apparently someone was trying to organise a protest about Beijing real estate in front of Uniqlo but only police showed up:
me: sth going on?
officer: I dunno
me: how come you’re all here?
officer: dunno what I’m doing here
(from my current understanding of the situation) the drawback of solar and wind power is less that it’s more expensive than coal, and more that it’s *cheaper.* Cheap energy is an unfortunate prospect for energy companies because it’s one big game of chicken: as soon as one company starts switching to solar power and energy costs pennies on the dollar, suddenly every energy company is making pennies when they used to make dollars.
I think this is part of the issue, but @xhxhxhx did a good effortpost about alternative energy a while back that I felt left me a better understanding of some of the other issues involved. I won’t just reiterate the same thing worse, but from the sounds of it, a lot of the problem is the way supply tends to fluctuate independently of demand. It seems like there’s a lot of potential for a big breakthrough in power storage at this point, though I am also kind of terrified of the failure states of something capable of storing that kind of energy.
The difficulty of the transition factors into that theory, if it were extremely easy, there would be no stopping it. Instead, there can be this situation where someone is going to have to spend a lot of money discovering how to solve the storage problem, then have that process immediately taken and used by others and therefore make none of that money back.
I dunno, I think whoever invented better storage tech would make bank. Power companies would pay, electric car companies would pay, those goofy people trying to sell consumer solar stuff (presumably made possible by govt subsidy or something) would pay. Storage technology is pretty bad today, and it would be huge if we made major advances in it.
@collapsedsquid said:
They would pay whoever produces the machines. That doesn’t have to be the one who developed it.
I mean, there are patents and shit. And if there isn’t any such protection, it’s pretty much orthogonal to the energy sector and more a general condition of the country/legal system you’re operating under. I don’t actually think that it’s likely to be a power company that would develop or produce better storage tech, but I do think they’d pay whoever did.
There are patents, but like you said, they can be tricky to enforce. There’s the the problem that someone can come up with a competing technology right after you come up with yours, or that you can spend a lot of money and develop nothing.
You want to think of this as an allocation issue. The rewards from this technology can go to consumers, capital, or labor. Consumers can make out like bandits here. I think the people who work on it can cash out in their next job. But the person who paid for the development? They might get a small piece, could cover their actual development costs before risk-adjustment, but not enough to make it worth the risk.
Depends on what tech it is. Super Ultimate Pumped Storage would have trouble, some battery tech probably not so much.
“One reason why we have not learned more from this history is that queers do not have the institutions for common memory and generational transmission around which straight culture is built. Every new wave of queer youth picks up something rom its predecessors but also invents itself from scratch. Many are convinced that they have nothing to learn from old dykes and clones and trolls, and no institutions–neither households nor schools nor churches nor political groups–ensure that this will happen. And since the most painfully instructed generation has been decimated by death, the queer culture of the present faces more than the usual shortfall in memory. Now younger queers are told all too often that a principled defense of nonnormative sex is just a relic of bygone ‘liberationism.’ This story is given out in bland confidence, since so many of the people who would have contradicted it have died.”
Really makes you think
That’s an almost neoreactionary thought about queer people and social fabric dressed up in progressive language.
@mitigatedchaos (Now with more statism) would probably solve this problem by requiring you to take three-weeks of evening classes at your municipal DLGBT to get your queering license.
No no no,
The correct institution to ensure the inter-generational passage of queer knowledge is the Queer Nuclear Family,
The National Delegation
In case you haven’t noticed recently, democracy has major issues. Every major developed state is strewn with dysfunction and programs that are actively at odds with their intended purposes. Our politicians are either incompetent idiots or shrewd operators working against our interests.
Policies routinely have reasonable stated values, but terrible efficacy.
Organizations such as the RAND Corporation knew the Iraq War would be a lot tougher than the Bush administration said it would be. Policy plans coming out of think tanks seem to be better than the actual policies we get.
If we didn’t know they’d immediately get subverted, we’d almost be better off with think tanks running the country.
Better results are necessarily different results, and systems produce the outcomes they incentivize, so to change the results it is necessary to change the system.
The truth is, it may be possible to get something like think tanks in charge of the government, a hybrid between them and political parties, but we will have to add selection pressure to ensure they work towards correctness.
I propose a new legislature, composed of a new kind of corporate entity, the Delegate Candidate Organization (DCO).
