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I've lately become attuned to a harmful pattern of thinking which I might call the "just so fallacy".
Anytime someone talks about ways in which things can be improved, there are others who chime in with the equivalent of "No, that's impossible. You see, all problems are intractable. We're doing the best we can. The exact way things are right now is the best they can possibly be, or at best, it will be extremely complicated and time-consuming to change them". And then they come up with elaborate rationalizations to explain why the current system is exactly the way it is.
And yet China can build an entire metro systems in less time than it takes New York City to add 1 station.
I think that the existence of Musk is proof that things can change a lot more than anyone anticipates. A huge percentage of what the government does is waste. What if we just stopped doing that?
As a society, we are not guaranteed to decline and fall. We can fix it.
Building into greenfield is, perhaps, easier than renovating entrenched systems with significant entrenched interests.
Sure. But France builds at a cost 1/5 as NYC did with second Ave subway
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I don't think you realize just how fast China's metro has blossomed. Far from greenfields, these are some of the most densely populated places on Earth.
For example, consider Chengdu, a city of 20 million people. The first phase of their metro was approved in 2005. The metro opened in 2010. Today, just 15 years later, it has more stations than London.
Of the 20 largest metro systems on Earth, 13 of them are in China. 9 of those opened after the year 2000. 5 of those opened after 2010!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems
I've heard New Yorkers blame this on, at least partially, on the lack of green-field. Boring tunnels for the subway or really anything has to worry about hitting undocumented, unmapped utility lines that have been in-use for a century.
But also on unions (risk of a subway strike prevents real automation improvements for efficiency and safety), and your standard bureaucratic bloat. Political pressure could at least fix this side of things, and maybe even "whoops we hit a gas line and will have to shut down heating for a ten block area for two weeks".
Ooh, a century. I know Americans think that is a long time, but I'm currently catching up on a century's deferred maintenance on my perfectly normal terraced house in the London suburbs, and it really isn't when you are talking about buildings and urban infrastructure.
Rome and Istanbul can both build tunnels at less than 1/5 of the cost of NYC (Paris isn't best-in-class. Alon Levy, who is the leading expert on public transport construction costs, describes France as medium cost, whereas Turkey is low cost and Italy can be low or medium depending on how corrupt individual regions are). After allowing for additional costs due to archeological excavations. Into things that are thousands of years old.
Anyone who tries to defend NYC construction costs should be shamed out of public life.
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That isn’t even remotely my argument. The change I want is far more radical than anything imagined by Trump/Musk.
But the public demand their bennies, and if you want to significantly cut spending you have to cut them. It’s that simple. Nothing DOGE has uncovered even somewhat challenges that thesis.
What is the change you want?
I agree with this, and frankly it seems like most people in my generation (early 30s) tacitly accept we are never going to get social security because of this issue.
Repeal birthright citizenship (through congress, or at least fight for it there, given its central importance to the entire future of the country), repeal CRA (certain limited provisions of which can be replaced by much more limited, targeted laws), begin preparations to hand Taiwan to China after domestic chip production scales up and use intimidation and force to relocate as much of what remains to the US, end all federal student loans and tuition support, force Ukraine into the most realistic peace deal (threaten to unilaterally revoke sanctions on Russia if they drag their heels), begin realistic preparations to deport ALL 13+ million illegal migrants in the US (investing tens of billions in holding facilities, hire 300+ thousand temporary ICE staff, checkpoints in every city, raid every blue collar contracting business in any major city, mandatory nationwide E-verify enhanced with biometric security to get around existing loopholes as part of a national ID program - as discussed above the feds probably already have your biometrics), abolish all postal voting (Americans abroad can vote at embassies), end the carried interest loophole, tax childlessness heavily, jack up interest rates to unfathomable levels to force an asset price crash, abolish NASA (fold some defense programs into DOD, Elon can explore space on his own dime or for commercial interests), breakup Google and Amazon, allow and encourage hospitals to refuse to treat homeless drug addicts, hand out free lethal dose fentanyl in certain urban centers and ban narcan for first responders in overdose hotspots, execute roughly 20-40x the number of criminals per year the US does now, mandate all office-based male federal government employees and their peers at all institutions that receive federal funding wear a suit, tie and black oxford shoes to work every day, NO exceptions, hand Ozempic out for free to every fat American at taxpayer expense, destroy much of the HFCS industry, grant unlimited 5 year work visas with pathway to citizenship to citizens of all western european nations (call it the ‘ellis island program’) if they have ‘distant family’ matches ithw Americans in popular DNA databases, adopt a foreign policy built around getting European countries to change immigration policy with the stick if necessary, implement a mandatory ‘national college admissions test’ that must be the sole criterion for admission at any federally funded college, but also reserve 5% of places at elite colleges for the highest performing URM, and fire loud, midwit racists from DOGE and wider government since that kind of thing is just vulgar and racial hatred is cruel and wrong.
