domain:arjunpanickssery.substack.com?page=1
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
9m ago
many people still somehow think progressive lip service is fine or even morally just
This is natural- casting shade on people not wanting to conspicuously consume (in this case, from the society-wide patronage network that activists embody) is a thing rich people do naturally.
When you're rich in virtue, conspicuous consumption is saying "yeah, polygamy is totally for everyone".
When you're rich in rent-seeking, conspicuous consumption is saying "yes, my property values the environment is more important than developing the next generation".
It's not necessarily realized by people doing that, since this is just copying the fashions of the richest- but it is still that thing either way.
Wait, what? Trump is distributing lands to ICE officers? Where?
Also, in Imperial Rome, the government - usually magistrates under the guidance of provincial governor - distributed the lands, and usually this was used to colonize the conquered lands. So how this dynamic is replicated? Is Trump personally giving ICE officers he likes the share in the vast riches confiscated from notoriously wealthy illegals? Is he giving them settlement on the lands that those people owned? Are they allowed to conquer Tijuana and settle there? In what part is the dynamic replicated? What is the mechanism inspiring personal loyalty and why this is not an argument against financing any part of the government then - if giving budget to ICE makes them Trump's personal army, then why giving budget to any other of the innumerable set of government agencies doesn't make them into sitting president's personal army?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
23m ago
I kind of see activists in a posiwid sense - yeah nothing is ever good enough for them, their job depends on it. What I find truly frustrating is that even after a decade of this, many people still somehow think progressive lip service is fine or even morally just - they will even joke about how useless activists are in one breath before condemning conservatives for racistly not want to throw money away on performative bullshit in the next.
We have a few social techs for allowing non-genocidal acclimation of oppressed populations but when they can all be trivially overridden by the logic that "any observed inequality in outcomes is proof positive of ongoing oppression which must be rectified" then guess what comes back on the menu.
But note that this is a civil matter, caused by women/the womanly/progressives seeking more social power. Any nag they can get their hands on will be used, and nags are quite powerful in democracies (commonly referred to as "women's tears winning in the marketplace of ideas"). This doesn't even require women having the vote to work- universal male suffrage is generally enough, the 18th Amendment being a good example of that.
Not allowing credit and pride to flow forward in the same measure as guilt is also a woman thing, because women aren't generally wired to seek credit and pride in the first place- so it makes sense they would simply ignore it exists [at best] and actively seek to devalue it [at worst]. This is related to inherent male disposability in an environment of excess men, and right now there are simply too many men (which doesn't require you actually be a man; which is why women who function like men complain about this just as much as men themselves do).
The reason incomplete genocides could work in the past is because the rulers at the time were less vulnerable to them; the womanly could cry "no ethical consumption under capitalism" all they wanted, but at the end of the day the only way they have power [outside of a post-industrial society where women are productive in their own right] is if a man listens. And men with power are far less likely to bow to the demands of useless people.
Is this risk completely mitigated? Well, no- you can still have the Church organize moral movements, but even in that case the Church is made up of people and property, those people have names and addresses, and since they have organization they have pre-scribed outlets for any charity they might feel (it's their own money, so the moral hazard is avoided). In a democracy like this you can't pull off that kind of suppression.
No evolved solution to this currently exists. Men are not wired to resist women when they believe themselves rich enough to be above needing to put themselves first (for a bunch of complicated reasons), but this is not symmetric. Only once men have been exposed to being poor will this change, and that only lasts for a little while.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
53m ago
Yes indeed. You can find my FiMfiction account under this username. Do you have a recommendation?
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
56m ago
But that would take away Steve's freedom of movement for the part of the day he’s not trying to commit suicide! Can you in good conscience deprive someone of his freedoms?
(This is, of course, sarcastic. I agree your solution is probably the best, just like tying people to trolley tracks and sabotaging the brakes is already illegal.)
faceh
1hr ago
I know you're tongue in cheek with this, but man I don't like that the lesson being taught internationally right now is: "If even a single member of a particular ethnic group survives, and your ancestors did something oppressive to their ancestors hundreds of years ago, they will use this to extract reparations from you in perpetuity and will never let you forget what happened."
Similar logic for why, if you depose a monarch, you have to kill off their entire extended family, lest some loyalists later track down their teenage second cousin thrice removed and try to restore them to the throne.
We have a few social techs for allowing non-genocidal acclimation of oppressed populations but when they can all be trivially overridden by the logic that "any observed inequality in outcomes is proof positive of ongoing oppression which must be rectified" then guess what comes back on the menu.
Perhaps we can counter that logic by pointing out that whatever mechanism allows guilt to flow forward in time should also allow credit and pride to flow forward. So sure, maybe my great great great grandpappy beat some villagers that one time, but my family saved an awful lot of drowning children over the years too, so maybe it balances out.
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
Generally, religious people actually believe in their religion. Politicians lie all the time, like Ulbricht denying the plan to build the Berlin Wall, Bush lying about Saddam having WMDs or Putin denying his intent to invade Ukraine. Clerics deceiving their followers about matters of religion are at least rarer.
