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ArbitraryValue

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ArbitraryValue ,

So “magical thinking” explains why they believe this stuff in the first place, but what explains why they keep believing it after it doesn’t work? Even in a fantasy setting, it doesn’t make sense. If you thought vampires couldn’t come into your house uninvited but then a vampire did exactly that, you’d run away. These people would lecture the vampire about what his weaknesses really were and then go online and complain that the vampire sucked their blood when he wasn’t supposed to.

ArbitraryValue ,

I wonder if that’s still true if gang violence is not counted.

ArbitraryValue ,

I’m a man and I wouldn’t think going on that trail would be a good idea, unless there were lots of other joggers there at the same time. I don’t fear being alone in the countryside but I’m much more wary in an urban area.

Judge formally says Trump owes $454 million in civil fraud case, countdown starts for him to put up the money for appeal (www.cnn.com)

A New York judge on Friday formally ordered Donald Trump to pay $454 million, including interest, a move that will give the former president one month to post nearly half a billion dollars to appeal the fraud verdict....

ArbitraryValue ,

Putting up the money is a prerequisite to an appeal.

I’m not familiar with this area of law. What’s the reasoning behind this rule? From my naive perspective, it seems like whether or not an appeal is justified is independent of whether or not the defendant can afford to pay the full judgement.

ArbitraryValue ,

And “de-radicalisation” programmes would be promoted in all religious, educational and welfare institutions. The document suggests Arab countries with experience of such programmes would be involved, though Mr Netanyahu has not specified which.

I’m concerned because I don’t think anyone actually knows how to do this. Islamist movements have evolved to resist de-radicalization and as far as I know, success of the sort Mr. Netanyahu envisions would be an unprecedented achievement rather than something he can follow an established protocol in order to accomplish.

ArbitraryValue ,

I don’t think it’s that straightforward. The Soviet Union also successfully pacified East Germany and turned it into an ally. The USA spent twenty years and two trillion dollars trying to build credibility in Afghanistan, and that was all for nothing.

ArbitraryValue ,

I don’t think that’s actually what the problem is. The historical norm appears to be that even extremely brutal wars do not on their own radicalize the defeated population. Look at eastern Europe after World War II - the Soviet Union was quickly able to subjugate it despite having given so many people there ample reason to hate Soviet rule. A more recent example is Putin’s victory against an Islamist insurgency in Chechnya.

My own impression is that radical Islamism causes wars, rather than the other way around (although I acknowledge that those wars create a feedback loop of more radicalization).

ArbitraryValue ,

Yes, that’s my point. Credibility-building worked, and so did brutal repression. This leads me to think that there was some underlying cultural factor present in post-WWII Germany that made it governable by occupiers, by whatever means. The presence of radical Islamist movements appears to correspond to the absence of such a factor. (Sufficiently brutal repression might still work, the way it did for Putin in Chechnya, but it’s not an option for Israel.)

Blocking AI crawlers on the fediverse (fedia.io)

Given how Reddit now makes money by selling its data to AI companies, I was wondering how the situation is for the fediverse. Typically you can block AI crawlers using robot.txt (Verge reported about it recently: https://www.theverge.com/24067997/robots-txt-ai-text-file-web-crawlers-spiders). But this only works per...

ArbitraryValue ,

I don’t think that would make much of a difference. Training AI on copyright-protected data appears to be fair use.

ArbitraryValue ,

That’s not how it works in NYC. The city police don’t cooperate with ICE and even make an effort to protect illegal immigrants who have committed crimes from being deported. Simply talking to the cops while being an illegal immigrant isn’t going to get someone detained.

This is all beside the point because the migrants in question aren’t illegal immigrants who have entered the country secretly - the authorities have permitted them to enter and already know who they are. (The authorities are in fact spending a great deal of money on them.)

ArbitraryValue ,

I’m not saying anything about whether that’s bad. I’m just saying that the person I’m responding to is making an argument (illegal immigrants are less likely to commit other crimes since they want to avoid police attention which would get them deported) which is doubly inapplicable to the existence or lack thereof of a “migrant crime wave” in NYC.