Every three years, at election time, each voter delegates their vote to a DCO. The top 50 Delegate Candidate Organizations then form the legislature, becoming that term’s Delegate Organizations. This legislature is known as the National Delegation.
In a second election, those DCOs that did not make the cut delegate their votes to members of the top 50.
(In an optional alternative, the vote could be split between DCOs by categories by voters, allowing a truly innovative level of representation. Bills would have to pass on all categories to pass, and the tax category would determine how funding is obtained, but not total expenditures. Sadly, this is probably too complex for typical voters.)
A Delegate Candidate Organization receives its funding exclusively from the State. For each delegated vote it receives, the DCO receives $5 in annual funding, and an additional $5 times its percentile standing in a legislative outcome prediction market.
(That might sound like a lot. America has around 300 million people, so you could potentially be looking at three billion dollars. I would answer that the 2016 Presidential election cost $2.6 billion by itself, and that money had to come from somewhere and is already influencing our political process. The size of the US economy is $18,570 billion dollars. The real question is whether better policy by the DCOs could improve that by 0.016% or more, which would make the National Delegation pay for itself. I believe that it would.)
The key factor that makes DCOs behave more like think tanks is that a significant chunk of their funding depends on correctly estimating the outcomes of legislation. What keeps them honest? First, competition with other DCOs that will pressure them against spoiling the metrics. Second, voters.
When a piece of legislation is to be passed, DCOs make predictions on outcomes and bet on them in a virtual currency called Credibility Score (or just “Cred”). Each outcome must be represented by a basket of multiple metrics, to prevent min-maxing.
This structure allows us to build a differentiation between a policy’s values and its efficacy. Previous discourse has often viewed policy as solely a matter of efficacy, but of course in practice people have different preferences and are not a unified mass just waiting for enlightenment into [your political ideology]. Preserving the values component (in part through voting) also allows bits of efficacy that have slipped through to be represented on the other side of the equation.
The bets serve two purposes. The first is to reward policymakers that are actively effective at achieving their stated objectives, and punish policymakers that are too unaligned with reality. The second is to effectively tell voters what the plans will actually do, not just wishy washy language pols want people to hear.
“This bill will reduce gun crime.”
“By how much?”
“Uh… a, uh, lot.”
Not only can the DCO specify what its % estimate for a decrease in gun crime is, but it can also communicate its level of certainty - by how much it bets on the outcome as a percentage of its current Cred reserves, data that can be mined by political scientists and journalists.
DCOs must be able to amend predictions when new legislation is passed. A court will also be required to punish those who tamper with metrics, and resolve other disputes. The details of that are a challenge in themselves, but should be feasible to work out.
Each DO has as many votes in the legislature as have been delegated to it. A majority is required to pass legislation.
The accumulated Credibility Score/Cred across all bets is used to determine the percentile standing of all DCOs, used to determine funding (as above). Percentile standing is listed on the ballot next to the DCO’s name, but to simplify things for voters, DCOs are listed in the order of votes received in the previous election.
Practical experiments will be necessary to assess the viability of this model, but I have high hopes for it. If we want to advance as a civilization, then we must develop new organizational technologies.
Think you need to take a closer look at Robin Hanson, something I thought I’d never say
Specifically, the problem is that predicting the results isn’t the issue, it’s predicting the change in results given some policy change
I think Hanson has people bet on outcome both with and without policy
I may have to look into that, but it doesn’t sound unreasonable. Betting for outcomes based on whether the bill passes or fails to pass certainly provides more information for our voters/etc.
One big problem is that people are going to use this not to predict, but to hedge
It will be financialized
If you believe Hanson that markets are perfect, that’s not a problem it will all work out
if you haven’t had your skull smashed with a brick every day for the past 20 years or worked in the econ dept at GMU, you should be skeptical.
Sorry, I guess I should have been more clear in my intentions earlier.
While the probability estimates produced by the prediction market are interesting, the real purposes are more like:
1. Punish politicians that are actively at odds with the truth/reward those who have some idea what they’re doing, so that eventually the system is dominated by more clueful politicals who spend less time huffing ideology. Hopefully, this will result in more effective policy which is more aligned with reality.
(I’m of the opinion that there are many policies that it’s said you can’t do, because markets etc, but which you could do if you were smart about it. So I want those to come up, actually testing some of these policies before they come up, etc.)
2. Make politicians be more specific and truthful about the outcomes of policies in measurable ways, making it more difficult to do one thing and say another.
