All of skeptical_lurker's Comments + Replies

>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.

>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... (read more)

>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 ... (read more)

4Randomized, Controlled
You could contact the admin team and ask, but alternatively, consider instead create a new account and engaging with non-political stuff -- this comment is pretty introspective and open to criticism, which I think is even more LW-y than being "smart".

>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... (read more)

1Randomized, Controlled
Was she part of a crowd? It seems like American cops are generally given a lot of leeway to make use-of-force decisions and that legal system has generally been reluctant to discipline cops for this. This seems bad, but importantly different from an 'execution'. Tensions do seem high right now, but I don't know if they're at an all time or high or otherwise unique. Dan Carlin has often mentioned the numerous domestic bombings in the 70s; this Rand article says there were 1,470 domestic attacks in the US in the 70s. I think if you're going to redefine 'execution' to include some forms of police violence at protests or riots, the bet is going to become too vague to be likely decidable. I'd also decline that bet, as we're already sampling from a population that's shown itself to be willing to show up to potentially kinetic protests, and I can't easily find out enough about the group I'd be betting on.
-2lalaithion
The officer fired a single shot into a crowd of individuals who were breaking down a barricaded door. I think that even the strongest police officer would have a difficult time subduing 20 people peacefully.

>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... (read more)

3gjm
US police officers shoot people while they are (or seem, to the police officers, to be) in the course of committing crimes all the time. Sometimes they kill them by other means besides shooting. Usually the crime they're supposedly committing is less serious than storming a government building amid cries to murder the vice-president. Sometimes there's not the least reason to think they're committing any crime at all. In some of the more obviously appalling cases there's a public outcry about this. The great majority of the time, there isn't. There are about 31,000 entries in the spreadsheet at Fatal Encounters, for instance; how many of those met with any more opposition or complaint than the killing of Ashli Babbitt? 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? (An aside: I was curious about where you were coming from, so to speak, so I had a quick look at your LW comment history. It seems that you post about pretty much nothing but politics (including under that heading highly-politicized topics such as race). I think we have different ideas about what LW is for.)
5Randomized, Controlled
I have not looked into the the details of Jan 6th deeply, but my understanding is that this was something like a riot, in which a large group of civilians were trying to enter the capital, without authorization, to disrupt part of the election process. 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. Define "mass" and "a few years" I'll consider taking the other side of this bet.

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... (read more)

2ChristianKl
Under occupation German culture developed a self-hatred in the 60ies.  I would expect that to the extend that there's self hatred in other ethnic group it's likely not a ethnic group that has the power in their territory. 
7ChristianKl
Sartre's Reflections on the Jewish Question is well worth reading in this regard. I picked it up after Michael Vassar recommended it. For Sartre (who was Jewish) a lot of what anti-semitism was inherently about is anti-intellecutalism. Given how people conceptualize Whiteness as being about the various intellectual features like valuing objective truth and high IQ, the content of both fights seems very similar. 
6Vanilla_cabs
My grand theory on this is that the various phases we've been going through the last century at least are decided by the power relationship between an elite (political, industrial or both) and the masses. During the cold war, the western elite had to make large concessions to the masses in order to stave off communism. In other words, the competition between capitalism and communism benefitted the arbiter, the masses: wage raises, (un)employment rights, strong unions, positive media representation of the middle class, cultural power, individual rights, etc. Now that the alternative has disappeared, the elites strike back. For that, keeping the masses divided proves extremely efficient. It's striking that most problems that occupy the stage nowadays are divisive, while 40 years ago they were unifying. Demands for global, universal progress have been replaced with inter-sectoral complaints. TL,DR: Pet theory: this self-hate is fostered by the elite. It's excellent at dividing the general population, and therefore neutralizing any actually relevant political demand/alternative. 1 discussion about UBI is drowned in the middle of 100 discussions about white privilege.

I can understand why a race realist would argue that beleiving the truth makes you racist, but why a vicious racist?

0RedMan
You're absolutely right, the word vicious is redundant. Colloquially, the word racist is understood to include any negative attribute (such as viciousness) that could be ascribed to a person.

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... (read more)

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.

