Oceans Yet to Burn

collapsedsquid

Noah Smith is doing his “you people on the left need to be re-conciliatory, join up with moderate conservatives like McMullin to fight Trumpism“ that’s continuing his “The US is turning into civil war spain“ idea.

And he’s presenting it like people on the left are too prideful to do it, which some are. But the other problem with this he’s not addressing is that this plan could basically be “We’re about to be shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean, so what we need to do is to tie ourselves to the heaviest and fastest-sinking piece of the ship!“

whatevernatureis

Boring answer is that granting the premises there’s risks and benefits to either strategy, and while the risks and benefits for one strategy or the other might in principle be calculable, the noise of motivated reasoning means we won’t be able to tell which strategy is “right” ahead of time.

I’m largely in the camp that we should do what we can to defend liberal-democratic norms and make a coalition with anyone else who is also defending liberal-democratic norms, whatever else their views may be. Granted, that’s partly because there’s no real coherent agenda with broad support among the left, and we shouldn’t be picky about ideological purity when we don’t know what our ideology is.

(I mean, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are very popular on the left, but their popularity is more about personality and symbolism than policy)

collapsedsquid

I think the agenda with broad support is social democracy. That’s what the Bernie and Warren supporters want, that’s actually something that exists, and it’s a goal that can be worked towards.

And I’m not sure what level or type of support the left is expected to give. Is the left supposed to agree with McMullin when he says the Real Problem is the size of the US deficit? That’s the problem here, what exactly does this “coalition“ entail? Who gets thrown under the bus?

The closest thing to an answer I could think of is the generic culture war “Tone down the PC“ thing. But even leaving aside the morality and possible damage of that decision it’s tricky because it’s not something that can be given away, I don’t think it’s so much the law that pisses people off as the actions of people. It’s not available to give up.

mitigatedchaos

I think we could actually get some support for social democracy. I don’t think it will be as pragmatic as I’d like, but a relatively coherent social democracy that is not indifferent to the conditions of WWC rural Americans could rally up some enthusiasm and take some of the pressure off of automation.

And yeah, social democracy exists, and unlike Communism, it doesn’t involve killing lots of people.

I’m not sure how well it would work when combined with Globalism, which seems to be a thing the Left really does not want to remove, which I want to see removed.

On top of that, I recently had someone argue that all cultures are equal, despite my clearly explaining that FGM is cultural (not even religious), and them appearing to be opposed to FGM. So I’m not sure how much pragmatism there is to be had.

politics trump social democracy the left globalism

bambamramfan

Anonymous asked:

So, the current president of the US and the political party that controls the government won, this year, on a platform that, in part, openly appealed to white nationalists. The only thing I have seen from the rationalistsphere about this fact is A) telling people they're overreacting and B) treating people like monsters because they don't condemn the punching of a prominent neo-nazi. Why is this? Why the commitment to pretending that the "left" in the US is the real danger?

bambamramfan answered:

A fair question. I agree with @raggedjackscarlet the other day that lots of anti-SJ types are underestimating the possibility of right wing dictatorship.

I think a lot of people are struggling with how to deal with Trump, and honestly no one has found a good way to do so yet. He’s like the zombie we’ve shot all our ammunition into, and keeps on coming. Finding out how to defeat him is a top priority.

But let’s not ignore how much of the world is a liberal order - ie, focused on rights like free speech and property and voting and privacy, rather than trying to merge all of society into one collective body under the Leader. Even if Trump isn’t a rights based liberal, he doesn’t run all of society. Paul Ryan is a libertarian, and most Senators can be fit under this rubric. The richest CEOs of the richest companies are good liberals (like Tim Cook.) The top bureaucrats at all agencies believe in this worldview, not to mention the media and academia.

So if you’re worried “liberals might hate me and wish me harm” vs “fascists might hate me and wish me harm” that former group still has a lot more power to do so. And if liberals promise to be kind to each other and protect each other, actually the fascists will find there isn’t much they can do to us.

