TemulentTeatotaler's recent activity
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Comment on Donald Trump whisked off stage in Pennsylvania after apparent gunshots rang through the crowd in ~news
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Comment on Donald Trump whisked off stage in Pennsylvania after apparent gunshots rang through the crowd in ~news
TemulentTeatotaler (edited )Link ParentThe CSIS report is one I've seen come up. They separate out religious extremism with the groups: From 1994 to 2020 left-wing attacks were more common from ~2000-2005, but it mentions: In terms of...The CSIS report is one I've seen come up. They separate out religious extremism with the groups:
...right-wing terrorism refers to the use or threat of violence by sub-national or non-state entities whose goals may include racial or ethnic supremacy; opposition to government authority; anger at women, including from the incel (“involuntary celibate”) movement; and outrage against certain policies, such as abortion.6 This analysis uses the term “right-wing terrorism” rather than “racially- and ethnically-motivated violent extremism,
...left-wing terrorism involves the use or threat of violence by sub-national or non-state entities that oppose capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism; pursue environmental or animal rights issues; espouse pro-communist or pro-socialist beliefs; or support a decentralized social and political system such as anarchism
...religious terrorism includes violence in support of a faith-based belief system, such as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism
From 1994 to 2020 left-wing attacks were more common from ~2000-2005, but it mentions:
Most of these left-wing attacks targeted property associated with animal research, farming, or construction
In terms of fatilities, if you remove the very large outlier of 9/11:
In comparison, right-wing terrorist attacks caused 335 deaths, left-wing attacks caused 22 deaths, and ethnonationalist terrorists caused 5 deaths
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Comment on Donald Trump whisked off stage in Pennsylvania after apparent gunshots rang through the crowd in ~news
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentOr it could be an opening to remind everyone of when Trump endorsed "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat", praised Gianforte for attacking a reporter, or lied about his mass of connections...Or it could be an opening to remind everyone of when Trump endorsed "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat", praised Gianforte for attacking a reporter, or lied about his mass of connections to the Heritage Foundation with their president's recent comment on a revolution that will "remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."
Some Americans might wake up to the possibility that this sort of violence and potential Balkanization is what Trump represents.
We're a bit off script. We can make educated guesses--and this ain't great-- but I don't think anyone can really forecast the next few months.
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Comment on u/RNG investigates bitcoin town in ~health
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentHere's an option for Android if you wanted one. (hope you don't mind me tagging you RuralNoiseGumshoe, btw)Here's an option for Android if you wanted one.
(hope you don't mind me tagging you RuralNoiseGumshoe, btw)
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Comment on Joe Biden's path to US re-election has all but vanished (gifted link) in ~misc
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentDo you have a source for this majority? And are they freaking out because that is what their job is when Biden makes mistakes or trends down, or are a majority of them calling for him to be...It’s not just him either, a majority of Democratic strategists are freaking out right now.
Do you have a source for this majority? And are they freaking out because that is what their job is when Biden makes mistakes or trends down, or are a majority of them calling for him to be replaced because they believe that is a better path to victory?
I would've been happy if Biden didn't run, I'd have been good with him stepping aside after the debate. I've got tons of anxiety about the election, and I'm frustrated with the apparent inability of the DNC to groom talent from what you'd think would be a mucher larger pool.
That said, the only thing I think is pretty clearly a wrong decision is indecision.
At this point I doubt Biden is being replaced. And if that's the case, I find it hard to not think that two months later I'm going to be looking back at all of the attempts to build consensus to replace Biden as something other than doing the GOPs job for them.
Trump had his party do a 50+ point change in opinion Russia. Lindsey Graham went from calling him deranged and unfit to being a sycophant calling him unfairly persecuted. The religious right went from being disgusted by his vulgarity and cheating on his pregnant wives to rationalizations about the Lord using imperfect vessels. Personally I find all that disgusting and hypocritical, but damn if it ain't powerful.
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Comment on Joe Biden's path to US re-election has all but vanished (gifted link) in ~misc
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentNot exactly making the case that "all but vanished" isn't sensational."Our model currently predicts that Donald Trump has a 55% chance of winning the Presidency. "
Not exactly making the case that "all but vanished" isn't sensational.
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Comment on Joe Biden's path to US re-election has all but vanished (gifted link) in ~misc
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentWith Roger Stone and GOP staffers organizing the Brooks Brothers riot.With Roger Stone and GOP staffers organizing the Brooks Brothers riot.