8Habryka
Alas, I haven't been super much on top of support lately, so sorry for not responding. Sorry for this happening. I mistook you for Eugine_Nier, who was spamposting with a bunch of highly political stuff right at the minute you made your first few comments. It looks like you accidentally posted a comment twice, and the one that you posted twice was one that commented on the relationship between the MTG wheel and Nazism (actually making an OK point, but my pattern match system immediately matched it to Eugine's other spam comments). That, together with the fact that your email address was a fake email led me to the false belief that you were one of Eugine's sockpuppets. I unbanned you, and will try to be more on top of support in the future.

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... (read more)

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... (read more)

0Lumifer
That applies to homosexuality in spades, and yet gay people haven't been washed out of populations. By the way, keep in mind that "feminist" is not a very precise label. In particular, there is a rather large difference between the first-wave feminists (e.g. Camille Paglia) and third-wave feminists (e.g. Lena Dunham, I guess?). They don't like each other at all.
0dogiv
I haven't seen any feminists addressing that particular argument (most are concerned with cultural issues rather than genetic ones) but my initial sense is something like this: a successful feminist society would have 1) education and birth control easily available to all women, and 2) a roughly equal division of the burden of child-rearing between men and women. These changes will remove most of the current incentives that seem likely to cause a lower birth rate among feminists than non-feminists. Of course, it could remain true that feminists tend to be more educated, more independent, less traditional, etc--traits that might correlate with reduced desire for children. However, I suspect we already have that issue (for both men and women) entirely separately from feminism. Some highly-educated countries try to increase fertility with tax incentives and ad campaigns (Denmark, for instance) but I'm not sure how successful it is. In the end the only good solution to such Malthusian problems may be genetic engineering.
0knb
There are some intelligent and interesting heterodox feminists who spend a lot of their time criticizing mainstream or radical feminist positions. I could recommend them to you, and you would probably like some of what they have to say, but then you wouldn't really be challenging your current notions and wouldn't be getting the strongest defenses of current feminist thought. I'm not a feminist (or a marxist) but I do remember being impressed by the thoughtfulness and clarity of Friedrich Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State when I read it back in college.

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... (read more)

0bogus
Trump is the end of democracy-as-we-know-it, and both sides of the political spectrum agree that this is the case, albeit for very different reasons. But the United States were never founded as a democracy in the first place; they're supposed to be a federated republic, with plenty of checks-and-balances as an integral part of the overall arrangement. If our Constitution is worth more than the paper it's printed on, we'll find ourselves right back in what used to be the status quo.
4gjm
For what it's worth, I haven't seen the word used that way. But -- the standard disclaimer -- my left-leaning Facebook friends are not your left-leaning Facebook friends, unless there's some purely coincidental overlap, and yours may be more Nazi-accusation-happier than mine. Or both, of course :-). More seriously, I think your observations are adequately explained by the hypothesis that (1) Trump and his administration are much more unusual than Bush and his administration, (2) they are in fact distinctly more likely than Bush was (though still not very likely) to do serious damage to the US's democratic institutions, and (3) a lot of very smart people are somewhat mindkilled. I think #1 is obviously true, #2 is probably true, and #3 would be entirely unsurprising (much less surprising than all those people being utterly mindkilled). Incidentally, I do remember some not-otherwise-obviously-crazy people speculating that Bush would simply refuse to leave office after 8 years and that somehow the Republican-controlled Congress would help make it so. So end-of-democracy hysteria isn't so very new.
2metatroll
Putin's a mindkiller.

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.

2Viliam
Some people join the tribes because they are connected with the causes they support, but I think most people are there simply because of the other people who are there. When all your friends are X, there is a strong pressure on you to become X, too. And when people who enjoy hurting you are X, you are likely to become Y, if Y seems like the only force able to oppose X. It's like having a monkey tribe split into two subgroups; of course it makes sense to join the subgroup with your friends rather than the subgroup with your enemies. And the next step is making up the story why all good people are in your team, and all bad people are in the other team -- this signals that you have no significant conflicts in your team, and no significant friends in the other team, so you are a loyal member. But then also words have consequences, so if your team's banner says e.g. that you should burn the witches, then sooner or later some witches are likely to get burned. Even if most people in the team are actually not happy about burning the witches, and joined merely because their friends are there. Sometimes people agree that those words about "burning witches" were meant metaphorically, not literally; but there is a certain fragility about that, because someone is likely to decide that literally burning a witch will make even stronger signal of their loyalty to the tribe. It makes me sad that the popular political positions seem to be either nationalism or cultural relativism. Is there these days even a significant pro-"Western civilization" side? I mean a side that would say that as long as you follow the rules of civilized life, your language and color of skin don't matter, but if you as much as publicly talk positively about genital mutilation or "honor" killing, no one is going to give a fuck about your cultural or religious sensitivity, you are going to be called evil.

