EmptyString

@ChiefEngineerCE @GavinNewsom Any President who tears down that ballroom is a President who doesn't have any balls.

@GavinNewsom If the ballroom is for him Third term? Cool.

Donald Trump lied to you. He said he’d fight for you. Instead, he’s building himself a $1 billion ballroom and handing his criminal cronies a $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund. MAGA, wake up.

@ellelledeell @OmarSHaqueMDPhD Rights are a recognition of reality, not arbitrary grants handed down from God, Singer, or anybody else. Rights are discovered, not invented. History verifies them: the more freedom people have, the more prosperous and successful their civilizations become.

@emptyUtf8String @OmarSHaqueMDPhD Again: Peter Singer’s personhood theory arguments proved that is not true. If nothing is sacred, then rights can never be more than just what the powerful votes in.

Pagan philosophers like Aristotle argued for slavery; modern secular German philosophers like Nietzsche argued for slavery as necessary for cultural advancement; slavery is allowed in Islam and is practiced in Africa and the Middle East today. The arguments that ended slavery depended on biblical assumptions about human dignity and equality, and were made by a devout Christians using biblical concepts, William Wilberforce (politician) and Thomas Clarkson (Anglican deacon) in England in the late 1700s. The civil rights movement in America was argued via fundamentally religious terms by pastors Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King. We swim in this water and assume it’s morally obvious. But it isn’t; and the belief in these moral truths is not compatible with most other world views, including atheistic/naturalistic ones. Clarence Thomas is right on the uniqueness of our civilizational inheritance.

@ellelledeell @OmarSHaqueMDPhD Life is conditional. The idea of "rights" recognizes that a person can only survive in a society if he is free to use his mind, as opposed to being coerced by others. There is no need for God in that recognition -- nor does evolution make it go away.

What matters is the recognition that we are all created equal & as a result of that creation have inalienable rights If it is true that we’re all just random products of evolution, then arguments of men like Peter Singer are sound: - equality is neither possible nor desirable - not all humans are equally persons - human rights are whatever we decide to make them - the strong & clever impose their will & decide who deserves to be considered a person

@tanpukunokami It's happening because of philosophy. The academics push certain bad ideas, and the ideas have policy implications, and the policies in turn have life-and-death implications. Better ideas exist but have been ignored or ridiculed.

I used to think this was just a Japan problem. Then I started looking overseas, and I realized it isn’t. A lot of countries seem to be dealing with the same mess. Mass immigration. Feminism going too far. Constant arguments over LGBTQ issues. Falling birth rates. Leftists who refuse to have an honest conversation. Different countries. Different cultures. But somehow, the problems look almost the same. At some point, you have to wonder: Why is this happening everywhere?

@elonmusk @brivael The simulation idea begs the question, does it not? I mean, if reality could be a simulation, then the simulation could be running in another simulation, and so forth.

@brivael I think there is a good chance we’re in a simulation, not that we’re definitely in one

Elon Musk pense qu'on est dans une simulation. Moi, mon film préféré c'est Matrix. Et voici ma théorie sur la simulation : C'est improvable, ok. Mais en tant que philosophie de vie, c'est redoutable. Le principe : pour que la simulation reste active, il faut qu'il y ait du fun dedans. Sinon les designers s'ennuient et ils débranchent. Or, qu'est-ce qui tue le fun ? Les systèmes rigides. La bureaucratie. Quand tu enlèves les libertés individuelles, tu tends mécaniquement vers un système boring. Des formulaires, des comités, des normes, des sous-comités sur les normes. Plus personne ne crée, plus personne ne prend de risque, plus personne ne joue. Et là, les mecs derrière l'écran regardent leur dashboard et se disent : "bon, faut faire quelque chose." J'ai vu passer une théorie qui m'a fait mourir de rire : le Covid aurait été envoyé par les designers exprès. Pas pour nous nuire — pour pousser la bureaucratie le plus loin possible. La forcer à se révéler dans toute son absurdité. Confinements, QR codes, autorisations de sortie, comités d'experts qui se contredisent en boucle. Un stress test à l'échelle planétaire. Le but : faire péter le système par excès, pour permettre le reset. Et c'est exactement ce qu'on est en train de vivre. Trump, Musk, Milei — ce sont les incarnations du patch. DOGE qui démantèle les agences fédérales. Milei qui tronçonne l'État argentin en direct. La tech qui reprend le narratif. Le retour brutal des libertés individuelles comme valeur centrale. On assiste à un renouveau de civilisation. Et il est massivement basé sur la liberté de l'individu de créer, de buildre, de prendre des risques. Conclusion opérationnelle : Traitez la vie comme un jeu vidéo. Accumulez un maximum de skills. Buildez des trucs. Faites des choses qui vous donnent du fun, ou qui donnent du fun à l'humanité — et accessoirement, aux types qui nous regardent depuis l'autre côté de l'écran. Soyez intéressants à regarder. C'est littéralement votre seule mission.