I at least reject very much political programs that try to unite everyone around hating “one idiot.” Even the most dangerous idiot in the free world is still one dude. The question is the system that gets everyone to play along to his stupid antics.

Don’t read his twitter.
Don’t believe what his federal agencies say and who they accuse of crimes especially.
Don’t give him ratings.
Don’t turn in immigrants and Muslims.
Don’t accept his “us vs them” mentality.

…is how I fight Trump. Dodge the draft and evade taxes if it becomes necessary even.

I admit this doesn’t sound like the most effective plan ever. But in absence of a guaranteed way to defeat him, for the love of god, stop beating each up or other bystanders.

*****

Also you are not a monster if you want to punch a Nazi. It’s okay. These are pretty normal urges shared by many people. I hope you don’t do it, but I definitely don’t think you are a monster. Like, how would you even log onto to tumblr and submit an ask if you were? The monitor would melt and your claws would crush the keyboard. No you’re totally human.

mitigatedchaos

@anon The rationalsphere isn’t condemning people for not condemning the punch, that I’ve seen. They’re condemning people that are celebrating it as a general principle.

@bambamramfan

I think a lot of people are struggling with how to deal with Trump, and honestly no one has found a good way to do so yet. He’s like the zombie we’ve shot all our ammunition into, and keeps on coming. Finding out how to defeat him is a top priority.

Social status competition and (yes, really) virtue signalling, emotional satisfaction, and other things caused all the ammunition to lose its teeth.

This is actually a side effect of unethical tactics. Basically antibiotic resistance mutating as an effect of overuse of antibiotics.

Every politician against the Left was decried as “racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic”. Every position on immigration other than open borders was described as “racist”. Any criticism of Islam, which is not a very liberal religion and is tied into politics in ways that other foreign religions are not, was met with accusations of “racism”.

What is the correct tactical response on the Right to these things? To just flat out stop caring. Having swamped the field of racism/sexism/etc accusations with noise (I outright ignore uncited accusations of sexism these days), so many people have stopped listening that you can put in actual racists and cover for it by accusing the accusations of being fake! Because, to the typical viewer who doesn’t have time to research, often enough they actually are fake.

This is what Trump is. He is the antibiotic resistant bacteria. He is the strain that survived because people were busy applying antibiotics en masse to the common cold, which isn’t even caused by a bacteria in the first place.

I don’t know how to unbreak those tools, because I don’t know how to take them away from idiots and status-craving unethical people. If I make a new signal for “no, this guy is actually racist, he doesn’t just want to enforce existing immigration laws”, it will be hijacked by these same politicals who will use it to lie for status, resources, and power.

It will also be used to attack me and people like me.

Locally, there are still people I trust with a sexism/racism/etc accusation, but that number is shrinking.

politics the left trump

ranma-official

Source: memecucker overwatch culture politics

anaisnein

immanentizingeschatons

Seriously though it pisses me off immensely that most leftist’s response to the possibility of immortality only for the rich is to oppose immortality rather than to try and make it available for everyone.

Like, what the actual fuck, you’re the left, that is supposed to be your thing, saying you’d rather just ban transhumanism is basically just ceding ground to capitalism.

Immortality for all.

mitigatedchaos

basically just ceding ground to capitalism.

That’s a good point, actually. If you offer people to be Capitalist and have a chance of not dying, or be Communist and have a 100% chance of dying, they’re probably going to pick the former.

Anyhow, the good news is that life extension is probably worth a lot of money for any government that has to pay for healthcare, simply because aging is so ludicrously expensive. If costs $100,000 to delay aging-related care for 10 years, then to a government like that of France’s, it’s worth it to just subsidize it en masse.

The other thing is that it’s not that probable that whatever procedure is needed will be necessarily expensive because of physics, the way rocket launches are. It will probably be able to see large cost-reductions long-term through automation.

anaisnein

You most likely would not be eliminating old age and end-of-life costs but only delaying their onset by X years. And during much of that X-year period the person is very probably going to be retired and drawing a Social Security or equivalent payment. In this case, it’s a net absolutely massive *rise* in costs.

