>Was she part of a crowd?
Yes, but they could only fit through the broken door slowly one at a time, so they couldn't rush the officer.
Incidentally, I realise that my comment sounds pro-republican because I'm talking about what I see as a democrat executing a republican. But I'm sure many republicans would love to execute democrats too, its just that at the moment the democrats seem to have far more power, and so its far more likely that democrats start executing many republicans than vice versa. Either way, my point is that mass violence is an ord...
>If, as I contend, most of them weren't, why should we take the shooting of Ashli Babbitt (in the course of committing a violent crime) as evidence that the US is headed into fascism and mass executions in the next few years, when we don't draw any such conclusions from tens of thousands of other police killings?
Heading into mass executions with perhaps 5% probability is what I said.
The point is that the police make mistakes, but now it seems that whether an action is justified depends on political affiliation. If there were a similar event, of a ...
>If the police officer who shot Babbitt was tasked with defending the Capital, then, even if there was poor judgement on his part, it seems really unreasonable to call his actions an execution. An execution is carried out, generally by a state, as part of a deliberative, measured process of deploying force. This is a distinction I think most people would appreciate.
You are correct, this is an important distinction. My impression is that there was no grounds for the officer to think that his life was in danger - since he is a man he could have physically...
>If you weren't trying to suggest that there's debate about whether the people who stormed the Capitol should be executed without trial,
There isn't debate: Ashli Babbitt was de facto executed without trial (unless there is an objective legal principle where a male police officer can shoot an unarmed woman for breaking into a government building) and the shooter is described as a hero by the main levers of power, with no debate. The mass execution of capitol rioters might occur within a few years, I give it perhaps a 5% chance.
Now this might seem l...
This tactic is called Kafkatrapping:
"A sophistical rhetorical device in which any denial by an accused person serves as evidence of guilt."
Its also an idea I consider far more absurd than creationism, and to be frank I am shocked to see it taken seriously here.
1) If race is a social construct, then if we abandon this social construct, will a person who previously would have been conceptualised as Asian suddenly grow a few inches? If not, then this is an example of race having a physical meaning independent of mental states.
2) If differing outcomes ar...
I can understand why a race realist would argue that beleiving the truth makes you racist, but why a vicious racist?
This is just blue-tribe signalling. I apologise for being rude, but I don't know which is more absurd - the implication that only Europeans cared about gold/land/slaves (I think all non-tribal civilisation cared about the first two, and most cared about the third), or the idea that land has no value. I wonder what history would look like if the US had not expanded west? I think the most obvious change is that Germany and/or Japan would have won WWII. The US would have had little oil (as the Texan oil fields were not part of the initial colonies) no pacific...
I haven't posted on LW for a while now, but after posting to LW2.0 I got banned (till 2021) very quickly. My posts were also deleted. I was not told why I was banned, although I assume it was because I entered a fake email (I was annoyed that the new site required an email and not just a username). I asked why I got banned, and received no response.
Well, I'm sorry for using a fake email. I wasn't trying to spam, or sockpuppet or anything, but I think a 3 year ban without any sort of warning or explanation seems a little excessive. I'm happy to provide an email that works if required. I also considered setting up a new account with a real email, but I don't want it to seem like I'm sockpuppetting.
Facebook is full of bullshit because it is far quicker to share something then to fact-check it, not that anyone cares about facts anyway. A viral alarmist meme with no basis in truth will be shared more then a boring, balanced view that doesn't go all out to fight the other tribe.
But Facebook has always been full of bullshit and no-one cared until after the US election when everyone decided to pin Trump's victory on fake news. So its pretty clear that good epistemology is not the genuine concern here.
Not that I'm saying that Facebook is worse then any other social media - the problem isn't Facebook, the problem is human nature.
I've just been skimming the wiki page on Russian involvement in the US election.
SecureWorks stated that the actor group was operating from Russia on behalf of the Russian government with "moderate" confidence level
The other claims seem to just be that there was Russian propaganda. If propaganda and possible spying counts as "war" then we will always be at war, because there is always propaganda (as if the US doesn't do the same thing!). The parallels with 1984 go without saying, but I really think that the risk of totalitarianism isn't Trump, its people overreacting to Trump.
Also, there are similar allegations of corruption between Clinton and Saudi Arabia.
I generally agree, but...
