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This is a place for general chit-chat about virtually anything that doesn't fit anywhere else.
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(talk) (talk) (talk) (talk) (hic)

Pointless poll

It's the end of the world as we know it. Do you feel fine?

Yes

87

Vote

No

243

Vote

My enemy is...

Pigeons

11

Vote

Geese

80

Vote

Ducks

5

Vote

Corvids

16

Vote

Gulls

30

Vote

Starlings

6

Vote

Owls

5

Vote

Parakeets

4

Vote

Hawks

4

Vote

Cliff Racers

42

Vote

Zubat

47

Vote

Has KarmaPolice been watching The Birds?

68

Vote

To do list

Trump is ruining one of the greatest advantages Americans used to have over China and Russia

Yes, most people have reservations over the US for very good reasons, but most countries at least thought that they could trust the US in many aspects and, to put things mildly, tankies and some wingnuts that like the way they treat women and their LGBT community aside, no one likes China and Russia.. This of course started changing when Trump turned its back on Ukraine, but now it's reaching whole new levels with these tariffs. Punishing allies like Vietnam and Cambodia for no reason just because Trump wants an industry to call his own is something I just can't understand. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 13:18, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

The Economist didn't mince any words:
"It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era."
The only reading that makes sense to me is one that recognizes that Trump is both a narcissistic, a whiny black-and-white idiot who always sees himself as a victim, and one who has zero brain cells capable of critical thought. I do think that his business brain cells (and many others) seem to be stuck in the 1980s (before he failed bigly and went on his entertainer path). Recall that one "theme" of that era was how Japan was going to come and supposedly eat our lunch. Now, it didn't work out that way, but as seen in a letter Trump wrote in that era (and splashed in a full page ad in several newspapers), I think from those sort of themes floating around during the Reagan age, he got a (wrong) impression that America's wealth was propping up all these (supposedly) inferior nations... and they, in return, kicked back at us and laughed in our face. So he latched onto tariffs as a way to show dominance and say "go ahead, see if you can live without AMERICAN MIGHT. Because I will use AMERICAN MIGHT to PUNISH YOU!". He has never let go of the idea since. At least... that's my theory.
Of course, if true, this is a dumb take. Because the likely response from other nations will be a form of "ok, sure, bye bye America." As The Economist article points out, the US share of final demand for imports is only 15%. The world can live with reduced demand from America. The stock market is not the economy, but one thing investors seem to be betting on -- a take I agree with -- is that, while there will be pain from these tariffs, small American businesses will feel far, far more pain than globally connected ones, let alone the global economy.
Now, "people voted for this shit". So I look forward to seeing how the culture war blowhards who are Trump's Biggest Fans end up feeling about their Dear Leader trashing Pax Americana. Hey, at least those folks "owned" those couple of trans women athletes or something. Sure, the "American century" had to end, but for them, I bet it was so worth the price! BobJohnson (talk) 14:42, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
You say that as a joke but I think a disappointing number of Americans will plug their ears and yap about how making everyone (including themselves) pay more for everything that gets imported into the country is somehow a 500 IQ move. Some of the smarter ones will correctly recognize that this makes no sense from an economic standpoint and is purely an attempt to bully business leaders into bending to Orange Julius Caeser's will, but will crimestop and convince themselves that this will own the libs more than it will own them. Gabaghoul 🥩 19:53, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
What strikes me is that the tariffs demonstrate that Trump is completely clueless about international trade and macroeconomics, as shown by the absurd formula used to determine the tariff levels towards each country, as well as the EU.
As the BBC describes it, it’s clear that what is touted as “reciprocal” tariffs is, in reality, not based on the tariffs those countries/the EU have put in place on US exports, but on the trade imbalances between the US and the country in question (or the EU). This bizarre approach is why it yields the absurd results that some of the highest rates are slapped on such titans of the global economy and serious US economic competitors as The Falkland Islands (42%), Lesotho (50%), Myanmar (48%) as well as St. Pierre & Miquelon (50%).
This is obviously completely deluded, even if we accept Trump’s stated premise for tariffs (i.e. that US trading partners are unfairly hindering and disfavouring US export and “sniping” economic activity, especially manufacturing, away from the US). It simply shows that he fundamentally doesn’t understand what international trade is and apparently thinks that the US could/should run a neutral or positive trade balance against every single other country in the world, which is frankly bonkers.
Since this notion of universal trade surpluses is apparently his idea of what a “strong national economy” looks like, it also indicates that he apparently doesn’t understand that, on a global scale, some countries must have trade deficits for others to have trade surpluses, unless we begin trading with extraterrestrials. It also ignores that, even at the height of their international economic power, any economic powerhouse in history has run trade deficits with certain trading partners as an integrated part of their economic model. ScepticWombat (talk) 03:35, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
An obvious aside, but are non-tangible goods and services like insurance and TV shows counted when calculating net imports and exports? I ask because a lot of the U.S.' core competencies are things like software and financial products as opposed to stuff that gets loaded onto ships and sent across the ocean (this is the case for most mature economies as well). Gabaghoul 🥩 13:53, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
as i understand it, services are currently exempt from tariffs AMassiveGay (talk) 14:27, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Gay is right. [prepare selves for infodump]. Here's the state of play for the UK and USA trade-wise. [all figures in £ billions, italics 'invisible' products]
US Bill to UK, 2023
51.8 - Business Services
27.2 - Machinery/Transportation
25.8 - Finance
14.2 - Chemicals/Medical
11.5 - Transport/Travel
10.5 - Insurance
9.6 - Misc Goods
9.6 - Comms/Computing
4.8 - IP
4.6 - Materials
2.1 - Misc Services
2.8 - Food/Drink/Animals
2.0 - Fuels
1.9 - Tourism
0.9 - Govt
179.3 - Total
UK bill to USA, 2023
26.3 - Business Services
19.9 - Machinery/Transportation
18.8 - Fuels
9.0 - Transport/Travel
7.7 - Chemicals/Medical
6.6 - Finance
5.2 - Misc Goods
5.1 - Materials
4.8 - IP
3.4 - Comms/Computing
1.7 - Insurance
1.2 - Food/Drink/Animals
0.9 - Misc Services
0.5 - Tourism
0.4 - Govt
111.5 - Total
Therefore, the 'total' trade deficit the US has to the UK last year was £67.8b - that in 'visibles' [the shit the Orange Negus seems to care about] the deficit is only like £2.5b with the yawning gap is in 'invisibles' [which the Negus seems to not]. But let's not stop there.
When stuff like this is calculated, it doesn't take into account the ownership of the companies who do it. For example, Ford UK makes something like £300-400m profit yearly but sending this profit back to Dearborn will count as 'exporting' from the UK. Now, it appears the USA has something like £550b invested in the UK, which [if we assume a RoR of 5%] so that's £27.5b American orgs extracted from the UK in 2023. But this works the other way too; UK orgs hold something like £500b of American assets so if we apply the same RoR that's £25b back. So, my fag-packet says that in 2023 the USA paid out about £70b [$90.5b] in the last year to the British and the 'American invisible trade' is about 40% [with the EU 20% and China 7%] of the UK's total exports.
However, this opens up possibilities for Brits to fight back against the Negus by boycotting American-owned companies. Not just the obvious targets like Tesla and Coca-Cola, but things which are produced by British subsidiaries. Good examples here being Morrisons, Costa, Cadbury, Beck's, Waterstones, Boots, Weetabix and Sky. For we know the Tesla boycott is one of the few things which has needled the Negus/Boor and if Corp America really starts hurting it might make them get some balls to stand up to the Negus. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:14, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
On the level of tariffs themselves, some of the issue is what they see as 'a tariff'. Apparently, they regard VAT as tariffs. I've heard higher consumer/environmental standards are also regarded as tariffs. No sane economist or businessperson would class these as such because both are applicable equally to all comers, foreign and domestic. In this case, it's quite literally a method of trying to bully nations with superior standards; 'well, we'll drop the tariffs to 5% if you quit blocking chlorine chicken, hormone beef and titanium dioxide-dyed foodstuffs'. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:30, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Maybe Trump has a fixation for tangible items, kinda like the Soviets used to have? I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he just wants to see the "Made in USA" label in kitchen appliances more often, even if that means paying for products that are more expensive and often not as good as imported ones. I mean, I definitely know some people that think that bigger is better, and fail to realize, for instance, that the service sector of the economy can also competitive, dynamic and innovative, just like manufacturing. Heck, even the agriculture sector can also be extremely technological and productive nowadays, just look at Netherlands. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 20:26, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Unless I'm missing something, it takes far more than just raising tariffs to have manufacture coming back, or for that matter to get rare Earth elements from Ukraine. Panzerfaust (talk) 07:58, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
I don't think the Negus gives a fuck about 'Made in the USA' labels, Gee [in fact, it's a very short list of things I do think he does give a fuck about]. I think this is geared in it's entirety to pleasing the MAGA-hats in the Rustbelt sectors of the country - he vaguely promised to 'get those good jobs back' and tariffs Shall Do It. Lo, Lowell shall resume making cotton shirts, Fort Wayne televisions, Flint cars because The Great Orange has decreed it. All the while forgetting that if America wanted those places to make those products again, the shirt would cost now $55, the TV $1,650 and the car $32k, while the McD's server is making the minimum wage [$15] serving you $10 [value] burger meals. The issue being, these folks have a pretty narrow definition of 'Good Job™' and that is making something in a factory, site or farm - office work [in their minds] is just BS paper-pushing crap, which 'produces no value' and they don't consider 'real work' ['you just sit in a comfy chair all day on the computer with a coffee. That ain't hard, boy! When I was your age I was working 20-hour days down mill pounding steel ingots with only my forehead...']. This was seen during the pandemic; in where younger white-collars went back to the family home for lockdown and found their blue-collar very unsympathetic/non-understanding about what they did all day via remote [the story which stuck in my head the most was that of a young woman who's parents kept on having a go at her for 'playing on the computer all day' and 'being so lazy to not help her parents do [shitty task]', even when she had explained fully that she worked in IT and therefore it's via a computer.] Therefore, they simply do not see how 'sitting in chairs with coffee' could snag $26b from the Brits [for example] each year.