If the first one actually worked to any appreciable degree, it would of course conflict against the goal of the second one (assuming that "change immigration policy" means "no third-world immigration to Europe"), considering how much of the latter is labor immigration to plug the workforce deficiencies caused by the birth rate crash.
People can pay more for vegetable and manual labor automation is already picking up with multimodal LLMs.
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Maybe citizens of all western european nations whose grandparents were citizens. To avoid the wrong sorts of citizens I think some sort of 'Ahnenpass' would be necessary.
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No exceptions? What if the gentleman is missing both legs?
Irrelevant joke, but putting "NO exceptions" quite so emphatically just begged for some smart-aleck to find a loophole, and I'm that guy. Besides it adds a bit of levity to my more substantial reply which is to observe that "cruel and wrong", in my book, describes a great deal - though not all! - of your proposed suggestions; and also that trying to implement most of them, particularly the '300,000 temporary ICE agents' thing, would result in an actual literal civil war.
Didn't say where he has to wear them.
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I would love to see a top-level comment laying out the arguments for all of these.
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I think I generally agree with most of this except the biometric ID, and abolishing NASA!!!! How could you even say that?! You don't think space is important?
And wait when you say free lethal dose, you mean kill addicts without their knowledge? I don't get it.
Also I'm curious how you got to a lot of these policies without being religious?
I mean I believe in assisted suicide for those who live like they want to die.
I’m not religious or trad, I just want to live in a functioning society.
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Well now you've just lost me. Derby shoes are clearly the superior choice here because they fit a range of feet widths and sizes more appropriately. And are more appropriate to transition to a happy hour after work for that matter. Until the Ozempic has done its work forcing overweight people into Oxford shoes is I am sure against both the Geneva convention and general aesthetics! We should leave the torture for Guantanamo and/or whatever camp we have to open in Canada as the 51st state.
Plus you didn't specify the color of the suit and I will not be caught dead in black Oxford shoes with a navy blue suit! The youth of today are simply wrong on that front. And since pale skin looks better in a navy blue suit than a black suit, let us not discriminate against white people. Suit and tie is fine, allow either navy blue or black, perhaps even charcoal, but let's allow black or brown Oxford or Derby shoes. Let's at least leave some room for some sartorial elegance. We can leave the government Men in Black look behind behind us. No brogues though, I think we can agree on that.
More seriously black Oxfords with a black suit is very formal which means you have not much room (except a tuxedo) to dress up further for important meetings or events. So navy blue suits with a brown Derby shoe for day to day use, with a black suit and a black Oxford shoe for when you are meeting the President or pleading with DOGE or similar. Tuxedo with the Oxford (or perhaps even a wingtip if you are feeling like causing a scandal!) for when you make it to a White House gala. That gives you 3 specific "grades" of formality with distinct looks.
Luckily we do not need to consider what to wear to one of Diddy's White parties because a white suit is just gauche.
Bring back morning dress. Seriously. It is just about hanging on in the UK, mostly at Royal Ascot and daytime weddings. It has died out in the US to the point where Americans wear black tie at formal daytime weddings.
Watch out for @die_workwear and his crack team of Kingsman agents if you wear brown in town.
Plain black is for mourning-with-a-u or evening. It doesn't look good in full daylight - the most formal business suits are charcoal grey. Morning-without-a-u coats are usually black, but the trousers are not.
If we are bringing back higher standards of dress, a formal evening event at the White House should surely be White Tie?
Yes! Please! I love tailcoats. And it's not as though they're any harder to deal with than regular coats / jackets. One of the projects that's been on my mind for ages is finding a tailor / costumier willing to experiment with 'casual' tail coats.