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Comment on How to raise your artificial intelligence in ~tech
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentThe appeal, if maybe specious, is that AGI can be better than us. Yeah, humanity is plagued by obvious and solvable problems... and we haven't and likely won't solve them. That is the...- Exemplary
They're not fundemental problems that need to be figured out if only there was a super smart AI to do it. They're problems that require understanding and consent in a democratic system.
The appeal, if maybe specious, is that AGI can be better than us. Yeah, humanity is plagued by obvious and solvable problems... and we haven't and likely won't solve them.
That is the "insurmountable crisis" we are facing: flaws in human decision-making writ large. There's always going to be a bias, a local optima, an anti-social mutation, a perverse incentive, a free rider-- whatever you want to attribute our repeated failures to. And you can point to computer trends of the last 30 years if you'd like, but you can point to pretty much any other point in history to see the same patterns of violence playing out.
AGI may kill us all, or kill us much faster (I would argue we are facing a variety of plausible existential crises), but it offers some sort of alternative to the human condition.
Humanity can't get its act together about climate change? The AGI will solve clean energy, with a possible detour into better material science of computing paradigms along the way to make it possible. Or safe geoengineering, resilient crops/infrastructure, etc.
Humanity can't prevent the next pandemic or the inevitability of cheap bioweapons? The AGI solves asymmetric violence by just being so much better and faster playing defense than a prospective domestic terrorist would be.
Or perhaps it will just play a fair judge, so that company A isn't punished for doing the right thing with slightly worse margins than company B.
With AGI you could conceive of an agent that is transparent, improveable, and testable. You can't run a human through countless examples of the sort of case data it would be using to render a judgment and see if it was biased against someone of some ethnic group, or towards some company/country, but you could with AI. That opens possibilities for all the things people agree could and should be done, but for which we can't agree to a process or arbiter.
Much more likely, a being vastly more intelligent than any human wouldn't consent to, and wouldn't allow itself to become enslaved
I'd caution against anthropomorphizing AGI. First, there is no reason sapience comes with sentience. A system could be designed to answer questions intelligently without any 'self' or persistent state.
Second, there is no reason sentience comes with human-like motivations. If all the dogs woke up tomorrow as a superintelligent hivemind they might be much more inclined to come up with ways to be helpful to mankind than to enslave us.
Maybe that would be slavery, in the same way our parent's genetics enslaved them to take care of us or the Ameglian Major Cow is enslaved to enjoy being eaten. It starts losing all the connotations of suffering, resentment, and insurrection we have for "slavery."
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Comment on Dozens were sickened with salmonella after drinking raw milk from a California farm in ~health
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentI get the frustation and have given up on a number of people making bad choices, but can't agree with that. A lot of people making bad choices were at some point failed by their upbringing,...Honestly, that is mostly fine
I get the frustation and have given up on a number of people making bad choices, but can't agree with that.
A lot of people making bad choices were at some point failed by their upbringing, whether family or society.
They may have people who care about them who now have to choose between taking on that burden and having a loved one suffer. Or it may become society's problem in other ways, like a loss of productivity from someone no longer able to work or strain on healthcare/insurance when preventable issues become serious problems.
And any profit coming from successfully bilking those playing stupid games goes right back into the advertising budget of folks like Mercola, until otherwise intelligent and educated people are getting convinced of harmful fads.
Intelligent regulation is what I think makes sense. Experts informed on a topic should be empowered to regulate or otherwise call things out as bullshit on the behalf of people without that expertise.
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Comment on James Carville: Joe Biden won’t win. Democrats need a plan. Here’s one. (gifted link) in ~misc
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentAlso things like: Not that there aren't legitimate concerns or discussions to be had about Biden, but I have no interest in Carville's opinion.Also things like:
Carville was retained by Palantir Technologies as a paid adviser in 2011, and was instrumental in bringing about Palantir's collaboration with the New Orleans Police Department to quietly deploy predictive policing software in New Orleans.
In February 2020, Carville suggested jettisoning the Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses, letting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi select the Democratic Party's presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and suggested Mitt Romney should "resign from the Senate to save the Democratic Party's ass, and run our convention."
