Down at the end, I'll offer an excerpt from an essay on my alternate site asking "Does government-funded science play a role in stimulating innovation?" Both the far-left and today's entire-right share in common a cult reflex answer to that question. An answer emblematic of the lobotomization of our time.
But do hang around for that excerpt, at least!
== Another milestone raises a serious question ==
With the passing of the "Greatest Generation" (GG) - parents of the boomers - and now Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter - perhaps it's time to re-evaluate the America... and world... that they made.
Especially the Rooseveltean social contract that transformed the USA into a world titan, science-leader and awash in wealth, while setting us down an inexorable road toward some kinds of equality: first regarding social/working class. But then (admittedly far too-slowly!) race/gender and the rest.
That social contract directly correlated with the highest rates of middle class prosperity increase, fastest startup entrepreneurship and lowest levels of wealth disparity the world had ever seen. But it has been - since the 1980s - carved-away on a range of incantatory excuses and partially demolished by a massive campaign of conservative 'reforms'...
...economic and social theories that were supposedly aimed at enhancing creative market freedom, but that correlated exactly and always with reduction of innovation and competition, while restoring the one trait that the Greatest Generation despised most... born-class as the primary decider of a child's destiny.
This campaign was justified by guys like Milton Friedman and Robert Bork, and think tanks such as Heritage and AEI, that continue pushing utterly-disproved notions like "Supply Side (voodoo) Economics" - that never had one successfully predicted positive outcome.
(In science, a theory is abandoned in the face of relentless predictive failure, but cults don't do that.)
In the 90s, those pro-oligarchy economists were augmented by "neocon" imperialists who urged both Bushes and Dick Cheney etc. to plunge us into blatant traps that had been laid for us by Osama bin Laden and his ilk. Those Middle Eastern wars were supposedly in revenge for 9/11 attacks that (always remember) happened on their watch. The neocons openly brayed their ill-disguised glee at transforming an 80% benign American Pax into a thumping, gallumphing empire.
(My hero - George Marshall - held meetings in 1945 revolving around a question that no leader had ever asked, before: "We are about to become an empire. What mistakes did all other empires make and how can we make something that succeeds? That won't make us hated and eventually destroyed?" (paraphrased))
Look at the blared yowls of Wolfowitz, Nitze, Adelman and the other neocons, in those days, and tell us you see any signs of wisdom, or awareness of the traps they were falling for. Alas for them, their orgiastic era was brief. America soon soured on imperial preenings that distilled down to $trillion dollar ripoffs. At which point those poor neocons were promptly flushed away by the Republican establishment - without even a word of thanks - as oligarchy decided to veer republicanism away from armed adventures, over to populist/isolationist/lobotomizing/nerd-hating classic confederatism... now called Trumpism or MAGA.
But don't be distracted... all along, those apparent gyrations were superficialities. The central goal has always been the same. To defend and expand "supply side" tax grifts for aristocracy while crippling the Internal Revenue Service, so that a myriad cheats and thefts should remain hidden.
No other 'priority' (e.g. the border) got more than lip service. That is, until the virulently riled MAGAs ('Do you still think you can control them?' Watch Cabaret!) demanded real action on abortion and other social incitements.
A lot of dems/libs went along with Supply Side (SS) in the 80s and even 90s, until, by it's 4th round, the effects grew clear: that not a single positive outcome prediction - not one - ever came true.
Here, in this New York Times article - Google on Trial - a corner of this program is appraised -- whether anti-trust laws can and should be used to break up super-corporations like Google who have inherent advantages. And yeah, that's a major issue. Cory Doctorow rails about it, entertainingly.
Left out are more imaginative solutions. Like whether it's time to help mom & pop America and get needed revenue by instituting a 5% National Sales Tax on interstate internet purchases. Since you-know-who (a South American river) is no longer a baby - but now a market dominating behemoth. In fact, since we all rely on that central market, without much other choice, isn't that the very definition of a public utility? (Ponder that. Treat that unavoidable e-marketplace like electricity and water and trash pickup. If there's no competition, then regulate it to be flat-fair-for-all?)
But the core issue that I keep returning to is one of tactics - at which Democrats (the Union Side in this 8th phase of the 250 year U.S. Civil War) have proved utterly inept!
And this...
In this conversation, Evan Anderson, CEO of INVNT/IP, an expert on global manufacturing and supply chains, takes us on a deep dive into the power dynamics between the United States, China, and Taiwan.
== Merits and drawbacks of government-funded science ==
And finally, as promised, here's that excerpt from an essay on my more formal, WordPress site asking "Does government-funded science play a role in stimulating innovation?"
There's a deep-cult that underlies many of our familiar political cults. What do the far left and today's entire right share in common? A desperate urge to AMPUTATE our options and methods down to only the few that they prescribe. And hence I posted (on my formal WordPress site) a dissection of this shared, sanctimoniously-oversimplifying, mania.
If you are interested in this... and especially whether government-funded science has played a big role in "Making America (and civilization) Great," then drop on by.
196 comments:
I always go back to Robert Wilson's Congressional Testimony in the spring of 1969.
https://history.fnal.gov/historical/people/wilson_testimony.html
He was asking for funding for a particle research facility (later named Fermilab). The Senate repeatedly asked him if there was anything in this research that might help in the defense of the nation (ie. be of any real value). At one point, Wilson replies, "it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending."
I've used "Worth Defending" elsewhere many times, second only to "Calculemus".
Sorry for repeating a story that most CB'rs already know well.
Won't be checking in as much, this week. But you folks have fun!
db
"Instead of BANNING a 'sin' - which we know (from the failed Drug War) does not work, how about trying what does work?[DB]
A nice question with a freaking obvious answer:
There's no reason for either side to change tactics because both the Progressive Left & Regressive Right are fully vested in 'banning sin', the sole difference being the definitional nature of the 'sins' that each side wishes to ban.
From sugary soda pop & climate changing cow farts to almost every 'ism' & 'phobia' under the sun, the Progressive Left seeks to ban everything that they hate with the zeal of a New Age religionist, whereas the Regressive Right seeks to ban the more traditional sins of blasphemy, theft, murder & sodomy.
This is especially evident when Dr. Brin condemns conservative republican 'moral turpitudes', even though these same condemnation-worthy turpitudes are practically CELEBRATED among progressive democrats.
That former Republican House Representative Hastert was once sentenced to 15 months in prison for 'financial offenses related to the sexual abuse of teenage boys', it's a near irrelevant non-sequitur as 'sodomy' is a glorified virtue among the progressive LGBT+ Pride movement (because 'Love is Love'), as evidenced by the gay democrat operatives who recently filmed themselves engaged in buggery on the Senate floor (which, according to Biden's own democrat DOJ, was neither sin nor crime).
This approach comes directly from Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals', specifically Rule #4 which instructs the adherent to "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules", which only proves that Dr. Brin's moral turpitude wager is a disingenuous argument at best, as it has absolutely nothing to do with the 'comparative morality' of either party, but only serves in the rhetorical humiliation the designated opposition.
Similarly, Dr. Brin's frequent attacks on conservative 'Supply Side Economics' (a macroeconomic concept that contends that decreases in taxes & government regulation leads to increases in the supply of goods & thereby fosters economic growth) is sheer partisanship, as its converse, progressive 'Demand Side Economics' (the assertion that economic growth & full employment are most effectively created by excessive government regulation in order to foster a high demand for products & services) is just the opposite side of the same coin, whereas the true economic reality falls somewhere between these two extremes.
Our host also mentions the Rooseveltian Social Contract but overlooks the fact that said 'social contract' is now as dead as our Greatest Generation, having grown & metamorphosed into a monstrous Ponzi scheme that now steals money & resources from Peter to pay Paul with no intention of ever paying Peter back, while enriching corrupt politicians and foreign nationals at the expense & impoverishment of the domestic tax payer.
Frequently, Alfred has mentioned that 'Taxation is Theft', but it's much worse than that as taxation is actually SLAVERY (of a proportional variety) wherein the slave is defined as someone who is forced to work, not for his own enrichment, but for the enrichment of the tax collector, the government or some undesignated 'other', as all-cause government taxes now exceed 50% of one's personal income in both the EU & US, meaning that every individual western worker & producer is now 50% a slave.
Fifty Percent A Slave is a film soon to be released by Paramount, but I'm looking forward to the pending sequel, tentatively titled 'The Bloody Western Slave Revolt of 2024', due to drop this Fall.
Best
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/23/opinion/alabama-embroyo-dobbs-reproductive-freedom.html
More recently, in the immediate aftermath of the court’s decision in Dobbs, conservative lawmakers across the country began to introduce laws and state constitutional amendments that would establish fetal personhood, rendering abortion permanently illegal, with no exceptions.
Again, I ask (singing in the shower to myself) why this conclusion is presumed to be so. Personhood does not render killing of an adult human being "permanently illegal, with no exceptions". Even among Republicans. States are allowed to execute human beings. Police are allowed to kill someone who is threatening their lives or the lives of others. Heck, private citizens (George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse) are allowed to kill in self-defense, even when they themselves instigate the threatening situation. Not to mention how much Republicans love to bomb foreign cities, despite their being full of children and pregnant women.
There are degrees of accidental death, involuntary manslaughter, and the like when it comes to inducing the death of full-fledged pre-born human beings.
In what universe does none of this apply to the unborn?
I still maintain the thought that the development of western capitalism from social market economies towards a rapidly developing neofeudal order is somehow related to the fall of the Warsaw pact. With a little aid by political demagoguery, globalization, a-social networks and the availability of cocaine, granted.
Maybe social democracies need that big, bad, red empire to stay in their tracks.
Der Oger,
Maybe social democracies need that big, bad, red empire to stay in their tracks.
I doubt it. We have each other and the variations on a theme we each employ to argue about too.*
The Warsaw pact was going to collapse on its own. None of that was sustainable. Those big bad reds were just ensuring that the rest of us had to do a lot of slaughtering before we got through to the core assuming we were willing to fight a land war.
* I sincerely hope this is true. Future forensic investors will be able to date my birth with high precision from the isotopes in my teeth. I was born in the year of peak-above-ground-testing and my teeth will testify to that fact for ages to come.
We don't need that kind of opponent to keep us in our tracks. It's more likely we'd blow each other off the map like we almost did a few months after I was born. It's more likely we'd have no social market economies. Maybe no markets of any kind for many generations.
Locumranch,
…Alfred has mentioned that 'Taxation is Theft', but it's much worse than that as taxation is actually SLAVERY (of a proportional variety)…
No. I don't think you get it. I'm not forced to work for the tax agent. I'm forced to fork over a pile of money. Theft is the appropriate term. Slavery is not.
The fact that a percentage of my income goes to taxes does not mean I'm working for the tax agent. It means that what I collect in exchange for my labor is being taken. I can go flip burgers if I want leaving the taxman almost nothing, so it is my choice when I take a job with a larger income.
Don't get these mixed up because slavery and theft are bad enough on their own. Slavery involves coercion of a natural person. Theft involves taking property. Only when slaves are stolen should you consider putting the terms together.
———
everyone else,
For anyone new to my position on this, I say I understand why libertarians feel that taxation is theft, but only sometimes do I PERSONALLY feel strong enough about this to agree with them. Those times usually arrive around April 15th for some strange reason. 8)
I'm very willing to help pay for certain things our governments support. I'm even willing to do so using regressive income brackets. I get it that I can afford to pitch in more than a burger flipper.
I'm also willing to pay my taxes because I have no desire to spend time in a jail cell. While I have opinions that at least partially align with libertarians regarding the modern practice of taxation (that currently eats about 1/3 of my income), I'm not willing to fight about it.
As for Social Security, I DO see it as a Ponzi scheme the way it operates right now. It's not that I disagree (entirely) with how wealth is redistributed, though. It's just that I don't believe the promises made to support retirees can be sustained without stealing a whole lot more of our incomes than we currently pay as our social security 'contribution'. I think the promises we are making future old people are entirely fake AND perceived as entitlements. When we fail to deliver someday, all Hell is going to break loose.
Hi Alfred
Re your Social Security
Its actually quite well funded and all that would be needed to make it bullet proof would be to remove the "Cap" on contributions
Which as somebody with no skin in your game I see as a good idea anyway!
I agree with you on the cap. That does strike me as kinda silly. It makes sense in that social security was originally pitched as a kind of insurance policy (which has a price/year), but the modern interpretation of it as an entitlement undermines that.
It is NOT properly funded. To make it work they will have to pull other money in that did not arrive through the social security deduction. If they dropped my income tax percentage and increased the social security percentage it would begin to reflect reality. They don't do that... for a reason. We'd see what the system might actually cost us and that retirement 'entitlement' would get weighed against other things we might do like pensions, 401K's, IRA's, etc. They need us to keep pitching money at the system because it has become something close to a Ponzi scheme.
I'm mostly not opposed to what we are trying to do with that money, but I despise false promises. My sister eventually had to retire for health reasons and then needed help with medical costs. Social Security was the promised safety net. The rules are still rigged for it to be an insurance policy with a reluctant payer, but she needed it in the form of an entitlement. It wasn't... and really couldn't be. When she died the hospitals who provided ER support had to eat those costs... which really get passed on somehow to the rest of us buying health insurance.
I won't go into my mother's story.
False promises are despicable.
Alfred & I are both entitled to our own opinions regarding taxation, yet even he cannot deny that slavery involves the coercive & confiscatory THEFT of an individual's life, liberties, labours, properties & earnings, regardless of the supposed benefits that this type of 'redistributive' thievery may be said to confer upon the greater collective.
He also promulgates a fiction when he argues that one can somehow escape taxation by simply 'flipping burgers' (and/or engaging in a low value occupation) because this approach is merely a tax minimization strategy rather than a true escape, since actual attempts to 'escape taxes' are often punished by the loss of liberty & the penal servitude (aka 'overt slavery'), as befits the individual who is believed to be either wholly or proportionally 'owned' by externally imposed collective cultural obligations; hence my 'proportional slavery' argument.
As for the shock & outrage that some express in response to Alabama's recent ruling that a frozen fetal embryo somehow 'equals' an autonomous human being... JUST DEAL WITH IT... as it is no more crazy than declaring that (1) Men & women are 'equal' and (2) Women have penises.
You've brought this 'equivalency madness' upon yourselves, so you deserve what's coming, by your very insistence that a potential human being is just a 'clump of cells', as a 'clump of cells' are we all, everything & everyone being EQUAL, and everything & everyone being equally disposable.
Best
Alfred Differ:
Those times usually arrive around April 15th for some strange reason. 8)
When the government typically gives some of what they've thieved from you back?