The other aspect which is important is that for various reasons they do not want to be retrained. They don't just want 'the TV plant back to Fort Wayne', they want the one where they hand-built teak-cased Radiation King CRTs for $40 p/h plus full benefits and security - it's work they understand and can do. It's one of the reasons Biden's 'Build back better' fell rather flat; that it involved producing things they did not understand using skills they did not possess. Therefore, they felt that these were jobs that Other People would get ['immigrants'] and therefore would be zero to minus benefit to their locality - the lesson here being that if you're going to big up strategic reshoring/reindustrialising you must include in the plan [and budget] facilities for expansion of infrastructure and [most importantly] skilling-up for free locals to work there [because companies simply don't bother training anymore].
The real crux of the problem is that USA.Inc is heading full steam ahead into a huge economic storm of mainly their own making. Not only are they declaring a trade war on effectively the whole world at once [which shall be inflationary and economically damaging short/medium term] but while threatening real war against some of their own allies [making foreigners even less inclined to 'come to a deal' on the previous] hacking up the Federal Govt almost willy-nilly [short/medium-term incapability to actually do shit correctly], ramming through domestically-divisive policies [ie Project 2025] which shall cause significant civil unrest within six months [economic investors etc don't think nations with unrest 'good for business'] with a strong anti-immigrant and anti-intellectual policies which shall bite harder as they go on [as the economy will be increasingly cramped due to labour shortages and brain-drains]. Yes, sweeping tax cuts for the rich are on their way again [they will be funded by the tariffs] which will be interesting how much of the American Big Public realise it's their tariff-paying funding the cuts for the top 10%.
Lastly, the Negus' own utter instability is also a factor here; economic bods cannot be sure that any 'deal' cut with him will actually stand longer than a few hours, or that he won't do something utterly stupid on a whim or on the advice of known morons - for example, if he followed through on his 'suggestion' that the USA stopped paying some of the interest of the national debt. The British example of Liz Truss come to mind here; that if 'the money men' lose their confidence in a country's leadership, they can [and will] pull the plug. Even if they're allowed now to use racial and sexist epithets in the office now with no pushback. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:36, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
And Panzer is right; tariffs alone won't make all those factories come back. Labour shortages, unsuitable labour, finding a decent place to put the factory, building it, finding all the capital goods to kit out the factory, getting the associated infrastructure put in, getting the capital to fund all of this - all this will take several years. If they bother doing it at all. Even more importantly, supply chains now snake all around the world which means even if you are 'american made' you'll still be hit with tariffs. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:29, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
I just want to talk about the inconsistency of Trump's actions. Wholly apart from the fact that these are not "reciprocal" tariffs at all, I have heard three explanations in respect of his objectives. But they cannot all be true as they work against each other.
1. They are bargaining ploy to get a "better deal from other nations. 2. They will obtain more revenue which will be used to offset income tax. 3. They will bring manufacturing and other activity back to the states.
Each of these explanations has it's own problems but taken together they are absurd.
If his objective is "bargaining ploy" then "income" and "jobs" are really irrelevant. If his objective is revenue and tax cuts, then this is absurd because the net impact on citizens will be zero (depending oh how they are targeted) and that also means he has no scope for bargaining them down. If his objective is jobs then he can't bargain - because that would defeat the objective. And the jobs stuff is nuts because some of that stuff isn't ever going to come back to the Sates - especially so if potential US producers are concerned that his real objective is "bargaining".
Of course this is his usual tactic of throw lots of shit at the wall and then claim that whatever sticks was the objective all along! Victory to the Texas Sharpshooter!Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:42, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
On the note of some of the above: The Economist pointed out recently that, overall, there's one area where America *does* have a big trade surplus. In services. That invisible thingy that Trump and his staff has zero comprehension about. That surplus happens to be nearly $300 billion. Maybe MAGA Blue-Collar Joe can't comprehend how "playing at the computer all day" is valuable. But it is. And, for now, America is actually good at this type of thing.
(Side note: MAGA Blue-Collar Joe also is probably clueless about modern manufacturing and just how automated everything is these days; that person "playing at the computer all day" at home may actually be pushing code and debugging issues for multiple manufacturing floors scattered all over the world. But that's another story...)
Although I still think in general that global businesses will suffer less than small American businesses, and the same on the consumer end (the poor will be far more impacted than the well-off due to higher percentage consumption patterns), this article does add another dimension to said thoughts. If the tariffs stick around, it will be tempting for countries to retaliate targeting American services. With Silicon Valley so heavily entwined in Trump 2.0, Silicon Valley firms are an *especially* juicy target. (Like The Economist article says, of course, if the tariffs are actually meant to be a negotiating tool, this would be a different story. But I tend to assume Trump administration stuff as dumb in a MAGA Type-A-asshole barrel-headed fashion until proven otherwise.)
Shortly after the Trump tariffs happened, news came out that EU regulators are considering a billion dollar fine against Twitter. While the article says that the investigation was "progressing independently", I wonder if in reality the releasing of this news was a bit of a tariff reaction "trial balloon". BobJohnson (talk) 20:21, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
American multinationals will in fact do a bit better than expected, partly because the weakening of the value of USD will plump up foreign-currency earnings, and thus declared profits. Whether this would be enough to offset a slide in sales/margins within the country is another question entirely, as well as asking how much global 'fucked off by America' turns into a public boycott of American-owned companies.
This widens into being other threats to American economic power. American-owned interests overseas make a lot of cash for the homeland, and if relations end up totally in the shitter, well those interests might be boycotted, hit with punitive taxes or perhaps even forced to be divested. If American tech services become 'untrustworthy' (for example, Google starts to censor their search to be more pro-MAGA) that dominance might crumble fast as competitors grow and consumers defect. If American academia/creatives become increasingly in under the thumb of MAGA-hats, talent will flee overseas. If the xenophobic and anti intellectual tenor grows much further, the worlds elite shall go elsewhere to study, invent and push the bleeding edge. If the American 'rule of law' crumbles into ash, entrepreneurs shall look to try their luck somewhere their success can't be stolen from out from them. KarmaPolice (talk) 01:28, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Ho ho. I knew it: "Of course this is his usual tactic of throw lots of shit at the wall and then claim that whatever sticks was the objective all along!" Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 11:53, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
It ain't over yet. :)
At any rate, in the long term, anyways, the Trump administration is chugging on with its plans to ruin universities / education and American science, as well as extending a big middle finger to foreign talent. It is pretty clear to me that while the upper class twits in charge of America have gotten antsy over the tariff thing (due to portfolio damage etc.), many of them have for some reason fully bought in to the idea that universities are an engine of a "woke mind virus" or some other culture war bullshit, and not an engine of innovation.
Personally I see the tariff war thing as "short term" noise. Such is quickly reversible. The long-term damage to engines of innovation, less so. BobJohnson (talk) 14:18, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
This of course raises another issue. How are Americans going to produce high-quality manufacturing goods if they don't even know how to produce them? In the end, the American population will end up paying for worse goods that are more expensive than their foreign counterparts! I wrote about the infant industry argument here and, as I said, in order for it to work, you also need good education. Trump loves to mention how high tariffs were in the 1900s, but back then American schools, especially those in urban areas, were also among the best in the world, and the country was one of the pioneers on public education. Now, the American government is actively trying to destroy public education. Trump is IMO doing everything wrong. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 15:13, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
I don't think the wannabe feudal lords around the Negus' throne gives a fuck about that. They're mainly in tech/finance, real estate, dirty energy, extractives, agriculture or retail. Their business model doesn't really need a well-trained mass workforce or tech/sci development. In fact, most don't even need decent infrastructure or a prosperous home market. In fact, turning inwards into a 'Fortress Gilead' offers other benefits - that they can become a full-blown stratified oligarchy protected from internal disruption or external competition. Putinism has shown the way; America is wealthy enough in natural resources for a generation to provide enough for the oligarchy and their support/security apparatus while the masses slowly succumb to despair, anger or resignation.
But I accept the above theory relies on a wannabe lords being smart enough to think like this. It's quite possible a lot of the above simply never think things fucking trough, think everything will continue to function fine however much you shit on it. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:09, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Serious question