How far can cities go to clear homeless camps? The U.S. Supreme Court will decide (wamu.org)

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a major case that could reshape how cities manage homelessness. The legal issue is whether they can fine or arrest people for sleeping outside if there’s no shelter available. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has deemed this cruel and unusual punishment, and this case is a...

ArbitraryValue ,

There’s nothing a city can realistically do except shuffle them around - providing assistance simply motivates more homeless people to arrive from other places until the assistance is exhausted and the city is left worse off, with less money and more homeless people.

ArbitraryValue ,

The alternative to military AI is not peace, it’s war the old-fashioned way. Humans are bad at distinguishing civilians from enemy fighters; artillery shells can’t do it at all. I anticipate that AI will make mistakes, but fewer mistakes than would have been made otherwise.

ArbitraryValue ,

I didn’t know Putin had any tables that short.

ArbitraryValue ,

That’s what the wizard is called but it isn’t his name, in the same way that “President” isn’t President Biden’s name.

ArbitraryValue ,

I liked the name Bard… Gemini is just random and unrelated to the concept.

ArbitraryValue ,

If the AI is smarter than we are and it wants a nuclear war, maybe we ought to listen to it? We shouldn’t let our pride get in the way.

ArbitraryValue ,

Since I’m not desperate for money, I won’t do it as a matter of principle. What that principle is exactly, I don’t know…

Israel tells families of 31 hostages their relatives are dead as Hamas mulls truce deal (www.theguardian.com)

Israel has said it has informed the families of 31 people held in the territory since 7 October that their relatives are dead. The news came as the Qatari prime minister said Hamas had given a “generally positive” response to proposals for a deal trading a break in the fighting and release of Palestinian prisoners for the...

ArbitraryValue ,

First, I keep being surprised by how leaky the militaries of various nations are. Russians post cell-phone pictures of burning equipment for the benefit of Ukrainian rocket artillerists, Americans reveal classified information in order to impress kids on the internet, and now Israelis apparently BCC the New York Times…

Second, it appears that some significant fraction of the hostages revealed to be dead were actually never captured alive. They were killed during the initial attack and then their bodies were taken. It seems like these victims should not count against Netanyahu’s post-October 7 strategy.

ArbitraryValue ,

I’m sorry but I’m not in the right state of mind right now to look up the details of the October 7th attack. With that said, there’s a history of Israel trading large numbers of prisoners for the dead body of even one Israeli.

ArbitraryValue ,

A real car guy wouldn’t have anything in particular against EVs because he already drew the line at automatic transmissions.

ArbitraryValue ,

How would you know? Have you ever seen truly perfect condom use? A flawless prophylactic performance! It is a thing of beauty.

ArbitraryValue ,

Is it so much worse than existing, popular sports like boxing or American football which are known to cause brain damage to the athletes involved?

ArbitraryValue ,

I don’t buy into the claim that quantifying performance is bad for employees. It prevents low-performers from free-riding on the productivity of high-performers.

ArbitraryValue ,

That’s a good point, although I presume the same technology could be used to monitor customers and collect statistics about whether the identity of the server affects the probability that a customer will return.

Metrics can be dangerous because if people are rewarded according to a metric, they’ll work to maximize their score, which might not be what the actual purpose of their job is. However, I don’t think that’s a reason to assume that metrics are worse than no metrics.

ArbitraryValue ,

Good managers are themselves a limited resource - I suspect that quite soon, the sort of manager who’s better than a state-of-the-art AI system will be too valuable to assign to a coffee shop.

I figure that they already track all the customers who pay with a credit card.

ArbitraryValue ,

In my experience, people don’t pay much attention to anything from those countries unless there’s some special reason to take it seriously.

ArbitraryValue ,

And that’s not even fraudulent, just incompetent…

ArbitraryValue , (edited )

Your options are “a powerful blow from the fist of Taylor Swift” or “never even getting close to Taylor Swift”. Which do you choose?