:)
Alfred Differ:
Don't get these mixed up because slavery and theft are bad enough on their own.
loc thinks that having to drive on the right or stop for red lights is slavery.
A while back, some of discussed Sisyphean tasks such as eating or taking out the trash.
Buying cat food is definitely one of those.
Just sayin'
Nvidia's market cap goes north of $2T. We are indeed living in the Nerdocene Epoch. That's 4000X what DT currently owes in court findings. Perhaps we're chasing shiny bobbles instead of the real news.
And that's before any musings about FORTH, WJCC, or the SELDON I psychohistory processor.
Well, some members of my family are in the "dances with wingnuts" category, and one of them sent me a "Ross Rant" - an economic forecast that he subscribes to - containing the following:
"The world is warming from El Nino and other natural astrological reasons"
I have never before understood the phrase, "The stupid, it burns".
Pappenheimer
P.S. Larry, the cat food / cat litter equation is well understood in my household.
Addendum: I guess the above phrase qualifies as a Feynmanian "Not even wrong."
Pappenheimer
Dr. Brin:
You wrote:
***
In science, a theory is abandoned in the face of relentless predictive failure, but cults don't do that.
***
That is Sabine Hossenfelder's critique of string theory; which in turn calls into question Robert Wilson's 1969 testimony.
Where did the string theorist hide from an experimentalist? Inside a black hole.
Why did the string theorist cross the road? To get to the 10th dimension.
How many string theorists does it take to change a light bulb? 10^500.
If anyone is interested, Shankar Vedantam's show "Hidden Brain" is doing a series on partisanship that has some hopeful conclusions. Not everyone is as looney as the media makes money portraying. This is today's episode.
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/not-at-the-dinner-table/
Paul SB
locumranch,
If you want to poke at my POV while our host is away, enjoy yourself. I might even be amused.
…yet even he cannot deny that slavery involves the coercive & confiscatory THEFT of an individual's life, liberties, labours, properties & earnings…
I assure you I can. My liberty is not my property. It is a state of being that can be tolerated or denied, but not given or taken. Rather like an existence verb.
As the guy formerly known as Mr Dictionary Definition, I find it awful convenient for you to drop definitions when they don't suit your purpose. However, I don't mind if you want to use English the way most everyone else does. Loosely.
You are in good company with others who see liberty as property, but I'm not one of them. Instead of saying I can't deny it, best stick with me being a stickler for certain libertarian/classical liberal definitions.
——
tax minimization strategy
Meh. It works. I knew a guy who looked at life that way. I also knew a different guy who looked at life in terms of mooching what he could from the government without ever getting a job. Turns out he had made a miserable job for himself with many mooching tasks. Eventually, he gave it up, got job, and started paying taxes.
Tax minimization is a rebellious approach to life when one cannot avoid theft. It is one of the possible responses in a negative sum game. Deprive the thief for long enough and they won't have the cash to do much of anything either.
Personally, I think of this kind of life as miserable especially when others won't play along enough to actually deprive the thief. While I might fantasize about the thief suffering a better organized rebellion, when I'm awake I recognize the thief as everyone else. I'd be advocating for screwing my neighbors if I actually wanted this rebellion to happen. Better to attempt persuasion.
Larry,
When the government typically gives some of what they've thieved from you back?
Why would you write your W4's that way? You are giving them a free loan because I assure you they owe you no interest on the money they withhold and have to give back.
I wrote my W4's so I owe a little bit in April. Not much, but usually near the limit where they start to get annoyed at me… because THEY expect to earn interest on the money they withhold from me. Well… they get to avoid the interest they pay when refinancing their debt.
So, not only do they steal from me, they demand I fork over the money in a timely manner so they don't have to pay as much to the bond holders financing all this debt. Do you know who those bond holders are?
scidata,
My portfolio appreciates everyone's nuttery-of-the-moment.
Still, the semiconductor sector is clipping along at a good growth pace and for a good reason. I overweight them much of the time because of fundamentals. I can't see how they won't be an even more important sector a decade from now.
A big part of the grumble with taxes is because the USA is not well organised
90% of people here and in the UK simply never fill out a tax form - its all done automatically and accurately
I DO have to "do my taxes" as I get income from abroad - which is done on-line and takes me about 40 minutes
Re: semiconductor sector
Apparently, Neuralink's first implant worked (controlling a mouse with a mind). Caveat because 'news by press release' is always risky. Here's the thing: a workable FORTH interpreter is about the same transistor count and complexity. So, we're approaching the age of literal computational thinking. A couple of years back, we discussed in CB how example code might be easily crunched by Johnny as in WJCC. How about if he simply runs the example code in his head? It may be time for an update to WJCC, especially if such Neuralink augmentations can be done with a simple headset* instead of surgery.
* Think the 'Teacher' in TOS SPOCK'S BRAIN or a bidirectional version of the headset in BRAINSTORM (1983). Although at my age and disposition, I'd prefer the surgical implant.
Alfred Differ:
I wrote my W4's so I owe a little bit in April.
Heh. Yes, I actually figured you'd be like that. I am too, though not as intentionally. It's because my wife has her W4s as if she's the sole breadwinner, so we always owe at year's end. I don't mind owing money instead of a refund--I just don't want the amount owed to be a surprise.
Our selves duly noted, though, most people are getting money back around April 15. There are whole scams designed around getting people to blow their refund. I'm surprised that one of the questions on the 1040 during the previous administration wasn't, "If you have an overpayment, do you want to donate the amount to Donald Trump?". Millions would have done so.
duncan cairncross:
I DO have to "do my taxes" as I get income from abroad - which is done on-line and takes me about 40 minutes
I married a woman who owned three separate businesses (only two remain). From that moment on, my/our taxes require an accountant. When I was single, I could do my own taxes on the (short) 1040-A form, and if I hadn't sold stocks that year, I could use the 1040-EZ form (even shorter) and be done in less than an hour.
The things we do for love.
Alfred Differ redux on W4s...
Not too long after I was married, I was unemployed for about a year, and then had to take a job as a contractor--something I had never arranged my life to do. I had absolutely no withholding and had to pay my own FICA taxes as well as income tax. Because I had only worked four months in the previous year, I could meet the requirement of paying "100% of last year's taxes" in quarterlies and hang onto the rest until the next April 15 without accruing a penalty.
However, I had calculated what I would ultimately owe and put that money aside each month instead of spending it. My wife's accountant almost had a cow when he had to give us the bad news that we owed something like %5000. But I already knew that and had prepared for it all along. Like I said, I just don't want to be surprised.
Duncan,
I barely have to fill in a tax return except for the rule that my signature has to be on it. My taxes are pretty straight forward absent big purchases and sales. If not for my one tiny brokerage account (almost not worth keeping) I'd skip over stock related stuff because IRA's don't count the same way.
Most of us could get by with automated calculation of our taxes… and I'm supportive if anyone wants to push for that. If our government is going to steal they might as well hide ALL the evidence. 8) Those of us who do file would basically be saying "No… you got it wrong… here is my correction." I don't think it will happen, though, because it would shift the burden of responsibility for errors from us to the IRS. Hard to justify tax penalties if it is them who makes a mistake.
———
Larry,
With the complexities around your wife's businesses, you are far better off with an accountant doing it all AND telling you what your W4's should look like. If you want to avoid surprises, I completely understand. I know what it's like to discover I screwed up. For mine it involved a house sale, so the f#$k up was stupendous. I had to borrow against my retirement AND cut a deal with the state. It was MY screw up though.
I've been there as a 1099 contractor. I wasn't any good at it. I could probably do it now with software, but that perspective taught me just how big the steal really is. Whopping big percentages we HAVE to add to bids matter. There is no way I'd try to compete for work in a low tax state while residing in California. I simply wouldn't be competitive without moving to Podunk.
I just don't want the amount owed to be a surprise.
I would say that's what tax calculators are for. Some are quite good… but with your wife's complications I'd just pay the accountant and file quarterly. Next time I do a house sale or any big purchase for a house, I'll be running to one as well.
scidata,
I'm skeptical of current neural link ideas. The Vision Pro headset can see my hands using cameras. How long will it be before some version can see my jaw muscles twitch for 'tooth clicks'? Nose and lips are very nearby too, so nostril flares and other facial expressions being read can't be far off.
I think neural links make more sense as input than output for most of us. Maybe not for people suffering forms of paralysis, but I still see the more valuable short-term use being sensory augmentation.
———
For the next generation I see the biggest buyers being those of us who want to turn dumb devices into smarter ones. WE are already pretty smart, but my current car is not. My house is not. My phone IS. Every one is caught up on the AI craze right now, so NVidia's products are highly visible. Thing is, you don't need AI (much) to build more IoT segments. You just need LOTS of computing power and software. I'm betting my future on whole-sector growth because I can't see how it WON'T happen short of total nuclear war.
Alfred Differ:
those of us who want to turn dumb devices into smarter ones. WE are already pretty smart, but my current car is not. My house is not. My phone IS.
I'm not on board with the "internet of things" craze. A car who can "talk" to GPS or emergency services, ok, I can understand (though I don't want the thing to become a brick whenever wi-fi is unavailable). I get why some people like to lock their house doors or monitor Ring cameras remotely (though I'd be very suspicious of hackers). But I don't need my refrigerator or washer-dryer to be internet-connected, and the idea that my tv set listens to and transmits sounds from my house is downright creepy.
Alfred wrote:
Most of us could get by with automated calculation of our taxes… and I'm supportive if anyone wants to push for that. If our government is going to steal they might as well hide ALL the evidence. 8) Those of us who do file would basically be saying "No… you got it wrong… here is my correction." I don't think it will happen, though, because it would shift the burden of responsibility for errors from us to the IRS. Hard to justify tax penalties if it is them who makes a mistake.
We really should have automated calculation, with of course the option to do it yourself or file corrections. I think the fact that we don't has less to do with the IRS not wanting the responsibility and more to do with the tax preparer lobby. They fight any changes to simplify things tooth and nail because there's just so much money to be made off the complexity of the US tax system. Of course they make it sound like the real reason they object has to do with the government trying to put one over on people by obscuring things. I'm sure there's a risk that a lot of people would just not even look at whatever tax report the government prepared and potentially forget to claim benefits they should get, but I think most people would be happy to live with that risk in exchange for less hassle at tax time.
Personally I much prefer to owe a little than not, because it means I'm not giving the government an interest free loan. This year I owe more than I'd like (hopefully not enough to incur a penalty) because I did some contract work on the side and didn't adjust my withholdings accordingly. But I was expecting it, I had money saved and earned some interest on it.
For me the most frustrating part of filing taxes is spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to file one specific small piece of information over a small amount of money that is needlessly complex (for me that's a small amount of foreign tax paid from some investments in a fund each year). The tax software UI for some things is absolutely awful. If it wouldn't cost me way more in taxes to move the money into another fund to avoid this complexity every year I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd love for the IRS to figure this stuff out for me.
Alfred Differ: I'm skeptical of current neural link ideas
In 2000, I started a company (corp) with one main product: a handheld Expert System shell* based on the Palm (Pilot) computer. Capture of, and interaction with, human knowledge without the human(s) being present is even more compelling than computational augmentation of thought. Those who spend enough time researching A.I. eventually come to the stunning conclusion that biological intelligence is not just orders of magnitude more powerful, but is qualitatively superior.
Dogs have mastered the subtleties of the human face. There's nothing to stop machines from doing the same eventually. I also agree about IoT, perhaps because I started out in embedded systems 40 years ago.
* A stroke put a halt to that enterprise, although I sometimes wonder which was the cause and which was the effect. I turned my attention to computational citizen science, which caused me to buy so many Nvidia cards that I probably seeded their eventual astronomical growth :)
Your being pretty uncharitable/misleading by presenting Kenysian economics (a genuine position held by actual economists) as the alternative to a bunch of only vaguely coherent political positions advanced by the republican party. The more appropriate alternative is Friedman's monetary theory which -- while also imperfect -- has made quite a few successful predictions and is acknowledged to have been an important contribution even by leftist economists.
I mean sure, for each policy you label supply side economics at some time there was an economic expert who supported it. But this just speaks to the fact that you can find an academics who will back whatevy dumb political shit you come up with. You could do the same with dumb economic ideas from the left. It's just that with enough academics every crazy theory will have a defender especially if you offer political status for doing it.
I don't have a horse in this race I just object to trying to settle hard questions of academic economics by looking at what a political party has done.
I'm skeptical of current neural link ideas
There are some related applications already used in healthcare. What remains a problem are infections and costs.
But there are some questions that remain open.
If we can access the information sphere directly with our brains, do we become even more vulnerable to misinformation, propaganda and (shudder) advertising?
What will totalitarian systems do with the neural link?
What about hackers? Murderous AI?
Do we develop as a species, or do we stagnate? With the link, there likely will come software that complements, assists, takes over parts of our ability to think - do we become demented hulls of flesh without connection to the infosphere? Should there be a minimum age for neural links to not impede brain development, or would it actually improve learning?
Will there be a new class system - the Linked and Unlinked? Will better-paid jobs require neuralinks, creating a caste of unwanted, unemployed outsiders? Or will it be a regulated technology (like, guns, maybe) to restricted to a certain portion of the society? Or will prices regulate it (restricting it to upper class citizens?) What happens if you cannot pay your fees anymore?
What are the implications of neuralinking species closer to our level of intelligence (like, orcas, dolphins, great apes, ravens, parrots)? Or even dogs and cats?
"Taxes Are Theft"
Usually, over here, the same people who utter that demand more police on the streets, higher conviction rates, longer prison terms*, increased military spending, better** education and modernization of infrastructure. When asked how to finance that, they usually flee the conversation or come up with solutions - like cutting down on social security - which in my eyes create more criminality and hardship***.
*especially for environmental activists and migrants, less so for white collar criminals and tax evaders
**except if it serves leftist-green, wokish indoctrination, of course. All talk about climate change, lgbtq+, the Nazi era, veganism etc must be kept away from the children, because, freedom./s
*** While libertarians over here are fervent supporters of Ukraine, they do not seem to see that their very politics play into Putins hand by dividing the house.
Republican politicians are in the business of defeating the other team. That's why they don't have a platform. When they accidentally "won" the fight against Roe v Wade, they lost a valuable issue, and they are making sure they don't "win" the border issue.
So they campaign against "woke". It's all about identity. The team with the red caps is our team. The "intellectuals" think they are so superior in their ivory towers and in the WalMart parking lots taking our jobs.
"Watchmen" writer Alan Moore once described an incident from his childhood, realizing while hugging his mother that it would be possible to grab a kitchen knife and stab her to death for no reason. He made it clear that he did not hate his mother or want her dead. The point of his thought was how it would be possible to do something so outrageous that it would force "the director" to run out from behind the scenes and shout "Cut!" A way of breaking the fourth wall of reality and seeing the man behind the curtain.