So, I checked the "recent changes" page and there's this "Fuerdai" & "Jose Molina" that keep poping up. Who the fuck is Jose Molina & who or what is (a) Fuerdai?? Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 20:44, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Fuerdai and most likely José Molina (baseball). Bongolian (talk) 06:12, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
"Fuerdai", "Jose Molina" and the recent spam shit in recent changes are related to Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/BMX On WheeIs. the Wikipedia LTA page just shows how determined the user is at causing disruption. Lavalizard101 (talk) 14:09, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Kurzgesagt's video "SOUTH KOREA IS OVER"

Kurzgesagt recently made video titled "SOUTH KOREA IS OVER" which, predictably, talks about a potential major crisis which could happen in South Korea. Particularly, it talks about SK's extremely low[birth rates, which he argues would lead to a collapse on nearly all fronts.

Economically, there would be too few workers to support all retirees, and the smaller workforce more generally would lead to a permanent recession by the 2040s, as well as forcing the government to cut essential public services due to the lack of money from taxes. Culturally, the already existing loneliness problem in SK would be aggravated by the higher number of people with no children or siblings, and the lack of young people would lead to a shrinking of youth culture and various cultural traditions dying out, as older people would have no way to pass them forward to future generations. Militarily, the ongoing war against North Korea would become even more of a problem as there would be fewer young people to join SK's military to deter against a full-blown confrontation.

He also argues "there's really no way back", as SK would still face major difficulties even in the most ideal scenario, where the birth rates rapidly raise to 2.1. However, he still believes it's possible for SK to get out of this mess eventually as long as the country actually faces the root causes of the problem. In particular, he attributes the falling birth rates with the country's workaholism, low wages, high cost of living and education, low spending on family benefit, and old-fashioned cultural norms, in addition to other factors associated with low birth rates such as more wealth and education. He also cites how various nations throughout the world will also face similar problems if they don't treat the crisis seriously.