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Yees but we're talking about the entire male federal workforce here, we're already asking them to have 3 levels of fanciness. I'm not sure we can go with white tie as well. Maybe that's if they get invited to get the Medal of Freedom or whatever.
As for no brown in town. I repudiate them! A brown Oxford or Derby looks much better with a navy suit than black. And I wore brown in town all the time in my time in the City, and no-one ever assaulted me with an umbrella. A charcoal grey suit is a good choice though. But unless we are providing a fashion budget (re-allocate USAID funds to tailors for the Feds?), I am not sure how many suits we can expect them to have and keep well tailored.
Neufert's architectural reference is excruciatingly utilitarian, measuring everything to squeeze out every square centimeter. Here's what it uses to size a man's closet:
If the Germans think a man should have seven suits, including a tux and tails, then why shouldn't much richer Americans have them?
An interest question given that this is presumably translated from German, but is the tailcoat supposed to be a morning coat or white tie? They are different designs of tailcoat for different purposes.
In the modern UK, I suspect a morning coat would be worn more often, but I can imagine the opposite being true elsewhere.
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No brown in town, sorry.
Yes, aren’t black oxford shoes and a navy suit the standard business dress for men?
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I suspect a lot of people would claim to have found the elusive Jewish Nazi if they read this, but if I were Congress and you were Elon, I would let you get away with this program.
I would also hire some kind of taxpayer funded cringe gamer art hoe active-on-AI-twitter escort to seduce Elon and distract him from public activity for 4 years.
Why does this sound awfully specific?
I don't know if you're being facetious, but remove the "escort" and that's literally Grimes.
I think it's supposed to be Aella.
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I'd be surprised if 2rafa could find even one person that meets that description.
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Have you heard of our lord and savior, bullet points?
If you ever get under my skin, I will send you a badly formatted text when you're crossing a busy street.
Wow, I don't think you've done that to anyone since at least the forum migration.
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Jesus, I wouldn't wish that even on my worst enemy.
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Aww, it was kind of meant to be a wall of text!
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Historians take this of reasoning as an axiom. Ask them for a plausible alternative worldline, and you will treated worse than a holocaust denier. Too bad as there is space for an academic, rather than fantastical and fictional, exploration of historical possibilities, but history departments refuse to be that space.
As perfect information isn't avaliable to hissorian specializing in any era or area, any historian who ventures into interpretation or narrativizations (mainstays of historical thought) already leaves the safe confines of evidence. So it can't the fear of speculation.
Bias against counter-factual reasoning, if you will.
That's too bad. Perhaps historians could benefit by spending some time on prediction markets.
I find post-hoc explanations for why things happened to be utterly unconvincing. If there were consistent principles that could be applied to explain historical events, then they could be used to predict future events. But this obviously doesn't happen.
Perhaps there is psychological comfort in thinking that events can be explained.
But imagine if Elon Musk hadn't been born. Or Trump. The world would be entirely different. Random events matter a lot. The number of possible worlds is much greater than most people can imagine.
It's a cheap shot, but I am reminded of this green text.
It’s also a problem because when you spend so much time immersed in the post-hoc, you gradually start to forget that none of the historical actors at the time had access to this level of information and analysis, and that most of them were very much flying by the seat of their pants. Forget Bush or the CIA, most of Iraq’s own generals thought Saddam had WMDs up until three days before the invasion started.
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You know, there was that one viral clip of Sam Harris that is like the inverse of the "But I did eat breakfast" green text. Where he is really doubling down with how, in a different world with different on the ground realities, he would have been correct. Which is a funny way of admitting that in the current world, with the current ground realities, you were wrong. Or way of not admitting. But it's this retreat into counter-factual reasoning to justify yourself after the fact is incredible. And people rightly mocked Sam Harris with "But none of that did happen".
So I guess, counter-factuals are all well and good as thought exercises. Not so great at justifying massive violations of civil liberties.
Agreed. In the real world, we have uncertain information. Maybe Harris is right about their counter-factuals. But we don't even know, for sure, what the baseline ground reality is.
For that reason its better to stick to simple moral precepts rather than complicated rationalizations. Don't kill. Liberty is good. God, family, country. That sort of thing.
Of course, this is nothing new. In "Crime and Punishment", Raskolnikov kills a pawnbroker because he believes he can transcend moral law to bring about a greater good. 500 pages later, he learns this was wrong and finds Jesus.