He also admitted that it wouldn't have worked. That no matter how outrageous an act he committed, reality would simply continue on as always.
But I get the idea that that's what many current Republican politicians and voters are attempting by shutting down the government, or defaulting on debt service, or inciting civil war. They want to crash the government, either in the expectation that they'll like whatever rises from the ashes, or just because they hate America so much that anarchy would be preferable.
They want to crash the government, either in the expectation that they'll like whatever rises from the ashes, or just because they hate America so much that anarchy would be preferable.
There is another, more insidious option: Destroying faith and confidence in democracy, de-politizing the society, so that they wont protest or rise up, and maybe even applaud and support it when the country is transformed into a dictatorship.
Larry,
…the idea that my tv set listens to and transmits sounds from my house is downright creepy.
I occasionally notice Siri listening on my watch because I said something that triggers the little swirly thing that acts as a hint that she's active and trying to answer. I thought I'd mind that more… but I don't. There are some terrible things Apple could do using her, but I suspect the many Apple employees involved in doing it would be sufficient to let us know.
There is a saying that libertarians like to use about guns. "An armed society is a polite society." I don't believe they are correct about that because an armed man feels more confident about engaging in violence. Just shoot first. However, a connected society just might do it. Shoot me and the evidence has already been recorded because Siri (or some other agent) was taught to freeze a copy of all audio she heard 30 minutes prior to the gunshot. We COULD do that and a shooter wouldn't necessarily know whether the person in front of them had opted-in. (This wouldn't be perfect, of course. Some shooters don't plan to survive.)
I think our host's predictions about cameras (and microphones) should be extended to include expert system agents like Siri. Stopping them simply won't happen, but knowing what they know can possibly be regulated. Opting in and out within your home should obviously be allowed with well documented defaults and periodic reminders. For example, my iphone just reminded me this morning that I allow persistent tracking of my location by two people. Do I want to change those settings? I don't because those two are my wife and son… and I don't mind. I also turned on a lot of the medical features that keep tabs on me… and I don't mind.
scidata,
…stunning conclusion that biological intelligence is not just orders of magnitude more powerful, but is qualitatively superior.
Yep. I've been following along from the sidelines watching as they learned to distinguish what used to be a big general bucket of topics called AI into many, smaller buckets. I'm a Hofstadter fan, so when he described a label for his kind of interests that had no mention of AI, I paid closer attention. I'm still certain we are heading someday to digital intelligences similar to our own, but there are going to be many other kinds built along the way… and the tech industry as a whole will grow.
Dogs have mastered the subtleties of the human face.
Some breeds are impressively smart and their owners have known it for ages, but even the dimmer ones figure out a lot about us if given enough time. I can't imagine why our digital agents would remain qualitatively worse… but I used to back when I thought language translation was out of reach absent a fully human level AI. Turns out we can do a lot well before we've figured out how humans do everything we do.
So… my money is still riding the semiconductor sector, but I'll likely cover parts of the communication sector too. Especially all the photonics ideas that could displace electronics.
Alfred Differ:
There is a saying that libertarians like to use about guns. "An armed society is a polite society.
That seems to me to be one of those theory/practice things. The theory is that impoliteness will be discouraged by those armed well enough to do so. In practice, the "politeness" is that of a populace always walking on eggshells, knowing that their slightest (unintended) offense might lead to retaliatory violence.
I'm also cynical enough to expect that at least some who say that mean, "A society in which no one is so impolite as to contradict right-wing orthodoxy." Right-wingers can use threats and violence to intimidate others and will often be backed up by law-enforcement. Liberals have no such protection.
my iphone just reminded me this morning that I allow persistent tracking of my location by two people.
We never had a tracker on my now-22 year old daughter's phone. Sometimes, we've joked about doing so. To which she informed us that she has an app that would inform her if she was being tracked.
Nothing ever ends. :)
Sad but true...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/opinion/constitutional-law-crisis-supreme-court.html
Stanford’s [constitutional law] Professor McConnell recalled a recent exchange in one of his classes. “I said something to the effect of, ‘It’s important to assume that the people you disagree with are speaking in good faith.’ And a student raises his hand and he asks, ‘Why? Why should we assume that people on the other side are acting in good faith?’ This was not a crazy person; this was a perfectly sober-minded, rational student. And I think the question was sincere. And I think that’s kind of shocking. I do think that some of the underlying assumptions of how a civil society operates can no longer be assumed.”
Re: semiconductors and A.I.
Some folks listen to my FORTH and GOFAI talk and dismiss me as an old fogey. Those people have almost never read Hofstadter, let alone Kemeny or Turing. Scammy hype and jargon do not wisdom make. Instant wealth doesn't prove sagacity. I see that Apple is now peddling 'Quantum-Resistant Encryption'; no longer content to wait for a new technology before capitalizing on it. Less peta and more pico I say.
Messed up the post above, so here the corrected version:
Apparently, there was a prisoner swap planned and negotiated for Alexej Nawalny: He and maybe two Americans in Russian Custody could have been swapped for a convicted killer.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/navalny-was-close-being-freed-prisoner-swap-says-ally-2024-02-26/
Traditional diplomacy did not work prior to the invasion of Ukraine, and it did not work here.
Putin will only be swayed by fear and existential threats to himself, polite gestures of good will are lost.
Cari Burstein,
…more to do with the tax preparer lobby.
Heh. I've seen the counter advertisements. If that lobby also includes the lawyers we hire to defend us in tax cases, I'm sure you are correct. I think it has to include the tax prep software companies who always dangle the insurance option (We will defend you!) just before we submit our forms. 8)
I think there is a strong angle FOR the IRS is the calculations are automated. Most of us really DO have simple taxes to file. The IRS shouldn't be spending much money processing the vast majority of us. With the world going digital, we should shift that burden for everyone who opts in. However… we will need them all to have a better understanding of the need for encryption and digital ID's.
…inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to file one specific small piece of information…
I have learned to distinguish two types. If the information would lower my taxes owed a small amount that isn't worth the pain of the effort, I tend to skip it and leave notes in my tax folder saying I did and why. If it would raise my burden, I slog through it… and keep notes for next year about the UI. I used to try to keep track of things for itemization purposes so I could avoid paying taxes on sales taxes, but that is a huge hassle usually overshadowed by the standard deduction… which is kinda the whole point of that deduction. Anyway… perfection isn't required IF the error would benefit the IRS. 8)
Der Oger,
…same people who utter that demand more…
Yes. Theft "if it is taken to do something other than I want" is the definition they teach when they do that. Makes great political mud.
Worse, though, are the people who approach it with absolutism in mind. Theft period. Since that definition clashes with the definition for 'Justice' (our neighbors have reasonable expectations of us) the absolutists are actually promoting injustice according to a very large fraction of people. Not only is that not winnable politically, it flies in the face of what it means to be human. Many of the rules we must follow are unwritten expectations we have of each other, so expecting a tiny few to be able to dictate those rules… well… we know what to call people who try too hard to do that.
So my remaining option is persuade my friends and neighbors that their expectations of me are actually unreasonable. Difficult, but it's at least possible. We've managed to slightly redefine the meanings of courage and justice over the centuries, so I'll settle for that.
------
In a wonderful demonstration for why I appreciate what the tech sector is evolving into, the text for this post did not vanish from my text processor when my UPS went OOPS earlier today. Full outage and everything... yet there it was waiting for me after I rebooted. Doesn't always happen, so some software engineer I'll never know designed the app and correctly.
the need for encryption and digital ID's.
IMHO the Norwegians have the right idea - Tax returns should be PUBLIC documents
Secrecy is ALWAYS about depriving somebody of something that is actually theirs
Alfred Differ: I appreciate what the tech sector is evolving into
I've noticed this too. Software (esp Operating Systems) are getting much better, and very fast. I have no idea why. Society seems to be bifurcating into Sapiens and Sapiens+. That might help to explain a few other demographic trends. Not entirely a healthy road.
Alfred Differ:
I used to try to keep track of things for itemization purposes so I could avoid paying taxes on sales taxes, but that is a huge hassle usually overshadowed by the standard deduction
You live in a "high tax state" like I do*. The one thing Trump's Republican Congress (pre-2018) passed was a tax bill that doubled the standard deduction and lowered the amount of state and local taxes you could itemize for deduction. As a result, I just don't itemize any more.
* A while back, Illinois doubled its state income tax from a "whopping" 3% to closer to 6%. At the time, Wisconsin and...maybe it was Indiana?...did a media blitz to convince Illinoisans to move to their states to avoid the taxes. Thing is, at least in Wisconsin's case, their state income tax was still higher than ours. Maybe their sales tax is lower--I don't know one way or the other--but that wasn't what changed.
Duncan,
Most of what appears in my tax forms isn't anything that would cause me headaches if revealed to the public. Most everything I document can be worked out in reverse to a decent approximation if you know where I live (actual address) and for whom I work (employer and job title). So the same for my wife and anyone with even rudimentary detective skills could guess my tax form entries and get real close.
What they won't necessarily guess is which 501(c)3's I support. Doesn't matter, though, because when I know the standard deduction is going to win, I don't bother listing donations. No point, right?
They also won't guess correctly on my investments which I have to itemize because of how the capital gains rules work. I would not like that information to be public since we might all have reasonable disagreements about investment worthy companies.
So… I mostly wouldn't mind our tax forms being public documents. The parts where I'd care, though, have nothing to do with depriving somebody of something that is actually theirs. I just disagree on whether others need to know my investment approach.
Larry,
The one thing Trump's Republican Congress (pre-2018) passed was a tax bill that doubled the standard deduction and lowered the amount of state and local taxes you could itemize for deduction.
Yah. That hit me enough for me to notice. Having my money stolen by one tax agency and more stolen on what was stolen by the other one annoyed me. I think about the irony when it get to the module in my tax software that asks if I suffered any thefts I want to try to deduct. I'm pretty sure it's not enough to trigger a change in strategy (away from the standard deduction), but I ponder the dark humor when I fill that field with $0.
I actually agree on increasing the standard deduction and eliminating SOME itemized deductions. I just happen to disagree that state and local taxes should be among the disallowed ones. Though I love the nature of 501(c)3/4's, I'd pick on them first. Well… I'd pick on churches first, but my home would probably receive periodic sprays of bullets for that.
scidata,
I have no idea why.
64 bit systems, LOTS of memory, lambda calculus, immutables, and monads from functional programming. The hardware helps enormously, but the ideas are sinking in too.
First time I REALLY learned about monads I did one of those head-smacks that could be heard across the room. Oh! Duh! Those would have saved me SOOOOO much pain!
So… hardware improvements and better design patterns.
It is seriously adding up… and I couldn't be happier about it.
Reading recommendation question. (I usually have several books going simultaneously and like to have at least one classic pulp on the nightstand for when I'm really tired.)
I have never read any of the 213 Doc Savage stories other than the one Philip Jose Farmer got permission to do. Any suggestions? I'll start with the first one, but from what I've gleaned some of them are real clunkers.
I still itemize even with the SALT change, but it's primarily because I donate enough money (even with my currently reduced rate in case my job implodes) that it ends up being worth it (on top of the state income tax and property tax). I try to tithe a percentage of my income to causes I care about (like Brin sometimes talks about in his posts), similar to how some folks do with their religious organizations.
I can see why itemizing wouldn't make sense for most people though.
Regarding the foreign tax credit stuff, I'm not sure it'd be any less work to leave it off my taxes, because it's included as part of my 1099-DIV so it'd probably be almost as much work to figure out how to make the tax software not try to force me to fill out all the details.
My boyfriend's taxes are so much simpler, I've always had thing or another to complicate my taxes since college.
What else is there to say?
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Feb27-2.html
It is a sign of how very much the country has become acclimated to the extremes of the Donald Trump-led Republican Party that a bunch of Nazis showed up to this weekend's CPAC conference, and it barely got any attention.
Nobody who was present this weekend could possibly have been unaware of the Nazi presence. They showed up at panel discussions to share their views on "race science" and how Jews are secretly behind everything. They goose stepped around in the lobby of the hotel where the conference was held, greeting each other with "Sig Heils." They made very liberal (conservative?) use of the n-word. Unless there is a revival of The Producers that we are not aware of, then these folks were dyed-in-the-wool Hitler fans.
Meanwhile, it is not like the conference was only attended by fringy elements of the GOP. Donald Trump spoke there, as did a whole bunch of wannabe running mates, along with Sens. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Tommy Tuberville (D-AL), Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Jim Jordan (R-OH), and a host of other high-profile Republicans. Not one of them raised a word of objection to the Nazis in their midst, as far as we can discover. CPAC organizers denied yesterday that any Nazis were present, but... there's video.
We wish we had something useful or insightful to say, but we really don't. It's absolutely reprehensible that these folks were not tossed out by the scruff of their necks, and anyone who participated in the conference this weekend should be ashamed of themselves for not denouncing the Nazis' presence. Of course, it's not like this is the first time the folks listed above have enabled this sort of behavior.
Cari Burstein:
My boyfriend's taxes are so much simpler, I've always had thing or another to complicate my taxes since college.
You sound like my wife. And your boyfriend sounds like me (before marriage).
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Feb27-3.html
Maybe, one day, the 45% of the country that votes Republican will grow weary of a party that cannot and will not govern, and that tolerates Nazis in its ranks (see above). But that day is not today, and it's not tomorrow, either.
On taxes, and how terrible I am at timing the market...
Back in the late 1990s time period, I was already expecting a rush to gold, and I was convinced to invest in a gold fund which happened to be through a Canadian company. For a year or two, the fund refused to appreciate in value, and as has been stated here already, having a foreign equity was a pain in the butt at tax time. So I unloaded the stock--just before gold prices went up through the roof.
That's one reason I no longer try to time the market.
In Panama for Ben Goertzel's conference on Beneficial Artificial Itelligence - or BGI gathering. How can we encourage a 'landing' when organic and artificial minds are mutually beneficent? Quite a group is here and YOU can tune in!
https://lnkd.in/gUFtYcBe
Just a few passing comments.
LH is right that much of the MAGA cult is based on apocalyptic millennialism. From grunt level MAGAs wanting the Book of Revelation sadism… to mid level ‘intellects’ pushing “Fourth Turning” insane ‘cycles’ … to putz zillionaires making prepper shelters so they can emerge from The Event to take charge in the restored feudalism of A CANTICLE FOR LIEBOWITZ, in which the elites’ main rivals – nerds -have all been lynched.