(Also, trust me, the procedure will be expensive. Look at immunotherapy and biologic cancer drugs and get back to me.)

mitigatedchaos

And during much of that X-year period the person is very probably going to be retired and drawing a Social Security or equivalent payment. In this case, it’s a net absolutely massive *rise* in costs.

That’s assuming the life extension effect doesn’t kick in until the person is already quite old. That probably is not the case, or the life extension mechanism is not likely to be effective at its goal of extending life. It won’t stretch out puberty, either (probably), so that leaves an effect on early and particularly middle adulthood, which are prime earning years.

If you can extend the amount of time that someone is effectively 40 by about a decade, or even just five years, then sure it isn’t as fun as being in one’s 20s, but it still adds plenty of earning potential.

(Also, trust me, the procedure will be expensive. Look at immunotherapy and biologic cancer drugs and get back to me.)

At first, sure. And the willingness of wealthy tech executives to pay almost any cost for it will fund a lot of the research necessary to make it cheap enough to be more widely available. But while we are on the side of the medical cost curve where medical costs come down from infinity, and therefore costs go up since we start actually paying them rather than dying, there should be a far side of the curve where the costs start going back down again.

We’re growing new organs on laboratory animals, printing new (and functional) organs with 3D printers, and we just got CRISPR. Apparently this year the NHS will be testing some kind of gene therapy on a subset of blind patients. Surgical robots, while not autonomous, are becoming more common. (That’s leaving aside the prosthetic robot arms since those aren’t relevant to aging right now.) Even those immunotherapy drugs are a step up.

On the far side of that curve, the sorts of chronic conditions that cost us so much money are prevented through gene therapy and selective IVF, while tissue engineering replaces organs damaged by disease with natural ones that require no immunosuppressant drugs. Robots decrease the cost of surgery, either by automating part of it or allowing more labor to enter the field from elsewhere in the economy. Critically damaged limbs can be replaced by nervous-system-linked prosthetics (which already exist) produced by highly-automated factories and custom-fit to the patient (factories are getting massive reductions in staff even in places like China), without drastically impacting patient mobility.

Much of the cost is in the research. One can gene mod bacteria to synthesize the desired chemicals, build big heavily-automated factories, that sort of thing.

Many very expensive drugs cater to an illness that is not common in the population. However, the market for life extension is probably at least one quarter of the population in all developed nations, if not much more, and they would be willing to pay an enormous amount of money to have it. That’s a very large number of people to amortize the research cost over.

Now, reading all this, you might say I’m being naive and that it will require personalized interventions for each person, not a nice mass-manufactured one-size-fits-all solution.

But that’s what we have computers and big data for. The market is enormous, and computer power is still increasing, so even if the genes have to be tailored to each specific person, the genetic tailoring can still probably be done by machines.

Now, it’s possible that I’m wrong about this, and it will remain unreachably expensive forever. However, I think that sort of pessimism on this matter is driven in large part by how unattainable life extension has been for humanity, and all the Deathist myths in our culture that tell us that old age and mortality are really better for us, and that the immortality we crave but cannot have would be terrible. In our myths, it is often associated with vampires and other undead, the temptation that drives sorcerers and other villains to do evil and corrupts their hearts.

In fact, weren’t people joking about Peter Thiel wanting to look into the qualities of young blood? But we can just grow cell cultures, and if it’s something that’s common to all young blood, then that sort of thing would only last for about ten years before they crack the secret of how to do semi-artificially it on an industrial scale.