Experts think that they can start wars, lockdown the population, force their ideology on others, etc... They think they are above the simple rules that have stood the test of time. But they aren't. They are constantly wrong. The world is far too complicated for a person to understand, and even when we know what happened, we lack the ability to explain it correctly.
... sorry for the tangent.
But... starting wars and forcing ideology on others is what stood the test of time. Lockdowns were also a thing, from what I heard. It's not like every time someone started a war they were smitten by lightning from on high.
How many nations born from ideological wars to force ideology onto them have actually stood the test of time?
During the monarchist period, claimant or imposition wars were far more about having a conciliatory neighbor / concessions / etc. than for the ideological sake of the neighbor. Religious wars might have spread the faith, but when they did they were more often wars of conquest rather than ideological imposition. Even post WW2 most conflicts with ideological points were civil wars or post-colonial insurgencies rather than 'ideology from the outside.'
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Does he learn that it was wrong, or does he realize that he can't and he is better off finding Jesus? I mean Raskolnikov's central thesis, that might makes right for certain people (with Napoleon as a central example) doesn't necessarily get disproven by the end of the novel. Only that he is no Napoleon.
tangent2
I haven't read the book in 25 years, so I asked Claude. It says this. Take it with a gigantic grain of salt.
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This is exactly why “you can just do things.” Is such a powerful meme / rallying cry at the moment. It’s funny but also 100% true; you can just do things.
Agency is back, baby.
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Yeah I've grown to detest the "just so fallacy". Not just in politics/government but in health/medicine, too. It seems too common to just accept things as axioms that don't have to be true, or are at least modifiable.
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AAQC for this, strongly agree. This fallacy is deep in the western mind at present and is quite a rot.
Ironically the most liberal people who talk about manifesting and such have it right - if you engender the right mindset, you can absolutely do far more than you think you could.
That sounds like you are just treating AAQC as a super upvote for statements you really agree with. Upvotes based on agreement are already being a blight; taking even AAQC there would just complete the descent into circlejerking. Maybe Zorba should consider introducing MotteGold™️ awards to capture some of that energy instead.
There is no conceivable award system that WON’T devolve into super upvotes for comments you agree with. This is a human universal. You can tell people to vote on quality and not ideological alignment, but they (typically) won’t. There will always be a bias towards perceiving comments you agree with as being intrinsically higher quality. And that’s fine. Let’s face it instead of hiding from it.
Hmm, this sounds fallacious.
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You can't just conflate a tendency in a direction with the endpoint that would be reached if no countervailing forces existed at all. Every law will be broken, but it still brings benefits to have and enforce laws; every system will ultimately devolve into disorder, but it still makes sense to tidy your room sometimes. We can, for now, push back against having a super upvote system and thereby eke out some more time in which the incentive is not just farming agreement, giving us more of a window to reap benefits in the form of posts that give new insights.
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I think it's a quality contribution, though. I don't understand the issue.
I don't AAQC random one liners that I strongly agree with.
I don't particularly want to dunk on jeroboam (whose post is really perfectly okay), but I don't really see that post as adding any particularly new insight or explaining the old insight that is in it from an unusually persuasive or interesting angle. Would you like it if the forum were made up of posts like that, but for views you don't care for or strongly disagree with?
I think it's fine that my post doesn't win an award. It didn't take me too long to write and I didn't even do any research or sniff my own farts at any point while writing it.
But, yes, I would prefer that this board is mostly social commentary of short to medium length. I want to learn new things and hear interesting perspectives. I hope my posts provide that for others, even if they disagree with me. In fact, if they do disagree, I hope they can sharpen their mind by writing a good counterargument. Someone might even change their mind. I do occassionally.
I find the 5,000 word galaxy-brained posts to be insufferable.
Can you name anything (non-fiction) 5,000 words long, written by anyone anywhere, that you do appreciate? Or is this just a hard limit that no level of quality could surmount?
I read long non-fiction books all the time, mostly history. That's not what I'm here for.
Fair enough. But that is what I'm here for. I'm happy that there's at least one community on the internet that encourages long-form writing.
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Nine times out of ten the 5,000 word posts aren’t insightful. And easily could’ve been 500 word posts.
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Yeah, very much agreed. I basically skip them at this point.
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