George is a Perfect Bayesian Rationalist, and has recently come to the conclusion that everything Albert Camus says is correct with a probability of greater than 0.99999. Since his realization, George has called himself an absurdist.
One problem here could be that it might not the case that all beliefs and positions can be determined by Bayesian Rationalism. Does absurdism have an objective truth value? Perhaps not. Political positions, to give an example, seem to correlate more with personality traits than with intelligence: E...
I said a few weeks back that I would publically precommit to going a week without politics. Well, I partially succeeded, in that I did start reading for example an SSC article on politics because it popped up in my RSS feed, but I stopped when I remembered that I was ignoring politics. The main thing is I managed to avoid any long timewasting sessions of reading about politics on the net. And I think this has partially broken some bad habits of compulsive web browsing I was developing.
So next I think I shall avoid all stupid politics for a month. No facebo...
The impression I have -- though of course I don't know what your friends have been saying -- is that the burn-their-houses-down brigade are much more upset about the kinda-fascist sort of right than the kinda-libertarian sort of right. Of course even if I'm right about that that doesn't necessarily reduce the sense of alienation; your aliefs needn't match your beliefs.
Except that I don't think libertarian is incompatible with boarder controls - indeed, libertarians are generally enthusiastic about property rights, and controlling immigration is no diffe...
You see, its one thing to advocate violence against a literal Neo-Nazi, but advocating violence against anyone who advocates reducing immigration, well, that shows a lot more liberal tribe loyalty. So much holier than thou.
Additionally, this comment was made IRL, possibly within earshot a person they were advocating violence against.
I think people cluster into left and right because those are the tribes. However, it can be oversimplistic and I agree that there are many potential directions left and right progress can take - indeed, if a few more Islamic terrorists shoot up gay bars there could be a lot of LBGTs defecting to right-nationalism.
I think communist beliefs, violent or not, are on the rise largely due to young angry people being too young to remember the cold war. Some friends and acquaintances from multiple disconnected freindship groups are communists, and too many of these advocate violence, although I think that they are still a tiny minority overall. I think the situation is, as you put it, "this person is broken".
I'm not at all worried about actually being the victim of politically-motivated physical violence or of riots/revolutions etc in the near future. What worrie...
"The simplest explanation is probably correct" is true when we have a sufficient number of facts in front of us to make inference. In most things in life this is the case, but human behaviour is complex enough to make that not generally true.
However, I would say that even when dealing with high complexity and uncertainty, the simplest explanation is still usually the most probable hypothosis, even if it has <50% probability.
The things I previously mentioned such as "Or that there is >50% probability that Brexit will literally lead to a neo nazi state in the UK within 10 years?" are mostly positions expressed by freinds. The group this person joined was advocating violent communist revolution and the murder of enemies of the people (as in it was an explicitly communist group, not a anti-Trump group that had been hijacked by communists), and so cannot be seen as a reaction to Trump or Brexit.
But, in the more general case, there are a lot of people, a lot of centera...
Well, in one comment a friend was advocating violence against perhaps the most right wing 10-15% of the population.
No, but I'm not under the illusion that I can currently make any significant contribution to changing politics - its certainly not my area of comparative advantage, but I could at least leave the country if things did start to get that bad. There would be fairly obvious warning signs that would not require a close watch on current events.
'Overuse of Occam's Razor?'
Anyway, I know that psychology is complex and the explanations I come up with are only my best hypothesis, not one that I would necessarily have >50% confidence in - I should have made that clear. Still, I have trouble thinking of other explanations for why intelligent, educated, friendly people claim to believe that about 50% - 95% of the population are evil?
Or that most old people deliberately vote for bad things because why should they care if they are going to die soon anyway?
Or that there is >50% probability that Brex...
All good points, in the general case - I myself frequently read about things I disagree with. However...
Even in cases that appear to be clear cut fear or violence mongering it may be that they joined the group to have its messages in their news feed for awareness, because they refuse to flinch from the problem.
That is more of a LW thing. Most normal people don't act like this, and the person I was thinking of certainly doesn't. Politics is about waving the flag for your tribe, and trying to actually understand the other tribe's point of view is like wa...
I think about politics far too much. Its depressing, both in terms of outcomes and in terms of how bad the average political argument is. It makes me paranoid and alienated if people I know join facebook groups that advocate political violence/murder/killing all the kulaks, although to be fair its possible that those people have only read one or two posts and missed the violent ones. But most of all its fundamentally pretty pointless because I have no desire to get involved in politics and I'm sure that wrt any advantages in terms of helping me to better u...
