psi's recent activity
-
Comment on Smartphone recommendations? in ~tech
-
Comment on Smartphone recommendations? in ~tech
psi LinkTo me the obvious choice would be a Google Pixel of some variant. In my experience, pretty much every Android phone ends up being a compromise in some way, but at least with the Pixel series...To me the obvious choice would be a Google Pixel of some variant. In my experience, pretty much every Android phone ends up being a compromise in some way, but at least with the Pixel series you're guaranteed 7 years of updates and a no-bloat experience. Plus the camera sensors are generally very good.
-
Comment on When Richard Dawkins met Claude in ~health.mental
psi Link ParentI don't think the Russel's teapot analogy works here (to wit, something that could in principle exist, has no supporting evidence, but whose existence could be proved by observation). In fact, I...I don't think the Russel's teapot analogy works here (to wit, something that could in principle exist, has no supporting evidence, but whose existence could be proved by observation). In fact, I think in many ways LLMs are the anti-Russell's-teapot: we have plenty of behavioral evidence to suggest they're conscious, but there exists no avenue to prove it, similar to how I can't prove that bats are conscious and you can't prove that I'm not a p-zombie.
-
Comment on What's something that you missed out on? in ~talk
psi (edited )Link ParentMy dude(tte)! You're only 26! You have plenty of time to develop your hobbies! Just remember that your hobbies are for you, not anybody else, and that you don't need to "perform" at a professional...My dude(tte)! You're only 26! You have plenty of time to develop your hobbies! Just remember that your hobbies are for you, not anybody else, and that you don't need to "perform" at a professional level to enjoy them. And in truth, the fact that your output fails to meet your expectations is a good sign. It means that you have good taste. Hopefully this advice from Ira Glass will resonate with you:
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Speaking from personal experience, I never took piano lessons growing up, so I never developed the technical skills some of my peers have, and I almost completely lack the ability to read music. But because I didn't have those lessons, I learned to rely on experimentation and my ear, something the piano-lesson-taking cohort tended to skip over. Of course this means I'll never play in a professional orchestra, but I can sit at a keyboard and noodle around to my heart's content. I hope and believe you can also draw from your more indirect path to make your hobbies more your own.
-
Comment on What does Tucker Carlson really believe? I went to Maine to find out. (gifted link) in ~society
psi Link ParentI'll admit the article's an amusing read, but the problem with interviewing Tucker Carlson is that he's a professional bullshitter, and it should be obvious to anyone with an inkling of media...I'll admit the article's an amusing read, but the problem with interviewing Tucker Carlson is that he's a professional bullshitter, and it should be obvious to anyone with an inkling of media literacy that Carlson is softening his rhetoric for the New York Times audience. If I recall correctly (sorry that I can't remember the source) Carlson's method for preparing for his Fox show was to spend a few hours before each taping writing out what he wanted to say -- no research or fact-checking, just rhetoric. Compared to something like Last Week Tonight (which I am not advocating for as the pinnacle of journalism, either), it's clear that Carlson doesn't produce journalism so much as journalistic malpractice.
Consider his "regret" for his interview with Nick Fuentez. Carlson claims that it was a mistake, but Carlson willingly gave Fuentez the gentlest interview possible. It was such a shitshow that it fractured the Heritage Foundation [1] and led to conservative outlets like the Washington Examiner (ew) condemning Carlson [2]. I mean, Fuentez admits to admiring Stalin, and Carlson responds with a shrug and a promise that "we’ll circle back to that" (reader, they did not "circle back to that"). Mind you, this is the same guy who has been shouting at the progressive caucus for years for being socialists hellbent on destroy America.
Or consider this part of the NYT interview:
Were you part of the distraction? Because you were talking about [race] quite a lot. I wasn’t actually talking about those issues quite a lot, but I would say I have been involved in many distractions, including that.
[...]
And then I noticed, and this is measurable actually by a Lexis search of New York Times stories, that the terms “racist,” “racism,” “white supremacy,” exploded in New York Times stories, and not just The New York Times, but the rest of the legacy media. And my interpretation of this fact is that the media was used to distract the population with racial conflict.You were part of the media, Tucker. Well, I’ve already said, I have been part of many distractions. It took me a long time to recognize this. And I’m trying to be honest about it now. Now again, there’s been an enormous amount — particularly in The New York Times, but not just — of anti-white hate, which is totally normalized across the American media. Whiteness is bad, white supremacy is evil.