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... (read more)

0Lumifer
We never had and yet we all are here.
0gjm
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. Agree about first half; not fully convinced about second half. As you pointed out yourself, it's not that long ago that we had actual Nazis and Stalinists in power in Europe, and bad though early-21st-century politics is it doesn't seem like it's got there just yet. People have said horrible things about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but ten years ago they were saying similarly horrible things about George W Bush and, er, Hillary Clinton. But yeah, I can't see our existing political institutions coping very well with immortality or super-effective genetic engineering or superintelligent AI, should those happen to come along.

"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... (read more)

0Lumifer
You should find better friends. Terrified. What exactly are they terrified of? That their favourite political positions are not going to be held by people in power? In the West that's hardly grounds for terror.
2Viliam
Does it make a difference if instead of talking about "left" and "right" we focus on specific agendas? For example, if "left" includes both "gay rights" and "killing the kulaks", then it may sound scary for a left-leaning person to say "we had 50 years of the left progress, but now we will have 50 years of the right progress", but less scary if you translate it to e.g. "we have 50 years of gay rights, but kulaks are not going to be killed at least during the next 50 years". Yeah, this is too optimistic; I am just saying that perhaps focusing on the details may change the perspective. Maybe the historically most important outcome of the "50 years of right progress" will be e.g. banning the child genital mutilation, honor killings, and similar issues which the current left is not going to touch with a ten-foot pole (because they would involve criticizing cultural habits of other cultures, which is a taboo for the left, but the right would enjoy doing this). I guess my point is that imagining the "right" only clicking the Undo button during the following 50 years is unnecessarily narrowing their scope of possible action. (Just like the "left" also had other things to do, besides killing the kulaks.)
2gjm
Well, if this person is joining an explicitly and specifically violent communist group, then I guess that indicates that this particular person is sympathetic with violent communism. That's too bad, but it's also pretty unusual and I'd classify it as "this person is broken" rather than "politics is broken" unless what you're seeing is lots of otherwise sensible people joining explicitly violent explicitly communist groups. In that case, either we've got a general resurgence of violent communism (which would be alarming) or there's something unusual about your friends (which would be interesting but not necessarily alarming). I think you're right that the last several decades have been pretty good for progressive social causes, and that this seems like it might be changing, and that this might lead to more violence from leftists. My guess is that serious politically-motivated violence will remain rare enough that you don't actually need to worry about it unless for some reason you're a specific target, and ineffectual enough that you don't need to worry that it will have much impact beyond the violence itself. What's there been historically? Occasional riots (usually left) and demonstrations-turned-violent (usually left, though arguably when there's been violence it's been as much due to provocation from the police as to actual violent intent by the protestors). Occasional acts of terrorism (usually right, but occasionally kinda-left as with Kaczynski). All these things are really rare, which is why they make the news, which is why it's easy to get worried about them :-). And they very rarely have any actual influence on what anyone else does. The single most worrying political-violence-related outcome (to me) is that someone commits some act of violence and the administration uses that as a pretext for major gutting of civil liberties or something of the kind. The historical precedent I'd rather not be using explicitly is of course the Reichstag fire. [EDITED to

Well, in one comment a friend was advocating violence against perhaps the most right wing 10-15% of the population.

0satt
! That clarifies things somewhat.

