domain:astralcodexten.com
jkf
2hr ago
Assume that it works, why would it? It's not as though the climate has become intolerable, or will be 20 years from now?
Glassnoser
2hr ago
I don't think anyone here wouldn't be able to remember Scott's name.
OliveTapenade
2hr ago
If you had to be based to post here, I would never have managed to register!
Shrike
2hr ago
Am I completely wrong in my guess that the Greens don't want nuclear weapons stationed on German soil?
Amadan
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
2hr ago
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
Degrowth Greens are getting absolutely crazy, easily 10x as radical as any far-right European party. More radical than Putin too.
A (biased) source on what one German Greens thought leader wants to see, noting that it isn't all Greens but a formidable brand of Green thought: https://www.eugyppius.com/p/in-which-a-leading-green-intellectual
New construction banned, train travel rationed, 50 sqm living space per person, meat rationed, end of banking (because money is basically worthless since everything is rationed)... This from an apparently respectable political voice, editor of a newspaper, who basically wants to destroy the Western way of life. These people have influence in the real world, their fellow compatriots get into power and start shutting down nuclear plants for no good reason.
It's in the UK too. Some imbeciles passed a law mandating net zero emissions by 2050. A think tank gave serious thought as to what that would actually look like if we take the laws and climate scientists seriously:
TLDR, they conclude that technology is too unreliable, the only path to success is crushing austerity. No air travel for 30 years. No shipping for 30 years. 40% less heating. No meat.
What I find most revealing is the mindset of 'well we don't really have any known methods to get CO2 out of the atmosphere besides planting trees and there's not much space for more trees so let's take a low-risk path to absolute zero, using only known technologies'. And then the low-risk path they propose is shooting yourself in the foot with a 50 cal. No shipping and no air travel ON AN ISLAND? Famine is locked in - they add that 'fertilizer use is greatly reduced'. This mindset is absolutely toxic.
The correct solution to climate change is directly controlling the temperature by releasing sulfate aerosols in the upper atmosphere. At a cost of $5-20 billion per year we can hold temperatures in place or reduce them, even as CO2 levels rise. These people want to destroy industrial civilization over a glorified nothingburger.
And I think Russia might be trying to assist them. These Degrowth Greens can be viewed as purely destructive agents, Stalin's mythic wreckers that were deliberately harming the economy by submitting false instructions or damaging machinery. If you want to induce chaos and dysfunction in Europe, help them out! They might shut down a nuclear plant or commit some other blunder and cause right-thinking people to panic-buy more natural gas or oil (which in a global market will increase Russian income). Russia probably doesn't have much ability to help them and doesn't spend much time doing so but I think it's part of their agenda.
Suffice to say that with no air travel and no shipping, the VDV could probably take over Britain by themselves. Inducing stupidity and self-sabotage in your rivals is usually a good move, even if it hurts you occasionally. Just because Russia exports fossil fuels, it doesn't mean they don't want division and incompetence in their targets. Nuclear power is still the primary threat to their energy exports IMO. Nuclear France produces fewer emissions than 'Green' Germany' per $ of GDP.
Stellula
2hr ago
Vance follows moldbug, and I believe also BAP on twitter, just for reference.
TequilaMockingbird
2hr ago
My understanding was that the German Green party's core policy objective was to see Germany divest itself of locally produced coal and nuclear power in favor of what was sold as "renewables" on paper but was natural gas supplied by Russia in actual practice.
I also recall reading something back in 2019 (when there was all that talk about Germany wasnt pulling its weight in NATO was in news) about how the German left in general and the Greens in particular was rife with ex-Soviet/DDR apparatchiks and thier kids.
The invasion of Ukraine may have been an inflection point that flipped a bunch of incentives, but it seems to me that the Green Party being a bunch of watermelons (outwardly Green but Reds/Communists under the skin) and the Russians quietly looking to sow political dissent amongs thier nieghbors isn't a crazy conspiracy theory as much as it is a solid prior.
doglatine
2hr ago
It’s entirely compatible with active measures or just general FUD tactics for a state to fund groups that have multiple ideological goals at odds with their own. And that’s without considering the possibility of miscalculations; the US funded bin Laden for decades, after all.
SubstackNecron
2hr ago
"I know my thumb is broken and if I cut my whole arm off that will defiantly fix the problem" type thinking
Magusoflight
2hr ago
Have you ever tried modifying your diet? I have a friend who said their sinutitus improved significantly after eliminating certain foods (dairy I think)
Magusoflight
2hr ago
I’m not wishing it to happen, but saying that would be the best future possible from a political perspective
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Well yes, right wing posadism remains stupid.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
The US has fairly generous citizen’s arrest laws for holding suspected shoplifters until the police arrive.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Draco and the bloody code and the regulator-moderator war were exceptions, most historical societies did not execute petty criminals, although corporal punishment, fines, and public humiliation were common and enslavement slightly less so.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
The death penalty for sex crimes and drug dealers probably has majority support in the U.S., although shoplifting specifically I doubt it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3hr ago
Christianity.
The Second Great Awakening was a hell of a drug.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Major HBD confounder, there.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3hr ago
No, it is not.
However, we’re talking about tradeoffs: on the one hand, reduced standards of evidence and expedition of the trial process is likely to increase false accusations, while also massively reducing the odds that a criminal will avoid prosecution; on the other hand, heightened standards of evidence and the requirement of a full in-person trial process for all accused person is likely to reduce false convictions, while exposing the public to greater levels of crime by allowing criminals to avoid prosecution.
When considering these tradeoffs, it’s important for me to keep in mind which side of that ledger is likely to impact me personally. Am I more likely to be falsely accused of a crime than I am to be the victim of a crime? Almost certainly not. As a matter of fact, I have already been the victim of multiple crimes, whereas I have never been falsely accused of a crime. In fact, I’m not even sure I know anyone who has.
It turns out that the vast majority of people accused of crimes are in fact guilty of those crimes; this is particularly true of crimes like shoplifting which nearly always produce some sort of video record and/or physical evidence. It is generally quite easy for businesses to determine the specific individual responsible for a given act of shoplifting. And if there is the rare instance of mistaken identity, such a thing is unlikely to happen to a person such as myself, who bears little resemblance to any of the demographics responsible for the lion’s share of shoplifting; therefore, I’m extremely unlikely to ever need to avail myself of any of the myriad protections afforded to criminal suspects.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Isn’t Russian funding for the German Green Party actually literally true, just as it is for most everyone else on a political fringe somewhere?
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Vance is pretty based, and you don’t have to be that based to post here, anyways. I’m convinced that the progressive freak out about him is an instinctive reaction to him hiding his power level.
Right - the conscience veto didn't work in the case of marriage because it was only a small handful of people willing to stand up for it. It's different when you're looking at most of the bureaucracy. The president can fire them all, but if so he's destroying his own state apparatus and thus his own ability to act.
There's an obvious rebuttal here - "If I fire the bureaucracy I won't be able to act? But I'm not able to act now! My choice is a bureaucracy that refuses to do what I want, and no bureaucracy that does nothing. At least with no bureaucracy, there isn't an institution actively impeding me, and I can get started on the long, difficult process of building a new state apparatus."
But that's where I worry about the election cycle. Four years is not long enough to rebuild the entire federal bureaucracy.
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