I'm not used to watching Kurzgesagt's videos, but I've heard he's relatively reliable and he cites various academic sources such as OECD for his figures. Apparently, this was also much more negative compared to most of his other videos. Anyways, I'm not particularly knowledgeable on the causes and consequences of low births aside from superficial stuff. ミ★ LunaAHHHHH 19:47, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I recall reading about the "4B" movement in South Korea.. interesting, but not conclusive as to why birth rates are generally falling not just in SK but across the board in developed nations.
My own thought is that in developed nations people get educated, and when educated they realize that this world really isn't pleasant... or at least not pleasant as it currently is and likely how it will remain for the foreseeable future (likely going to get worse in the future at this point actually).
Go to university or college, get better critical thinking skills, learn about all the nonsense and little big injustices that are continuing to happen right now, tell your parents or any elder person in a position of authority or leadership, and at best they'll acknowledge it but not commit to doing anything. Or they'll smile at you with dim comprehension. Or they'll say you're woke. Guess which two of responses are most encountered?
Sure there are small delights and pleasures that can keep one occupied and sane enough to almost forget about how this world is... but ah the key word is "almost". What intelligent person wants to have kids knowing and living through life's tribulations that they are certain to also encounter? I don't and wouldn't. Impiricism (talk) 04:11, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Most countries face a similar situation, but what I got from that video (and by the way I adore every video by them) is that with the confluence of multiple factors, all at once, South Korea faces a more brutal challenge than even say, Japan with ageing population. The difference between South Korea and say, European countries facing a somewhat similar issue, is that it is taboo to even discuss this in Korea (partially due to a decades long trend to encourage smaller families and as with Japan, a severe hostility towards immigration [which Kurzgesagt didn't mention for a number of obvious reasons]), which may mean the harm will come when it is too late to take quicker action. I would rate Kurzgesagt very highly for reliability, intellectual integrity and fact checking. They are quite careful about what they put out and even make follow up videos correcting themselves when they get things wrong. ShabiDOO 11:47, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Personally, I don't see low birth rates as a problem per se, especially the "sort of near replacement rates" you see in some countries that regardless get whined about by some natalists. A lot of the lower birth rates is reflective of good things, particularly advances in health and women's equality. Funny that it wasn't too long ago that the moral panic was over overpopulation.
Low birth rates are a big problem for today's go-go capitalism model. This, along with climate change, are the two things I can see that might severely upend the current economic order long-term. Capitalism is just too dependent on a "absolute growth all of the time" philosophy at the moment.
What I find ironic about this is that, from my perspective, this very same go-go capitalism model actually plays a large part in causing low birth rates. Countries that have embraced "work culture", to the point that they are super well known for excessively long hours and even karoshi, "death by overwork" -- Japan, South Korea, and China -- happen to have some of the lowest birth rates in the world. Coincidence? I doubt it.
Even outside these countries, to me there's a paradigm in current capitalism overall that happens to be very hostile towards families, babies, and women. I'll take a recent American example: the Republican House intra-party rules spat over proxy voting for new parents. Mike Johnson (along with most of the House Republicans), ostensibly the "party of family values", opposed this initiative. Why? None of the reasons I've heard are logically sound to me. Making the job easier for parents (with seemingly no logical impact to anything) seems like a no-brainer. (I mean, fuck, even Donald Trump was against Mike Johnson's proxy voting hostility here.) But it would mean that these dumbfuck (mostly male) House twits would have to give up a little control. And many of these pointy head boss shitheads hate that. (See the "work from home" hostility if you want a more generic demonstration of this problem.)
I do think the ruling class capitalist twits are aware of "the situation", but so far, for the most part, they haven't been self-reflective enough to come around to an actual solution (which would involve, you know, things like flexibility. Less control. Less of the paradigm in some places that "pregnant woman = career death sentence". Less embrace of overwork as godly. That kind of thing) In many cases, the twit solutions are even stupider -- most natalism movements I see advocate rolling back the clock and essentially making women baby-plopping second class citizens again. (No surprise that most natalism movements I see are heavily male.) Since the Republicans started babbling the "family values" catchphrase (early 1990s), the United States birth rate has fallen from ~2.0 to ~1.6. Way to read the situation, capitalist upper class twits!
My suspicion is that this "capitalism culture issue" is present even in European countries with better public support systems; despite the better safety nets, it doesn't change the underlying situation much (though I suspect such things might help explain the difference between, say, France's 1.8 birth rate and South Korea's 0.8). There seems to be a globally deeply ingrained paradigm that's going to be hard to resolve as long as the ruling class believes that go-go capitalism and work are the only things to promote in life. Especially since too many twits with this go-go capitalism paradigm have a notion of female equality that's stuck in the 1800s. BobJohnson (talk) 12:16, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
I've read the conservative natalism push as more of a classism/eugenics thing because having kids (at least in developed countries) is a luxury increasingly affordable only to the wealthy. If you want people to have kids, you implement policies like extensive parental leave, make quality K-12 education affordable to as many people as possible, and encourage less gender disparity in terms of labor both in and out of the home (there's evidence suggesting that disparities in domestic labor have a negative correlation with fertility).
These are, of course, things that the type of people who yap about declining birth rates tend to oppose on principle (at least in the U.S.). Funny how that works. Gabaghoul 🥩 13:33, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
I find this subject fascinating, and I wish I could write a wall of text about it. Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to answer, so I'll just say a couple of things. Indeed, I couldn't even read the posts above, so maybe people already mentioned what I'm going to say. First, Kurzgesagt despite being great in hard sciences has sometimes a few bad takes in social sciences (though don't ask me to find their older videos, as I said, I don't have time), so take them with a grain of salt on these subjects. The second thing is, does a growing population forster economic growth? Economic growth models, such as the Solow model say yes, but their answer is somehow unsatisfiying. Let's suppose that a country has a working population of ten, with an income per capita of 1000, with a total GDP of 10,000. Now, let's suppose that the population grew to 12. We can expect the GDP to grow to 12,000, but the people aren't better off, their income remains the same. What makes people richer is productivity. Now, can a growing population result in more productivity. I'd argue it can, but the answer is far more complex. There are many reasons why population growth can (I repeat again, can) make everyone better off, but I'd personally say that the most important one is the fact that having more people also means having more ideas - the key of innovation, which is the the main drive of economic growth in the long term. However, people don't exist in a vacuum. People won't be able to have better ideas and/or put them in practice without certain insitutions, such as good education and guarantees that their rights are secure. In both aspects, South Korea, to my limited knowledge, excels, so they are far from doomed. Also, a growing population can also hinder development. It is, after all, much easier, on average, to provide to a small family. If you have six children, it's much harder to give good education to all of them when compared to people that only have two (not saying that there aren't great parents that have many children, I know some). When families are too big, this usually means that someone (almost always the mother) won't be able to work, further harming the economy. Yes, I'm not talking about the problems with healthcare and social security that South Korea will face, mostly because I don't know a lot about their welfare system, but even though they'll have some serious challenges in the next few decades, the country isn't "over" as Kurzgesagt's clickbait suggests.
TL;DR: yes, I think it's possible that things will go wrong for them, but the video's title is hysterical and they can compensate their dwindling population with productivity - and they have been pretty good at it so far. South Korea is a relatively rare example of a country that grew rich before it grew old, and there are many other countries in Asia and East Europe in a much direr situation. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 17:20, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
I don't believe Kurzgesagt's video is claiming that Korea is absolutely doomed (though yes the title is deceptive), but that if they don't address the confluence of multiple issues they are facing (unusual amongst countries facing a shrinking population with little immigration), and that it is in fact taboo to even bring it up, they are in for a bad time. The situation is not unique amongst developed countries. The west is addressing it via immigration and increasing retirement ages (amongst other strategies). However, a significant reduction in working age population (along with other compounding issues) without a long term plan to potentially deal with the consequences could be dire. ShabiDOO 22:12, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
@GeeJayK, on the productivity point, the video does argue why something similar wouldn't be able to compensate for the smaller workforce long enough (link timestamped):

Of course technological progress means that productivity will be higher and each individual will probably produce more than today. But even if productivity keeps growing at the same rate or more than we've seen in the last decades, South Korea's GDP could peak in the 2040s. In other words, South Korea will enter a permanent economic recession. There are more optimistic projections that see the recession begin as late as 2050, but they are based on the medium UN demographic scenario – and there are no signs we're heading there.