It seems likely to me that either the rich will have life extension treatment and it will become cheaper over a couple of decades, or that no one will have effective life extension treatment worth more than a few years, and not a stable in-between state where we go for a century with only the wealthy having life extension.

anaisnein

Clearly the interventions won’t be priced in the mid-six-figures on the rare-disease model, but that doesn’t mean that an intervention with everyone as its target market will necessarily be cheap, nor that there’ll be the fundamental willingness to pay for it on a large scale. Right now there are mortality-extending drugs for patient populations in the millions, pricing in the $4K-$6K a year range – that’s rack rate, obviously, much higher than the various sorts of actual rates – and the payor landscape has been extremely resistant, despite not only rigorous clinical evidence and strong medical guidelines recommendations but also great pharmacoeconomics models and strong value propositions across health-systems, hospital, and patient levels. It’s not going to be as simple as demonstrating impressive clinical benefits and rigorously proving cost-effectiveness.

(And I mean I’d really, really like the answer here to be as simple as “well, fucking well charge a bit less and just roll around in a zillion tons of moneys instead of a jillion,” cf: literally everyone. I get that. I spent fifteen years in oncology. I’ve seen some shit. Suffice it to say structural incentives across biopharma and the entire US access landscape are pervasively and fundamentally fucked in that way where you can’t do much more than tinker with any one bit without catastrophic repercussions due to the whole contextual gestalt of it and solving for pricing strategy is a killer of a hard problem.)

As per the rest of your response, of course, there’s always the possibility (necessity) of a lateral and sharply innovative solution.

I actually like your optimism and find it less implausible that outsider/cross-industry thinking could in fact end up generating the way to break the back of what look like intractable problems from here than that the healthcare industry will manage to painfully stepping-stone its own way out of the mess. I’ve been in the industry for a long time (mostly in biopharma rather than devices, which your post is kind of suggesting to me might be part of the problem) and I’m tired and maybe jaded. And personally I might be a little bitter about transhumanism. I’m over forty and feel like even if all of this really truly comes to pass it’s going to be too late for me to benefit, certainly while in my prime, on which I haven’t yet lost my goddamn death-grip [so to speak] thank you very much but the writing would seem to be on the wall even if I’m not yet forced to look that way. It’s hateful tbh.

mitigatedchaos

And personally I might be a little bitter about transhumanism. I’m over forty and feel like even if all of this really truly comes to pass it’s going to be too late for me to benefit, certainly while in my prime, on which I haven’t yet lost my goddamn death-grip [so to speak] thank you very much but the writing would seem to be on the wall even if I’m not yet forced to look that way. It’s hateful tbh.

I’m younger than you are, enough that I may benefit from at least replacement organ technology (probably only 10-20 years out now), if not reach at least the early tiers of life extension or cryo that actually works.

But my parents aren’t. I’m fortunate enough that they’ve made it this far, but I need to start thinking about how they may not be here in 20 years. And that hurts, because I have not yet showed them me being successful. I want them to at least see that, before it’s too late. I’m trying to record some more things, too.

They had me late. On the one hand, that put me perhaps ten years farther into the future, which gives me more of a fighting chance, and allowed me to meet the people and have the experiences that are important to me. On the other hand, I won’t be able to know them as long, and they are good people.

I know you may feel bitter about Transhumanism, because younger generations will benefit more than you will, and younger generations still would benefit more than me.

…but isn’t it better to be one of the last generations than any generation before? Isn’t it better than to be born earlier than this, in the 1700s or the 1800s, or the early 1900s, where the people were recognizable to us, but the only hope was some vague abstract notion that progress would overcome it? Clashing against a seemingly-indestructible monolith of despair.

It’s like knowing a war will end soon, and that even though you won’t make it through to the end, your children will, and after this, they may never have to experience a total war again, not the way you have.

Please, keep fighting, though. At this point, even a few years could make a difference, for both you and for others. Those tech billionaire money spigots are starting to turn. If we can just manage to keep the economy going for another 20 to 30 years, I think we may just make it through to the other side as a species.

Source: immanentizingeschatons transhumanism aging

anaisnein

immanentizingeschatons

Like, what the actual fuck, you’re the left, that is supposed to be your thing, saying you’d rather just ban transhumanism is basically just ceding ground to capitalism.