Carlson claims the media (which he pretends not to be a part of) talks too much about race while simultaneously spouting off rhetoric about white victimhood. He says that he's distanced himself from these sorts of "distractions", but he was mainstreaming the great replacement theory just three years ago [3].
So yeah, I'm not sure that this article really does much to elucidate Carlson's inner workings since I don't think he really has any core beliefs anyway. He's a professional bullshitter. His words are worthless.
-
Comment on Why I find woke criticism of veganism and effective altruism so outrageous in ~society
psi Link ParentI was thinking the same thing. This article feels very inside baseball, so to speak. I agree with @RNG that a few people here are making the sort of strawman arguments against veganism/effective...I was thinking the same thing. This article feels very inside baseball, so to speak. I agree with @RNG that a few people here are making the sort of strawman arguments against veganism/effective altruism that the author rallies against, but on the other hand, the author isn't making a positive case for veganism or effective altruism in this blog post, either. It's really just a rant. Which is fine, of course, but that doesn't leave much substance to actually critique.
-
Comment on The zero-days are numbered — Firefox team uses AI to find and fix vulnerabilities in ~tech
psi Link ParentThe local translation feature is pretty neat: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation...The local translation feature is pretty neat:
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation
- https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/translations/resources/01_overview.html
- https://github.com/mozilla/translations
Within Firefox, you can try it out by navigating to
about:translations. -
Comment on Adults are earning college degrees online in weeks, alarming US educators in ~society
psi Link ParentSimple: use a lottery. As an example, perhaps first filter out the top 1% of candidates (leaving 100), then select 1/5 of them at random to interview. If you're worried about missing truly...The scenario is a company that has 3 spots, 10,000 applicants, and needs to decide who to hire. What could society actually do, here, to produce a more egalitarian result without immediately causing a series of awful side effects?
Simple: use a lottery. As an example, perhaps first filter out the top 1% of candidates (leaving 100), then select 1/5 of them at random to interview. If you're worried about missing truly exceptional candidate (perhaps the top 0.1% by whatever metric you use), have them skip the filtering step. Now you have 30 people to interview for 3 spots. Hell, you could even use a lottery on the top X % of interviewees for the hiring decision.
And obviously you could get more granular with the ranges, depending on how egalitarian you want to be. Maybe the top 20% of candidates have a 1/100 chance of being selected for an interview (~20 people), the top 5% of candidates have a 1/20 chance (~20 more people), etc. Fiddle with the numbers as you wish.
I know companies want to select the best possible hire, but honestly a CV is not that great of a signal. It's a point estimate with tremendously large error bars.
-
Comment on What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat in ~society
psi (edited )Link ParentI think the piece actually does address why billionaires turn "evil", at least to an extent. Quoting this observation from the article: That is, it's not just that behavior ⇒ consequences but also...I think the piece actually does address why billionaires turn "evil", at least to an extent. Quoting this observation from the article:
Decades of research in developmental psychology have shown that moral reasoning develops through consequences—not punishment, necessarily, but experiencing the effects of your actions on others, receiving honest feedback, having to accommodate reality as it actually is rather than as you wish it to be. It’s not that the wealthy become evil; it’s that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back. When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.
That is, it's not just that
behavior ⇒ consequencesbut also thatconsequences ⇒ behavior. If a group of people is shielded from the consequences of their actions on others, then that group will learn to behave in ways that are narcissistic or selfish. Obviously this dynamic extends beyond billionaires -- it also broadly explains the tendency for Israelis to feel apathetic about the conditions in Gaza, Americans to tolerate factory farming, shoppers to support fast fashion, etc.Nevertheless, everybody still has the capacity to act morally; they just might have to be deliberate, which requires some amount of introspection. Unfortunately, some of these same people view introspection as weakness (see link in quote), likely because introspection doesn't reap personal benefits (further reinforcing the idea that
consequences ⇒ behavior). -
Comment on Why the US Navy won't open Hormuz in ~society
psi (edited )Link ParentYou're right to highlight the hypocrisy. However, I would go further and say that European forces almost certainly cannot secure the straight, so Trump is essentially trying to pass the buck to...You're right to highlight the hypocrisy. However, I would go further and say that European forces almost certainly cannot secure the straight, so Trump is essentially trying to pass the buck to Europe even though Europe has realistically no way of accomplishing the task.