ミ★ LunaAHHHHH 22:56, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Gaba is very correct to note the link back to old eugenics of the early 20th - they on the whole are not just bitching about 'not enough kids' but also 'too many Bad kids' aka kids from parents who have been judged unfit for various reasons. A classic example is a complaint that too many 'domestic' kids up for adoption these days are not 'mistakes from white college girls' but from mothers with 'problems' (being poor/homeless counting as such) producing lower-quality product (such as being mixed race) which might have 'problems' themselves in later life (because it's all us underclass producing the 'problem people', not respectable folks).
A lot of above view has in a diluted form transferred wholesale into (at least) Anglosphere bourgeois mores; that it was Very Irresponsible for you to ever have a kid without being able to provide everything they need, secure in the knowledge you will never Need Help from the state and you will be able to shower them with the attention/stuff the gossipy busybodies say You Must Provide. Ultimately, a lot of this is down to economics - if you have a situation where a) your're basically on your own spawn-raising, b) the setup means it's hard to get the resources together to 'do it all yourself' and c) any official help is bureaucratic/demeaning/rationed than yeah, a lot of the 'elective' kids simply ain't gonna happen.
This 'middle class arrogance' even leaks into what pro-natal policies they do come up with; for example UKGov developed a free childcare policy a couple years back. Problem is not only is it underfunded but it can only be one through 'official methods' (with associated bureaucracy). This means working-class informal self-help can't happen - in this case Tina and Fiona both giving their £50 p/w to their retired mum to look after Scott and Sarah while they're at work (remembering that Mum might be living off £230 p/w so that £100 would be a modest but welcome increase [also helping to reduce pensioner poverty!]). Most folks would agree, toddlers being raised by Grandma is normally better than a impersonal, bargain-basement daycare who gets fucked off if you're 3mins late for pickup. Hell, strip out all the bureaucratic shit and simply give that £50 to all parents gratis you might both reduce the total bill. But why won't they do that? Fixation of getting 'scroungers', because us working-class cannot be trusted one iota with anything.
This weave/tangent has a point; in which I think we're way overpaying for dependent care/support than we could be - not just kids, but seniors and the disabled too. I mean, we gave a system where authorities will spend £800 p/w on professional carers because they won't bung £400 p/w for a relative to do it themselves (Classism again; assuming said relative does not really need money, should do it for love).
Another thing is that 'economically inactive' people can in fact be quite socially productive. Caring for others, volunteering, mentoring, training etc. Does the Grandma daycare or Grandpa DIY services have value? Common sense says yes, while Econ bods say no as they're not run through any metric to be crunched. Even simple stats are hard to find - the only one I found was a wild-ass guess (£250b p/a) which if correct means the British GDP is 10% bigger than believed.
On the 'permanent economic recession' point, it all depends on how you define recession. Our current definition is very rooted around a presumption of eternal population growth, everything being priced-up and a unusually high % of working people (caused by the 'Boomer bulge' between c1975 to c2025). For economies with flattish (or even declining) pops, we very well might need to depreciate raw GDP numbers. (In fact, think it should be already; UK post 2008 had all the hallmarks of a stagnant/contacting economy but as we had an increasing GDP [due to immigration] our key benchmark 'looked okay'. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:24, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
I completely disagree with KarmaPolice’s notion of “paying too much for care”, because the underlying assumptions are dubious and the maths are completely off.
First off, the scenario assumes relatives who are both willing and able to deliver this care, and it’s not exactly unheard of for grandparents to still be in full time employment while their grand children need care, or for those grandparents to not be located conveniently nearby. Sure, you could do the self help scheme by pooling resources, but that’s basically just lowering pay for essential services and outsourcing them to unskilled labour in the hope that “love” will cover the difference.
As for care for the elderly, that requires skills too, unless we’re talking minimum levels of housecleaning etc. Even worse, the maths of 800 vs. 400 ignores several obvious problems: That it would mean that that family carer can’t hold a full time job, which needs to be factored in as a societal cost, likely more than offsetting the proposed savings.
It also assumes that one professional care worker only cares for one person per week, thus ignoring economies of scale, let alone the fact that care work for the elderly also requires education for a reason, which needs to be factored in as a counter in quality to “love” (and whether everyone loves their family to a degree able to compensate for training in care work is at least open to debate). And once again, it requires that there are actually relatives nearby willing and able to take on this significant task.
Then there’s the quite likely prospect of gender bias in this “family care model”, because who do we think are most likely to be saddled with this role? My guess would be that it would fall overwhelmingly to women, who are already heavily over represented in (professional) care work, and thus it would be an effective 50% income cut for women, if we assume they currently work as professional care workers and likely far more, unless they’re really low paid or unemployed.
Family care sounds really good — right up until you have to quit your full time job to do it. Indeed, the problem of the state expecting families to handle this important, societal task is one that is keenly felt exactly in those states (especially in East Asia) that rely on it while also having aging populations.
If anything, the “boomer bulge” argues for increased reliance on public care, simply because the larger number of elderly relatives needing care would be unmanageable on a family based model, as one working age person might need to care for between two and four grandparents.
Sure, you might want to subsidise those who are willing and able to take on such care work anyway, but I really wouldn’t want society as a whole to rely on it. It’s not just “unskilled labour of love” and already doesn’t pay particularly well while being physically demanding (and often mentally straining too’), and claiming that we’re overpaying those who are willing and able to do it full time seems frankly bonkers to me. ScepticWombat (talk) 18:19, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
Think you're misreading a lot.
-I don't assume there would be relatives to be willing/able to provide the care, only that there would be some instances where there would be.
-Don't dump on the 'unskilled labour'. Some of those are damn good at what they do, and because they have 'skin in the game' can be more attentive to their charges than a professional carer. What's more, you get skills over time; so the relative might be more experienced than our professional. Lastly, a lot of care doesn't need skilled labour to do; which is why (for example) a lot of family carers get in a 'proper' carer in for an hour or two do do the stuff they can't.
-Opportunity cost is very important, and is why flexible systems are vital. Sometimes there will be someone who's current 'real job' is low in pay and going nowhere. Or that they'd be willing to do it, but not for free. Speaking of wider societal cost; there's some evidence which shows low-quality daycare is usually inferior than family care for young kid re later development.
-Speaking of cost, you're hung up on the purely example numbers I did. The truth is simple; professional care environments are more expensive due to extra overheads (insurance, admin, operating profit etc). Yes, this stuff has long been shunted onto women's shoulders, which I support family being paid for caring - in many countries, it would result in them being paid something for what they already do for free (mainly, because they have to). KarmaPolice (talk) 20:30, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
I still don’t think that paying people a pittance, rather than nothing at all is a particularly good argument, either socially or economically. As for the extra overhead involved in professional care work, that’s at least partly due to the kind of protections that doing work professionally entails.
Basically, if you’re a health care worker and injured at work, you’re usually entitled to some form of compensation, but if you’re injured while doing “family charity” work, you’re not. This is also something that needs to be either factored in as a personal cost for the family member or being paid for by society at large, thus eroding the purported savings.
Is public support preferable to working for free? Of course. Is publicly supported family care better than no care at all? Sure. Is it better than “bad” care? Possibly (though I’d question how comparable “bad” daycare is to families with the resources and willingness to provide their own).
The more important question is whether family care is really a viable alternative to public care on a societal scale, or at best a niche supplement. Another issue is that such a system would give a great excuse for certain politicians to shovel all kinds of care onto the families, returning to the situation before comprehensive welfare programmes were implemented in the first place. ScepticWombat (talk) 08:55, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
Just as a curious real world example: Denmark, despite having a comprehensive public and private daycare system also used to have “a parental daycare subsidy” for, let’s be honest, stay at home moms.
Now, Danish conservatives and others on the right used be in favour of this, because it very much chimed with their traditional Kinder, Küche, Kirche view of gender roles. That is, until they realised that the majority receiving this support were immigrant women (mainly Muslims) who were thus disincentivised to seek jobs, which also meant that the need to learn and use Danish became less of an issue.
Not surprisingly, the scheme was quickly cancelled, but the right wing has sought ever since for some way to reintroduce it while exempting the former main users from being able to use it, but have been unable to because that would be blatant discrimination and thus certain to be struck down by the courts. ScepticWombat (talk) 09:10, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Umberto Eco's famous quote about fascism and Fundies