@War4theWest @ChiefEngineerCE @visegrad24 True; you have to be on the extreme end of "unable to deal with reality" to be insane.

@emptyUtf8String @ChiefEngineerCE @visegrad24 Being unable to 'deal with reality' isn't insanity. Many people are unrealistic and not mentally ill.

The Italian authorities have announced that yesterday’s car-ramming attack in Modena by Salim El Koudri was not a case of terrorism but due to “mental health issues” 🇮🇹🇲🇦

@ChiefEngineerCE @War4theWest @visegrad24 The difference is between being unable to deal with reality (insanity), and being unwilling to deal with reality (criminality or ideology).

@War4theWest @visegrad24 I worked with the first world trade center bombers. It's in my subscribers section complete with my FLETC certification as honor graduate. I seriously think those drawn into the extremes of religion to harm others in terrorist acts are not right in the head.

@ChiefEngineerCE @TrustlessState If we had a separation of state and economics, the government would be powerless to intervene in the economy, so it wouldn't be as beneficial to bribe or lobby politicians. It's not a perfect solution but it would help a lot.

Lots of people say that. It's almost like you are saying why try anything at all. Let's just elect a king or go to communism and be done with it. Let's just get comfortable with the corruption. I tend to think our left and right media would hold their feet to the fire and feel like we need to try something different.

Unironically, congress members should be paid 600k-800k a year Strong financial compensation is a fundamental deterrent for corruption and alternative interests

@ChiefEngineerCE @TrustlessState This would just encourage meddling in the economy and they would also game the metrics.

@TrustlessState They should get low base pay and incentives to hit key metrics such as standard of living, life expectancy, home ownership, employment and balanced deficit that would allow them to make millions if it saves us trillions.

@FreezePeach4me @rich56635 Authoritarians dictating truth is the opposite of objective truth. Objective truth is something that anyone can see for themselves (even if there is nobody else around to have a "consensus" about it).

@rich56635 I'm a midwit granted, but objective truth is rare. We should rather have a market for truth, out of which rises a common consensus. We should not have authoritarians dictate truth based on whim.

"In philosophy, the fundamentals are metaphysics and epistemology. On the basis of a knowable universe and of a rational faculty's competence to grasp it, you can define man's proper ethics, politics and esthetics. (And if you make an error, you retain the means and the frame of reference necessary to correct it.) But what will you accomplish if you advocate honesty in ethics, while telling men that there is no such thing as truth, fact or reality? What will you do if you advocate political freedom on the grounds that you feel it is good, and find yourself confronting an ambitious thug who declares that he feels quite differently?"--Ayn Rand Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Signet, Kindle ed.), 16.

@blair_t_longley @NationalAware Censorship and "cancel culture" are wrong. We should use all the information we have. However, we should use it correctly. "Probably true" is not "always true."

@emptyUtf8String @NationalAware It made perverse sense that one of the men who first discovered the structure of the DNA molecule was also one of the first to be censored for stating that there were correlations between genes for superficial features like skin color, and the genes for more vital intelligentce.

Africa’s Average IQ is 75. -Why do black households have lower median incomes? -Why do blacks have graduation rates that are pathetic? -Why are crime rates through the roof for blacks? -Why do black neighborhoods collapse into poverty, gangs, failing schools, and despair? -Why does Africa remain the poorest, most violent, most dysfunctional continent on Earth... year after year, decade after decade. It’s not colonialism. It’s not “systemic racism.” It’s not “poverty” (that’s the result, not the cause). It’s genetics. It's biology. It's IQ.

An individualist says, "Let's give this person an IQ test to see what his IQ is." A racist says, "We don't need to give him an IQ test because we already know his race." An individualist says "Let's examine the evidence to see if this defendant is guilty." A racist says, "We don't need to examine the evidence because we already know the defendant's race." An individualist throws people in jail (or lets them go) based on evidence of whether they are guilty, and regardless of race. A racist throws people in jail (or lets them go) according to race and regardless of whether they are guilty. Individualism is not "pro-stupidity" but actually aligns the incentives with the situation. Racism uses race as a "short-cut" to avoid evaluating actual facts, and as such it prevents the facts from incentivizing anything. Race becomes the only thing that actually matters. The cure for racism is not more racism, it's individualism.

@NationalAware So, being against "racism" meant being for stupidity.

@tuuu28283 Don't they have this in Japan? tacobell.jp

アメリカの兄弟達 これ食べてみたい！ どんな味なのかな？？アメリカに行ったら食べる！！

@realannapaulina I believe reality exists whether anyone is conscious of it or not, but consciousness requires something to be conscious of.

Do you believe in God?

@haine_2020other @ayapan_0510 I'm an American and I would say both of the above are sandwiches.