For a theocracy like Iran, having the leaders following god's will is their fundamental claim to legitimacy. When religious leaders reveal that a proclamation of doctrine (e.g. a fatwa or encyclical) was just a ruse to mislead the unbelievers, they are making a mockery of the religion. Nor do they control their population to a degree where they can just retcon everything -- "We were always at war with Eurasia" / "The ayatollah had always said that nuclear weapons are great tools of the jihad".
This does not mean that I would update very much on an anti-nuke fatwa -- I would certainly read the fine print, consider how often these things are overturned and so forth, but I would likely update a fair bit more than I would on Putin's claim that his troops were just conducting a military exercise.
Of course, a fatwa against nukes would also be a good reason why Iran -- despite having reached 400kg @ 60% enrichment, which is very much within grasping distance of a nuclear weapon stopped just short of building nukes for now.
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
1hr ago
Certainly you can understand how that at face value looks incredibly stupid right?
The more obviously stupid the thing is, the greater the power flex it is to do it. This is why it only works in one direction.
Humorously, Westerners also tend to say 'African-American' even when the subject is not American- because the American propaganda (which they all consume) all says "but describing someone in the most obvious way is Bad, Actually". Capitalizing 'black' is the same thing.
"African-American" is commonly understood to mean American Descendants of Slavery, not Elon Musk.
No, it means "Black" (implication: description + privilege). As a bonus, this works on the entire West, since you can't be ADOS without being A (and it's a great way to tar cultures that were never racist with the same brush they use domestically).
WandererintheWilderness
1hr ago
This only holds for climate scientists trying to come up with new global models. Useful climate science looks like trying to make specific predictions about specific areas on a specific time scale in the context of an extant model, so that human infrastructure can anticipate and adapt to disruptions to established patterns.
(It's the difference between "AI risk researchers" who come up with yet more convoluted thought experiments on how to do timeless bargaining with omniscient gods, and "AI risk researchers" who are actually creating code to interpret and control what's going on inside neural networks. I can see why someone would be fed up with the former, but the latter is actual expert work that needs doing, and - so long as they sub-optimally remain a package deal - justifies the existence of the overall field.)
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2hr ago
I would absolutely do community service at the bridge - it seems like doing community service at the bridge is my lot in life anyway.
Edit: also I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, great job.
And if the Earth gets warmer this isn't a crisis
Come on. It would suck for far more than "penguins and polar bears". It'll suck for the current balance of worldwide agriculture, it'll suck for coastal population centers, it'll suck for vast swathes of land that are already near the threshold of unlivable, and, oh yes, it'll suck for all the currently temperate areas which will inherit the latter's status as the arid "well, you can eke out a living there, I guess" hell-holes. This is true even if you're correct about global warming opening as much hitherto-frozen land for settlement up north as it will ruin further south. We'd be looking at a major reshuffle in what countries control what kind of territory and resources, which may not favor the West much. (Indeed, odds are it wouldn't: we'd been dealt a good hand already, to the point that some view sheer luck of the draw on Europe's local climate as, if not the secret to Europeans' worldwide success, then at least a crucial prerequisite. We can really only go downhill.)
Even if it turns out net positive in the end, it needs to be anticipated and planned for in order to mitigate the damaging side-effects of the disruption itself. Which is exactly what I had in mind when I spoke of "global implications" and why we need climate scientists. I agree that the Earth getting warmer isn't x-risk. But there's far more to whether a crisis is worth averting or mitigating than whether it'll literally wipe out humanity. (Particularly if we're talking about a specific country's incentives rather than Homo Sapiens's as a whole.)
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2hr ago
This is my biggest problem with rlhf aside from my free speech bullshit - due to the way llms work, rlhf means hallucination is impossible to solve - it is baked in.
Which climate scientists have made a prediction including a date of extinction for the human race, particularly one with a date that currently counts as definitely falsified (presumably in the sense of having already passed)?
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
These scientists continually produce predictions which turn out to be cartoonishly wrong. When they don't come true they just change the date for extinction of the human race and demand more power. Climate science exists for the purpose of pushing a single environmentalist narrative with a single goal(states of nature as close to pre-European colonization as possible) for which they are willing to sacrifice human achievement. I think this goal is stupid, and I'm sure not willing to entertain people wanting to sacrifice human achievement for it. Australian megacats are really cool and a valuable source of scientific knowledge, not a crisis. And if the earth gets warmer this isn't a crisis, either- maybe it'll suck for penguins and polar bears but it'll open more land for settlement and that's good, and there's plenty of animals that aren't penguins.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2hr ago
I mean 40 years is a bit long, but I’d put it to at least 7-10 years simply because scrubbing your feeds, removing yourself from lists, etc. is unlikely to be that successful beyond 5 years because you forget about old accounts, you forget that mailing list you signed up for, or buy something incriminating with a credit card and those things will still be there because you won’t be paying attention to something that far back.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
2hr ago
I'm completely unsure and very skeptical of any Llms will take away x job headline given the poor track record and the obvious faking of benchmarks and media hype.