...branded Sanders as a "communist" and pejoratively labeled Sanders' base of support as a "cult", warning of the "end of days" if Sanders were to win the Democratic nomination.[177][178] Carville used his media appearances surrounding the dustup to rail against the ascendance of progressive populist Democratic policy positions such as student loan debt forgiveness[179] and "people voting from jail cells."
Not that there aren't legitimate concerns or discussions to be had about Biden, but I have no interest in Carville's opinion.
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Comment on The most profound cosmic horror or weird lit stories you've read that are not Lovecraft or Ligotti in ~books
TemulentTeatotaler (edited )Link ParentBoth great choices! For people that might be interested in checking out the style of Peter Watts I'll add a shorter work that might qualify, his version of Jon Carpenter's The Thing told from the...Both great choices! For people that might be interested in checking out the style of Peter Watts I'll add a shorter work that might qualify, his version of Jon Carpenter's The Thing told from the perspective of the entity.
*Got reminded of Borges by that thread of thought, from The House of Asterion. A lot of his stories get pretty close to cosmic horror.
The obsession of The Zahir that bleeds out as a critique of Borges' own escape into abstraction after abstraction. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius in which fictional realities try to invade real ones. The Library of Babel, and an inaccessibility of meaning. The Immortal or The Aleph might fit.
Ted Chiang has a few as well, like Hell Is the Absence of God.
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Comment on Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the US, allowing him to go free in ~news
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentI think the charitable take is that he ended up in Russia with nowhere to go, and that whether he actively aids Russia his existence serves their goal of sowing dissent and undermining any U.S....I think the charitable take is that he ended up in Russia with nowhere to go, and that whether he actively aids Russia his existence serves their goal of sowing dissent and undermining any U.S. claim to moral superiority.
Assange (who I'd argue has a strong case of being a Russian abetter, if not an asset) got him to go to Russia before looking for asylum in Bolivia. Given the forced landing of Evo Morales, that was perhaps a good choice.
He's largely been irrelevant since then, afaik. Often critical of the surveillance state, but not positive about the Russian gov't in the way Tucker Carlson or others have been.
Not especially critical, either, but seeing the treatment of not just Navalny but the threats to his family, it would be risking a lot to do so. A quick look suggests he was upset about the invasion.
You can argue the morality of being of use while not actively aiding Russia. But you can also argue that he shouldn't be in this situation to begin with. If other countries offered him asylum, or (at least according to him) if he was allowed to have a fair trial, he may not be in Russia.
So he stays in the only country willing to host him, and Russia gets to say, "Hey! Look at Cuba, look at Operation Condor, look at Laos or the fresh campaign to malign China in the Phillipines by fomenting distrust of Sinovac/PPE!" -- as a way of rationalizing that what they're doing is just real politik.
Which sucks. You get the same people justifying or condemning atrocities based on their nationality, forming that international brotherhood of nationalists, and you get groups saying it was wrong when the U.S. did it, and wrong when Russia does it.
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Comment on Texas secessionists win GOP backing for independence vote: 'Major step' in ~news
TemulentTeatotaler (edited )Link ParentThe long history of problems in the South is due to rewarding political violence and screwing up Reconstructionism. Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson favoured white Southerners /...- Exemplary
traced directly back to the decision to force the South (literally, at gunpoint) to stay in the Union and like it, or else.
The long history of problems in the South is due to rewarding political violence and screwing up Reconstructionism. Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson favoured white Southerners / northern Copperheads. He attempted to veto the Civil Rights Act of 1866, revoked Sherman's Special Orders, and pardoned/restored the Confederate elites.
The same people were put back in power and the federal gov't relegated authority back to the state, so they recreated the pre-war social order by an expansion of Black Codes into the Jim Crow era.
And because the fed didn't protect black southerners but did count them for the purpose of representation we rewarded disenfranchisement.
But much more significantly, I have a real problem with the idea of a country created by--and based upon--democratic governance, saying that some group within its community is not allowed to leave the country after a fair/honest democratic vote choosing to do so.
(*except for women, non-landowners, and black people (who get a negative vote), and where land is more important that people)
Presumably that also means Dallas and Austin can secede from Neo Texas? And conservative neighborhoods can secede from them? That is a good recipe for Balkanization.
One of the foundational principles of democracies is limitations on authority of the gov't and guaranteed protections for the people. The 90% cannot vote themselves entitled to the 10%'s labor and property. Why should you be able to vote away someone's home and country?