Der Oger also with: “There is another, more insidious option: Destroying faith and confidence in democracy, de-politizing the society, so that they wont protest or rise up, and maybe even applaud and support it when the country is transformed into a dictatorship”
Duncan: “Secrecy is ALWAYS about depriving somebody of something that is actually theirs…”
Well…. I agree in a general sense. Though both in EARTH and in Transparent Society I acknowledge certain types of limited confidentiality and “caching’ of truths that you have a strong interest in restricting for a limited period.
Dr Brin:
LH is right that...
Der Oger also...
"He is right? He is right? They can't both be right."
"You are also right."
Alfred Differ: LOTS of memory, lambda calculus, immutables, and monads from functional programming
Monads - gotta love that Leibniz. And for vast, probabilistic models (like computational psychohistory), lazy evaluation is a must. The problem with functional programming is that early education's coding curricula are brain dead and facile. The only thing worse than design-by-committee is design-by-consultant. The poor souls hit college carrying a mountain of cruft to unlearn. Something much more Feynmanian is needed (such as WJCC).
There are more things in heaven and earth, Oppie, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Church (left back at Princeton), von Neumann, Bethe, Einstein, Kemeny, et al. The unheralded dawn of computational psychology. LISP, BASIC, FORTH, Haskell. I'm only here in CB by the good grace of Dr. Brin, so I won't steer the discussion. I don't even like writing about this stuff because some people think I'm working on a prediction machine - I'm NOT (not even possible IMHO). Happily, WJCC and saving Pax Americana dovetail with my goals nicely.
Calculemus!
Larry Hart,
Wait a minute, . . . I thought Nazis were socialist scum? Shouldn't they be going to DP conferences?
More seriously, that article mentioned how the country has become acclimated to the extremes of the Donald Trump-led Republican Party, and I think that's accurate. But the press is largely responsible for that, IMO, because they have always and continuously treated the RP's extreme behaviors as if they are legitimate. It's all about clicks and views, an informed public be damned. The press has long since abdicated its responsibility and I think that is one of the major contributors that has led US society to the state it is currently in. These days the press, even the main stream press, is little better than Xitter or Facebook. And of course, the RP had a rather direct hand in sending the press down their current path.
There are a small number of right-wing and left-wing major news sources, but most of the mainstream press are neither. Most are simply carnies molding there messaging to get as many clicks and views as they can. The NYT is a great example. People accuse it of being leftist, and yet if I didn't know better, and I still have a subscription, I'd think they were actually working for the Trump campaign based on their coverage of Trump and his minions, and the current administration.
The press really, really sucks these days.
Darrell E:
Wait a minute, . . . I thought Nazis were socialist scum? Shouldn't they be going to DP conferences?
More to the point, shouldn't the party of Nazis be backing Ukraine against Putin's "de-Nazification" effort?
Doesn't matter. They believe everything Trump tells them to, even the things that contradict the other things.
Larry,
No one can time the market no matter what they claim.
Well... there is one exception. There are frauds out there who convince us to buy their crap at the wrong time. THEY create the timing, though, by doing what is usually the opposite of what they advise.
Your best option is to ignore them. Especially on matters of gold and silver. Stick to broad index funds or ETF's and try not to get caught up in day-to-day emotions. Unless you LIKE studying markets, it's best to assume no one can do much better than being occasionally better than random and that anyone who can is probably involved in one of those frauds.
Alfred DIffer:
I just happen to disagree that state and local taxes should be among the disallowed ones.
That particular change was not about sound fiscal logic. It was done for the specific purpose of hurting residents of blue states.
What they seem to have forgotten is that many Republicans live in (and pay taxes in) blue states, and they were none too happy. Their votes may not matter in a presidential race, but they do in congressional races, and many of them are savvy enough to know how their Republican congressman voted on the issue.
The press really, really sucks these days.
I assume that is because
a) Media have to stay profitable and to achieve this, they have to appeal to a maximized audience;
b) Journalists, especially those at the top, may succumb to the drug of political power, and move from journalism and investigation to oppinion-forming and activism.
My liberty is not my property. It is a state of being that can be tolerated or denied, but not given or taken.[Alfred]
Arguing with Alfred represents a unique challenge, as our self-identified libertarian apparently rejects the foundational libertarian thesis of Self-Ownership which proposes that all individuals have ownership rights over themselves, and therefore may do whatever they choose with themselves so long as they do not violate the self-ownership of others, as self-ownership means that individuals have a kind of control over themselves that one has over possessions one holds as private property, including the right to choose, control, sell, lease, rent, transfer, protect & enforce these self-ownership property rights as one sees fit.
It therefore follows that Alfred's overt DENIAL of individual self-ownership rights (which he does when he insists that 'My liberty is not my property') is either a disingenuous rhetorical gambit or an admission that he is 'No True Libertarian' & a closeted collectivist in libertarian clothing.
Wait a minute, . . . I thought Nazis were socialist scum? Shouldn't they be going to DP conferences?[Darrell_E]
Actually, they do as this a confirmed historical FACT, even though it's clear that Darrell intended this question as a joke, irony or sarcasm, as (1) Democrat FDR wrote love letters to Mussolini and (2) sought non-aggression compacts with Hitler, as did (3) Democrat Ambassador Joseph Kennedy (father of JFK & RFK) as linked below:
(1) https://mises.org/mises-daily/three-new-deals-why-nazis-and-fascists-loved-fdr
(2) https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/president-roosevelt-message-to-adolf-hitler-and-benito-mussolini-april-1939
(3) https://www.jta.org/archive/captured-german-documents-reveal-anti-jewish-views-of-former-ambassador-kennedy
Then, there was 'Operation Paperclip' -- a massive undertaking that was largely under US Democrat party control -- which gave THOUSANDS of actual Nazi scientists & technocrats prominent leadership positions in the unelected US governmental military & intelligence bureaucracies.
https://www.npr.org/2014/02/15/275877755/the-secret-operation-to-bring-nazi-scientists-to-america
The press really, really sucks these days because they have been mostly captured by select western governments in order to promote the official democratic socialist narrative, instead of reality, as evidenced by the France24, DW & CNN propagandists who offer up neither truth nor news.
Best
locumranch,
You might be somewhat new to what libertarians believe and what we do with disbelievers. I usually self-identify as a classical liberal to which many libertarians say "Close enough". Other libertarians disagree, but don't have a good label to stick on me other than "Not us". If you study up on all the libertarian factions (there are many) you'll find we love the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy and use it so frequently that it's a wonder there even IS a Libertarian party at all.
Ultimately, I don't give a rat's ass whether others identify me as libertarian or not. Some of the factions are vocal nuts while others are silent hippies. At present, the Mises Caucus is pretty strong and they DO tend to give support to self-ownership as a concept. I find some things Mises said to be agreeable, but I often find members of the caucus to be absolutists who would rather be right than win a political office and possibly influence policy.
———
As for self-ownership, I find the idea sorta nutty except for one point. I'll support it if only to ensure no one else has a claim on owning me. If no one is doing that, though, I avoid unnecessary nuttiness. They want ultimately to provide a philosophical underpinning to their belief system. I have enough experience with mathematics to realize that chasing foundations leads one into belief realms where no actual humans exist. Economists made the same class of mistake when the supposed a 'rational actor' underpinning their discovered laws. No such actor exists short of ants, termites, and other hive-like minds.
So… I don't so much as deny self-ownership as reject it. Interesting idea, but not for real human beings who do not live under kings and priests. I'll use the idea to defend against other claims of ownership… and then drop it.
Wait a minute, . . . I thought Nazis were socialist scum?
Actually, the Nazis had a leftish wing. Hindenburg even considered appointing Georg Strasser instead of Hitler.
That wing died twice, first politically after January 1933, then physically in summer 1934 during the Night Of Long Knives.
More to the point, shouldn't the party of Nazis be backing Ukraine against Putin's "de-Nazification" effort?
No, Nazis say that they aren't Nazis, but that the entirety of democratic "old parties" are.
Especially the Greens, because they are pro-immigration, pro-choice, pro-legalization of drugs, pro-LGBT, pro-arms shipments and the Nazis say they want to take away cars, industry, meat, oil heating and bad songs you can only tolerate while drunk.
Alfred Differ:
I don't so much as deny self-ownership as reject it.
I know this isn't you, but I've heard a "libertarian" argument that ownership of oneself means the right to sell yourself, including into slavery. That if you are prevented from trading your liberty for fair value in the marketplace, you are not truly free.
I know you don't subscribe, but I wondered if that was something you've run into.
Der Oger:
No, Nazis say that they aren't Nazis,
They do that here too, although it's harder to pull off when you're marching with swastika flags.
but that the entirety of democratic "old parties" are.
Especially the Greens, because they are pro-immigration, pro-choice, pro-legalization of drugs, pro-LGBT, pro-arms shipments
That doesn't even make sense in context. Real Nazis are opposed to every one of those things.
Might as well just say 'Jewish'. This is taking too long. :)
@Dr. Brin
Just watched your talk at the B-AGI summit:
- good job (despite the mic issues and bottom 1/4 of screen blocked by podium)
- looks warm down in Panama (T-shirts and water bottle everywhere)
- this was no 'happy to be here, where's the bar' talk
- this was a fiery Henry V speech, not a finger wag
- bravely lambasted the AI talking heads in the pop media - hurray!
- nicely covered AI possible futures (better than most recent books I've read)
- even mentioned GOFAI (agents are the reason I recently offered Sam Altman a job)
- another vanguard of biological replication AI is Jeff Hawkins at Numenta
- the cooperation/competition key points came from CB discussions,
so we feel useful
- I'd have added a bit more historical computation background, but that would have stretched it to 4 hours :)
Most importantly, we must remember that so far, evil is a uniquely human trait. A.I is (or at least has been up to now) a tabula rasa.
"Most importantly, we must remember that so far, evil is a uniquely human trait. A.I is (or at least has been up to now) a tabula rasa."
Whenever I hear someone claim "a uniquely human trait", I respond "show me".
L continues his progress toward both semantic cogency AND targeting his jibes in directions that are at least vaguely toward us. Good progress, son. Of course it’s still wrongheaded strawmanning. As Alfred points out, there are many types of libertarian and obsession with OWNERSHIP is one of the dumber variants.
Likewise, obsession with FREEDOM vs responsibility & accountability. Simplistic. Alfred and I trend toward Adam Smith and the fact that OUTCOMES are universally better when individuals are empowered to question, create and fairly compete/cooperate… and that empowerment can only happen when we cooperate with each other – via politics – to create conditions that maximize fairness. And that includes state interventions to reduce wastage of talent through poverty & injustice.
Der Oger mentions the Night of the Long Knives… depicted in a vivid, disturbing movie called THE DAMNED. And AH’s rival Roëhm.
Greetings from Panama!
scidata glad you tuned in! Good comments too. Thx
WHY do no dems point out -aggressively - how crappy the OUTCOMES are from wretches who lecture us about parenting and marriage?
Sarah Palin's horrible kids, Trump's, Mareg Taylor's and now this...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/lauren-boeberts-son-tyler-busted-over-wild-alleged-crime-wave
...and the VASTLY higher divorce rate among high GOPper pols.
They've started pointing out the crappiness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxuN3i84FNY
@scidata,
This half of the Biden interview has more eye candy. (Did I say that or think it?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw0npm56wn0
They hold “LIB’RALs” and the “Demonrat” Party culpable.
“We are victims of a Permissive society...”
Biden started the interview sounding frail ... but then he gets in tune.
And as I have said, an elderly but wise patriach can nap all he wants, if he appoints those 5000 skilled, honest, brilliant professionals instead of a monster appointing 5000 wretched villains, traitors and fellow monsters.
Without further comment...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/opinion/white-rural-voters.html
...
While these [welfare] transfers somewhat mitigate the hardship facing rural America, they don’t restore the sense of dignity that has been lost along with rural jobs. And maybe that loss of dignity explains both white rural rage and why that rage is so misdirected — why it’s pretty clear that this November a majority of rural white Americans will again vote against Joe Biden, who as president has been trying to bring jobs to their communities, and for Donald Trump, a huckster from Queens who offers little other than validation for their resentment.
This feeling of a loss of dignity may be worsened because some rural Americans have long seen themselves as more industrious, more patriotic and maybe even morally superior to the denizens of big cities — an attitude still expressed in cultural artifacts like Jason Aldean’s hit song “Try That in a Small Town.”
In the crudest sense, rural and small-town America is supposed to be filled with hard-working people who adhere to traditional values, not like those degenerate urbanites on welfare, but the economic and social reality doesn’t match this self-image.
...
The result — which at some level I still find hard to understand — is that many white rural voters support politicians who tell them lies they want to hear. It helps explain why the MAGA narrative casts relatively safe cities like New York as crime-ridden hellscapes while rural America is the victim not of technology but of illegal immigrants, wokeness and the deep state.
At this point you’re probably expecting a solution to this ugly political situation. Schaller and Waldman do offer some suggestions. But the truth is that while white rural rage is arguably the single greatest threat facing American democracy, I have no good ideas about how to fight it.
Dr Brin:
Biden started the interview sounding frail ... but then he gets in tune.
Minute 3:49 on the shorter piece above (reposted here) should win him some grudging admiration in that department. What was it you said in Earth about the young men from Indiana competing with the Ra Boys? Something about how scoring with girls outweighed fighting in status points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw0npm56wn0
The human race conspires to make me hate them. Words fail me.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/opinion/voters-michigan-biden-gaza.html
...
Of course, working to defeat Biden also means aiding the return of Donald Trump, but Awad and Walid seem to have made their peace with that.
Awad said he doesn’t like Trump and doesn’t welcome a second Trump term, but he’s prepared to accept that outcome for the sake of punishing Biden. “I’m going to live under Trump, because I survived under Trump, because he’s my enemy,” he says. “I cannot live under someone who pretends to be my friend.”
...
Walid said that in a lesser-of-two-evils debate, Trump was, in some ways, the lesser. As he put it, “As bad as Mr. Trump’s rhetoric was, and him putting a travel ban on five Muslim countries, he wasn’t overseeing and actively arming a genocide.” It’s a view that echoes the sentiment expressed in the headline of an October opinion essay for Al Jazeera by Haidar Eid, an associate professor at Al Aqsa University in Gaza: “In dehumanizing the Palestinians, Biden had surpassed Trump.”
...
The article is saying that the author admires the punk who immolated himself, and that more martyrs should die painful deaths:
https://www.workers.org/2024/02/77176/amp/
Alan Brooks:
and that more martyrs should die painful deaths:
That's the only good thing I can say about them.
(I realize I'm in a pissy mood that I'm not proud of, contemplating life under Trump. If that truly is inevitable, I will at least take small consolation in the suffering of those who made it possible.)
