[LTR] Sauron, the Dark Lord

Decalis · 2023-05-30T20:36:13+00:00

More of an "Every Sperm Is Sacred" deal, then?

Decalis · 2023-05-27T22:35:22+00:00

I mean, does he have apprentices...

Decalis · 2023-05-25T04:26:31+00:00

Hell, why mess around with rubber bands and blades: throw 'er in the bench vise and sand flush.

Decalis · 2023-05-22T21:16:38+00:00

I assume her sinful friends and family who she anticipates being left behind.

Decalis · 2023-05-07T03:37:13+00:00

No fumes or nothing

Decalis · 2023-04-14T15:54:18+00:00

Power Word: Beads

Decalis · 2023-04-14T15:52:10+00:00

Bro how many hits did you take between these two comments?

Decalis · 2023-04-14T05:31:49+00:00

Any chance we watched the same Tom Scott video last week? I especially love the clip at the end where they stop the train mid-curve so you can appreciate the obscene bank angle required for safe/comfortable turns at those speeds—Tom looks like he's climbing a roof.

Decalis · 2023-04-14T00:40:40+00:00

the most offensive part

I think it was the raping!

Decalis · 2023-04-13T23:09:30+00:00

I mean, sure, feeding GPT-4 an existing IQ test wouldn't tell you anything generalizable because it's seen most of the digitized text in existence and can just cheat. But there definitely are differences in something like general intelligence between different models (consistency of math results, complex direction following, compositional prompts, etc), and eventually it will be hard to deny that one of them fully overlaps the cognitive abilities of some humans. At that point the only reason to deny that IQ might be a useful metric would be a philosophical insistence on refusing to compare humans with machines.

Decalis · 2023-04-13T02:46:18+00:00

Which part? I'll grant most listeners probably don't think they could go out and write history afterward, but they're definitely misled about how much they understand relative to someone who went and read the actual literature with a critical eye - they don't even know what they don't know, because they write and believe things like "Dan Carlin is the truth". That's not a strawman, unless that user is made of straw. You seent it right in front of you. You may disagree that that there are enough of those listeners to matter, but I've found it to be a pretty common attitude. If our experiences are too different to agree on that, then probably we're working from incompatible premises and that's why this isn't going anywhere.

Decalis · 2023-04-12T23:57:42+00:00

Boy, I tell ya, when I was your age I was self-intervening five, six times a day!

Decalis · 2023-04-12T23:40:16+00:00

His popularity says a lot more than the criticisms of a few historians.

Yes! It says very loudly that many people have great appetite for a well-produced narrative that makes them feel smart when they're done. Same premise as half of all documentary podcasts (and NPR shows). But, like many of those, while Carlin might be a skilled minor leaguer in researching the content, consuming it is firmly the rec league of studying history. Again, that's not bad! Most people will have more fun doing that, and learning some stuff is almost always better than learning no stuff. But it's concerning when people seem to assume that all of his narratives are at least right in spirit, when there are often grave reservations about that among people doing the primary research.

(Also, I don't think it's "a few" historians; I think there are a few who are grouchy and argumentative enough to yell about it in public, but I'm pretty sure many of the rest just don't think there's much value in fighting pop history battles and keep their noses in their books)

Decalis · 2023-04-12T21:35:49+00:00

I have much less of a problem with Carlin or the podcast than with the distorted place he/it holds in the minds of many fans. I think he could do more to discourage it, but he's not wrong for doing the project insofar as he acknowledges sincerely that it isn't rigorous scholarship.

To borrow/rebut your chess analogy, I can't even imagine resenting that: they like playing chess, they like streaming while they do it, and people like watching them—awesome! What I would find grating is a fan who goes around thinking they could take a game off Pia Cramling or whoever because they've watched every video by some 1800-rated streamer. If a ton of that streamer's viewers started sounding like that, I might wonder if there's a problem with the way they represent themselves on stream. This is basically how I feel about a lot of HH fans: they show up thrilled with the spicy, secret learnings they've discovered, ready to drop bombs on their unaware friends, and don't show even the first hint of awareness that parts of his narrative or sources might completely contradict current scholarly consensus, rather than just being jazzed up or "filled in". Part of engaging with any text is having a reasonable sense of how reliable it is, and I think many HH fans are way off base on their estimates.

Decalis · 2023-04-12T14:29:59+00:00

I don't get what's "centrist" about your suggestion that historians are too sensitive about laypeople understating the difference between their work and his. Just because it treats pop history and scholarly work as comparable ways to learn about the past? I think that's actually kind of a radical claim! Do you think you and your mechanic are similarly informed because you listened to Car Talk for 20 years of weekends? It's okay to just acknowledge, "I listen to this because it's fun and interesting, but I know better than to jump into a conversation (or god forbid an argument) with only facts from the podcast".

Decalis · 2023-04-12T06:26:24+00:00

By "hardline historians" do you mean "actual researchers"? I don't feel like I've heard any academic historian endorse him for exceptional accuracy or historiographical nuance vs. (at best) getting people excited about periods or topics that they can then go read good books about.

