experiences of the latter’s protagonist is described from the start in upper middle class terms. It feels like she’d easily become fast friends with Rudy Huxtable from the Cosby Show.

Finished Pride & Prejudice yesterday. I was expecting crisp and refined writing but what I got, which certainly was not parallel to, indeed not sharing many aspects with, a style one could generously, or as befits opinion parsimoniously, describe using a range of terms, carefully chusen from the refracted, diffuse spectrum of all potential lexical motifs, as one of focus, indeed moreso not an under abundance of sidewards steps and circumlocution.

Better than Madame Bovary though.

I’ve never opened Pride & Prejudice, but I did attempt Sense & Sensibility and my impression was similarly unfavorable. Austen was indeed a keen observer of human psychology, but her elliptical prose style left me cold. (And I say this as someone whose writing style is not exactly a paragon of Hemingway-esque brevity itself.)

Yeah, I don’t know if it was a particular quirk of hers or just the writing style of the time. But the way she just summarizes entire conversations without putting any of the dialog feels weird.

Seemed to me that there were many more significant sections written almost entirely in dialogue. Easily one of the most dialogue heavy books I've read.

It was a welcome relief toward the second half to read something like "he continued explaining the reason for his frustration until they arrived at the house". Felt like Austen herself was starting to show signs of getting tired of listening to her characters by that point.

When I was in secondary school, I bought Charles Burns's comic book Black Hole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_(comics)), a wonderfully trippy and surreal fusion of body horror, coming-of-age story and 70s nostalgia. It's over 350 pages long, but I found it so absorbing that I read the entire thing in one sitting of maybe 3-4 hours. I read it again maybe two years ago and found it just as good the second time, if not better.

I recently happened across his latest book Final Cut in a bookshop and snapped it up. Last night I read the first chapter. Man's still got it. It revisits a lot of the same motifs as Black Hole: I think it's set in the seventies or possibly the eighties, it's very dreamy and surreal and there's some body horror. But this time it's in colour. I'm sure I'll have devoured the whole thing before the end of the week.

I finally finished The Night Land. Hodgson's imagination is certainly prodigious and it's easy to see why his ideas have been so influential, but The Night Land has very little to offer a casual reader. The patience is takes far outweighs the payoff. Doubtless I wouldn't have finished it if I wasn't determined to explore the full breadth of the dying earth genre. More than any other book I have read is it deserving of an abridged version. Such a version wouldn't abridge so much as it would jettison chapters whole, and the book would be better for it.

I've been reading Beware of Chicken and Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade, and Tax Evasion.

September saw the release of a fifth Bobiverse book an a seventeenth Expeditionary Force book. Both were good instalments.

Yahtzee Croshaw released a third Jacques McKeown audibook back in April that I missed, so listening to that now.

I decided to give John Scalzi a shot. Starter Villain was enjoyable but fell apart in the last third. Recommended if you like cats. Constituent Service: A Third District Story didn't grab me, I didn't get far. I'm a few chapters into Old Man's War but not feeling too excited about it yet.

The Freedom's Fire box set had some very good parts, but I think I would have preferred and abridged edition.

Starship's Mage, Book 14 Chimera's Star has them finally encountering the aliens they have been teasing since book 4. The series is fun but has a major problem where key people aren't as smart as they should be. The Mage King somehow doesn't have any bright military advisors and problems happened that you'd expect a jr officer to foresee.

Children of Time is broadly praised. I gave it a try but I can't sympathise with intelligent spiders.

I've been watching Yahtzee's video reviews for a decade and a half, he's put me on to so many great games, but I've never read any of his fiction. Is it any good?

I really liked the Jacques McKeown audiobooks (Will Save the Galaxy for Food, Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash, Will Leave the Galaxy for Good). He reads them himself so you get his presentation skills.

I am particularly fond of spaceships, so it got points for that. It's a light and funny listen that's easy to follow. So it's great if you're doing chores or going for a walk where there may be some distractions.

I played it on a drive with my father and he asked me to turn it off because he liked it but it was too distracting. Usually he's fine with audiobooks on drives.

I had trouble getting into "Differently Morphous". I'm less familiar with some of the Lovecraftian & Harry Potterish material that the story involves. Plus there are POV jumps that make it harder to follow in while playing the background.

I'm planning to give it another try.

His books are not anything dense or deep, but I find them enjoyable.

Just got caught up on Path of Ascension, a progression fantasy story with an enormous scope. The lack of stakes still bothers me but whatever, it's popcorn anyways.