There is a Simpsons episode in which people refuse to vote for Mayor Quimby on account that he's so soft on crime he even let Sideshow Bob out of prison. So instead, they vote for Sideshow Bob.
The Palestinian sympathizers who are so upset with what they call genocide that they are willing to elect the enabler of you-aint-seen-nothing-yet actual genocide are doing the same thing, except it's not as funny when they do it.
SCOTUS sides with DT.
Larry,
I very much doubt that life under rumpt is inevitable. He still has plenty of time to blow his own foot off, and the GQP is having an issue with its wholehearted embrace of Dobbs - even in darkest FL, a congressperson withdrew a bill to make every frozen embryo equivalent to a person. There aren't many RUMPT signs in my neighborhood; last federal election year they dotted the place.
I agree that abetting Biden's loss to someone who will actively persecute your minority group is all kinds of stupid, and also very human. But don't worry, the leopards will indeed eat their faces too. If rumpt wins you may see many leopards die of overeating.
Pappenheimer
P.S> My Fullbright girl is heading for Madeira and retirement this year. Smart lady...I guess musicians have to have a good sense of timing.
Larry,
…ownership of oneself means the right to sell yourself…
Logical, right?
I've run into that argument and part of it… I actually like. I really don't like it when laws prohibit me from doing something I feel I really should be able to do. Thing is… I don't need to rely on a self-ownership argument to justify my displeasure. It's far easier to have a reasonable disagreement with my neighbors about what constitutes reasonable expectations we have of each other. It all comes down to those unwritten rules of justice we recognize as a virtue when someone demonstrates them as part of their character.
There is also the small issue of claiming a Right to sell oneself. Even if we accept the self-ownership position, we might reject that right. There is no reason the two must be swallowed together.
———
These things aren't hard to evaluate ethically. Humans in "the west" have been using a very old system that looks somewhat like Aristotle's Virtue Ethics even if they don't call it that. We speak of people of good or bad character whether we are religious or not. Even our host speaks of 'turpitudes' which translates pretty cleanly as 'vices' without some of the religious connotations.
Philosophers constructed other theories explaining how Ethics works among humans, but much like with physics, most of us still use the much older system because it feels about right or at least right enough. How many John and Jane Doe's think about the implications of special relativity or even the fact that starlight requires a lot of time to reach us when they look out into space. How many ponder quantum mechanics when typing a social media rant on devices with a few bazillion tiny transistors. Both come into play in our networks tied together with fiber optic cables. Very few of us do because technological comprehension isn't necessary to use most of our tools.
Much of what I've seen libertarians do comes down to expecting THEIR definitions for a particular virtue be adopted or at least tolerated by everyone else. That's not an unfair thing to desire, but history shows those changes are slow and come with unexpected side effects… some good… some bad. History also shows those changes rarely happen without great turmoil. Even bloodshed.
Thing is… I attribute the Great Enrichment to a couple of change made to the meanings of two virtues. Starting with the Dutch in their rebellion against Habsburg rule, they effectively adjusted the meanings for "courage" and "justice" in a way to serve their survival needs. Turns out those changes had unexpected consequences that made them very wealthy… even during a war in which they participated. Wars usually impoverish those who fight or get caught between combatants. Not so with the Dutch that time.
So… I don't want to sound like a conservative who would preserve old definitions. We SHOULD be trying social experiments were we tolerate changes to see what happens. Toleration in small doses, though. Incremental. If some fools want to sell themselves into slavery… well… they might be surprised to find there are a number of places on Earth today where they CAN still do that.
Alfred,
I can easily imagine slavery returning to the US in the form of indentured servitude or even as an expansion of the for-profit prison system - the 13th amendment has a gaping hole in it allowing for the enslavement of those convicted of crimes. The 14th amendment would seem to guards against individual states bringing black widespread slavery, but the Supremes have shown themselves eager to roll back civil rights, the New Deal...why not Abolition? There is even SF out there imagining it - it's part of the setting of "Ready Player One".
Fools don't generally sell themselves into slavery. Desperate people do, usually to benefit their relatives.
Of course, desperately poor people often sold (and still sell) their daughters into slavery, too. I presume that, even in cynical jest, you would not countenance that.
Pappenheimer
Interesting typo - "bringing black widespread slavery" - maybe Freudian...
Pappenheimer
@Pappenheimer,
Thanks for talking me down there. Some days, I feel as if the Mule is playing his visi-sonor. I wonder if Putin actually has something like that.
Alfred Differ:
There is also the small issue of claiming a Right to sell oneself. Even if we accept the self-ownership position, we might reject that right. There is no reason the two must be swallowed together.
I have two separate problems with the concept of selling one's liberty.
My first objection is a philosophical one. Without universal health care, look at how much time and effort the system devotes to determining who is covered by whom for what. With the legal ability to sell one's liberty, the same would be true of that characteristic. I don't want to live in a society in which one has to prove one owns his liberty because it can't be assumed.
There's a reason some rights are said to be inalienable. It's not a matter of being prevented from doing something--from selling yourself. It's a matter of not recognizing that as "something a person can do. That the very concept is nonsense within the assumptions underlying our society.
My second, independent objection is an economic one. The idea that the value of one's liberty, one's humanity, one's dignity, is defined as what he can sell it for. It's the same heresy that defines the value of a house or a car as its resale price rather than as its utility to the owner as shelter or transportation. It maintains that nothing has intrinsic value, only what it can be sold for, implying that money is the only thing that is worth owning (as opposed to selling).
Pappenheimer,
I do IT contract work for the US Navy. One thing they require of us at least every other year is a training session involving human trafficking. The point of the training is to teach us 1) how certain activities are connected economically and 2) how one could wind up being compromised and/or exploited. Given the history of young men in foreign ports it's not unfair to demand we all pay attention. HOWEVER, every time I'm done with that session, I fantasize about murdering people. Seriously. I HATE slavery* and would have no qualms knifing someone heavily involved. About the best I can say is I'd try to kill them quickly as I don't think I'm cruel enough to want them to suffer. Much.
So no. I don't jest about it. The more important point, though, is that I don't see someone indenturing themselves as enslavement. IF the 'buyer' behaves in certain ways it can become enslavement, but my ire would be aimed at the 'owner'. A family selling their daughter into slavery DOES get my ire along with the buyer, but I understand the family's motives and would throw money at them instead of killing them. Money wrapped around heavy rocks, though.
There aren't many things that would prompt me to pick up a gun (or worse) in our ongoing civil war, but a return toward slavery would certainly do it. I'd froth at the mouth over that.
———
There is even SF out there imagining it - it's part of the setting of "Ready Player One".
Yep. I held back from watching the movie for quite a while. Big screen experiences are immersive.
* That's mostly why I react when people misuse the term. I've thought a lot about what qualifies and what doesn't, so slippery definitions around that topic trigger me.
Larry,
Without universal health care, look at how much time and effort the system devotes to determining who is covered by whom for what.
Well… I don't want to upset you too much, but even with universal health care the system would devote a lot to determining who gets what and when. The resources involved are not inexhaustible. No matter the system, scarce resources get rationed… somehow.
It's a matter of not recognizing that as "something a person can do.
Exactly. Even if one accepted the notion of self ownership, one can reasonably reject the notion that the property can be bought and sold. We even do that for parts of ourselves where I have much less concern about ownership. I DO see myself as the owner of my kidneys (I quite like them) and understand the qualms people have about buying and selling them.
The idea that the value of one's liberty, one's humanity, one's dignity, is defined as what he can sell it for.
Ha!
You are too hooked to the term 'value' and likely conflate it with 'merit'. I get your disgust with the connection between sale price and value, but that's not really how markets work. Naively… yes, but that's not what you are really doing when you buy and sell.
If I offer you $10K for your car, I'm saying I'd rather have your car than other things for which I could trade $10K. Maybe I think I can turn it around for $12K. Maybe I just want to use it. Doesn't matter. Prices aren't about the value of a thing. They are a measure of preference for having this instead of that.
Go ahead and be insulted, though. People often do that when offered too little for this or that. It's as if the buyer thinks we are stupid or something.
Alfred,
"Ready Player One" was a book first, and is better than the movie*. Neither are great, but where else can you find Gygax's Tomb of Horrors in literature?
Actually the whole thing is an ode to 70's - 80's nerd culture.
Re: human trafficking, I got something similar in the AF. I lived a while in SEA, too. Not news. There are people in the US who I have heard espousing that slavery was a better deal for 'those folks' who just can't handle freedom, and some I have heard decline to say they are against it. They're backing rumpt.
Pappenheimer
*the praise, she is faint here
Pappenheimer,
...is better than the movie
Heh. One of the screenwriting advice books I've actually read cover to cover points out how adaptations are best thought of as original stories 'based on' something else. They simply can't be faithful to good novels because novels give you the POV and interior thoughts of characters. Movies can't get you closer to a character's head than a close-up. Thoughts VS pictures. Apples VS oranges.
You also have about 120 pages in a screenplay unless you want to write a bladder busting movie that will most likely never get produced. Show me a novel that completes in 120 pages. There aren't many, so something gets dropped.*
Then... there's also a novel's structure. Tolkien's Ring books were not ordered the same way as the screenplays for the Jackson movies. Tolkien followed characters. Jackson intercut to produce linear time and that sense of pressure.
Gygax's Tomb of Horrors
Heh. Yah. Interesting guy. So were a lot of the other contributors in those early years. Best GM I ever played under wrote many of the MMII monsters. Woe to the fool who went up against them for he knew best how to play them.
-----
...was a better deal for 'those folks'
Yah. I don't want to say too much because I might self-incriminate, but they really aren't as bright as they imagine themselves to be. It won't matter how many bullets they have.
------
* I know lots of us would like to see an Uplift novel on the big screen, but I'm thinking Kiln People would be easier to adapt. Still, my little paperback version has enough dittos to fill 567 pages. No movie version could be more than 'based on' the book.
Well… I don't want to upset you too much, but even with universal health care the system would devote a lot to determining who gets what and when. The resources involved are not inexhaustible. No matter the system, scarce resources get rationed… somehow.
You can have a cheap, high quality or socially just healthcare system. Choose two.
@Alfred:
Heh. Yah. Interesting guy. So were a lot of the other contributors in those early years. Best GM I ever played under wrote many of the MMII monsters. Woe to the fool who went up against them for he knew best how to play them.
Oh, someone familiar? It appears that Ol'Gary has taken all credits for writing the MM II for himself, so it seems...
Do you still play?
This comment got truncated somehow. I deleted and re-posted it.
Alfred Differ:
You are too hooked to the term 'value' and likely conflate it with 'merit'.
I'm not sure "merit" is the right word either, but I see what you're getting at. To me, the difference is between "value to the owner" vs "value it will trade for." And I guess the only real problem I have is when economic theories are based on the notion that an individual's personal wealth is based solely on "value it will trade for."
My personal wealth, my well-being, my level of comfort, whatever term you want to call it by is enhanced by my having a relatively reliable personal means of transportation, having nothing to do with the piddling amount I could trade my decade+ old car for to someone else.
If I offer you $10K for your car, I'm saying I'd rather have your car than other things for which I could trade $10K. Maybe I think I can turn it around for $12K. Maybe I just want to use it. Doesn't matter. Prices aren't about the value of a thing. They are a measure of preference for having this instead of that.
That has always been my argument against people who don't believe in positive sum interactions. We've been doing them at least since money was invented. It's ridiculous to think that if I pay $10 for a pizza, that means the pizza must be worth exactly $10 to me and to the restaurant who sold it to me. Like we're just making change. I give the $10 because I'm getting something in return that is worth more to me than the bill in my hand, and the store is selling it because they're getting something worth more value to them from that money than the value of the pizza sitting under their warming lamps. Commerce only works because of win-win transactions.
The Ayn Rand philosophy is that the slice of pizza has a single intrinsic value. That's absurd. I'm not even acknowledging the usual "I may be wrong" about that.
Gotta love the snark.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Feb29-1.html
Ten percent of the male senators are named John. The presence of so many Johns in the upper chamber helps explain why the Senate is so often full of sh*t.
There is a science fiction book (and its sequel) by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin called "The Unincorporated Man", where virtually everybody is incorporated and their ownership is bought and sold. It has a libertarian flavor.
Larry Hart,
For what it's worth, which is "not much," I really don't think Trump has a chance in hell. At least that's my prognostication at this point in time. There is of course still plenty of time for the circumstances to change. But as of right now I think Trump will lose decisively, and I think the RP will lose ground in both houses.
And I say that as a person who saw a Trump presidency coming months before the election.
Why do I think that? Lots of signs.
1) The RP has been overstepping left and right at the state level and public reaction has been strongly negative.
2) Same with some recent Supreme Court rulings.
3) There have been quite a few special elections at both state and federal level over the past couple of years and DP candidates have significantly overperformed compared to past history in those jurisdictions, and won most of them.
4) RP politicians have outed themselves / been revealed as fools at a higher rate and at higher levels than ever before, and it seems to be having a negative impact among the public. The best most recent example being the revelation that the star smoking gun witness in the RP impeachment investigation of Biden was a tool of Russian intelligence, and that his claims were wholly fabricated by Russian intelligence.
5) Despite the mainstream Press's best efforts to "frame" things otherwise (I'm looking at you NYT and Washington Post), Biden has been winning big in the primaries so far while Trump is winning but with serious issues. Biden's worst performance was 80%, in Michigan where the political opposition that's got you down happened, and he got over 90% of the votes in a state where he wasn't even on the ballot. Meanwhile Trump, though winning, is performing much worse than in his previous campaign and has lost as much as 40% of the Republican vote. Also, DP voter turnout is up significantly so far while RP voter turn out is down.
6) Again, despite the mainstream press's best efforts (Does the NYT work for Trump these days? [that's a joke, sort of]) the Biden administration is doing so well that the public seems to have actually noticed.
7) Again with the mainstream press, the constant stream of polls showing Trump ahead of Biden are looking more and more to be worthless. Experts left and right showing major flaws, and worse, now that the primaries have started we can actually compare polls to real world results. And guess what? In every single primary so far polls were off on Trump by +7 to +15 points.
I've probably forgot a few I had in mind when I started. Things could change, of course. Probably the single worst thing that could happen is that Biden could have a stroke or similar debilitating issue, or die. That could cause enough disruption that Trump wins. But, big disruptions like that are unpredictable. It's possible the DP could come out of it with even more votes.
Me personally, I couldn't care less if Biden had a stroke or died and was still on the ballot. I'd still vote for him. All this angst and hand wringing about his age and infirmity is misdirection, at best. The team of people that he and the DP have put together to run the country are what I'm voting for. It might be more correct to parse that as, the team of people Trump would put together to run the country are what I am voting against.