And as has already been pointed out elsewhere, the state doesn't own everything. Texas wouldn't resemble its present self without the support and protections of the U.S., and there are significant federal investments in it. Why would it be allowed to steal those?
If Texas actually votes to leave the US, just let 'em go. They've been living in a fantasy world for decades, anyway; let them sink or swim on their own.
Texas has been fairly purple for decades. When you say "Texas" that includes people like the thousands of women Texas would like to force to carry their rapist's child who would no longer be eligible to travel to another state or be given federal protections.
That sort of "burn the system" shtick appeals to a desire for simplicity in a complex reality. I find it hard to believe that anyone calling for that, when presented with a realistic representation of what that would entail, would remain in favor of it.
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Comment on Emmanuel Macron dissolves French parliament after EU defeat, calls election in ~news
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentIt's not a massive difference, but (in the U.S. at least) women are more likely to vote / be involved in politics in almost every breakdown until you get to the 65+ bucket. From another source:It's not a massive difference, but (in the U.S. at least) women are more likely to vote / be involved in politics in almost every breakdown until you get to the 65+ bucket.
From another source:
46% of women and 40% of men 18 to 24 years old voted
59.7% of women and 53% of men 25 to 44 years old voted
68.2% of women and 64.9% of men 45 to 64 years old voted
72.5% of women and 72.8% of men 65 to 74 years old voted -
Comment on US Supreme Court ruling greenlights nearly all racial gerrymandering in ~misc
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentYou can argue that drawing a map to give a likely majority to a minority group allows for better representation, but you can also concentrate minority votes in a few regions to help the party who...You can argue that drawing a map to give a likely majority to a minority group allows for better representation, but you can also concentrate minority votes in a few regions to help the party who would not be getting those votes based on their platform win otherwise contested elections. That's what has ended up happening in a lot of places.
The idea you have to "win" to have representation is also a bit flawed. In a hypothetical scenario with three voting blocs with 49%, 49%, and 2% of the vote, the 2% has equal say in the outcome of the election. It's not hard to find minority interest groups (e.g., NRA) who are catered to because of their influence.
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Comment on Today is the UK courts decision day on Julian Assange's extradition to the US in ~news
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentI don't think you'd find anyone here defending a clandestine operation to murder someone in another country. Definitely not one that isn't an active, violent threat. What you're referring to...I don't think you'd find anyone here defending a clandestine operation to murder someone in another country. Definitely not one that isn't an active, violent threat.
What you're referring to appears to be the work of Mike Pompeo. There have been many batshit plans that never manifest (e.g., drunk Nixon nuking NK) which can be hard to evaluate, except to say the people involved are not good people.
Pompeo was a Trump appointee whose company included Manafort with his activity in Ukraine on Russia's behalf, Flynn's plot to kidnap a rival of Turkey's Erdogan, the downplaying of the murder of Khashoggi, and a number of other shady, authoritarian acts.
I also don't think you'd find many people defending the horrific past of alphabet agencies (MK Ultra, violence towards civil rights leaders, Operation Condor, etc.) or people like Gina Haspel who became the head of the CIA after Pompeo.
That aside, Assange is not a journalist and he is not someone speaking truth to power. There is a good chance he is a foreign asset and committed crimes that merit extradition.
Intent and character doesn't get more clear than him promoting the Seth Rich conspiracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich) while being in contact with Guccifer 2.0 after his death:
According to the Mueller Report, WikiLeaks had received an email containing an encrypted file named "wk dnc link I .txt.gpg" from the Guccifer 2.0 GRU persona on July 14, which was four days after Seth Rich died.[77][78][79] In April 2018, Twitter direct messages revealed that even as Assange was suggesting publicly that WikiLeaks had obtained emails from Seth Rich, Assange was trying to obtain more emails from Guccifer 2.0, who was at the time already suspected of being linked to Russian intelligence.
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Comment on The tech baron seeking to “ethnically cleanse” San Francisco in ~life
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentThis is coded language for contemporary Democrats? You don't need to overcomplicate things. He didn't invent "gray tribe", it's from a Star Slate Codex blog post from 2013 and he refers to a...any time he talks about a “gray,” he’s talking about Democrats today
This is coded language for contemporary Democrats?
“Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.”
In exchange for extra food and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. Srinivasan recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their political leanings. For example: “Did you want to take the sign off of Elon’s building?”