About to start Golden Son, the sequel to Red Rising. Red Rising was fairly enjoyable, it felt like a knock-off Ender's Game with much less creative tactics, strategy, and general ideas, but better stakes/plot. If the sequel is equivalent it'll be more than worth the time.

Life of Saint Louis by John of Joinville.

I finally finished The Culture series, ending on The Hydrogen Sonata. @roystgnr asked to hear what I thought of it when I was done:

I heard that Banks didn't want this to be the last culture novel, but I do think it fits in a way. The focus on Subliming (definitely the most hand-waved, mystical part of the series) was arguably a great topic to wrap up on. I think he did a good job peeling back the curtain just enough, but any more books about it afterward would have been too much.

There were elements of it that felt a bit disjointed and unrealistic. The murder of so many people just a few days before transcendence would be unbelievably abhorrent and arguably not something a civ "mature enough" to sublime would do, from my read. I am surprised the primary human protagonist survived since most of these books end in everyone dying. I do think the idea of the Sonata itself, music, was brought in only as an introduction and in the last few pages. The title suggested something beautiful and cohesive, when, in the end, it was just a romp around the galaxy.

In any case, I've moved on to other books. I discussed being recommended "Normal People" from a woman I have a bit of a complicated relationship with. I discussed it in the Friday Fun thread. To be frank, I don't think it will tickle the fancy of many people here. It's a modern romance novel with a little bit of woke dashed in. Great sex scenes, and refreshing in terms of how it treated an intense relationship. I haven't read a romance in many years. Many commit the sin making what's supposed to be a great love just... not very good. I much prefer the type of book that reminds me of what it felt like the few times it's happened.

I've also started on Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion. The title is hilariously "standard" for a history book, but I'm very into it so far. At one time as a child, I had an abject fascination with the California gold rush after getting a basic book about it from my San Franciscan cousins. Anyone living in the Bay Area probably considers it played out, but for a guy in the Southeast, it was exciting stuff. Reading about it with the level of fidelity a book like this provides (just in the first 25 superdense pages) is a treat. I'll wait to recommend it, but so far, it's been good.

Thanks for pinging me on this, and for the spoiler tags.

The focus on Subliming (definitely the most hand-waved, mystical part of the series) was arguably a great topic to wrap up on.

This is selling me on the book. Decades ago I was very skeptical of the then-common sci-fi trope of "Elder Races who were once Immensely Powerful until they Mysteriously Disappeared Up Their Own Asses", but I kind of want to see it again with fresh eyes now that my first reaction isn't "but that makes no sense" rather than "oh, sure, like Europe".

AIUI American homesteads starting in the late 19th century were the most prosperous example of subsistence farmer ever in the history of the world, and the gap in per farmer productivity vs the old country opened up very early.

Was this an artifact of social equality? Of more land per farmer? Of better access to markets due to settlement patterns?

Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization is precisely about this. Here's a book review which answers your question: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-energy-and-civilization-by

More (good!) land per farmer plus mechanical reapers. If you didn't know, harvesting ripe grain used to be the limiting factor for farm sizes: it's a very short time frame when your wheat is ripe and dry and not falling off the stalk. It's a lot of literally back-breaking labor to cut the stalks and tie them into sheafs since you cannot use horsepower to do that, so the amount of grain you can harvest is limited by the size of your family that abandons all other activities and spends whole days in the field, young and old alike.

With a mechanical reaper you could reap the way you ploughed and sowed: by walking behind a horse, the reaper cutting and baling the wheat for you. A typical Midwestern farmer could harvest a massive surplus of grain, turning him from a subsistence farmer into a businessman.

plus mechanical reapers.

Well yes, this is a relevant factor in the late Victorian era. But the per farmer productivity gap opened very early.

Could the difference be corn or higher solar indexes than northern Europe?

Can you clarify what group you mean when you talk about American subsistence farmers? Where most of my ancestors came from in Europe, the average peasant farm was IIRC around 3 acres, and they paid high taxes to the local lord and the various higher levels of government. When they came to America, the smallest farm any of them had was either 40 or 80 acres, plus they had a vastly lower tax bill. Even though they were initially hard up, I don’t think it would be accurate to call any of them subsistence farmers after the first few years.

Were there actually long-term subsistence farmers out further south and west, where the land is less fertile?

Yes. Subsistence farming hung on in America surprisingly late; LBJ famously grew up on a subsistence farm in the Texas hill country- some of the worst grain growing land of its climate anywhere. And of course the Deep South had lots of the population living as subsistence farmers until Jim Crow- my great-grandfather recounted them as a major presence after WWII.