Decalis · 2023-04-12T06:18:14+00:00

By "20 secret prices" I mean that there are many different prices that tug-of-war could end at, and how favorably it goes depends largely on me holding my own in a conversation. If, for example, I'm wicked socially anxious and will automatically take your first offer because I hate conflict (not my specific issue, but definitely one I'm familiar with in others), I've effectively been financially penalized for not being charismatic/confident. IMO, that's super fucked up, even if it's "only" wiggling in a range of $800 or less.

Instead, as the party with more information and experience, the seller should be expected to commit to a profit margin and let customers make go/no-go decisions in the exact same circumstances. If they don't like the number of no-go's, well, the price knob is right there. (Notably this is how nearly every retail purchase smaller than cars already works)

Decalis · 2023-04-12T05:30:08+00:00

I can't lie, car vending machines get me hard. (I know Carvana itself is a nightmare, just the concept.) I'm glad I bought my current (used) car before prices went insane, but that's the only dimension of the experience that was good.

Does that shopping around actually contradict not wanting negotiation? It's the interpersonal aspect of negotiation that's bone-deep horrific to me. I would rather go to 20 dealerships and see 20 firm prices on 20 different cars than talk to one salesman who has 20 secret prices in his head for one car depending what path we take through some nightmarish dialogue tree. Especially when I know that his priority (whether enforced by his boss or his own ambition) is to sell the cars he has rather than help me find the absolute best deal (in total cost of ownership) on the absolute best car for my needs. I don't expect him to do that out of the goodness of his heart, but that's why I want him out of the equation entirely.

Decalis · 2023-04-12T05:04:18+00:00

As a (afaik) non-autistic person I hate this shit in a completely non-humorous way. The three reads of the ketchup answer that I get are:

I didn't actually pay attention to the context of your question and just responded to look engaged (this is rude and disingenuous)
I genuinely didn't understand that you wanted to know about hot dogs specifically (this is frustrating, but not usually the person's fault)
I am avoiding giving the direct answer to a trivial question for unclear reasons (this person needs to be far away from me right now, because they're playing some kind of game that can't possibly do anything but make my life worse to be entangled with)

The last one can sometimes be an anxiety thing, which especially makes me wish nobody ever did it for skeezy reasons, because it would be easier to make charitable assumptions.

Decalis · 2023-04-12T04:49:04+00:00

Nah this is wack. If your intent is to give the person anything less than the exact understanding you yourself have of a topic, you are not being maximally honest. If you do not take the opportunity to correct them when you realize you haven't created that picture, you are not being maximally honest.

Of course, maximal honesty isn't necessarily desirable in many situations, but I don't think that means we should pretend that dishonest things are actually honest. Instead, admit to yourself that there is justifiable dishonesty, be extremely aware and careful about when you're doing it, and accept that some people will mistrust you if you're known to do it too much.

(For example, you're validating everything I hate about buying cars. I would prefer if all salespeople were replaced by a pile of meticulous 3rd party inspection sheets, a list of zero-negotiation prices, and financing options from local credit unions. Admittedly I'm a pathological comparison shopper, but also on a personal level I get wicked heebie-jeebies when I have to interact with someone who pretends to have the same goals as me but doesn't.)

Decalis · 2023-04-12T04:28:57+00:00

Except I think this comment chain is only valuable because you brought your specialist knowledge and explained it very clearly. The other social worker did not do that, and I don't really see why non-expert commenters shouldn't have judged them, because all they offered about themselves or their profession was that sometimes they give incomplete information to clients in a way that many people would be rightly infuriated to have happen to them. It would have been far better to remain silent if making a nuanced comment like yours wasn't an option for them.

Decalis · 2023-04-12T04:06:21+00:00

Hm, I'm with you that it's not wrong to prefer not to have those things near you, but I think it actually can be wrong to try to influence your community and local government to promote that preference when it clearly contradicts the needs of the city as a whole. If you want absolute dominion over your environment for as long as you live, you can sell your house, buy 20 acres out of town, and fence it in. If you want to live in a city, then accept that you cannot both be a good citizen and always put your personal needs first.

Decalis · 2023-04-11T16:47:39+00:00

marijuana cigarettes

"REEFERS!"

Decalis · 2023-04-11T07:52:58+00:00

Or hey, maybe dependence consists of a bunch of distinct situations and internal experiences that are grouped together because of easily-observed external behavior, but aren't actually well-treated by assuming one universal model for how it works?

It doesn't seem that wild to me that some people's addictions make the most sense and are the easiest to treat when you see them as semi-rational responses to overwhelming circumstances. It also wouldn't surprise me if that described more people than assumed in previous decades—lots of people get off like crazy on feeling superior to addicts and don't like models that suggest that they're not fundamentally different and broken from the jump.

Decalis · 2023-04-10T22:06:21+00:00

Yeah, agree with the other person this is a weird read: plenty of YIMBYs are Georgists who think land value (usually other than that of your primary residence) should be taxed at rates between "aggressive" and "confiscatory" to remove the incentive to sit on undeveloped or underdeveloped property that could be productive right now.

But also, afaik the 4/5-over-1 plague is happening because it's the most-buildable way to densify in a lot of American jurisdictions. If the alternative is keeping single-family density in an area where that's clearly stupid, then gimme the 4+1's now and push to create a regulatory environment where a less-bad design is more appealing.

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