Not a lawyer, I do wonder how this plays out, can you hold a model accountable the way a lawyer is? What happens when you add your own data to it? Does the responsibility then land on the law firm. Not a rhetorical question.
magicalkittycat
2hr ago
Throwing up a lot of words as a smokescreen doesn't change that Mamdani's claim was well out-of-bounds.
There are people who have called Elon Musk, who is much pastier in skin color an African American before!
The category "Black or African-American" isn't nearly as ambiguous as "Hispanic", and neither extends to people of Indian ethnicity born in Africa. Historical changes in the meaning of the term "white" don't matter either, because none of them would make a person of Indian ethnicity born in Africa "Black or African-American" either.
If every other category we use for ethnicity and race is fuzzy and ambiguous, how is that not relevant?
This argument still doesn't address the elephant in the room, it is patently obvious that the term "African American" for darker skinned people doesn't make sense when a light skinned person whose family has lived for generations in Africa and practices local traditions does not count when they move to the US but a dark skin person whose family has lived in France for generations and has no African cultural identity does.
If there's a major discrepancy between category and reality, what does that suggest? The problem is categories.
TIRM
3hr ago
The way it is framed on talk radio is those people losing healthcare are able bodied men who refuse to work and never should have been recipients of government paid healthcare. An unambiguous positive to cut them off Medicaid.
Dean
Flairless
3hr ago
'The entire rotten edifice will go down with one good kick' ranks up there with 'and then the enemy will lose the will to fight' in my personal list of 'big indicators of really bad strategy.' There are historical examples of it happening, and you can even identify trends that make it more likely to happen, but strategies that bet on it happening, as opposed to factor in the possiblity, tend to be poor strategies.
The one thing that really baffles me is whether Hezbollah also failed to reign in its own militants itching for action given their lack of full greenlight from Tehran or likely Nasrallah himself. For all its failures and cosplaying at being a fighting force (uniforms for nasheed tiktoks, journalist vest for publishing in reuters, the senior Hezbollah leadership must have known that keeping its cards in reserve for any Israeli incursion was the right play no matter what Hamas did.
This presupposes that they didn't have as much of a greenlight as could be expected, with the patron parties distancing themselves from Hamas's decision after it became clear it wasn't going to spark the regional bonfire. Which, from my memory of those first few weeks, was pretty apparent in the first day(s). Hezbollah in particular had a pretty big anticlimatic drawdown in which they spun up the media organs like they were going to directly enter the conflict, demurred, and then 'quietly' began the artillery campaign after a bit later.
Though to be fair to past considerations, I am on record as believing that Iran has kind of lost the plot on managing its proxy warfare strategy. The curse of the deep state / cult of the offense strikes again, conflating strategic means with strategic ends and over-leveraging a strategic asset (the proxy network) beyond diminishing returns and into outright counter-productive tendencies.
TIRM
3hr ago
terrified of the massive increase to the ICE budget
Letting in huge numbers of illegals and false asylum claimants by the millions is practically free. Getting them back out is expensive.
The alternative is to shrug and let almost all of them stay. And then the next Democratic president lets in a few million more. Then shrug again. From the point of view of a Republican, you can guaranteed lose hard through inaction, or bite the bullet and go big in reversing the tide.
I think the Democrats will win anyways. It is too great an advantage to be able to let in millions for free.
2D3D
3hr ago
A common thread I saw on the gazanow telegram channel (now deleted) was that Hamas was uploading their livestream of civilian massacres not for goreporn likes, but to prove the IDF was a hollow shell without the USA and that the entire rotten edifice was kicked open so the rest of the arab world, especially West Bank but Hezbollah and Syria too, could roll in to clean out the yahudi with no effort. I still don't know if this was a particularly inspired attempt to justify the gleeful livestreamed executions and rape aftermaths as serving some strategic reason, or if it was a sincerely held belief that Israel was nothing without the USA and Hamas had struck the singular crippling blow, or y'know, both.
The one thing that really baffles me is whether Hezbollah also failed to reign in its own militants itching for action given their lack of full greenlight from Tehran or likely Nasrallah himself. For all its failures and cosplaying at being a fighting force (uniforms for nasheed tiktoks, journalist vest for publishing in reuters, the senior Hezbollah leadership must have known that keeping its cards in reserve for any Israeli incursion was the right play no matter what Hamas did.
Maybe trading bodies for international sympathy could work as a viable end state wild card, but previous trends don't really bear it out. The intifadas didn't result in a materially improved ground condition for the Palestinians and for all the hatred Israel gets it still has a growing population and economy. If that is losing for Israel, I'm sure Israel will collapse immediately like most of the world wishes it would.
TowardsPanna
3hr ago
Wondering where I should try to move to... Will there actually be any safe spots on earth in a few decades?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3hr ago
Because the conclusions of any given paper are the same "Climate change is worse than we thought in some new way, it's caused more by human activity than we thought, we're all going to die even sooner than we thought, and if there's any chance to avert catastrophe it's in turning over control of all energy usage to boards of people like me who will be stewards for the common good." If this is true, we've already heard and we don't need any more. If it's false, it's even more useless.
Agreed. We need Critical Age Theory
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