@ayapan_0510 日本人の考えるサンドイッチ← アメリカ人の考えるサンドイッチ→ ってこと？ アメリカのサンドイッチはサンドイッチなのか？

アメリカのマクドナルドでビックマックバーガーを注文すると、店員さんに 「Just the sandwich?」 と聞かれることがあります。 コレ知らないと普通に「サンドイッチだけ？」って聞かれてると思いますよね。 え、私ハンバーガー頼んだけど…マックにサンドイッチあったっけ？ でもコレって実は、

When I was in high school I almost flunked out of Calculus. I saved myself at the last minute with flash cards: due to those, I aced the final exam and the AP exam. I've been using flash cards to try to learn Japanese. So far I've studied like 4,300 flash cards. I still don't feel like I know much Japanese. (But I do come across a lot of words and kanji I recognize!) You know how many flash cards I needed to learn Calculus? About 40. But in Japanese I'm mostly learning new words for concepts I already know (e.g., 保険 is insurance, and I already know what insurance is). Calculus requires learning new concepts that don't exist elsewhere.

Even 30B models are crushing grad level math. The hard to escape conclusion is math isn’t actually that hard. Humans are just really bad at it. Writing a 40 page short story with narrative consistency probably requires more intelligence than winning an IMO gold medal

@kitamuraharuo Unemployment is caused by bureaucrats, not AI or robots.

目前に迫る日本人の「AI失業」「ロボット失業」をどうする積もりなのか❓ 日本人の実質賃金を上げるのに、「安く働く外国人」を大量に入れる現状が大きなネックになっている。 何より、移民の流入がこれ以上進めば、世界に誇る日本の治安は失われ、日本文化も壊される。 この方に日本の舵取りは到底任せられない。

It's easy to apply principles incorrectly. To apply them correctly you have to understand how they were reached in the first place. Principles apply in a context; they have underlying assumptions and conditions that need to be understood. If the assumptions are wrong, if the conditions are not met, the principle will not work. Even Newtonian physics only applies within a context. Unfortunately a lot of people abandon good principles because the principles seem not to work, but they don't realize that the principles didn't work because they weren't being applied correctly in the first place. Some other people discredit good principles by misapplying them deliberately. Marxists for example count on people not understanding what capitalism really is. They point to problems that are actually caused by government intervention, and then blame capitalism. Political freedom does not require a perfect world but it does require a great deal of conceptual understanding. For example you need police who protect the innocent from criminals. In order to determine whether a particular police action, such as an arrest, works for or against that goal, you need a lot of contextual knowledge. If people are able to do that thinking, but unwilling, that is not the fault of the world for not being perfect enough, it is their own fault for being lazy. On the other hand, we've had golden ages before, so it can be done.

The Accidental Globalist Some of the most principled people I know are libertarians. I used to be one and I attended the conferences all over the globe. They believe deeply in individual liberty, free markets, voluntary exchange, and keeping government small. In a perfect world their philosophy would work beautifully. The problem is we do not live in a perfect world. Globalism is not a fair playing field. Other nations subsidize their industries, steal technology, dump products below cost, and export their surplus population. When you apply pure libertarian ideas in this rigged game you can accidentally become part of the problem. You might be an Accidental Globalist if you... Support unrestricted free trade without demanding real reciprocity and watch American factories close while foreign governments protect their own workers. Defend the free movement of people while communities absorb the costs of rapid demographic change and wage suppression. Call for legalized drugs while other countries with strict drug laws intentionally flood your country with dangerously potent drugs that hook and kill your young. Champion expanded H-1B and guest worker programs as free market solutions while American engineers and technicians get replaced. Oppose tariffs on principle even when facing countries that practice aggressive economic warfare to keep you from manufacturing on your own soil. These positions are not made with bad intentions. They come from good faith belief in timeless principles. But in practice they often deliver the same result as deliberate globalist policies: weaker American communities, suppressed wages, and lost national strength. Here is the pragmatic truth. If you do not consciously embrace nationalism as a guardrail, you will default to globalist outcomes. They Dont Work For You.

@MartinSkold2 Gatekeepers can abuse their authority. What is needed is not "gatekeeping" but "curation," somebody who finds the best works in the pile and draws attention to them. Curation allows the best works to rise to the top while also allowing people to disagree on what is best.

Gatekeeping serves a purpose. The whole point of an education, notably, is to certify that you’ve completed a given curriculum, which in turn entitles you to something (whatever that is). Obliterating that signal (which AI does) is a social and institutional cost. And, per OP: AI does not “give access” to artists - it makes everyone one, which drowns artists in a sea of slop exactly the way it drowns writers. It makes “artist” a title like “Roman citizen” under Caracalla. You can argue this is acceptable since we can do without art (up to a point), but if you do this with all communication you’ve effectively drowned signals in noise. And that’s the point: As people have been noting, a flat org chart is a tyranny - a society with no hierarchy, that values nothing and treats everyone the same, is an atomized society in which a tiny handful rule over an eternally churning mob. You want that? - fine: But that’s what we’re arguing about, and you get to plead your case for it, including to people you don’t respect.