Except some people do sleep with strangers without charging money.
I too would like a more pacifist president, but realistically neither the libertarians or the greens were going to win. But this is more because of the huge amount of money spent on the military. A conventional war would be bad, but I don't see that it would be disastrous. NATO would easily beat Russia, and I'm not sure who would win in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but it would be over quickly - the decisive factor is largely naval, and naval battles are over quickly. Neither country can deploy a large fraction of their army against the other as they are ...
For the rest of us, it's a bit more complicated. It could be politically difficult to discuss, because male sexuality is nowadays usually shamed or dismissed as "patriarchy", but the short version is that many men have a preference for things that in the ancient evolutionary environment would be evidence that the child is biologically theirs... and let's just say that a history of sex with strangers for money feels like an evidence in the opposite direction.
But, if some men have a politically incorrect preference for virgins, how is a history of whoreing any different from a history of casual sex?
There's been a lot of discussion about Trump. But I think the actual most important aspect is one that I havn't seen discussed in any depth anywhere - there seems to be speculation that Peter Theil will be advise Trump on tech issues.
The president's (unofficial?) technology advisor will be someone who has donated to miri/open ai/life extension. This is great news, and I would argue far more important than any other factor except nuclear war. This comes at a time when AI risk seems to be starting go mainstream, when Obama has had discussions on AI risk (tha...
Stalingrad was an important strategical objective in that theater, but the Germans focused on it to the exclusion of all else, which is why they got encircled.
Tolstoy makes the argument that attributing Russia's defeat of Napoléon as due to some grand strategic brilliance is nonsensical,
Choosing to abandon and burn Moscow, while perhaps not strategic brilliance, seems like an impressive willingness to make sacrifices.
I don't think invading Russia was a bad decision per se, the problem is invading Russia during the winter which is what should have been learnt from Napoleon, who's army was destroyed by the winter, not by the Russian army. There was a long distance to cover to Moscow, and Germany should have attacked around the start of spring, not 22 June (Napoleon attacked on 24 June). If that was not possible during 1941, they should have waited till 1942.
More irrational was Hitler's decision to order troops at Stalingrad not to retreat, saying roughly "Too many G...
If you're working for $x an hour, do you think you would take fewer that 100/x times as long as someone who is experienced at web dev?
Fair pay would be $x an hour given that it takes me 100/x times as long as someone who is experienced at web dev. However in reality estimates of how long the work will take seem to vary wildly - for instance you and Viliam disagree by an order of magnitude.
The more efficient system might be for me to work with someone who does have some web dev experience, if there is someone else working on this.
What's hilariously ironic is that our problem immigrants are Eugine's sockpuppets, when Eugine is NRx and anti-immigrant.
That Eugine is so much of a problem is actually evidence in favour of some of his politics.
I can code in python, but I have no web dev experience - I could work out what algorithms are needed, but I'm not sure I would know how to implement them, at least not off the bat.
Still, I'd be willing to work on it for less then $100 per hour.
I'm assuming that the reason these people are pushing the idea that at least 50% of the US population are racist is because they want to normalise racism. Otherwise, they'rd be shooting themselves in the foot, normalising the very idea they are trying to stop, and no-one could be that stupid ... right?
\s
I think there are three main uses of which I am aware:
1) General sense of wonder and awe at real things: pantheistic 'the universe is god'; sacred geometry; nature worship.
2) Rituals, yoga, meditation without religious or paranormal baggage.
3) Paranormal beliefs that do not fit into an existing religious framework, possibly because you don't want to cause conflict between different religions so you believe in a non-denominational 'supreme being'.
Does anyone worry that (rot13 as possible memetic hazard for highly paranoid people)
Nyy bhe vagrearg npgvivgl vf orvat fgberq naq va gur shgher ragvgvrf' qrpvfvbaf ba jurgure gb gehfg hf (be cbfguhzna irefvbaf bs hf) jvyy or cnegvnyyl onfrq hcba jurgure be abg jr fgnoorq rnpu bgure va tnzrf bs bayvar qvcybznpl?
It's not good for the Yen when the US wants to introduce trade tariffs. It's also not good for the Euro.