3. Track the effectiveness of policies over time so that better policy can be created in the future (through the metrics gathered to feed the market, not the market itself).
Would hedging interfere with those? I’m not so sure. It is, itself, information. It may also depend on the market’s design itself.
Alright, then you’re gonna have the problem of “who gets to decide what comes up for prediction and how?” with the various possibilities for manipulation.
Yes, a challenge in itself. My opinion is that it must be easier to get stuff into the prediction pool than it is to pass the legislation. Otherwise, it just degrades to normal legislature with some fluff on top.
So, off the top of my head, it may require 30-40% approval to get an item into the prediction pool, perhaps with a limit on the number of items each DCO can put into the pool.
Second and related is that you can basically rewarding people who are connected rather than accurate
To some extent, this doesn’t matter, connections are a part of effective policy too, much as I wish they were not
But it comes down to who can manipulate the outcomes and who has the inside track on what people will do.
- court will be needed so they can sue each other when they cheat
- baskets of metrics harder to game than single metric, so all metrics must be baskets
- hard to actually game some of the more challenging ones by outside interference if metric collection is at all accurate, simply too costly, borders on cost of actually fixing the problem
I’ll expand on this when I have access to an actual computer, which will be a while.
The Rand Corporation has done more than basically any group in the twentieth century to shape what kind of world we’re living in now, and they’re weirdly unrecognized for that
the fact they’re responsible for the MAD nuclear deterrence doctrine alone is mind boggling
Did you know they were aware that the Iraq War would be, well, more like it actually was and less lile the Bush administration thought it would be? Which is less impressive by itself, but more impressive relative to the cluelessness of various other US government institutions.
After that, I began to wonder if government quality could be improved by replacing the legislature with think tanks.
at the same time, RAND also made a doctrine for waging a “victorious” thermonuclear war against the Soviets. A large number of think tanks also pushed for a war with Iraq, which is why Gore was hore hawkish compared to Bush on this.
Tom Schelling, who’s undoubtedly a genius, is responsible in part for the Vietnam war.
National Review, Heritage Institute and a bunch of Kochtopus’s tentacles that all shill for the “global warming doesn’t exist because there was winter once” meme are technically think tanks as well.
Replacing the legislature with think tanks would delegitimize their rule in the eye of people (which is the primary reason for democracy, the idea of legitimate control) while these tanks are frequently wrong and not free of bias.
That’s why you make them bet on the outcomes of their legislation. Some think tanks are significantly more ideology-huffing than others, so you have to weed out the weak “this liberal democracy thing will totally work out in a nation with such high illiteracy” ones. Eventually what you’ll have left, after they all lose huge standing in the market or massively adjust policy to actually fit the situation (oh hey let’s try a 20yr mil governorship to actually make the necessary conditions for democracy before doing the democracy) will be less stupid.
And actually my plan is for elected thinktankparties, see my National Delegation post.
The Rand Corporation has done more than basically any group in the twentieth century to shape what kind of world we’re living in now, and they’re weirdly unrecognized for that
the fact they’re responsible for the MAD nuclear deterrence doctrine alone is mind boggling
Did you know they were aware that the Iraq War would be, well, more like it actually was and less lile the Bush administration thought it would be? Which is less impressive by itself, but more impressive relative to the cluelessness of various other US government institutions.
After that, I began to wonder if government quality could be improved by replacing the legislature with think tanks.
I kinda don’t know how to react to that.
The first problem is believing that the Bush administration actually believed their own PR. The second problem is not assuming that Rand wasn’t working hand in hand with the administration. The third problem is believing government institutions are clueless. The fourth is not acknowledging that think tanks already have more de facto control than most official government positions, hence the origin of the term “deep state”.
They probably didn’t believe their nonsense about WMDs, they probably did believe they wouldn’t make a clusterfuck that would ruin the Republican brand for many people and lead to ISIS.
From what I’ve heard, the admin basically ignored any naysayers, so if RAND told them how it would go, that doesn’t mean they listened to them.
Honestly, there is a lot more incompetence than scheming a lot of the time. Also incompetent scheming. But it’s like assuming Trump is playing 4D chess, when it seems in reality there is no Trump Master Plan. Also lots of individuals working locally at cross-purposes.
Think tanks have some control over legislation because legislators are lazy, but most legislation that actually gets passed is worse than what the think tanks come up with.