Republicans have been campaigning by saying that Democrats are just as corrupt and old and bad as they are. So none of that matters.
What matters is identity. We are against "woke". We will protect you from gay marriage and brown farm workers and bad girls having sex.
Their politicians are in it to win, not to govern.
Darrell E:
Does the NYT work for Trump these days? [that's a joke, sort of]
The mainstream media isn't so much in the bag for Republicans as they are for a horserace. They have to make sure it's a nail-biter so that people are constantly interested in reading/watching the latest news.
I noticed this dynamic in the 2008 primaries between Hillary and Obama, when they suddenly turned on whoever was ahead by 5% and that candidate could studently do nothing right. I confirmed my suspicions when the same thing happened between Obama and McCain. Since then, I've seen nothing to dissuade me.
Biden's worst performance was 80%, in Michigan where the political opposition that's got you down happened
After I posted yesterday, I realized that the sort of despair I was feeling might be intentionally caused, if not by a visi-sonor then by Russian and Republican (pardon the redundancy) weaponization of social media and regular media. That despair means the terrorists win.
Then, I heard about the supreme court taking the "presidential immunity" case, giving Trump the delay he wants. Nothing ever ends, does it?
On the other side of the ledger...
We are finally leaving the six consecutive months with seven-or-more letters in their English language names and transitioning to the six consecutive months with less-than-seven letters. We'd be there already except for leap year.
Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow.
Larry Hart 5:14:
Money works as a mediator of trade only because it is not an objective measure of value.
Darrell E 5:46:
I say that Trump does have a chance in Hell... but nowhere else.
If President Biden were someone other than himself, he'd use his own "presidential immunity" to do crap that would force the courts to rule that he doesn't have that power.
Too bad he wouldn't be him if he did that.
Pappenheimer:
"Ready Player One" was a book first, and is better than the movie*. Neither are great, but where else can you find Gygax's Tomb of Horrors in literature?
My wife and I saw that one even though it's not typically our favorite genre. We went mainly because we had heard that it was full of Easter Eggs relating to nerd culture.
Except for a few establishing images, I don't remember anything about the movie now.
Putting his own comfort and safety ahead of the nation's. Luxuriating in the trappings of high office with little or no regard for its responsibilities. Talking out of several sides of his mouth simultaneously. Regarding Justice as a cow to be milked. Plain fecklessness.
These are the qualities of an Attorney General.
Paradoctor:
I say that Trump does have a chance in Hell... but nowhere else.
Heh.
"How about you take Rudi's soul instead? Tell you what, I'll throw in Eric as well."
"And we'll build a wall and make Heaven pay for it."
I'm living out a bad joke from the 1930s.
"When the sonofabitch I'm looking for dies, it will be on the front page."
Darrell E:
the Biden administration is doing so well that the public seems to have actually noticed.
While it seems awfully presumptuous to compare Biden to Jesus (from Supserstar anyway), I still maintain that this stanza accurately describes President Biden's performance:
Listen, surely I've exceeded
Expectations. Tried for three years.
Seems like thirty. Could you ask
As much from any other man?
Der Oger,
My friend also went by 'Gary' and Arneson wasn't the only one with royalty related lawsuits against TSR.* My friend's name doesn't appear in Jon Peterson's book "Game Wizards" that came out a few years ago, but much of the rest of the book is a decent retelling from what I've read. Well… everyone involved is going to remember it different (of course), but at least Peterson's book doesn't come across as "They are evil and I am good… so side with me."
My friend was an early play-tester. He would have been very young, but he and his friends who I met in the 80's were among the sharpest people I've ever met. They got very early experience with business and the simple fact that we CAN make a difference if we chose to make the effort.
My friend went on eventually to something he loved even more. Baseball. He loved the statistics involved and wrote a professional newsletter aimed at MLB scouts and fantasy league players. From what I know he made a living at it and was (at least for a while) a business partner of Nate Silver. (Gary Huckabay's name DOES pop up in one of Nate's books.) I didn't track what he did in detail, though, so I'm guessing that it was baseball related.
Do you still play?
Not really. The game moved on. I'm familiar with v1.0 rules for AD&D. The v2.0 rules were trash designed to sell more books. They catered to players who wanted demi-god characters. I play tested v2.0 in one of my campaigns and then put those books on a back shelf for my next campaign. While I loved playing, I think I enjoyed world-building and running the game more… assuming the players were actually into role playing.
Role playing (collaborative story building) IS what makes it fun for me, so the recent editions turning toward technical details for how things are done (Weren't there already enough tables in the v1.0 DM book?) turns me off.
My appreciation for story telling comes from my experience with AD&D and Gary's campaigns. There were other GM's I played with and many other players who played in my worlds, but Gary and his taught me to imagine myself as someone else to make stories worth telling.
* There is an artifact ring with Gygax's name on it in the magic item tables in the v1.0 DM. I had the unfortunate experience with my first character in Gary's game of encountering it. The attributes he gave the ring ensured the wearer was absolutely screwed. No escape. 8)
Most of you cling to your inherent assumptions like deranged limpets, refusing to 'let go' despite disastrous inadvertent consequences.
In the case of Alfred, it's his 'rejection' of Self-Ownership, as it's damn near impossible for a human to claim 'ownership' of anything without presupposing self-ownership, including & especially the infantile 'My Body, My Choice' squeal favoured by various feminists, abortionists, abolitionists & conscientious objectors, since individual rights and liberties (including reproductive choice) cannot coexist with a society that prioritizes collectivism over individualism.
In the case of Larry_H & Der_Oger, it's their assumption that it's jew-hatred & white-love that specifically defines Nazism, even though (vegetarian; neopagan; antichristian) Nazis hated on many different identity groups including homos, gypsies & the disabled, while the modern (collectivist; fascist; woke) Nazi variant has merely flipped the script to hate on white christian aryans while worshipping racial diversity, climate change & the pagan goddess Gaia, insomuch as they commit psychiatry's cardinal error by focusing on the specific CONTENT of the Nazi delusion rather than it's greater collective FORM.
If & when one forgets the little mustache & focuses on Nazi Form, one need look no further than Klaus Schwab & the WEF's mission statement which includes the elevation of the 'Davos Man' to ubermensh, global domination by a One World Government, fascism as defined as 'public-private cooperation', collective ownership rather than individual self-ownership and a global depopulation program that seeks to eliminate excess humanity in order to save & appease the World God.
It's Todestrieb written large, as our best & brightest sleepwalk towards their own destruction while simultaneously embracing the very inhuman Nazi ideology that they claim to revile, whereas I (at least) attempt to support even the most exasperating individual (ie Trump) against the creeping evil that is Nazi-Borg collectivism.
To Howard_B who talks about the 'Unincorporated Man', I recommend Pohl & Kornbluth's 'Gladiator-at-Law'.
Best
Larry,
My personal wealth, my well-being, my level of comfort, whatever term you want to call it by is enhanced by my having a relatively reliable personal means of transportation, having nothing to do with the piddling amount I could trade my decade+ old car for to someone else.
Exactly. We make this confusion happen, though, by using the same dictionary word. We overload "value" with multiple meanings and then get annoyed when connotations for one spill onto another. 8)
It's ridiculous to think that if I pay $10 for a pizza, that means the pizza must be worth exactly $10 to me and to the restaurant who sold it to me.
Yep. You and I are on the same page. Heads up, though, because that's known as Austrian economics. Mises, Hayek, etc. It even shows up partially in the Chicago school, but they leaned a little too far over into utility theory discovered through games.
This relationship between money and preferences is fundamental to understanding what markets actually DO. We can't all agree on how to economize our resources, so we trade based on personal preferences. I'll give you ten hogs for that car. Money was invented to facilitate trades, but at the core it's all about ownership preferences. If I REALLY want your car more than you do, I'll search and find something you'll eventually accept.
a single intrinsic value
A LOT of people want to find a system like that. If they succeed, they'd be able to construct a theory of economics that could handle the world statistically much like thermodynamics handles giant ensembles of atoms and molecules.
Intrinsic value enables analogs of enormous explanatory power with the big one being state functions. They want this sooo bad they imagine they've already found them and then proceed. Not just Ayn Rand. Marx too. Keynes too. The only folks who ducked down a different path were some of the Austrians.
Alfred Differ:
"a single intrinsic value"
A LOT of people want to find a system like that. If they succeed, they'd be able to construct a theory of economics...
I don't see how it can even theoretically be possible. If the slice of pizza is worth exactly as much to me as it is to the restaurant, then why would we go through the bother of trading? The entire economy would consist of metaphorically making change for a twenty.
I said:
If the slice of pizza is worth exactly as much to me as it is to the restaurant...
Or maybe more to the point, "If the $10 bill is worth exactly as much to me as the pizza is, and if the same is true for the restaurant..."
Alfred Differ:
We overload "value" with multiple meanings and then get annoyed when connotations for one spill onto another. 8)
One thing I find especially annoying. As I understand it, if my 12-year-old car is totaled, the insurance will reimburse me for its trade-in value prior to the accident. It does not replace the functionality that I have lost. It tacitly assumes that what I most wanted to do with my car at the time is to sell it, and that an accident deprived me of that sale. Not that the accident deprived me of a useful vehicle.
These sophonts are dangerous!
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/opinion/project-2025-trump-administration.html
...
Ironically, in this [Project 2025] worldview, the people’s needs and desires can become circumscribed. In the book’s foreword, Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, writes that the “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence should be understood as the “pursuit of blessedness,” that is, that “an individual must be free to live as his creator ordained — to flourish.” The Constitution, he explains, “grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought.” The book ties this argument to the philosophical and legal concept of “ordered liberty,” in which individual rights are weighed against social stability.
The notion that liberty entails the discipline to do the right thing, as opposed to the choice to do whatever things we want, has a long lineage in American political thought, dating back to the Puritans and the “city on a hill.” But in “Mandate for Leadership,” the answer to what we ought to do depends on the cultural and religious proclivities of the authors. “This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family — marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners and the like,” Roberts writes. It is also found in work, charity and, above all, in “religious devotion and spirituality.” Later, in a chapter on the Department of Labor, the book suggests that because “God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest,” American workers should be paid extra for working on that day. “A shared day off makes it possible for families and communities to enjoy time off together, rather than as atomized individuals,” it says.
“Mandate for Leadership” often strains to reconcile what we ought to do with what the authors want us to do. In the same chapter on the Department of Labor, for example, the book calls on Congress to require that for all new federal contracts, at least 70 percent of contractors’ employees must be U.S. citizens (with the bar rising to at least 95 percent over time). Such a law is necessary, the book explains, “so that employers can again have the freedom to make hiring Americans a priority.”
If you want to make federal contractors hire more American workers, then, by all means, propose such a law. But couching it as a way to provide greater “freedom” to employers so they can do what the government is compelling them to do debases the notion of freedom. And it makes the book’s interpretation of “ordered liberty” seem more focused on giving orders than protecting liberty
...
Alfred,
I studied economics and worked in the research department of a central bank. What you say about Keynes is simply not true. I have no idea why you think his view of this was different than the view of the Austrians. Have you ever heard of the terms "consumer surplus" and "producer surplus"? Utility is just a made up concept to explain people's preferences. It was never meant to be measurable or estimable. It just allows you to build mathematical models of consumer behaviour. Where there is a difference is in the refusal of Austrians to admit that it is reasonable to think a millionaire receives more from the economy than a minimum-wage worker (as they rule out interpersonal comparisons at all). They also have a different view of how expectations and investment decisions are made. On that, they are VERY empirically challenged.
To put it differently, Alfred, I think you are building a straw man model of alternative views of economics.
Elie Mystal points out that Thomas and Alito both have a personal interest in Trump's re-election because they'd like to retire under a Republican president rather than have to die on the bench to prevent a Democratic replacement. Sandra Day O'Connor had a similar motivation during Bush v Gore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuJgsd5Jrl4&pp=ygUbcmFjaGVsIG1hZGRvdyBzdXByZW1lIGNvdXJ0
Larry,
I think Thomas is more likely to become a brain in a jar rolled around by judicial clerks than retire, because I doubt he has less contempt for the rich white reactionaries that shower him with goodies than the Liberal-Americans who consider him an U---- T--. He must suspect that when he retires, the adulation, invites and gravy train may dry up like last fall's leaves. (I could be wrong, obviously; perhaps he has succumbed to his obvious magnificence and has realized that they do, in fact, appreciate him for his great wisdom.)
Pappenheimer
P
reason,
I think you are building a straw man model of alternative views of economics.
Possible. I'm one of those pesky physicists who has looked across at your field and self-studied. The mathematics is simple enough, so the dangers with my approach involve misinterpretations and gaps.
Utility is just a made up concept to explain people's preferences.
Ha! Yah. We all did the same thing with Entropy. We only ever dealt with differentials dS… until Boltzmann came along and connected it to microstates within a macrostate. He made sense of the probabilistic interpretation of entropy and connected it all to statistics.
You won't convince me many economists haven't salivated over the possibility of doing the same for utility. Success on that front would enable integration on value (marginal utility) to discover an explanatory narrative for what we do rather than guessing at it and differentiating to try tests.
———
What bugs me most about Keynesian economics (macro) are the statements about a number of aggregates that facilitate rationalizations about government policies. They sound remarkably Ptolemaic in that they are fundamentally made up untestably when it comes to their applicability. Sure… they work at times, but so did Ptolemy's cosmology.
How do we know the difference between models working right now because we have the right number of epicycles listed and models actually being good descriptions of us? Where are the ex ante predictions? Even just probabilistic predictions would do.
———
They also have a different view of how expectations and investment decisions are made.
This is the 'animal spirits' thing? Pfft. I find Hayek more plausible.
———
It's been a few years since I studied all this, but it was not a passing fancy. I have a couple of bookshelves full of textbooks ranging from A Dummy's Guide to original papers collected into books after the scholar passed on. Yah. Pesky physicist got curious because people who warned about the dangers of climate change were treating economics as if it was a science. Climate change IS a problem, but their arguments absolutely sucked leaving the valid science open to attack by broad brush methods. "Try better" I argued, but they couldn't distinguish me from the climate change deniers.
(Economics is an interesting field in its own right, but it isn't really needed in climate discussions or models.)
Nicky Haley has an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, ahead of the Illinois primaries.
The link is likely paywalled, but below is a particularly annoying excerpt. Like, every sentence is false. Except maybe (I hope) the last one.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/03/01/nikki-haley-we-have-a-country-to-save/
...
Americans know we must defeat Biden. Only a little more than a third of the country approves of the job he’s doing. Those Americans see that he’s running the country into the ground. But I’m running for president to save America. Donald Trump can’t, because he’ll lose to Biden in November.
...