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... (read more)

0Lumifer
Well, there is one simple explanation called bullshit. A lot of people are willing to pronounce positions and statements that they will not be able to execute in reality. Hopefully, most of them.
0[anonymous]
If you want non-meme based arguments, try visiting fora that cater to people capable of engaging in non-meme based arguments.
0gjm
I don't know exactly what you've seen and therefore it's possible that the following fails to address it. But on the face of it username2's diagnosis seems very plausible. Not the bit about choosing to see violence-mongering stuff to keep one's awareness and opposition keen; that's taking steelmanning too far. But: put yourself in the shoes of someone who is, as you put it, intelligent, educated and friendly, whose political opinions are generally leftish, and who is horrified by the rise of right-wing populism as exemplified by Donald Trump and Brexit and Marine Le Pen and so forth. These things alarm them and they want to surround themselves with ideas that point the other way, to reassure themselves that the world isn't entirely against them, etc. So they find a Down With Donald Trump And Brexit group on Facebook and join it. Some of the things it posts are extreme and violent; our hypothetical intelligent leftie deplores that, and would be happier affiliating with a large anti-rightist community that doesn't do that sort of thing -- but all the large anti-rightist communities have people in them who do that sort of thing, so they don't have much choice. Joining the group doesn't mean endorsing everything its members post. (It's not as if the rhetoric of the less-pleasant parts of the political right is any nicer or more sensible than that of the less-pleasant parts of the political left. Intelligent educated friendly right-leaning folk can find themselves with some regrettable -- dare I say deplorable? -- bedfellows too.)
2username2
Well, you got me. I thought perhaps you were seeing things like "Islam is a violent religion" and inferring too much into it. But most if not all of those examples seem inexcusable if genuinely held. Although the original point stand that the person subscribing to the group might be doing so in response to more mundane writings, and they are not endorsing the more extreme writing, which may even have been done for shock value. I don't know. Regarding the other point, it's not quite that Occam's razor is wrong, but rather having to do with ignorance of a complex system. "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. I can make Occam's razor predictions about the underlying reason for my wife doing something, and maybe my closest friends or siblings. But not others -- their mental states are too complex, too dependent on things I don't have information on. Anyway sorry to distract from your original question. I just wish there was a name and some literature regarding this bias because it seems relevant and important.

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... (read more)

0username2
I was going to remind you of the fundamental attribution error, but that isn't exactly what's going on here. Is there a name for the error of assuming the simplest possible explanation given the information available is correct, when it comes to human behaviour? Popsci aside, the simplest explanation you can come up with is usually not the case, because the other person is acting as a result of a lifetime of experiences that you have had at best only a small glimpse into. It's hard to evaluate exactly why they do what they do, without sitting themselves down on the couch for a few hours. If anyone knows what this error in analysis is called, I'm genuinely curious.

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... (read more)

0satt
Does it help to disaggregate "political violence", political "murder", and "killing all the kulaks"? I'm happy with some instances of political violence, and even some political murders are defensible. The assassination of Jonas Savimbi pretty much ended Angola's 26-year civil war, for example. To quote Madeleine Albright: worth it. If the people you know are thumbs-upping literally "kill all the kulaks" (and maybe they are! I'm sure I've seen that kind of stuff in YouTube comments and Stalinist tweets, so it is out there), I can understand your reaction. But if people are merely affirming that some political violence is worthy of support...well, I'd have to say that I agree!
0Gram_Stone
Why do you mourn when you can contemplate politics no more? What makes you think about it so much in the first place? That just seems like something you wouldn't want to ignore.
4username2
Or they agree with some aspects of a group but not others. Surely you don't agree with every opinion voiced on LessWrong, do you? Not even all of the generally accepted orthodoxy either, I'm sure. If you claimed you did, I'm sure I could come up with some post by EY (picked for representing LW views, no other reason) that you would be insulted to think others ascribed to you. Worth thinking about. 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. How others choose to engage in social circles should be treated like browsing data from a library -- confidential, respected, and interpreted charitably. We wouldn't want to be making thought crime a real thing by adding social repercussions to how they choose to engage in the world around them.

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 ... (read more)

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?

0Viliam
There seems to be a general rule that interactions involving money feel different than interactions not involving money. Not sure what exactly is the mechanism of the underlying feelings.