ArbitraryValue ,

It’s an American tradition.

ArbitraryValue ,

I will note that the sort of blow you have in mind cannot be performed with only the hands. Regardless of that, whichever sort of blow you receive will leave you writhing in pain.

ArbitraryValue ,

Information has a mathematical definition, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Gen Z boys and men more likely than baby boomers to believe feminism harmful, says poll (www.theguardian.com)

Boys and men from generation Z are more likely than older baby boomers to believe that feminism has done more harm than good, according to research that shows a “real risk of fractious division among this coming generation”....

ArbitraryValue , (edited )

Is there a coherent definition of feminism that feminists agree on?

(I think that people’s opinion about feminism is commonly their opinion about self-identified feminists. It’s fair to say “I believe feminism is harmful because the opinions I have heard self-identified feminists express have often seemed ridiculous, offensive, or counterproductive” without needing a definition of feminism that goes beyond self-identification.)

ArbitraryValue ,

There’s an essay that I agree with about that sort of definition.

Here’s a relevant excerpt:

I feel like every single term in social justice terminology has a totally unobjectionable and obviously important meaning – and then is actually used a completely different way.

The closest analogy I can think of is those religious people who say “God is just another word for the order and beauty in the Universe” – and then later pray to God to smite their enemies. And if you criticize them for doing the latter, they say “But God just means there is order and beauty in the universe, surely you’re not objecting to that?”

The result is that people can accuse people of “privilege” or “mansplaining” no matter what they do, and then when people criticize the concept of “privilege” they retreat back to “but ‘privilege’ just means you’re interrupting women in a women-only safe space. Surely no one can object to criticizing people who do that?”

Let’s say that, for example, I affirmed my belief that people should be hired based on their ability rather than on their sex, but then I said that there are more men than women in software development mainly due to biological differences. That doesn’t go against your definition, but do you think most feminists would react well to it? They didn’t when James Damore said it, or when the president of Harvard said something similar…

(This is despite the fact that it’s commonly accepted that biological differences between the sexes are the main reason why there are more men than women who are violent criminals.)

ArbitraryValue ,

This time is different. If AI were to remain what it is today, the article would be correct, but AI won’t. It’s a fundamentally new kind of technology, unlike anything else that has ever been created by humans. It only seems like more of the same to some people because it’s so very new and primitive compared to what it will be soon. This won’t be humans losing their jobs, this will be humanity losing its job. There will be plenty of new industries created but they will be run by AI for AI.

With that said, it won’t necessarily be bad. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

ArbitraryValue ,

I was onezzz a man!

ArbitraryValue ,

That was the guy responsible for setting up Iran’s network of proxies. I’d say we didn’t blow him up early enough.

Biden’s response to Jordan attack is likely to be powerful, but US is wary of triggering a wider war with Iran, officials say (www.cnn.com)

The US’ response to the drone attack in Jordan that killed and wounded US service members on Sunday is likely to be more powerful than previous American retaliatory strikes in Iraq and Syria, officials told CNN, though the Pentagon and White House are being careful not to telegraph the administration’s plans....

ArbitraryValue , (edited )

“Every message you see talks about the fear of escalation from the administration,” said a former senior military official who has closely followed developments in the region. “We have managed to deter ourselves here.”

The funny thing is that here Biden’s clear and very reasonable desire not to start a war appears to be working against him. Iran is willing to antagonize the USA in order to gain regional influence because it knows that the USA is not looking for a fight, but of course it’s not really possible to deliberately elect a leader who convincingly appears to be warlike without actually being so.

Another problem is that Iran may not actually have the ability to order its proxies to stop. The groups it supports appear to genuinely believe in their stated goals; Iran has organized, trained, and armed them in order to expand its influence but they’re not actually fighting for Iran. It has some degree of control over them but they have the motivation and the means to keep fighting even if their support is cut off.

ArbitraryValue ,

If you don’t want a war then they should leave.