I think it’s accurate to call into question how wealthy it’s possible to be and stay a subsistence farmer- Little House on the Prairie is about a family’s transition to commercial production to take advantage of greater access to markets before it becomes a romance novel, but it’s quite clear that the Ingallses are farming because the alternative to growing enough food is not eating in the early books, and later on after buying a mechanical reaper they eagerly take advantage of markets.

I'm assuming more land per farmer was a superpower.

This would allow a farmer to have a large number of animals which both provide food directly and create fertilizer.

Better land (and climate) per farmer. Land farmed in the old world was either owned by aristocracy or very marginal.

Going to the new world was like being handed the best farmland the richest nobles had, literally for free. Of course the farms were productive.

Imagine everyone in Italy died from the black death and you could set up shop in the Po valley for free, would you be more productive than in some cold German marsh, the Scottish highlands or the Scandinavian inland?

Looking at internet memes going around in response to the election, I've been surprised by a lack — so far — of ones referencing the movies Valkyrie (2008) or Inglourious Basterds (2009). Is anyone else surprised by this? Or are they out there, and I've just missed them? Am I not looking in the right forums?

Normal people don’t usually make memes about murdering their political enemies.

this is true, for strict definitions of "normal" and strict definitions of "enemy". Al Qaeda was a political enemy, was it not?

...More generally, though, I think you're more or less entirely correct in this case. "Resist the Fascists" signaling is mainly signaling; there is not actually a way to hurt the outgroup much worse than previously without getting in too much trouble, and a lot of the signaling is being driven by at least a subconscious understanding that nothing is actually going to happen.

Why should there be any memes referencing these movies? First of all, they are old. Yes, they are old movies if you're a meme-making Zoomer. Secondly, "the Nazis won", how do you make a meme about "Nazis winning" with a WWII movie? If Trump had lost, you could at least imagine a Downfall meme with "Harris has won in Wisconsin and Michigan and is gaining in Georgia" - "it's okay, Pennsylvania should vote for me and Vance" - "mein Fuehrer, Harris got 51% in Pennsylvania, the Vance counteroffensive didn't succeed"

Why should there be any memes referencing these movies?

Because Valkyrie is about an attempt to assassinate Hitler, and Inglorious Basterds ends up being alternate history with a successful assassination of Hitler and Goebbels.

First of all, they are old.

Didn't stop this Inglorious Basterds meme from being posted on /r/moviescirclejerk just two years ago. It's text reads: "Plot holes: in Inglorious Basterds (2009), the antifascists kill and scalp Nazis instead of voting blue."

Well, "voting blue" clearly didn't work to stop Nazi II: Electric Boogaloo. And like so many people on Twitter and Tumblr are saying, we've got about 90 days left to somehow save Our Democracy and the lives of millions of Women, Latinx, LGBTQ+…

If failing to kill Hitler gets you into the history books and played by Tom Cruise in the movie about you, then imagine your legacy for taking out Hitler 2.0: Orange Edition?

The best Downfall one I've seen recently is "Hitler reviews footage of supposedly Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden where they wave Israel flags". It didn't even require the second part.

Those types of memes were more popular with the far left, not liberals. The far left has gotten burnt out by the Gaza genocide (as they call it) and the increasingly neoliberal corporate bent of the Democratic Party. The far left is disgusted enough with Democrats that they are no longer willing to take up arms on their behalf, even rhetorically.

I haven't seen too. The anti trump memes are weak. I guess they are still in shock. Let's hope they improve. But I doubt that there are real trolls left on dem side.

How do people determine which past accounts are to be counted as valid historical records, and which are to be dismissed as past propaganda? For example, there's the whole Carthaginian infant sacrifice issue — real history, or anti-Carthaginian libel? Or Aztec skull towers — actually existed, or just lying conquistadors demonizing their Indigenous victims? In those cases, we at least have recent archeological finds giving solid support to one side (but even then, some still dispute them). But when such physical evidence isn't obtainable, what then?

I'm inclined to believe the Carthaginian infant sacrifice stories, as we see it complained about in the bible, and Tyre and Sidon etc. were right by Israel.

Sure, but that just belabors the point — you think those Biblical "complaints" are a valid historical account, but plenty of people question the historical accuracy of, well, practically every part of the Bible, and those who argue the other side would dismiss these stories of Carthaginian infant sacrifice as being just as much false anti-Carthaginian libel as the Roman ones. So again, how do you decide? Here, the archeology helps, but without that, is it really just "pick a side and agree with their claims" like @hydroacetylene says?