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... (read more)

2Turgurth
Check out this FDA speculation. Scott Alexander comments here.
0bogus
What I'm most worried about is conventional war. Yes I know Hillary would've been terrible too, that's not the point. Let's just say that our latest Republican president doesn't have a very good track record in that area.

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.

4Lumifer
The Russians are absolutely outstanding at this :-/
0NatashaRostova
Yeah, fair enough. Everything I know about that event comes from War and Peace and Wikipedia, so I won't argue on any specific ground. Tolstoy's bigger argument that there were lots of hidden, but crucial aspects, that determined the war, at the time, went against the traditional view of the time that it was all a function of Great Men. Or at least that's the impression I have.

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... (read more)

0morganism
I thought the reason to keep Stalingrad was because of it's gatekeeper status to the southern oil fields, which Germany desperately needed ?

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.

4Viliam
And when the dictator stops Eugine, it will also prove that Cthulhu always swims left. (Meanwhile, in a different tribe: "So, they have a dictator now, and of course it's a white male. That validates our beliefs!")
0hairyfigment
You're talking about someone using the easiest method of disruption available to individuals, combined with individual voter fraud. This is difficult to stop because of the site's code, which I think the single owner of the site chose.

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.

0Vaniver
Thanks for the offer! 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?

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'.

0bogus
Note that these three things are in fact quite interconnected, at least if you broaden 3 ('paranormal beliefs') to 'paranormal/non-physical aliefs', which of course may or may not stem from actual beliefs ('expectations about the world') in the rationalist sense; and 2 ('rituals' and 'meditation') to other mind-hacking practices which largely amount to the summoning and manifestation of inner psychological archetypes or mind-stances, experienced in personified forms which we may call "gods". There is a broadly consistent range of "spiritual" practices ranging from the purest and most "rational" sort of meditation, to what we call "prayer" in a religious context, to the sort of mysticism which is directed at "summoning" and even "channeling" or being "controlled" by a god or spirit. And of course, having a general "sense of wonder" about the world is also something that greatly enhances the effectiveness of these other practices.

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... (read more)

0ChristianKl
Quite a lot of money is going to flow into the US when there's a deal to allow companies like Apple to move their cash to the US and not pay the full taxes for it. In general a trader who assumes that Trump engages into actions that are harmful for other countries also has no reason to move assets to other countries.

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?

1Ericf
The example that springs to mind is the 19th century US. And what they did was conquer and drive off (or kill off) the existing residents west of the Mississippi to make room for the new immigrants.
0TheAncientGeek
How literally are we taking "uncontrolled"?

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.

1entirelyuseless
Something like that could happen, but someone could just as easily come up with some opposite chain of events. And saying that you could still make an overall estimate of which is more likely is no different from saying that you can choose which religion is best for Pascal's wager.

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... (read more)

-3obin
There's no such consensus. There is a consensus (which may be more political than scientific in nature) that below two degrees is somewhat safe, globally and on average (locally, not necessarily; ask the island nations of the Pacific). And my impression is that more recent research has suggested that two degrees may be worse than previously though. Naively. I think solar currently accounts for less than one percent of global energy consumption. With CO2 levels still on the rise, there's a long way to go before the world economy is rid of fossils, and we don't know if solar and other renewables can actually scale high and fast enough. There are reasons to suspect they can't. Plus, with renewables like solar, we would also need to be able to store electricity on a massive scale, and that may not be possible either. Edit: Whoah, -3 with no responses. Now I get why LessWrong shuns politics.

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... (read more)

2Viliam
It would be nice to see USA turning against Saudi Arabia, and Russia against Kadyrov and Assad. I wouldn't bet my money on such outcome, though. Would you? Okay, here is the part where I would be much more comfortable betting my money.
0ChristianKl
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. Many stocks did rise because of the prospect of their industries getting deregulated. The reduction of the corporate tax rate would normally also be expected to produce a stock market rise. The prospect of various US companies maybe being able to bring home to the US huge sums of cash that's currently overseas also has an effect on the macro. But the role of the US president shouldn't be to beat other people but to create win-win situations. Trump isn't used to seeking win-win. Trump will have advisers but that doesn't automatically mean that he listens to them. Policy wise I don't think Clinton's plan is good, but I think her moves are calculated.
0siIver
It is very strange to me that claiming c/c is an X-risk is the position that requires explaining, rather than the opposite (as is the amount of scepsis/shading thrown at c/c on LW in general). Afaik (correct me if I'm wrong) the future of humanity institute also treats it as an X-risk, though they assign a lower probability to it than to other ones. That is my view aswell, I think c/c is likely to kill several billion people overall before we stop it, and might also lead to extinction. As for how that would happen, I imagine a sceanario of nation wide collapse, caused by mass migration due to flooding and hunger. Alternatively, it could escalate chaos and cause nukes to be used without leading to total collapse.