I have noticed that at the very least among some Fundies such quote (Trumpism has nothing to see with this, if anything local ones are quite silent about both him and the support he receives from their US brethen) about fascism seeing their enemies both so weak they're not a threat and so powerful they're the opposite applies, when they see their enemies (Satan and demons, witches, sorcerers, etc. I'm talking about Pentecostals obsessed with spiritual warfare) unable to affect them because they're bathed in the blood of Jesus that protects them of such enemies but other times they have to pray away them because the opposite happens (demons being behind mental illnesses medicine can't treat, such witches and sorcerers cursing them, etc. I'd really like this was made up.)
And why such obsession with witches and sorcerers in this epoch, when besides them being very few and far between for what I have seen online they seem to have far more important to worry about than cursing Christians?. These people seem to love LARPing. Panzerfaust (talk) 07:34, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Erm, sorta wrong.
They're immune to Satan's whiles because their faith in Jesus is steadfast. Temptations from Satan's minions are everywhere, constantly looking for inroads. If you succumb, it means your faith wasn't steadfast. And the main way for the steadfastness is to live your life to the literal word of the Bible and constantly repent for your sins.
Biblical literalism is all the way through. For them, we are living in the final days before the Great Tribulations - all that shite in Relevation involving Whores of Babylon and Marks of the Beast. This also means all the bits about miracles, spirits and direct divine interventions etc is all literally true too, so why can't these things happen now?
From a sane sociological POV, it's all quite self-sealing. Anything Bad is Satan's work; Bad is anything which takes you away from uncritically accepting Scripture and how your pastor etc interprets it. Therefore, it is ultimately hostile to not just other religions, atheism etc but also the principles of the Enlightenment, such as rational enquiry and logic. Even the most glaring evidence of all this being BS is written off as The Red Guy 'testing your faith'.
TL:DR? The average Pentecostal mind is riddled with fear - of sin, of being 'led astray' by Satan's minions, of the imminent Apocalypse (and missing the Last Boat out), to be condemned to burn in Hell for eternity etc. KarmaPolice (talk) 23:43, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
There's a concept in Protestant Christianity -- from the beginning -- which is called sola fide. This kind of explains the root here. Under sola fide, your path to salvation is merely acceptance of Jesus Christ alone. Good deeds don't matter as much, if at all. It's one of the big differences between the Protestants and the rest in Christianity.
Personally, on this issue, I'm more on the side of the "old school" folks like Catholics -- this concept is honestly Biblically questionable in my opinion (though, to be fair, what Martin Luther was reacting to, the Catholic church selling "indulgences", is bullshit as well). And also to be fair, this concept is not interpreted to-the-letter in many Protestant churches. But "Jesus *IS* Salvation" is certainly an important part of the more us vs. them type churches, of which I see the Pentecostals as one of those types. As a lot of that side of the evangelical experience is more about the *cough* mystical side of the Bible (miracles and all that jazz). Small wonder that sola fide has devolved in these churches to where it's now "Belief in Jesus Is Your Shield Against Those Evil Demons".
The ironic thing here is that such belief is often aligned with the view that they believe in "Biblical literalism". Yet, they don't seem to, really. To give one huge glaring example, in Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus literally states that the second most important commandment in Christianity is to "love your neighbor as yourself". This certainly doesn't line up with the fact that many (IMHO correctly) perceive large portions of American Christianity as intolerant. (8 in 10 "nones" see it as such), something backed up by all those angry preacher types that seem to do nothing but hate. Furthermore, evangelicalism is peppered with a lot of screeds on things that often have extremely thin (if any) Biblical justification. The Rapture is an excellent example -- its Biblical support is thin. But it sure is a great vehicle for uppity types who think they are morally superior than everyone else because they have their Jesus Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free card or something and they will get whisked to paradise while all those evil Others will suffer fire and brimstone etc. (There's Biblical warnings against that type of judgmental shit, e.g. Matthew 7:1-5, James 4:11-12, etc., but such is yet another example of passages that the "Biblical literalists" seem to ignore.).
In other words, if their religion really *was* real (it isn't methinks, but let's entertain the thought), there's a helluv a lot of so-called Christians who might be surprised where they end up. BobJohnson (talk) 01:57, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Sola fide needs a rewrite - most non Calvinist mainline Protestants state you need genuine repentance and reasonable efforts of retrofication (ie 'good works') - which means the Pentecostal loophole is semi-sealed. To whit; even the Negus can be by their lights 'a good Christian' by occasionally repenting, saying you love Jesus and then toddling off to do Evil In The Eyes Of THE LORD. (Though some Pentecostals have soaked up the Calvinist idea that earthly rewards are sign of divine grace - and that if the Negus had lost said grace surely the rewards would be removed?)
The way I started to self de-programme from this cult was realising this loophole (and abuse) and then calling out evidence of it being used (one time literally quoting the Good Samaritan parable). I then realised that if suicide wasn't a sin most Pentecostals were fairly likely to kill themselves when they were certain 'they were in a state of Grace' to make sure they got to heaven. KarmaPolice (talk) 08:19, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Pardon my ignorance but was is the UmbertEco quote? Bongolian (talk) 05:23, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
"By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."
Number 8 on Eco's list of 14 Common Features of Fascism. Nowhere Man (talk) 17:49, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Jacob Collier invents post rock