But regardless of the effectiveness of the military operation, there is also the economic angle. Suppose the US/Europe could mostly secure the strait. Well, what would that mean? If transport ships "only" had a 1/20 chance of being sunk, would it even make financial sense to attempt the crossing? Oil tankers cost from ~10 - 100 million dollars and take years to build. Ship owners (not to mention sailors) might well decide it's simply not worth the risk.
-
Comment on Why the US Navy won't open Hormuz in ~society
psi (edited )Link ParentI would not say the Navy can absolutely secure the Strait; I would say they can maybe secure it, and even then I would remain somewhat skeptical. I think it's hard to have a properly calibrated...I would not say the Navy can absolutely secure the Strait; I would say they can maybe secure it, and even then I would remain somewhat skeptical. I think it's hard to have a properly calibrated notion of the capabilities of the US military. It's very large and very well-funded, especially compared to other militaries, but its resources are not infinite. There are, therefore, necessarily things the US cannot do, even if we presume it better equipped than any other country. Our failure in Afghanistan serves as an an obvious, recent example.
Assuming you haven't read it yet, I would recommend this piece I submitted a few days ago. I'll quote the relevant passage:
For the United States, a purely military solution is notionally possible: you could invade. But as noted, Iran is very, very big and has a large population, so a full-scale invasion would be an enormous undertaking, larger than any US military operation since the Second World War. Needless to say, the political will for this does not exist. But a ‘targeted’ ground operation against Iran’s ability to interdict the strait is also hard to concieve. Since Iran could launch underwater drones or one-way aerial attack drones from anywhere along the northern shore the United States would have to occupy many thousands of square miles to prevent this and of course then the ground troops doing that occupying would simply become the target for drones, mortars, artillery, IEDs and so on instead.
One can never know how well prepared an enemy is for something, but assuming the Iranians are even a little bit prepared for ground operations, any American force deployed on Iranian soil would end up eating Shahed and FPV drones – the sort we’ve seen in Ukraine – all day, every day.
Meanwhile escort operations in the strait itself are also deeply unpromising. For one, it would require many more ships, because the normal traffic through the strait is so large and because escorts would be required throughout the entire Gulf (unlike the Red Sea crisis, where the ‘zone’ of Houthi attacks was contained to only the southern part of the Red Sea). But the other problem is that Iran possesses modern anti-ship missiles (AShMs) in significant quantity and American escort ships (almost certainly Arleigh Burke-class destroyers) would be vulnerable escorting slow tankers in the constrained waters of the strait.
It isn’t even hard to imagine what the attack would look like: essentially a larger, more complex version of the attack that sunk the Moskva, to account for the Arleigh Burke’s better air defense. Iran would pick their moment (probably not the first transit) and try to distract the Burke, perhaps with a volley of cheap Shahed-type drones against a natural gas tanker, before attempting to ambush the Burke with a volley of AShMs, probably from the opposite direction. The aim would be to create just enough confusion that one AShM slipped through, which is all it might take to leave a $2.2bn destroyer with three hundred American service members on board disabled and vulnerable in the strait. Throw in speed-boats, underwater drones, naval mines, fishing boats pretending to be threats and so on to maximize confusion and the odds that one of perhaps half a dozen AShMs slips through.
And if I can reason this out, Iran – which has been planning for this exact thing for forty years certainly can. Which is why the navy is not eager to run escort.
-
Comment on Why the US Navy won't open Hormuz in ~society
psi LinkIt's worth bearing these facts in mind when Trump complains about how our allies won't "help" in opening the Strait of Hormuz. Beyond the lack of incentives (the war is deeply unpopular and Trump...Back in the Persian Gulf today, the Navy grasps the reality of the circumstances, recognizing that it simply can’t sail into the strait without risk getting blown to smithereens by Iran’s missiles. Today, its carriers are stationed well outside the Gulf and the ranges of Iranian missiles.