With the stock market it's also not clear to interpret the message. Normally risky times mean that traders sell stocks and buy treasury bonds. Given that Trump suggested he might partly default on US debt, that's not a safe move.
Good point - I had not considered this. Still, I would assume that even if the dollar does not go down, there would still be some sort of sign of danger in the markets if there were possible economic problems. Maybe US stocks...
I wouldn't bet my money on such outcome, though. Would you?
Not soon. Maybe later, as solar takes over from oil. But maybe we can move in that direction.
To veer off topic: is there an analogous historical case to "uncontrolled third-world immigration" and if so what happened?
Well, its possible that e.g.
Conservative judges -> ban abortion -> increased crime -> government spends more energy trying to stop crime and less on FAI reserch -> paperclips
But we're into the realm of tiny minute one-in-a-million probabilities here. Altering Supreme Court appointments is not exactly the most effective way to fight x-risk by any stretch of the imagination.
I think c/c is likely to kill several billion people overall before we stop it, and might also lead to extinction.
Scientific consensus is that warming under 2 degrees c could be good, warming over that is bad. Worst case scenario is that we will hit that around 2060. Many forecast the singularity as most likely to happen in the 2040s, but even if that is over optimistic, solar panels are halving in cost per watt each decade. Naively extrapolating, by 2060 solar power should be 20x cheaper, so even if the singularity is delayed we should still be able to...
I'm not denying that Trump does not seem like the best choice (out of the entire US population) for geopolitics. I'll concede that point. But look at Hillary - doesn't she want to impose a no-fly zone over Syria? Threaten to shoot down Russian planes? Why? This isn't the cold war, where maybe we had to draw a line in the sand. If the Russians want to have greater influence over Syria, let them.
Maybe there is another level to this that I don't understand because I am not an expert in geopolitics, but I would have thought it wiser to not restart the cold wa...
Elaborate? Even with just a link?
Re Climate change, I agree with Kawoomba, with the caviat that GW could provoke conflict which causes an indirect X-risk.
Interestingly, the Green party candidate said Clinton is worse for nuclear war. Maybe she's wrong, but I don't think the issue is as obvious as you think it is.
Moreover, the Supreme Court nominees probably have indirect consequences on c/c aswell.
I though the Supreme Court dealt more with civil rights stuff. How will they affect CC?
That's not the only argument. The fact that Trump suggested that it's fine that the Saudi's (and others) get nukes. That statement gave him no electoral advantage but he still made it.
That is pretty disturbing. I wish people would lead with 'Trump is ok with nuclear proliferation' rather than 'Trump is basically Hitler'.
I don't think that's the case. I doubt EY would have made the same arguments against Ron Paul.
Back to the problem that 'right/left' is too simplistic. Perhaps I should have said libertarians/progressives vs authoritarians/conservativ...
Well, I agree with it. Yudkowksy and S/A both seem to view the world through the lense of "let's do everything possible to a) reach singularity and b) get singularity right" which I think is the only rational perspective based on their beliefs about singularity (and utilitarianism). The amount of value associated with the singularity makes everything else insignificant in comparison.
Well, I agree with that. The question is, does Trump as president increase the probability of human extinction, and why? Bear in mind that Peter Theil, who has donated a lot of money to MIRI, supports Trump, so its not as clear-cut as all the smart people being on the same side of this issue.
I would like this to be a comment on methodology, about if their arguments were sound given what they knew and believed. I most definitely do not want this to decay in a lamentation about the results
So... any comments on methodology?
EY's central argument for level B incompetence was that Trump is creating ambiguity around which countries the US will defend against Russia, which could lead to war. Now, I agree that it would be wrong for a sitting president to create that ambiguity, but a presidential candidate has to ask those questions, otherwise the foreign policy can never change. As long as Trump arrives at a concrete policy over which countries the US will defend when he becomes president, I don't see that there is a problem.
I also don't see that the status quo is keeping the worl...
Indeed, but I was wondering whether modern social and technological changes will accelerate this.
>this comment is pretty introspective and open to criticism, which I think is even more LW-y than being "smart".
Thanks.
I'm not going to delete my posts on second thoughts, it would not be fair to those who have replied to me. I sort of feel that all political posts should just be moved to a walled off area for cognitive hazards. I am however, committing to staying away from politics.
Perhaps I will create a new account.