https://youtu.be/TURkB9zqxa0?feature=shared

Obviously I'm being hyperbolic. I am frustrated that this method of composition looks new or out of the box when it is very established, but I mean, I get it. I am impressed Collier finds a way to conduct/force a specific audience response. I am in no way against this. It is just a little tough when you see this and know it has been done very well before and the credibility goes all to this guy. It's a net good that people are giving a go to less than traditional compositions, and I know Jacob Collier isn't some chump, he knows his shit in and out. But it sucks to be the 'I told you this shit was cool' guy. Check out Godspeed You Black Emperor! , or as they take themselves less seriously by, Godspee. It is very cool, and I'm glad millions of people know that it's ok to like it now. 'I told ya so' is the burning desire, but I mean, we're all winning if the music is good. It's weird to see something familiar that has been poo-pooed go mainstream in an instant. Torrent (talk) 07:30, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

https://youtu.be/cU_Pbd5gC2I?feature=shared and then Josh Johnson nails the Tariff conversation. Torrent (talk) 01:52, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

(Serious) Is the internet full of bullshit?

Hello. I discovered Quora and Reddit about two years ago, and I'm shocked by the amount of pure hullshit there. I originally thought these sites were simply there to answer questions, but apparently they have many communities full of three types of people: Annoying "young" people, mentally ill people and obsessive functionaries. Especially Reddit makes me sad. Do people on there really believe what they write? Is there really someone who believes that you have to reflect about wether your a boomer or a generation X'er or whatever (even though these labels are obviously bullshit to most people I know). Except as an insult or a joke, I've never heard someone who seriously identified someone born between 1940 and 1960 as a "boomer", or a person born between 1960 and 1980 as a "generation X'er". And everything on that site is super-perverse: Some people treat "atheism" as an ideology, which I thought was very far from reality, and had to be some American bullshit. In my country, an "atheist" is a non-religious person, and to most people an "agnostic" doesn't mean anything. To find other people angry about Reddit, I searched the site, and I found people obsessed with a particular hat variety, which made me completely forget about the first thing. Apparently, a "trillby" is a very "cringe" hat. Originally, I thought the hat they were randomly making fun of was called "fedora", but apparently it's a "trillby" which they call "fedora". I looked up "fedora" and apparently these terminally online people are talking about the literal Indiana Jones hat. So, apparently, people in real life don't wear that anymore? That's just not true. Some people wear it, others don't, most people don't care about the hat, including those who wear it. Then I looked at random posts about various subjects, but everyone on the site is always extremely annoying and obnoxious. Apparently, leaving your 6 year old alone on the playground right next to your house for not long is "neglect", and letting your 8 year old have an IPhone without time restrictions is "abuse". Apparently, being normal is called being a "stupid boomer", and insisting on something means you have "ADHD". Apparently, being a little arrogant (something that happens to everyone) makes you a "Karen", and your child is then most likely "neuro-diverse". Apparently, your very "cringe" if your not a sexist, and "races" exist. Apparently, you are necessarily some bullshit stereotype put in a "Starterpack". Apparently, you're a "jock" if you show off muscles, but you need to "hit the gym" with your "gym bros" if your slightly above average weight. Apparently, you will be bullied to death if you're overweight (I'm not overweight, but this is just ridiculous and obviously has to be far from reality considering most of those comments come from American users). Apparently, you have to analyse things (an irrelevant TV show, life stages, some movie, a video game, an arrogant attitude, a rebellious child, etc.) which most people in real life just do not give a fuck about.

Am I becoming crazy, or is that site full of bullshit? Or is that just how American daily life is? 2003:EE:6F10:1AF2:868:94CB:C87C:FA56 (talk) 17:40, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