[...]
This is why the U.S. Navy hasn’t attempted to force its way through the strait. Simply put, Iran is threatening extremely expensive and manpower-intensive U.S. ships with weapons that are a fraction of the cost in exchange. Moreover, the United States can’t easily replace destroyed or damaged vessels due to the well-documented decline of the shipbuilding industrial base.
It's worth bearing these facts in mind when Trump complains about how our allies won't "help" in opening the Strait of Hormuz. Beyond the lack of incentives (the war is deeply unpopular and Trump is wont to downplay allies' contributions regardless), Trump demands other countries do what the US Navy cannot. It's an impossible ask for nothing in return.
-
Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
psi LinkWe're risking splitting this community over something as banal as Harry Potter. Tildes has always been that weird corner of the internet with overly-winded, thoughtful comments (a phrase that's...We're risking splitting this community over something as banal as Harry Potter. Tildes has always been that weird corner of the internet with overly-winded, thoughtful comments (a phrase that's been thrown around to the point of cliche) interspersed with a progressive political bent and a pro-LGBT+ through line. Sure, there are plenty of places with wordy discussions and plenty of other places that are aggressively progressive, but this is the only community I know of that manages to thread both of these ideals successfully.
And I get it. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson and the gang are all about my age, so I literally grew up with them. But the more I learned about J.K. Rowling's bigoted beliefs, and the more she continued to double down, the less I could enjoy the franchise. Eventually I decided the best thing I could do was to simply disengage with the wizarding world altogether. But I understand that Harry Potter was much more important for some people than for me, and that for these people it might not be so easy to leave that series behind. And you know, I get that, too. I've been vegetarian for long enough to know that sometimes the best thing you can do is lead by example. I'm not going to lecture my mom on why she shouldn't buy a Harry Potter backpack when it's one of the few things of whimsy she enjoys. We live in a world where it's impossible to be the best versions of ourselves, and sometimes it's worth compromising just a little bit to get along with the ones we love.
But what I wouldn't do is invite my mildly homophobic relatives to a gay bar. That lack of an invitation would not be for my relatives's sake, but rather for the patrons of that bar who deserve their safe space.
So for those insisting on the right to discuss Harry Potter here anyway, despite there being much more suitable forums elsewhere, I implore you to consider what you might lose: You threaten to drive out a core constituent of our community, changing the fabric of this website, all so that we can have maybe a few dozen on-topic comments about a media franchise.
Is that really more important than supporting our trans friends?
-
Comment on Miscellanea: The war in Iran in ~society
psi LinkIt's a long article, but I found it an engaging read.It's a long article, but I found it an engaging read.
I am going to spend the next however many words working through what I think are the strategic implications of where we are, but that is my broad thesis: for the United States this war was an unwise gamble on extremely long odds; the gamble (that the regime would collapse swiftly) has already failed and as a result locked in essentially nothing but negative outcomes. Even with the regime were to collapse in the coming weeks or suddenly sue for peace, every likely outcome leaves the United States in a meaningfully worse strategic position than when it started.
[...]
The gamble was this: that the Iranian regime was weak enough that a solid blow, delivered primarily from the air, picking off key leaders, could cause it to collapse. For the United States, the hope seems to have been that a transition could then be managed to leaders perhaps associated with the regime but who would be significantly more pliant, along the lines of the regime change operation performed in Venezuela that put Delcy Rodriguez in power. By contrast, Israel seems to have been content to simply collapse the Iranian regime and replace it with nothing. That outcome would be – as we’ll see – robustly bad for a huge range of regional and global actors, including the United States, and it is not at all clear to me that the current administration understood how deeply their interests and Israel’s diverged here.
[...]
It should go without saying that creating the conditions where the sometimes unpredictable junior partner in a security relationship can unilaterally bring the senior partner into a major conflict is an enormous strategic error, precisely because it means you end up in a war when it is in the junior partner’s interests to do so even if it is not in the senior partner’s interests to do so.
