Month: September 2024

War Vibes

Chill War

And shooting retreating soldiers isn’t a war crime either. If they’re not surrendering, they are valid targets. What is a war crime is not based on vibes or feelings; it has an actual definition.

Also, yes, I would say that about Russians. Though I very much hope Ukraine prevails so we do not have to fight in Poland or the Baltics in 2032, the Russian army would be fucking foolish not to shoot retreating Ukrainian soldiers right in the back. As already noted, that is not and never has been a war crime. It is simply how war is conducted if one wants to win.

People get angry that words have meanings and that what’s true or not is not just based on vague notions of propriety picked up from TikTok. Too bad for them.

Ique

Chill Culture

If porn creates negative unrealistic expectations of women to men, are there media forms that create the unrealistic expectations of men to women, and are there examples?

This is a good thread. Most are accurate. I’d add (others in that thread say this too) that a lot of women now expect you to have a chiseled, perfect body with a six pack (à la Hugh Jackman in the later Wolverine films) while they look like a crack-smoking dumpster orangutan themselves.

I don’t think that women realize what it takes to get jacked like that, especially if you don’t inject any steroids or other hormonal enhancements.

I’m just at the edge of that sort of physique and I’ve worked out ~six days a week for an hour-ish or more every day for six years to get there. And to actually look like Hugh Jackman in a shirtless scene, completely ripped abs and all, I’d have to starve myself for a month and dehydrate myself for three days beforehand (that’s what he does).

That is a hugely unrealistic expectation that more and more women seem to have.

Liftup

Chill Gutter Philosophy

I think people are going to be really disappointed in 50-100 years when robotics, LLMs, and custom reasoning systems become good enough to create an AI that is functionally and cognitively indistinguishable from the average human.

I do think this is possible, and likely. And it’ll show both how limited and how complex humans are. Especially the default model. There are no miracles within us. No, we must create those ourselves. Out there.

Chill Links

Study: A key ocean current is holding strong, despite a predicted slowdown.

The World’s Most Desperately Needed Airplane Is Back in Production.

Fed’s high-rates era handed $1tn windfall to US banks.

War in the age of AI demands new weaponry.

Free Speech on the Internet: The Crisis of Epistemic Authority.

Inside the Loop: Decoding the Mystery of Self-Awareness in Cognitive Systems.

The problem was the same for the Positivists as it was for Hume-there is really no way to make verification work without either rendering it trivial, or so epistemically conservative that it makes virtually all knowledge impossible.

Disorg

Chill War

Russian assaults are all so disorganized. I do wonder, though, in the era of drones and ubiquitous battlefield surveillance, would more organization even matter? Not without good EW I guess.

In the future, the army with the most drones that are the least jammable wins….

Doc Up

Chill Science

True. I read more medical papers than nearly all doctors and it’s not even close. Of course, it’s possible to go really wrong here if you are not rigorous. But that’s also true of credentialed scientists. However, it’s not all that hard to know a whole lot more than an “expert” if you study that topic intensively — because they will not have done that.

Many scientists and doctors want to be worshipped rather than to find the truth. And that is a real problem.

Offices

Chill Politics, Prediction

I am the worst at political predictions, so take this with a grain of salt the size of Saturn, but I predict that Harris will narrowly defeat Trump, the coup attempt will last a few months but fail as some key Republicans turn against him (and he will have zero military support) and Harris will take office, perhaps a little late.

There will be some political violence but as most Trump supporters are obese 52-year-old white men who can’t run more than 10 feet without keeling over dead, it won’t amount to much.