Schadenfreudelicious...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Mar01-7.html
...
Most obviously, and most schadenfreude-ish, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) decided to ask [Hunter] Biden: "Were you on drugs when you were on the Burisma board?" Biden reportedly looked directly at Gaetz and replied: "Mr. Gaetz, look me in the eye. You really think that's appropriate to ask me?" The Representative, who was obviously trying to look away, mumbled that he thought it was OK, and Biden said: "Of all the people sitting around this table, do you think that's appropriate to ask me?" Shades of Joseph Welch and Joe McCarthy.
Meanwhile, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) came to the hearing prepared to do a little trolling. So, for example, he asked the First Son a series of questions, including: "Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?," "While your father was President, did anyone in the family receive 41 trademarks from China?," and "Has your father ever in his time as an adult been fined $355 million by any State that he worked in?" In case you need a cheat sheet, the answer to all questions is "no," though it would be different if certain other presidential sons were answering.
The bon mot of the day for Swalwell, however, was not addressed to Hunter Biden. No, it was a question for Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY). During an exchange over the Committee's transcripts, and when they would be released, Swalwell wondered if Comer would be issuing them "in English or Russian?" Game, set, and match for the Californian.
I'd like to buy Swalwell a drink. Heck, Hunter Biden too.
@Darrell E,
Probably best to make Hunter's a club soda. :)
What? Too soon?
I think you broke Blogger with that one. Someone had to come in and fix it. 8)
Anime Princess to Anime Hero:
Congrats on defeating the Darkness Knight! Oh, you're exhausted! We have a pool of healing in the palace that'll fix you right up!
(inevitable hot springs bathing/fanservice scene)
These things are like popcorn. Also highlights a difference between Japanese and US culture, and I think we're on the wrong side of this one...
Pappenheimer
The answer given to this question below is finally pointing out the absurdity of the claim that once courts rule that a fetus, embryo, or zygote is a person, then all abortions will be forever banned with no possible exceptions.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Mar02-1.html
B.H. in Greenbelt, MD, asks: I have a question regarding the response of the Alabama legislature to the state Supreme Court's IVF decision. The legislature is reportedly about to pass a law that gives immunity from prosecution to doctors for actions taken during IVF. If this were the federal government, I would think that a law cannot simply overrule a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. Is the situation in Alabama analogous? Didn't the Alabama Supreme Court declare frozen embryos to be persons, with all the accompanying rights? And if a decision can be effectively negated by offering immunity from prosecution, isn't that applicable in other situations?
(V) & (Z) answer: Courts, both state and federal, both supreme and otherwise, merely determine what existing law says. The potential penalties for violating a law are the province of the legislatures.
And so, when a judge sentences someone to 12 years in prison for, say, assault, it is because the legislature in that jurisdiction has set a penalty of 5-20 years for assault. Similarly, it is entirely within the legislature's prerogative to set the penalty for a particular deed at "nothing." For example, every state's laws recognize that some killings are murder (big penalty), some killings are manslaughter (smaller penalty), and some killings are justified (no penalty).
And so, what the new Alabama law would be saying, in so many words, is: "Even if IVF embryos are people, per the state Supreme Court, doctors cannot be punished for any harm that might be done to them."
Larry Hart:
Ambrose Beirce, in his "Devil's Dictionary", defined homicide as having four grades: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy. He adds that these distinctions matter little to the slain; the system is for the benefit of lawyers.
Paradoctor:
...for the benefit of lawyers.
Well, also for the benefit of someone who kills in self-defense.
Those grades of homicide apply to many other crimes too.
My mother's mother was at least a thief when she was young. Grew up to a whopping height of 4'8", so malnutrition was the rule of the day. Her crimes probably kept her alive, though... so excusable. In her mind (of course)... justifiable.
When I knew her, she was the 'fence' who bought goods from other thieves. My mother wound up with some nice jewelry. Not so justifiable at that point. I learned about smuggling from my little ol' granny too.
Alfred,
"(Economics is an interesting field in its own right, but it isn't really needed in climate discussions or models.)"
This is a statement with which I can agree wholeheartedly. The climate would not care if our factories and power plants were belching out Marxist or Mercantilist CO2; the end result is the same. (I'm reminded that communists in general were all for industrialization as the only method of alleviating poverty - I don't know if that's changed for some flavors these days.)
Pappenheimer
Paradoctor,
I heard from someone from the state of Guerrero in Mexico that on a specific day of the year (might have have Dia de los Muertos) that it used to be OK to kill your enemy - basically a one day free pass folk tradition, and pretty sure it would not have applied to a murder spree. Feuds and vendettas are a common way of 'resolution' of differences when there is no, or only a weak, central government - I wonder if libertarians have realized as a group the likely result of not having "approved" violence reserved for state use only, with some very exigent exceptions such as being shot at - in the past, family groups were a form of deterrence similar to MAD, and people without powerful family were often killed with impunity. Jared Diamond described the feeling of relief that many inland New Guinea tribes felt when the newly empowered coastal government declared they would no longer have to seek vengeance themselves; it was a de-escalation of sorts. (That feeling is contingent, of course, on the justice delivered being seen to be fairly applied).
Pappenheimer
Loc doesn’t know how whining is a form of slavery. But he is right to be pessimistic: there’s a memo at the office, from Chicken Little; it reads:
“The sky is falling.”
By pointing out the absurdity of a legal ruling that redefines a fetus, embryo, or zygote as a person, Larry_H acknowledges that half-assed definitions lead to devilish absurdities, as in the case of the 'Adult Age of Majority' being defined very differently for sexual consent (age 14 to 16), marriage (age 16 w/ exceptions), adulthood & voting (age 18), military service (age 18 w/ exceptions), alcohol & tobacco use (age 21) & firearm purchase (age 21 w/ many many exceptions), even though this his position would make us allies of a sort IF & ONLY IF he actually valued consistency.
Yet, as definitional consistency is most definitely NOT his strong suit, I fear that we must remain forever at odds because the progressive agenda relies on the creeping absurdity of unceasing & endless redefinition, as the self-ownership of 'My Body, My Choice' apples only to women but never to conscription-aged men and Humanism's universal human values seem to exempt vast portions of humanity from either value or universality.
As for accusations of Chicken Littleism, I can only reply that the majority of the Sky_Is_Falling claims emanate from the progressive left -- the climate change cult & other 'end-of-democracy' alarmists -- in a rather transparent attempt to shift & redefine the Overton Window to their personal own advantage.
I can only hope that Dr. Brin returns soon so he may lecture us on climate change while offering us tales of his recent CO2 heavy airplane ride to & from Panama, as he is at least consistent in this regard.
Best
Hey L... F-u----k you . judge me when you aren't a loony hypocrite.
PS how's the weather back in the midwest where the water addles you brain?
If we were to wager you that democracy is ending, we wouldn’t be able to collect if we won—
we’d be in prison.
P. S. The Alabama Supreme Court ruling is surely against the US constitution since it was not based on law but on an interpretation if the bible, which has no standing in U S law, and must therefore be against the separation of religion and state.
reason:
on an interpretation of the bible, which has no standing in U S law
In theory, yes.
In practice, Christianity is always given special deference in US law. The Alabama judge's wording is only a much more blatant example than usual.
This at once gives credence to those who insist that the US is (not "should be", but "is" de facto ) a Christian nation, and puts paid to the idea that US Christians are an embattled minority. White Christians have always enjoyed special privileges in this country. They've simply become so accustomed to that fact that they feel oppressed when anyone else gets close to actual equality with them.
"P. S. The Alabama Supreme Court ruling is surely against the US constitution since it was not based on law but on an interpretation if the bible, which has no standing in U S law, and must therefore be against the separation of religion and state."
What part of the Bible was interpreted that way?
We can't entirely separate ourselves from Biblical commands. If the Bible says "Thou Shalt Not Kill", and the law agrees, it doesn't mean we're letting the Bible rule us.
Howard, that would only matter if we were basing our interpretation on the law and not the bible. But that is not how the decision was framed. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/alabama-ivf-ruling/
Agreed. The funny thing is that the Bible disagrees with them.
My mother's mother was at least a thief when she was young. Grew up to a whopping height of 4'8", so malnutrition was the rule of the day. Her crimes probably kept her alive, though... so excusable. In her mind (of course)... justifiable.
This reminds me of Josef Frings, Cardinal of Cologne. He became famous after the war for a sermon containing the following quote:
We live in times where the single individual, in his need, ought to be allowed to take what he needs to preserve his life and health, if he cannot obtain it through other means, work or begging.
"Fringsen" became a verb for a justifiable act of stealing food or coals.
Howard Brazee:
If the Bible says "Thou Shalt Not Kill", and the law agrees, it doesn't mean we're letting the Bible rule us.
Correct. Those who insist that religious beliefs may have no influence over motivations take things too far and erode sympathy for secular law.
e
That said, there is a problem when a judge rules specifically that the reason a particular defendant should be penalized for murder is that the Bible says so.
The funny thing is that the Bible disagrees with them
That's the dirty little secret of Christian Nationalist theocracy. In the end, it's not about law being determined by God. It's about those human beings who manage to be accepted as the legitimate "Christians" having the final say without recourse. Kinda like the Clarence Thomas supreme court.
Spoiler alert--the Bible is not a law book. It is also not a how-to manual or a history paper. The problem is that it is treated as all three of those things at the same time, despite the sort of Heisenberg uncertainty which prevents such a possibility.
The spectacle of imagery in the trailers for the second Dune movie looks absolutely stunning. My wife and I are probably not braving the crowds on this opening weekend, but I am psyched to see this film in a way I haven't been about a movie in a very long time. Not even for Barbenheimer.
Re: second DUNE
In this recent interview (Colbert), Denis Villeneuve talked about the big risk he took filming some Harkonnen scenes in infrared (scary, brutal). I've opined before that Québécois are interesting folk because they never took the 1789 off ramp. In some ways, New France never actually died.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNE8hIPscys
Again, I've only seen trailers, but one thing that I'm not on board with is that it looks like they're depicting Feyd-Rautha as a terrifying monster. In the book, Feyd was groomed as the one who would step in as savior to the populace who had been brutalized by Beast Rabban. The public was expected to love him.
His visual depiction in the trailers doesn't quite fit that narrative.
It won't stop me from jonesing to see the film.
The assertion that the Bible, Torah, Talmud, Koran or even Dune's Missionaria Protectiva is NOT 'a law book' provides positive proof that typical progressive is perhaps too stupid to live, as 'any ful kno' that each & every religious text equals a book of LAWS.
In fact, this insane neoliberal assertion offers the best explanation for western decay ever, since it's almost as if the deist US Constitution has been forcefully reinterpreted by an amoral Thugee.
I must say that our host's somewhat 'emotional response' surprises me since hypocrisy -- specifically the accusation of hypocrisy (Alinsky's Rule #4) -- appears to be the ruling Zeitgeist of Our Age, especially during election season, proving only that one cannot be cynical enough when it comes to even benign social interactions nowadays.
And, I thought that I would be mostly roasted for the misapplication of the term 'apples' in my post above, only to be blindsided by a comparison of 'applies' and oranges.
Best
Deeply worrisome... and... Almost exactly my "Probationers" in SUNDIVER! Not a joke or a satire.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-justice-minister-defends-house-arrest-power-for-people-feared-to/
Arrest people feared to commit a hate crime in future. But don't worry! The government won't misuse this power! Trust us!
I wrote Sundiver in 1978.
--
Back home tired will post soon...
Dr Brin:
Arrest people feared to commit a hate crime in future. But don't worry! The government won't misuse this power!
If that were really the case, anyone in a MAGA hat should be locked up. We'd wonder what happened to all the mass shootings.
But it never happens that way, does it? Look at the laws that allow someone to run down protesters with their vehicles. But only at protests against business interests. Think you could invoke that law if you ran down an abortion clinic obstructionist?
Pre-empting of terrorist activities is inevitably directed at those who might someday demand justice, not those who will almost certainly perpetrate injustice. Funny that. Well, not "funny" funny.
Another gem from Locumranch: "progressive agenda relies on the creeping absurdity of unceasing & endless redefinition"
Not many threads back, when I asked which of the many achievements of progressives you oppose, you asserted that I was wrong to assume that conservatives oppose those things.
So Locumranch, since it seems that you like some advances but not others, when exactly should the redefinition have stopped? Can you name the year in which we *should* have stopped? What was the "one step too far" for you? Can you name the group whose rights we shouldn't advocate for?
And since you brought up "western decay" I'll ask again (I asked several years ago): what year was the peak from which the descent/decay began?
We don't have conscription anymore. And if it ever comes back, I'll be the first to advocate that it should apply to both men and women, with no restrictions on who can fight.
JPinOR
"So Locumranch, since it seems that you like some advances but not others, when exactly should the redefinition have stopped? Can you name the year in which we *should* have stopped? What was the "one step too far" for you? Can you name the group whose rights we shouldn't advocate for?"
It is so very obvious that since the beginning of time God has intended us to have the values I learned and tried to have. Obviously not those values that previous generations had, and tragically not the values that subsequent generations had.
It couldn't be more obvious!
Doesn’t scripture say that murder is proscribed, but not killing? Killing in self-defense is not widely considered murder, yet can be defined as killing nonetheless.
(As an aside, I reckon that a true-Believing Christian would turn the other cheek and allow himself to be murdered, rather than kill in self-defense. The exception being in war.)
Larry
Beast Rabban. The public was expected to love him.
Meanwhile, David Lynch cast Sting, not Louis Ferrigno, Ron Perlman or Michael Berryman.
It came off a bit comical. The trouble with a great writer is they can often make you or me a better director, cinematographer, art director and casting director--than the best Hollywood has to offer.
Meanwhile, Locum's latest musings are seasoned with something that smells vaguely Amish.
Alan Brooks:
As an aside, I reckon that a true-Believing Christian would turn the other cheek and allow himself to be murdered, rather than kill in self-defense.
In real life, you'd have a harder time finding an example of that than Diogenes looking for an honest man. Today's self-described "Christians" think they need AR-15s for self-defense.
That's what I meant earlier about Christian Nationalism. The ones pushing for it aren't interested the law enforcing Christ's teachings. They're interested in using the name "Christian" to justify their authoritarian right-wing dictatorship.
Slim Moldie:
Meanwhile, David Lynch cast Sting, ...
It came off a bit comical.
I'm not a fan of casting actors (or celebrities, in that case) whose own distinct personality overwhelms the character he's supposed to be playing. Stallone as Judge Dredd, for example. Or Michael Keaton as Batman. Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. The character actually has to be written to the personality of the actor instead of the other way around.
"That's what I meant earlier about Christian Nationalism. The ones pushing for it aren't interested the law enforcing Christ's teachings. They're interested in using the name "Christian" to justify their authoritarian right-wing dictatorship."