Events outside the borders of the USA will still affect the USA, and there’s no amount of influence the USA can cede to Iran that will satisfy them. Containment is necessary and less difficult now than it would be later. It would have been even less difficult before the USA squandered so much of its power and influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that fact doesn’t mean that the correct future policy regarding the region should be a very passive one.

ArbitraryValue ,

They’re living in a fairy tale. So to them, government works like making a deal with the devil: he’s allowed to deceive you but he can’t lie to you.

ArbitraryValue ,

These high-minded treaties don’t actually mean anything - there’s no enforcement mechanism and countries with a much worse human-rights record than the USA have signed them without consequences. IMO it’s better not to sign them than it is to pretend that signing does any good and lend unearned legitimacy to those other countries.

ArbitraryValue ,

The US is a member of the International Court of Justice - every country in the United Nations is. Are you thinking of the International Criminal Court?

Other than that, my answer is “yes but that’s not a bad thing”.

ArbitraryValue ,
  1. The actions of an international court will inevitably be political.
  2. The countries that are the worst human rights violators will never voluntary accept the authority of the court.

In that context, why should the USA give other, potentially hostile countries power over itself? It might have been worthwhile if it meant everyone had to follow the rules but in practice it would just give countries opposed to US foreign policy a tool for interfering without giving the US anything useful.

(My general view is that the US has made many very harmful mistakes but the era of American hegemony has still been one of remarkable global peace and prosperity. Like democracy, it’s the worst system except for everything else that has been tried. Now we’re seeing serious challenges to this hegemony and if they succeed, the world will get worse for almost everyone, not just for Americans. So if you think the US does more harm than good, we’re unlikely to come to an agreement.)

Edit: accidentally deleted, reposting.

ArbitraryValue , (edited )

Hah, or you can be me. I grew up in New York City with the ability to go pretty much anywhere unsupervised and I never did - I spent all my free time either reading books or playing videogames anyway. I had almost zero interest in the real world (I think it’s pretty boring even now that I’ve been an adult for a while) but I still feel like there was something wasteful about not bothering to experience things that so many other kids would have really enjoyed.

The worst part was college. I attended a famous party school but went to zero parties, zero dates, etc. At least I managed to graduate in three years with a double major. (By the time I got to college, I did want more social interaction but I thought that I was incapable of it so I didn’t try.)

ArbitraryValue , (edited )

It actually hasn’t been bad overall. Those were my missed opportunities but there were also other opportunities that I didn’t miss.

(I do live in New York City again and I do still think it’s really boring here. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do that doesn’t involve a crowd of strangers which ruins it for me. The main reason I’m here is to be close to my family but even visiting them requires a miserable two-and-a-half-hour round trip on the subway. I got to live in a small town for a while and I liked it a lot better - having a house with a big yard, being able to drive everywhere, and easy access to nature were great.)

ArbitraryValue ,

Checkmate, environmentalists!

ArbitraryValue ,

in Texas the steady decline in the teen birth rate since 2007 ended in 2022, with a slight rise in overall teen births – up from 20.32 to 20.4 births per 1,000 (a 0.39% rise)

We’re talking about a change of less than half a percent - probably just statistical noise like the 1.74% increase in liberal Massachusetts during that time.

(Massachusetts still has a teen birth rate about 3.5 times lower than Texas. I thought that that might be due simply to differences in ethnic makeup, but non-Hispanic white people in Texas still have a teen birth rate almost double that of Massachusetts, so there must also be a large contribution from culture, government policy, or average income…)

ArbitraryValue ,

There’s simply nothing good that comes from this

Oh, it was certainly very bad for my ancestors, but the lesson there isn’t “It’s better to assimilate,” but rather “Even if you do everything to assimilate, your neighbors won’t accept you, so remember that you’re different. At least that way, you’ll be prepared.”

Since [the Amish are] common, you just get used to them.

I wouldn’t say that - IMO, since the Amish are very rare, they’re seen as an amusing curiosity rather than as any sort of threat. If they really were common, there probably would have been more hostility.

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