-
Miscellanea: The war in Iran
12 votes -
Comment on <deleted topic> in ~society
psi Link ParentI think populism is just one of the fundamental failure modes of democracy. Ultimately, we do not elect representatives based on their capability (i.e., their ability to implement good policy) but...I think populism is just one of the fundamental failure modes of democracy. Ultimately, we do not elect representatives based on their capability (i.e., their ability to implement good policy) but rather their intelligibility (i.e., their ability to persuasively argue policy). Obviously capable politicians will have an advantage, but someone can also be technically capable but unable to effectively disseminate knowledge. Sometime it's from a lack of charisma, sure, but other times issues are simply complicated and cannot be distilled to a soundbite.
So what happens when you have a complex policy problem that cannot easily be addressed or explained (say, the shit economy at the end of 2024)? You get someone like Trump, a person who has a simple answer for everything (possibly because he cannot actually fathom complications). When Trump said that he'd fix the economy through tariffs, virtually every economist disagreed; but when Biden argued that his administration already had implemented policies to right the course, but that it'd just take time for their effects to be felt because of blah blah blah... Well, who did people believe? Some invisible experts with a forgettable message, or the TV personality who continuously boasted (falsely, for the record) about having presided over the strongest economy of all time?
Immigrants are particularly vulnerable to this type of scapegoating. It's much easier to blame "undesirables" for decaying infrastructure and "abusing" welfare than it is to build infrastructure or an effective welfare system.
-
Comment on Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don't rewrite an Iran missile story in ~society
psi Link ParentRather than asking whether "insider trading" is an intended feature, one should ask whether that is a good feature. Leaking classified military intelligence is a crime, and while there can be...Rather than asking whether "insider trading" is an intended feature, one should ask whether that is a good feature. Leaking classified military intelligence is a crime, and while there can be moral reasons for doing so, profiteering does not count among them.
-
Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news
psi Link"He Came to New York for Fun. He Left Seeking $20 Million in Damages." The New York Times."He Came to New York for Fun. He Left Seeking $20 Million in Damages." The New York Times.
When Mr. Manz arrived in New York in 2024, he was excited to try something new. He walked into the Times Square outpost of Los Tacos No. 1 on 43rd Street and ordered three tacos.
“Because this taco experience was too special for me, I made several pictures and videos of the received food,” he would later write.
He poured salsa onto the tacos, and began to eat. This did not go well.
“My tongue and mouth were burning immediately,” Mr. Manz wrote, and “my Apple Watch registered at this time a higher pulse.”
His symptoms worsened to include gastrointestinal and emotional distress, he said. In a lawsuit he later filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, Mr. Manz described the restaurant’s liability as a “failure to warn” customers of its hot salsa. He sought relief in the form of $100,000.
-
Comment on Documents reveal a web of financial ties between Donald Trump officials and the US industries they help regulate in ~society
psi Link ParentWell, this isn't quite true. The House has impeached 21 federal officers throughout its history, of which 8 were convicted and removed (all federal judges), the most recent being Thomas Porteous...After 250 years it still has yet to do the thing it's intended to do, even once.
Well, this isn't quite true. The House has impeached 21 federal officers throughout its history, of which 8 were convicted and removed (all federal judges), the most recent being Thomas Porteous in 2010 for corruption.
Not that I disagree with your larger point. Obviously the impeachment process is broken.
-
Comment on Some of my family members aren't convinced that ICE isn't overstepping and that they are just deporting people that broke the law, can you help me share unbiased links that proves they are? in ~society
psi LinkI would highly recommend this piece. It thoroughly dispels the notion that they're only targeting "immigrants that are criminals or that didn't immigrate legally", and in fact makes the opposite...I would highly recommend this piece. It thoroughly dispels the notion that they're only targeting "immigrants that are criminals or that didn't immigrate legally", and in fact makes the opposite point: ICE is illegally detaining and deporting immigrants that are here legally.
At one point, when [a lawyer at the Office of Policy and Strategy] told McDermott [a senior adviser at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] that one of his demands contradicted an existing statute and might be at odds with the agency’s stance in pending litigation, he responded, “We don’t care what the statute says. We don’t care about court orders, and we don’t care about litigation risk.”
Oh whoops, I somehow filtered out everything after "Not an Apple" -- my bad! But yeah, the microSD card requirement does significantly limit the options.