There are a thousand striking at the branches of evil for every one hacking at the root account of the computer simulating the Universe.
THEM: Hello, this is CVS, pharmacist speaking. May I ask who’s calling? ME: This is Scott Alexander. Scott Alexander is located at the desk in his bedroom. Scott Alexander’s waking hours are between 5 AM and 9 PM on weekdays, and between… THEM: Excuse me, I don’t understand. ME: I’m playing a defect-defect equilibrium. For every minute you force me to sit through useless…
sigmaleph : official-kircheis : sigmaleph : official-kircheis : dostoyevsky-official : official-kircheis : dostoyevsky-official : dostoyevsky-official : i don’t understand the recent “how often do men think of the roman empire” trend. one of the most well-known recent academic and popular historians of the roman empire is a woman, mary beard. why do this? it isn’t cute or…
moral-autism : schraubd : One thing I tried to impress upon my Con Law students this semester (and every semester) is that the interplay between anti-discrimination law and freedom of speech (and freedom of religion) is complicated and raises a host of thorny questions that defy easy resolution. These issues, of course, lie at the forefront of the 303 Creative case currently before the Supreme…
There’s some controversy over the Dealbook Summit, so I looked into it. It’s some conference in New York. Speakers/attendees include Mark Zuckerberg, Volodomyr Zelenksy, Mike Pence, Benjamin Netanyahu, Sam Bankman-Fried (apparently despite everything), and the CEOs of Amazon, Blackrock, Netflix, and TikTok. The site describes it as an “in-person gathering” but I can’t…
jadagul : tanadrin : tanadrin : slatestarscratchpad : shituationist : theconcealedweapon : You really can’t overstate how little anti-worker rhetoric has changed over a hundred fifty years. ( source ) I will never understand the human urge to leap from “lots of people have thought this was true over a long period” to “and therefore it must be false”. (one could argue this graph shows high…
shituationist : theconcealedweapon : You really can’t overstate how little anti-worker rhetoric has changed over a hundred fifty years. ( source ) I will never understand the human urge to leap from “lots of people have thought this was true over a long period” to “and therefore it must be false”. (one could argue this graph shows high workforce participation in 1948, making it hard for…
jadagul : accordion-druid : Don’t Lie To Me About Web 2.0 If you’re like me and you’re trying to keep an open mind that there may someday be a non-scam application of blockchains, you’ve probably read some articles about “Web3”, which promises to re-decentralize the web by something something Blockchain. I realize this is far from the most important criticism…
I find the Queen interesting because she’s a nice elderly woman with no particular qualities, and people go crazy trying to come up with some kind of take why she’s incredibly special and newsworthy. She’s like a placebo celebrity.
In many East Asian folk religions, including Korean shamanism , a deity by the name of Maitreya appears as an ancient creator god or goddess. A malevolent usurper deity by the name of Shakyamuni (the historical Buddha) claims dominion over Maitreya’s world, and the two engage in a flower-growing contest to decide who will rule the world. Maitreya grows the flower while Shakyamuni cannot, but…
nostalgebraist : slatestarscratchpad : nostalgebraist : comments on mesa-optimizers (Copy/pasted from a comment on the latest ACX post , see that for context if needed) FWIW, the mesa-optimizer concept has never sat quite right with me. There are a few reasons, but one of them is the way it bundles together “ability to optimize” and “specific target.” A mesa-optimizer is…
jadagul : slatestarscratchpad : triviallytrue : succliberation : triviallytrue : lol. lmao even. The vast majority of post-op trans QoL studies use sample sizes of less than 30 people, unless it’s a meta-study that’s compiling the work of multiple surveys. I don’t think you want to challenge the findings of almost every single study of trans healthcare. Deciding whether or not to trust a study’s…
triviallytrue : succliberation : triviallytrue : lol. lmao even. The vast majority of post-op trans QoL studies use sample sizes of less than 30 people, unless it’s a meta-study that’s compiling the work of multiple surveys. I don’t think you want to challenge the findings of almost every single study of trans healthcare. Deciding whether or not to trust a study’s results…
The Tariff of 1828 was a very high protective tariff that became law in the United States in May 1828. It was a bill designed to not pass Congress because it hurt both industry and farming, but surprisingly it passed.
Short politics survey that will probably show up on my blog at some point: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEfxGN85uQwb-GGL1rvxLC-45SSKwTJlxzTQ8m_0n7es0pFQ/viewform?usp=sf_link
nostalgebraist : comments on mesa-optimizers (Copy/pasted from a comment on the latest ACX post , see that for context if needed) FWIW, the mesa-optimizer concept has never sat quite right with me. There are a few reasons, but one of them is the way it bundles together “ability to optimize” and “specific target.” A mesa-optimizer is supposed to be two things: an algorithm…
“He stated in 2007: “There are no more opponents of Putin’s course and, if there are, they are mentally ill and need to be sent off for clinical examination. Putin is everywhere, Putin is everything, Putin is absolute, and Putin is indispensable”. It was voted number two in flattery by readers of Kommersant”
etirabys : lightly edited marijuana shitposts from last night (one of the times when, alas, I hyperfocus on gender) being extremely cis and straight and polysaturated can actually trans you by making most of your psychological influences [opposite sex neurotype]. It’s true, it’s how this works. every day I goof off in a deep level, inducing russian lit levels of arthritic existential despair…
I hadn’t realized that the antifa flag has a picture of flags on it. I’m no vexillologist, but it seems kind of redundant.
When my mind hands me a small thought, I can ask “Is this true?” and my mind will answer “Good question, let’s go over three thousand different rationality techniques and see what answer each of them gives. When my mind hands me a big thought, I ask "Is this true?” and my mind just answers “It better be, m——–r, cause this is how you’re…