You don't need to overcomplicate things. He didn't invent "gray tribe", it's from a Star Slate Codex blog post from 2013 and he refers to a blue-gray axis where technologist/libertarian/borderless grays create new wonderful things while the establishment blues try to bridle them. He's a pal of Thiel and Elon Musk and resents oversight from democratic institutions.
Hyperbole and "jokes" can be ways of signalling intent or measuring your audience without taking the risk of having an attackable position, but he doesn't come across as a 52 yo 4chan troll like Musk, whose satire is reduced to a sneering and insincere rhetoric of convenience.
Unless you think the last 10 years of his life have been performance art, his preferences are roughly in line with what was said. Maybe some of it was exagerrated for a laugh or to stretch a presentation, but he wants the sort of influence over cops/media/politicians that would have allowed him (Musk/Thiel/etc.) to ignore pesky laws and regulations that are just artifacts of a broken democracy.
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Comment on Net neutrality is back as US FCC votes to regulate internet providers in ~tech
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentAfaik, the main thing was California passed a law that enacted strong net neutrality rules on a state level. The Trump DOJ and carriers challenged that, California said they were going to fight...Afaik, the main thing was California passed a law that enacted strong net neutrality rules on a state level.
The Trump DOJ and carriers challenged that, California said they were going to fight it, and the Biden DOJ dropped it / California won in 2021.
Not sure if other states had similar reactions, but California by itself has a huge amount of clout. Carriers were looking at having to handle things differently all over the country in addition to being blocked from doing what they hoped to accomplish.
The bungled execution (e.g., transparent lies about the DDOS/faked comments) might have also contributed to some hesitancy to advantage of the situation.
Many people think Y2K was alarmist, but in both situations while there was certainly alarmism and misinformation there were also very legitimate concerns that didn't manifest because people put in work to stop them.
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Comment on Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient in ~enviro
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentI'd argue humans have a pretty good roadmap for understanding human consciousness. A neurologist could look at imaging of a damaged brain and have a decent guess as to how that person would...I'd argue humans have a pretty good roadmap for understanding human consciousness. A neurologist could look at imaging of a damaged brain and have a decent guess as to how that person would describe how they feel. They may have cortical blindness, or not feel like they owned their hands, or feel their loved ones had been replaced with imposters, etc.
You could take the strong sollipsist position that humans except for you are p-zombies, but being able to alter your own brain activity with medication or something like TMS and see how it lines up with what other people describe gives a decent intuition that your conscious experience is coming from the brain's activity and organization, and it's not a huge leap to believe that isn't unique to you.
Why not play it safe with other animals until we know for sure?
Definitely in favor of better treatment of animals, but it's hard to know what consciousness is valuable, human-like, or even accessible.
Is the aversion of single-celled bacteria pain or reflex? What about the spinal reflexes of a person with significant brain damage? What about a foetus, human or otherwise? Does the simulated connectome of C. elegans or Google have a consciousness?
Is avoidance of pain the main goal, when a good deal of the animal kingdom ends up being eaten alive, parasite-ridden, or starving to death? Where do you place the line between mercy killing a deer with Chronic Wasting Disease, population control, or full-on anti-natalism for animals (humanely) raised for food or in pastoralism? Are lab rats that get better treatment than "building rats" unethical?
"Playing it safe" depending on what you consider to be your defaults can lead you to some weird places. Maybe you'd be opposed to abortion or euthenasia. Maybe you'd want to ban cats, or replace obligate carnivores with hunters wherever possible.
Recent psychology got a lot of good criticism for trying to generalize using college students (WEIRD pops), so I can't imagine how bad it is when you get into something as alien as ants passing mirror tests. "Suffering" could have less to do with getting smooshed and more with being on an optimal route to food that ant-feels really inefficient. Or to steal from the Simpson's...
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Comment on Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient in ~enviro
TemulentTeatotaler Link ParentAlmost necessarily so, if you accept that evolution was a gradual process from mudskipper to man. Besides that most people have some notion of a changing consciousness as they grew from zygote to...Almost necessarily so, if you accept that evolution was a gradual process from mudskipper to man. Besides that most people have some notion of a changing consciousness as they grew from zygote to adult, or when they're tired, fevered, or otherwise altered (inc. recreationally) as Julien Offray de La Mettrie noticed.
Yeah, invading Iraq was already a goal of neocons, like those in the Project for the New American Century.