Anyhow, see my National Delegation post.
unpopular opinion: ice cream is bad.
ice cream is just cold milk with the sugar level of soft drinks, what could be… hm
Heresy!
When the Pro-Ice Cream Counter-Revolution comes, you will be sent to the Vanilla Mines!
The Rand Corporation has done more than basically any group in the twentieth century to shape what kind of world we’re living in now, and they’re weirdly unrecognized for that
the fact they’re responsible for the MAD nuclear deterrence doctrine alone is mind boggling
Did you know they were aware that the Iraq War would be, well, more like it actually was and less lile the Bush administration thought it would be? Which is less impressive by itself, but more impressive relative to the cluelessness of various other US government institutions.
After that, I began to wonder if government quality could be improved by replacing the legislature with think tanks.
the billion dollar app idea is to make a virtual friend you care about more than anything else in the world, then charge you a monthly fee to keep it alive.
waifu hostages are an illegal industry, Argumate, even I agree with the World State on this one
I think I understand why nrx essays are always at least 10000 words long now.
Themes and Influences
Counterintuitive Insight Porn: The Last Psychiatrist, Hotel Concierge, Malcolm Gladwell
Gratuitous Longposts: Steve Yegge, Scott Alexander, (maybe Oswald Spengler)
Going out of your Way to Appear Like More of a Dick: Zed Shaw, Jim Goad, Friedrich Nietzsche, (maybe Nydwracu)
Giving Catchy Names to Patterns: Paul Graham, Big Yud, Robin Hanson, Richard Dawkins, Venkatesh Rao, David Chapman, Christopher Alexander, Ward Cunningham, Friedrich Nietzsche, (maybe Oswald Spengler)
Reading Old Books: Friedrich Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler
Not mentioned above: Hannah Ahrendt, Robert Jay Lifton, Eric Hoffer, Jane Jacobs
Style
A good way to get a feel for the style of an artist and why it works is to look at what happens when others try to copy him and to see what works and what doesn’t.
Darkly Hinting at the Fridge Horror is definitely the theme that ties them all together in Moldbug’s writing. But his essays don’t start out that way.
The Blueprint
Like an old The Simpsons episode, which starts out with a simple problem and its zany solution to set up the main plot of the episode, these essay start out with the description of a historical situation, or a very technical/procedural/non-ideological problem of modern society. The digression into history allows the author to set up the mental stage in a way that does not immediately raise ideological shields, activate old thought patterns and fall victim to cognitive dissonance. If I write about Kings, Jacobins and Girondists, you are much more likely to pay attention than if I wrote about Democrats and Bernie Bros.
Readers are intrigued: Jacobins, CPSU, Gavrilo Princip, Weather Underground - damn interesting!
In this historical situation, you start the narrative. You explain the problems of the common man, based on the contents of this old book you read about the man who you assume was quite common and typical for his era. This might even be a great idea to counteract your biases. The biases that colour your perception of history are not so much your own, as they are the biases of historians who tried to fit long-term historical trends into neat theories of historical development. In hindsight, the right side of history is curiously always the one that won in the end. Isn’t that neat? The older a book is, the more time was there in the meantime for written history to congeal into an overarching narrative.
After you have used the old book to start the historical narrative, you can extrapolate into later eras and today. Viewed from the past, the present looks not inevitable, but terrifying, and the future will be as terrifying!
Now, you need to go back into the past. Do not dwell too much on the present - yet! Start with another anecdote or statistic about New England in 1850. You must let the first anecdote percolate in the mind of the reader. If you let them think about the present again, they might reject everything you said based on tribalism, ideology or wishful thinking. The past is a place where intuitions don’t apply and we can examine situations on an intellectual level. (If not: Abraham Lincoln was a Republican! The Progressive Era was kind of racist!)
Repeat this a couple of times, so that the reader can form new intuitions based on these examples. Now tie this back into your Big Buzzword Theory! Give a catchy name to the pattern, and link back to an earlier post where you explained the pattern and its implications in more general terms.
Now, the the takeaway: Apply the theory to he present situation by showing how the situation fits into it and how it is similar to the earlier instances of the pattern, but don’t draw the conclusions explicitly! You can darkly hint, and leave it to the reader to figure it out. You must end the essay now.
When he walks away to the next tab, the epistemic fridge horror will slowly thaw and make him realise: “Oh my god! I don’t believe in democracy any more!” That feeling fades after a couple of hours.