Immortality for all.

mitigatedchaos

basically just ceding ground to capitalism.

That’s a good point, actually. If you offer people to be Capitalist and have a chance of not dying, or be Communist and have a 100% chance of dying, they’re probably going to pick the former.

anaisnein

(Also, trust me, the procedure will be expensive. Look at immunotherapy and biologic cancer drugs and get back to me.)

mitigatedchaos

And during much of that X-year period the person is very probably going to be retired and drawing a Social Security or equivalent payment. In this case, it’s a net absolutely massive *rise* in costs.

(Also, trust me, the procedure will be expensive. Look at immunotherapy and biologic cancer drugs and get back to me.)

Much of the cost is in the research. One can gene mod bacteria to synthesize the desired chemicals, build big heavily-automated factories, that sort of thing.

Now, reading all this, you might say I’m being naive and that it will require personalized interventions for each person, not a nice mass-manufactured one-size-fits-all solution.

Source: immanentizingeschatons transhumanism life extension

immanentizingeschatons

Like, what the actual fuck, you’re the left, that is supposed to be your thing, saying you’d rather just ban transhumanism is basically just ceding ground to capitalism.

Immortality for all.

mitigatedchaos

basically just ceding ground to capitalism.

That’s a good point, actually. If you offer people to be Capitalist and have a chance of not dying, or be Communist and have a 100% chance of dying, they’re probably going to pick the former.

capitalism politics transhumanism

argumate

the main reason I regret Hillary lost is the intense cognitive dissonance that would have bloomed during her reign, with great potential for the Discourse.

instead we get Garbage Hitler, and that’s no fun at all.

voximperatoris

What cognitive dissonance?

argumate

Everything Trump does is bad for two reasons: one because it’s actually bad, and one because it’s Trump who is doing it.

With Obama it’s much more complicated; you get Obama/Biden bro GIFs and Obama family photo tributes sitting uneasily with drone attacks and expansions of executive power and all the other stuff that every President typically does.

It takes a strong woman to invade Iran.

politics

cyborgbutterflies

On Time-Travelers from the Future Killing Baby Hitler

cyborgbutterflies

The reason why I would not approve of this is that if you have the ability to time travel like that then why go straight to killing? Why be savage like that?

Like, it would be just as easy to render him impotent or out of the picture without killing him. You could, for example, take him back to the future with you (assuming you can return) or prevent his parents from meeting, or something. There are many possibilities here.

Depending on your resources and abilities (which, coming from the future, are likely to be significant), you could even try to tackle the root issues that created Nazi Germany and its allies, which would be much more beneficial and likely to prevent fascism than just killing Baby Hitler and declaring your job done.

mitigatedchaos

This assumes time travel is not horrifically immoral to begin with, which depends a lot on how time travel works. Does it create a new world, or does it cause 6 billion people who exist now to never be born? Also, so far this timeline has avoided global nuclear war.

@leafyhotdog

hey does it feel good to be so passive aggressive against someone who calls for violence against those calling for genocide instead of the ones actually calling for genocide? cause its pretty fucking sad

Buddy, you and your friends are absolutely horrible at telling who is and is not “calling for genocide”, especially since you include anyone questioning the violence in your calls for violence - you wanted violence against “bigots” and said people against the violence were also “bigots”.

You can block me, but it’s the truth. The reason so many people are saying “hey, wait a minute” about this Punching Nazis thing is because we know that it doesn’t end there.