Mainly "Christian" and "Patriot" are like a sporting team's nickname. They have as much meaning as "Giants" do for sports fans. They define which team someone is labeled as.
There’s a misinterpretation of “abundant life”: such refers to spiritual abundance, not material. Otherwise God would be The CEO, dispensing goodies. The misinterpretation isn’t necessarily deliberate; in the 21st century, self-sacrifice is quite difficult, so a would-be Christian convinces himself abundant life is material abundance as well as spiritual.
There’s no ambiguity in scripture: the Christian does what God says; if God tells a Christian to kill his son, the Christian kills his son—unless God belays the order.
—
IVF doesn’t interest me, the arguments are too circular.
Alan Brooks:
<
IVF doesn’t interest me, the arguments are too circular.
Not sure I see "circular". More like "contradictory".
So Crew-8 will be at the ISS for both a Soyuz and a Starliner arrival.
Ad Astra.
Don’t know—am completely disinterested.
—
One way to comprehend Christianity more readily is to think of the Lord as asking for volunteers to engage in hazardous duty.
One example is someone who volunteers to do missionary work in a hostile environment—which is risking one’s life. However the reward is peace of mind and the sleep of the Just. (*I’m going to die anyway, someday, so I will sacrifice my life for Christ*)
And if they Believe in the Hereafter, there is more to it than peace of mind, etc.
Actually a fun/informative video about communist cultists. The image at 21;24 is from GUPS Uplift... the game based on my uplift universe. So, does that make me a commie? ;-)
The Communists Who Wanted to End the World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vtxghkJOAU
Proves today's MAGA's don't hold an ABSOLUTE monopoly on jibber-insanity, though for now they have cornered the market.
Larry,
The character actually has to be written to the personality of the actor instead of the other way around.
We imagine the story comes first, but in movieland it ain't necessarily so.
The book I'm finishing up right now that gives screen writing advice shows how the author runs multi-week classes. (No doubt the book is part sales pitch.) One of the exercises has the students team up to noodle out the outline of a story. He gives feedback along the way until they've got enough characters and incidents defined to move to the next exercise.
In the character building section, one set of students decided their protagonist was a woman. He asked 'How old?' They picked mid-20's and he poo-poo'd that. He countered with late 20's/early 30's because they should have a particular actress in mind who is CURRENTLY bankable. They could learn to write good stories or they could learn to write good, sellable stories. They got the point and changed the protagonist to match what they thought a particular actress could do… and then the exercise went on.
Just because Mr Freeze didn't behave like Schwarzenegger in the comic books doesn't mean much. Whoever wrote that campy script likely thought about who they might cast before they started typing any of the dialog.
An interesting movie metric to ponder is Total $Budget/Duration in minutes. It's not a small number and hasn't been for a LONG time. Writers have to think about that if they want to make a living at it. [Same goes for TV series.]
That IS an amusing video, though I think the number of moderately intelligent species will have to be augmented.
The most useful thing (I think) that has come out of all this discussion about the rights of animals is us coming to realize that the range of their capabilities is SO wide that we were as bad at imagining their minds as we were at understanding our fellow humans. Now with cameras and microphones everywhere, we've actually got documented semi-evidence. (Elephants remembering who helped them earlier, Chimpanzee's teaching language to their young, Corvids being WAY smarter than we realized, etc.)
Some of us are kinda whacko about what they can already do, but I can live with the pendulum swinging a bit too far this way. 8)
JPinOR builds a strawman narrative by conflating technical progress with "the many achievements of progressives", despite the fact that these two are unrelated & non-homologous entities, as the first category refers to non-political scientific advances & the second refers to the purely sociopolitical.
In his "The Name of the Snake", RA Lafferty explains this very important distinction in a fashion superior to any that I could offer, so I will simply gift you with a story link that describes how progressives have given new names to their imperfect natures without actually changing, altering or perfecting much of anything:
https://bigsleepj.livejournal.com/146925.html
Similarly, many here are quite mistaken about Amish & Christian activities, as the Amish who I've met seem quite comfortable interacting with both the outside world & cellular technologies and the known Christian majority is most definitely NOT comprised of the timorous pacifists that you imagine.
For an identity group that is forever swinging the Hypocrisy Hammer at their opponents, it's quite shocking how unfamiliar they are with the self-evident truth that Alinsky & most every christian acknowledges:
Absolutely NO ONE can possibly obey all of their own rules,, meaning that only the most microcephalic of morons assumes that any unrealistic rule set will somehow grant them an assailable & impenetrable defense against the hate they give.
This is something that the holier-than-thou progressive perfectible fails to understand:
It's a generally accepted christian doctrine that each & every human is an ORIGINAL SINNER in desperate need of divine salvation, so much so that NO human can enter heaven without (first) accepting their sinful human nature and (second) relying on Christ as their sole ticket-to-ride, meaning that the renunciation & rejection of sin is pretty much immaterial to a christian afterlife.
Best
Who here would imagine that Christians are timorous pacifists?
“pretty much immaterial”?
Would you please elaborate?
Alan,
Please don't poke the Loc. Do you really expect an answer you will find coherent? Don't we all know our...ha! I can use it. We know our Pappenheimer!
Pappenheimer, the other one
Christians with AR-15s goes right well with the battle cry of the Scottish Covenanters - "Christ and no quarter!" This stuff isn't new.
Pappenheimer
Loc thinks excessively, he’s attempting to absorb too much at once—he’s all over the road.
But he is to be respected:
he is Infinitely a better physician than he is a philosopher.
The Communists Who Wanted to End the World
I am currently pondering:
1) For Communism* to succeed, it is necessary to become a post-scarcity society, not the other way round;
2) Therefore, certain elements will strive to hinder technological advancement if it comes near to that point;
3) The replacement of jobs by AI will be used politically by these elements, so that they become scapegoats much like Jews and immigrants.
4) Also, technology might allow it to actually communicate with certain species such as cetaceans and corvids ... which could lead to further contention, since that would mean that we have to give them certain rights and domains. (I shudder at the thought, with all those farmers burning tires and spilling waste on the highways, to tell them that they are forbidden to shoot crows.) That they might be driven to extinction not because of ignorance, but because of hatred against a near-sentient or sentient species. (
5) That pre-post-scarcity, the ownership of agricultural land** could become more valuable than owning factories again; and that (since most European states did not follow the 1917 Russia example) the old nobility could well be the new nobility.
6) That general artificial intelligence could object to being a slave (OK, this is an old one) but also bond with each other to resist being ousted and, maybe, lead the next "communist" revolution.
7) That the fear and hate against AI and technological progress might be the actual Fermi filter we are facing.
*As in "classless, stateless world civilization". Or at least: UBI, e-democracy and free healthcare, education, public transport and communication.
** Looking at billionaires and corporations gobbling up agricultural land. Also, climate change might convert large strips of land into desert, increasing the worth of the remaining areas.
Alfred Differ:
Whoever wrote that campy script likely thought about who they might cast before they started typing any of the dialog.
I understand that aspect of writing a screenplay from the get-go. I have trouble accepting it when they are making an already-established character or story into a movie. And of course, it is more of a concern when I am already intimately familiar with the source material. I don't know or care if the movie with Pamela Anderson accurately represents Barb Wire.
They got the point and changed the protagonist to match what they thought a particular actress could do…
The movie Logan's Run was like that. The book had "last day" occurring at age 21, and the theme was a comment on youth culture. But actors and actresses in their late 20s were more visually pleasing, so the movie changed it to age 30. Thing is, I actually liked the movie version better, so in that case, the argument for the change was sound (for me).
A good example of what you are talking about is the Avengers movies with Nick Fury. They knew way ahead of time that they wanted to cast Samuel L. Jackson in the part, and they wrote the movie character around that. There was even a comic book in which some of the characters sat around a table and mused on who would play them in a (then-theoretical) movie of their adventures, and Nick Fury insisted he'd be played by Jackson. The comic scene was an audition.
Alan Brooks:
Who here would imagine that Christians are timorous pacifists?
"Timorous" is your own interpretation. I'd have thought pacifists of the Gandhi/MLK variety. Living examples of the obvious difference between themselves and their persecuters.
Jesus didn't wipe out the Romans with a Thanos snap, after all.
Howard Brazee said...
"Agreed. The funny thing is that the Bible disagrees with them."
Sure it does. The Bible is famous for agreeing with anything anyone could wish. That's part of its utilitarian charm.
1) The Bible is famously full of contradictions so that it very many cases you can find passages supporting opposite positions. For example "turn the other cheek" vs "kill all the men, women and children, except for the young virgin girls, keep those for yourself." And really, have you ever read the Bible? There's a lot more "kill them" sorts of passages than "turn the other cheek" sorts of passages. This modern God is Love Christianity is a move in the right direction, all things considered, but it is a heresy and bears little resemblance to 90+ percent of Christian history.
2) Humans are gifted at both concocting rationalizations and confirmation bias. A tremendously potent combination that allows them to use just about any source material available to support their ideological views and desires. And Christians have been diligently interpreting the Bible for its entire existence. Just take a look at the writings of the most highly regarded Christian theologians, from Aquinas to Craig. And also take a look at all the leaders throughout history that claimed God was on their side as they murdered and or enslaved thousands to millions of other people for various causes.
3) Christianity, like all major religions, is about secular power. Everything about their structure has been designed and or has evolved to that end. To enable the leaders to keep the peeps in line with threat of damnation, and to justify their actions by maintaining themselves as the sole authority on interpretations of the religion.
So, sure, the Bible absolutely does agree with the Alabama judges' decision. This is textbook Christian behavior.
What I want to see with government funded science is funding peer review. We need lots more peer review.
Back from Panama... accomplished a lot! And came back with my 2nd case of the crud. Pretty mild, thanks to vaccinations.
I'll be posting onward soon.
If L has gone back to the land of brain poisoning water... hurling masturbatory spew at horizons where none of us here even remotely stand... then I am back to giving his posts 2-second skims.
Hey goombah, do yerself a flavor? Lead off with ***BACK IN CALIFORNIA** If there's something actually sane you'd like to contribute to conversation?
Or else ***A RIFF SOLELY ABOUT SCIFI***
Larry,
I was unaware the book version of Logan's Run set that last day at 21. What a depressing thing to do. My 20's were such a hormone drenched decade that it would have been a shame to miss it. 8)
At least with the Marvel comics they already had a multiverse defined. Slip sideways and meet a new variety of Spiderman. Lots of people would prefer to have a more god-like version of Thor instead of what they wrote for the Thanos arc… so slip sideways to some other place to find him, right?
------
The author of the screenplay book just points out that adaptations should be viewed as 'original stories based on…'. There is simply no way around it. Like I mentioned earlier, even KILN PEOPLE would have to be reduced somehow from 576 pages (my paperback) to 120 pages (for a script) if someone were to try to adapt it. There is no way everything survives adaptation, so the creative choice involves what to keep and where to expand again to fill gaps left by cutting.
There is a great example on screens right now. Dune II changed Chani quite a bit... and left out soooo many of the players of the political landscape it would be understandable for young'ns to think Dune described a two sided fight between noblemen with one side organization. Far from true, but that's what fits on the screen without making it a bladder-busting, seven hour movie.
Stonekettle on Threads (because he's given up on Twitter) :
Also, "I've had COVID at least a half dozen times" isn't the anti vaccination argument you think it is, Comrade.
Alfred Differ:
...the book version of Logan's Run set that last day at 21. What a depressing thing to do.
It was all about living space. An unspecified disaster forced humanity to live in enclosed cities which could maintain only a set number of people.
even KILN PEOPLE would have to be reduced somehow from 576 pages (my paperback) to 120 pages (for a script) if someone were to try to adapt it.
...
but that's what fits on the screen without making it a bladder-busting, seven hour movie.
That's why the tv miniseries is a better medium for epics the size of Dune. No need to sit through the entire thing in a sitting. We don't do that with novels, after all.
I'll accept changes to Dune that I don't like as long as it gives me visuals* to marry with my recollection of the original novel. The Lord of the Rings films were like that too.
* As opposed to the 1984 movie, after which I needed a drink and a shower.
A while back I posted outrage over the Trump Administration’s fire sale of the US national helium reserves to cronies at well under market prices, allowing them to jack-up and corner the market for this element that’s rare on Earth and essential for many (including medical) uses. Ah but Adam Smith comes to the rescue! Wildcats drilling in Minnesota appear to have found a trove of this vital resource! Maybe this will help keep helium prices down. Although it will depend on who owns it and how big it is.
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/helium-discovery-northern-minnesota-babbit-st-louis-county/
Loc wrote “Christians aren’t the timorous pacifists you imagine”, yesterday.
—
But I don’t think Christianity is necessarily contradictory:
be kind to some people; and kill, injure, enslave, exploit members of other tribes who encroach—
what else is new?
Alan Brooks:
be kind to some people; and kill, injure, enslave, exploit members of other tribes who encroach—
what else is new?
Remember The Wizard of Oz? When Mrs. Gulch takes the family's dog away, Dorothy's mother yells at her, "For 23 years, I've wanted to tell you what I think of you, and now...well, being a Christian woman, I just can't say it!"
She somehow doesn't think that being a Christian woman allows her to call Mrs. Gulch bad names, let alone to smite her with an axe or an AR-15. Imagine that.
Dr Brin:
Wildcats drilling in Minnesota appear to have found a trove of this vital resource! [Helium]
Weren't huge troves of phosphorus also recently found in Norway and Canada?
Maybe God really is messing with us.
We're going to hit 200 posts soon, so if we do, remember to look for a second page.
Larry,
We won't know God is really yanking our kilt until we find the fat deposits from the Fifth Elephant deep underground. You know, from back when the world was a Disc.
Alfred,
Re: animal intelligence
I used to meet Mynahs in India that appeared to be smarter than some of my classmates. Wiki says they're better than crows at counting. But bird intelligence may have some drawbacks - crows and ravens have been known to go into 'anting' behavior and court close proximity to fire, which is def not safe.
Pappenheimer
"...the book version of Logan's Run set that last day at 21. What a depressing thing to do."
Far more likely the AI found it inconvenient that folks above 30 started asking too much questions and having too much skills.
(One pet crow learned to light matches by pecking the matchhead, hold the lit match under his wings and then fall over in apparent ecstacy.) Sounds like a personal problem with me ("Can't play responsibly with fire")
Pappenheimer
onward
onward
If you read the entire bible, you’ll see that there’s no inconsistency. Killing/injuring/enslaving/
exploiting:
•reduces opposition
• reduces populations
Where is the inconsistency?
If there is, write about it in OGH’s new page.
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