But surely corroboration from across the mediterranean should be treated as evidence?

Are you talking about analysis of historical accounts? Because this is the bread and butter of history as a social science. This is a very big subject but I can give you a simple outline. This is the kind of stuff that would be covered in a classic "History of the Roman Republic" first-year university class. You get assigned a reading and in the tutorial sections you would ask questions like:

  • What is the author's purpose?
  • What "side" is the author on?
  • What is the social background of the author?
  • When did the author write this?
  • What might cause him to portray events this way?
  • Was he present at these events, or is he hearing this second-hand? If so, who were his sources?
  • Is there any information he might be leaving out?
  • Are there things which seem exaggerated, or maybe false?
  • How would the author have known about this specific detail?
  • Does this text match what we know from archaeological evidence?
  • Does this text agree with other things written about this event? If not, why might that be?
  • Do you think this text would be flattering to the author's patron?
  • Does the author seem to care strictly about accuracy, or are there other elements he prioritizes?

etc. etc. Basic textual analysis. Use what you know about the period and the situation and the author to expand upon what is written and try to think about all the different influences that might have transformed the narrative from what happened in reality to how it reads on the page.

If you want to read history books that go into this kind of stuff, the ideal subjects are periods where there are limited historical sources: I used classical Rome as an example and it's a great one. Historians in these books will often tell you very directly how they are analyzing accounts and what inferences they are making from them and the other historical evidence available to them.

Thank you for making this post so I didn't have to. I would add that there is a great deal of historical phenomina that we only know anything about due to polemics written against them, decrying their evil and error. Early Christian "heresies" being a good example.

A bunch of these heresies hung on for long enough that we have, if not an objective view, a wide enough variety of biased views to cancel each other out.

I pick a side and agree with their claims.

Historians have flowerier justifications.

Is there a good way to listen to Youtube videos while driving? Specifically, videogame Let's Plays, ideally through an actual Android Auto/Apple function rather than just "open Youtube on the phone and hit run".

Firefox lets me resume the playback from the lock screen, so I don't have to keep the screen on to listen to an interview.

Prior to the trip, download the audio with yt-dlp and copy the files to your phone.

yt-dlp --format "bestaudio" --no-mtime --embed-thumbnail --embed-metadata --output "%(playlist_title)s (%(playlist_uploader)s)/%(playlist_index)s %(title)s.%(ext)s" --windows-filenames --prefer-free-formats [playlist URL]

If you're on Android, you can also do this directly on your phone with NewPipe.

I use Seal for audio downloads.

When was the moment when you saw the first cracks in the dem machine (disclaimer I was prepared for Kamala win) - for me it was when Obamas tried to talk in woke to the black men from the working class. To me it was - if Obama has turned into (or confirmed that he always was) a woke white dude wearing blackface - yup , the leadership could be this disconnected from the reality.

Biden's obvious cognitive impairment on the debate. It was already months too late to switch candidates by that point.

For me it was very early, in mid-2022 with the laughable NAFO/Sarah Cirillo/Private Lujan propaganda drive that absolutely failed to get most Americans on board with the Ukraine War.

What chance would you assign to the following events?

  1. Donald Trump deports more than 25% of the total illegal alien population in the United States as of November 2024 by January 2029. This does not include border pushbacks.

  2. Legal immigration into the US falls by more than 30% by 2030.

  3. A major Western European country deports more than 40% of its non-native population (citizen and non-citizen) by 2055.

  4. Canada deports more than 25% of the legal immigrants who arrived under the Trudeau government between 2015 and 2025 by 2040.

  5. The governing party of a Western European country (including settler colonies like NZ, Aus, Canada and the US), openly embraces nativism (“…should remain a majority, forever”) by 2035.

I think focusing on deportation number is missing the point. AFAIK, all realistic plans include most illegal aliens leaving on their own, because driving your own car with your own stuff back is better than being snatched up at random with whatever you have on you at the time and dumped back in Mexico or wherever.

My assumption is that these are all extremely low. <10%.

When was the last time a western democracy executed any meaningful deportations? These are huge percentages of people to ship back, and the propaganda machine already has been preparing bullshit about how it's impossible for 2 months (much like the wall, but I digress).

Operation wetback enacted a meaningful amount of deportations in the fifties.

For 5, are we including South Africa? I can see opposition to continuing Central African immigration leading to a nativist governing majority much more easily than for other western-ish countries.

Trump said that he wants to staple green cards to diplomas, so #2 isn't even being promised.

if you stop the bullshit that is chain migration you can get there easily

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