Maybe if it were enforced consistently and actually ended there we could tolerate it, but hey, “Racism is prejudice plus power, and <ingroup> have no power” people already exist, so realistically that is not going to happen.

politics violence leafyhotdog

leafyhotdog

punlich

I can’t wait for liberals to go “ok we marched and we wore these cool hats now we’re done, we finished it, things will be fixed now”

mitoticcephalopod

See but that’s the reassuring thing, it means that people won’t actually be out in the streets assaulting random civilians for looking like nazis.

punlich

I’m sorry I can’t hear you over the beautiful sound of Richard Spencer’s glass jaw cracking under the force of glory-knuckled justice

mitoticcephalopod

why are you all like this

punlich

Because people keep asking me stupid loaded questions on my posts lmao

mitoticcephalopod

look I don’t want to live in a world where lots of people are roaming around looking to start fights with people who disagree on which batshit crazy political ideology they should implement, and I think you would too.

I’m annoyed at the liberals spamming “punch nazi” memes, but it’s reassuring to know that basically all of it is just posturing and signalling, and that most of them can’t be bothered to get off their asses to do the very things they advocate.

leafyhotdog

in? what? world? could? u? be? possibly? living? in? where? nazis? getting? attacked? isnt? something? to? cheer? for? ??? you act like this wasnt a known neo nazi that questions if jewish people are people and if black peoples “are neccessary” like lmao how about instead trying to act above violence you complain about the people calling for mass murder and genocide like??? messy messy messy

ranma-official

In this world.

you complain about the people calling for mass murder and genocide like

Tankies call for mass murder and genocide literally non-stop and unironically, yet they are on the other side of the fist for some reason. But they should not be. ///

leafyhotdog

i support them doing that tbh a fascist is a fascist, one should not and i mean never tolerate intolerance that bitch wants the government to control every aspect of peoples loves yeah she and anyone like her should be killed simple as that, theres no arguing their stupidity only crushing it

ranma-official

You missed the part where you people can’t tell who the Nazis are. “She must have been a Nazi anyways, right?”

leafyhotdog

“you people” who people??? pretty easy to tell whos a bigot when they down talk someone else for race or talk up their own as some sort of master race like??? no, its not hard to see whos arrogant and punishment of who is arrogant is more than good, also any liberals who wanna defend bigots on the basis of free speech can feel free to join the pile of bigoted garbage

mitigatedchaos

That is right, comrade. Anyone who questions our use of political violence is our enemy, and we must inflict political violence on them until the work camps swell with their numbers for the good of Communism. Only those who have already always ever agreed with us and those who are silent out of fear have virtue.

There is no possible way that expanding this sentiment of violence might have terrible consequences and get our regime labelled as one of history’s great monsters - after all, we are good Communists, and by definition, all monsters are counter-revolutionaries in disguise, right?

leafyhotdog

????? just saying man its not even an ounce of hard to tell whos a scumbag bigot and whos not and honestly? like i’ve said before yes antifa or whatever far left groups should make and maintain a more calm and organized look to the masses at large but actual nazi’s like spencer and his goons will always make up shit to legitimize their bigoted actions and someone going around questioning the humanity of other people based on imaginary shit like race needs not only their lights knocked out but their heads blown off plain and simple its not advocating violence it is 100% self defense against people calling for genocide

mitigatedchaos

Yes. Certainly, we must ignore all claims by the Fascists that any of their violence is a form of self-defense. As they are corrupted by the sick, twisted, and vile influence of Fascism, they must assuredly know that any such claims are complete fabrications. They are evil, and cannot be reasoned with, otherwise they would be good Communists like us - everyone knows Communism is true, deep in their hearts.

The defense of Communism is always an act of self-defense by the oppressed masses. And the best defense is a good offense. Until the last thoughts of Fascism have been purged from society, we must be ready to kill at a moment’s notice.

Anyone who doesn’t support killing all Fascists is also tainted by Fascism and must be killed. Recursively.

History will smile on us and our glorious revolutionary Communist wave. They will sing songs of our struggles. Our leaders will never be put side-by-side in textbooks with Adolf Hitler, used as a justification for why Communism must be destroyed and alienating the same working men and women we sought to protect. Completely impossible. We are the good guys, here. Definitely.

Source: punlich politics violence

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

On Time-Travelers from the Future Killing Baby Hitler