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?

-2siIver
That is not a caviat. That makes it an X-Risk. It is utterly irrelevant whether c/c leads to extinction directly or indirectly, what matters is the probability that it does in fact lead to extinction. If you want to argue that the probability is lower because it requires a longer causal chain, that would be a different point. Supreme Court: for one, it was responsible for Bush coming into office instead of Al Gore. That impacted c/c massively. I would agree that this is a scenario unlikely to happen again, and I am not an expert on Supreme Court matters, hence why I said 'maybe'. My suspicion is that, because political spectra are so heavily labeled, everything that shifts the discourse significantly also impacts every other issue. I think Stein is full of crap in that regard. I've followed her pretty closely, and my reading is that she wants to distance herself from Hillary as much as possible for political reasons, but also won't quite go as far as to claim Trump is better in general. You can always find some people who back any position. But the idea that Clinton is worse for nuclear war is frankly kind of silly. Some things don't have to be complicated. One person gets provoked by Tweets in the middle of the night and has repeatedly demonstrated ignorance about foreign policy, the other is the most establishment politician possible, and yes, the system as we have it has avoided using nukes for a long time. Sure it could have been luck, but that's not the plausible explanation. ( I would agree that the median of Clinton's foreign policy would have been more violent than that of Trump. That is backed by evidence. But that's not the question. )

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... (read more)

5ChristianKl
The problem isn't just the call for uncertainty around defending NATO countries or saying that it's okay that the Saudi's get nukes. It's that the reason he makes those bad calls is that he lacks the skills to be a good B-player. EY then references how various right wing national security officials think Trump is dangerous for those reasons. For any individual call you can make the argument that the call is unlikely to cause WW3 but a person who consistently makes bad calls like that because he doesn't listen to experts and has a low attention span is likely to make a lot of bad judgement calls once in office that in turn create problems. ---------------------------------------- There's a lot more than just a court case. You are off by more than an order in magnitude on the amount of court cases. In many cases a person who sues was also looking at paying more in legal costs than the case is worth and Trump had lawyers who dragged out cases for years. It got so far that contractors in Atlantic City institute what the called a "Trump tax" that meant charging Trump more because they didn't expect him to pay his full bills: http://europe.newsweek.com/quora-question-does-donald-trump-refuse-workers-pay-508992?rm=eu The issue here isn't raising the debt but saying on the campaign trial that he plans to default on US debt. When a president speaks about their willingness to default on debt that creates a reason for rating agencies to downgrade US debt when means that the US has to pay more interest for their debt. I don't think it's a different topic from nuclear war. If the US doesn't do what it promised to other countries the way Trump doesn't payed his contractors that can lead to international tension and that tension can lead to war. A key quote from another article: Trump got angry with his employees upholding contracts about paying contractors.

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.

-5siIver

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?

0Luke_A_Somers
Sounds like acceptance of the Variance argument at least, possibly the first as well.
-3siIver
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. To be perfectly honest, I think this case is straight-forward. I don't see any argument against the above that has merit.

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... (read more)

-6TheAncientGeek
6ChristianKl
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. I don't think that's the case. I doubt EY would have made the same arguments against Ron Paul. The problem isn't that Trump is right but that he doesn't listen to experts, doesn't read and is a compulsive liar. Not the usual kind of lying that most politicians engage but also lying to the people around him. Trump got rich because he frequently didn't pay people what he owned them. The the campaign he suggested that he wants to do the same with US debt. It's bad moves that lead to bad foreign policy.

Indeed, but I was wondering whether modern social and technological changes will accelerate this.

Load More