PS:This is not a shitpost, I'm seriously perplexed and I'm seriously asking myself if these people really mean what they write. 2003:EE:6F10:1AF2:868:94CB:C87C:FA56 (talk) 17:42, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
From what I see, there's something major going on with mental health in general in the past decades. The internet is just an outlet, a place where people feel like what they say matters. The anonymity helps, and some are just swayed hard by peer pressure.
Maybe most of the world is just fucked up like that? No doubt there are places where these kinds of minds are not as prevalent, but the inhumane, exponential growth of everything in the current century (And the last one, to an extent) is making it hard for any human being to be able to process the changes without outright ignoring most of what happens to the world, and some people think knowing what is going on in the world is a way to be shielded from the backlash that comes from the changes. This comes at a cost, and most people can't provide the mental energy required to fully process everything. But since they think it would be irresponsible to not do that, they destroy their psyche, sometimes agonizingly slow, until they become sort of a zombie that just needs to have a formed opinion about everything, lest they leave themselves open to being "exploited" by the changes they never understand.
As I said before, the internet is an outlet. Even those who troll have some subconscious drip into their responses. It's a clear sign of what's going on the minds of those who want to be heard. Maybe we need to start listening, not to agree with them, but to be able to see why and how this is happening. That is not to say there are not meaningful discussions on this hellscape, but they are localized in small pockets, few and far between, surrounded by this sea of dysfunction.
So yeah, Maybe most of the world is just fucked up like that. 200.160.128.227 (talk) 19:19, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
I tend to disagree with the idea that this is all *that* new. (See tabloid newspapers, which have existed for a century plus. Also, I can bring up some stories of the major classical music popcorn drama back in the day if you want. People *love* to throw shit at each other.)
So my response would be:
A) Welcome to the Internet. The Dickwad theory regarding the Internet has been around since 2004. Yes, a lot of the Internet is full of shit.
B) "Dickwads" are everywhere, in real life too. Plenty of real-life examples of things ranging from cults to obnoxious assholes to moral ninnies to the topic-obsessed.
C) Although various cultures do have different "flavors" of dickwad, this is not limited to America. There's a lot of dickwad in *all* of humanity. Nonetheless...
D) Social media IMHO is worse than real life. There's plenty of studies that social media nonetheless increases online disinhibition (leading to anti-social behavior) as well as increasing feelings of loneliness and isolation. No shit; social media communication just doesn't quite work the way face-to-face does.
E) Personal observation with social media (particularly where up/downvote rules the roost), from what I see, there's a tendency to cherry-pick the whackiest, most-over-obssessed, most emotive. It's real-life, but only a small slice of it is upvoted on the usual places. Controversy will get more "upvotes" than reason; there's simply no upvotes in the normal day-to-day or "meh, whatever" or, heaven forbid, an actual debate that doesn't turn into mudslinging.
My thoughts are to treat mainline social media as the tabloid newspaper / gossip page. It's where you will find Drama and see Drama People because these people exist, they are going to make the most noise, they are going to be the loudest, and presently mainline social media rewards this shit. The great thing about Reddit is its sub-Reddit system; the quieter sub-Reddits on more specific, more under-the-radar topics tend to be more chill, as long as they are moderated to keep the Drama riff-raff out. (People complain about Reddit moderation all the time; this is because many of the complainers are the riff-raff. :) ) BobJohnson (talk) 19:44, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
I agree that it is not a new phenomenon. It's just been exacerbated by how quickly information is spreading. My rant was less a critique of modernity and more about how most people just can't handle that amount of information without going, to to quote a famous italian, "Coo-coo crazy". — Unsigned, by: 200.160.128.227 / talk / contribs
the answer is yes, the internet is full of bullshit. It sucks, but we all gotta look at the bullshit. It is everyone's job to sort the information we're given. It is your job to care about the information you receive on the internet and in your life. My suggestion is, if it doesn't affect you and you can't affect it, let it go, at least as much as it takes your time. If you want to act, you can, but this would be a bummer place to start, since quacks and maniacs kinda have pressure over what can be said here. Torrent (talk) 03:02, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
I think you discovered that people who post a lot, especially text and memes, tend to be deeply troubled (to put it as politely as possible). Happy people with lovers, friends, and stimulating work don't have time to post and post and post, and surely not on someone else's site. This is also why Mensans tend to be boring: if you are smart and successful, you are busy doing things not hanging out and telling people you are smart. So the people who invest time in Mensa tend to be the people without fulfilling private or work lives. The Internet was dominated by teenagers and bored older people with a few cranks and fanatics and social media is too. Polydamas (talk) 05:31, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
'Mensans' is the funniest term I've heard in a while. Is that real? Shit like this keeps me coming back. Torrent (talk) 05:42, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
American subcultures from the 20th century like (science fiction) fandom and the Mensans went bad in many of the same ways as the Effective Altruists and LessWrongers today, however the blast radius was smaller because nobody trusted them with the equivalents of billions of dollars.Polydamas (talk) 05:55, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're talking about. I've got four dollars to my name, can you explain it to me pro bono? Torrent (talk) 06:17, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
If you want the subculture history, start with Isaac Asimov's autobiography and Alec Nevala-Lee's book. The reason anyone but people who like to mock bad ideas have heard of Eliezer Yudkowsky and co. is that they persuaded people in the finance and tech industries to give them hundreds of millions or billions of dollars at the peak of the crypto boom before FTX collapsed, and you can buy a lot of media attention and blogging with that. https://www.aipanic.news/p/the-665m-shitcoin-donation-to-the OpenAI who own ChatGPT are also run by a mix of soulless investors and people who think they are building God.Polydamas (talk) 15:31, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
I was completely unaware of all of this. I do know that in certain business environments it is normal that leadership asks you to read specific books. But man, you can't just say read the books, you're not paying me. What did you get from them? Should we have articles on them? You have the insight. Torrent (talk) 01:03, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
You are not paying me to tutor you about the history of subcultures with the same patterns of bad behaviour as the LessWrongers, so I suggested some books where you can educate yourself on your own time. If you want strangers to help you, you almost always have to show you have put in effort yourself first, because the world is full of people who ask for time-consuming things then don't do anything with them. Polydamas (talk) 23:19, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
The article is very time stamped news on a shitcoin rugpull, so if money, markets, and playing God all mean the same thing, I retain my opinion that any worship of a deity predicated on Monetary gain is worship to Mammon. I don't think any Gods are real but I don't discount worship. So whatever you are saying about a new personal God I would like you to describe, it is important to know the difference. Torrent (talk) 03:14, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
RationalWiki pages on topics like Existential risk and Roko's Basilisk are good places to start learning what Eliezer Yudkowsky and friends think OpenAI is building, "Extropia's Children" is by a believer https://aiascendant.com/p/extropias-children These are not wise things to learn about if you have mental health problems.Polydamas (talk) 23:28, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Future looks bleak

Seeing how at least a hundred innocent people have been effectively trafficked and sent to CECOT, as well as that Insurrection Act that Trump will invoke on the 20th... 2600:1700:103A:D800:382A:8748:DAA0:3C15 (talk) 20:14, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Yeah. Every day is an uphill battle to not kayemmess. It's like most of this country loves this man now. 2001:67C:2628:647:9:0:0:136 (talk) 21:55, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
While it's amazing in some ways (given his blatant disregard for humanity and the rule of law) that he has a 43-45% approval range, it's far from everyone: more than half the country disapprove of Trump in most polls these days. I suspect that the number will go lower over time; the financial impact of the Trumpism chaos hasn't quite hit "Main Street" yet.
It sadly won't go to zero. Trump definitely has masked off so many Americans. Not that anyone with their eye open didn't know that culture war conservatives were always hypocritical regarding their "freedom!" jingoism. But it turns out there really is a lot of flag-waving types that will throw the entire nation's power away in the hope that a Strong Dictator will "owns the libs". (And their idea of a strong dictator is... a seriously old fart who was a business failure in real life, but found success in reality TV? Oy... television really is the opiate of the masses!) BobJohnson (talk) 01:58, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
As well as the 'shit hasn't hit Main Street yet' section, we also have the folks who are by inclination or design deliberately not engaging at all with anything remotely political. It is common in authoritarian regimes that a lot of the Big Public will 'turn inwards' into personal/private pursuits which generally escape the eye/ire of the regime. Regular 'distraction activities' include sports, hobbies, self-improvement, classic literature/art/music [the modern stuff being politicised and thus verboten], family and most obviously, drugs and booze itself - perhaps the best example most folks would get is what people did 'to distract themselves' during the Covid lockdowns. This is known in the jargon as 'social atomisation' [I call it 'Own Bubbling']; where a regime buttressed by a small stratum of party zealots floats on a sea of a wider public which is doing their best to pretend the regime doesn't exist. They can be roused into action, but only when it directly pierces the bubble.
Therefore, the question becomes twofold; a) how many 'Own Bubbles' end up getting punctured in the next 3-6 months and b) how capable is 'the opposition' capable of mobilising them against the New Order. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:52, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Insurrection Act soon?

A January 20, 2025, executive order declared a national emergency at the southern border and mandated a report by April 20 on whether to invoke the Insurrection Act to achieve “operational control.” Question is, why did Trump wait to invoke the insurrection act, instead of doing it on day one as he said he would? 2001:67C:2628:647:9:0:0:136 (talk) 21:53, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Probably to let Americans acclimate to the authoritarianism, like foreplay.2601:140:C005:490:D8AB:70ED:3774:FC02 (talk) 22:23, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Looking through the actual legislation, only 10USC§253, condition (2) seems to allow for this sort of use of the insurrection act. It's impossibly broad! (Also the navy is explicitly mentioned earlier but the air force is not, so they might at least refrain from bombing migrants at the border) There are no time limits everywhere but presumably to even have a hope of surviving or at least drawing out a court case they need to at least pretend that they made a good faith effort to enforce whatever law they want to say they can't enforce. Namako (talk) 22:43, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
That's pretty optimistic considering the administrations current track record of laws and abiding by them. Also, the US Navy has a pretty considerable air force themselves (I believe 2nd largest in the world, with the US Air Force as 1st). A real worry would be the use of autonomous drones for border security, which would no doubt be considered and used. 2601:140:C005:490:65EC:AAC6:144F:F95F (talk) 03:50, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
That's also pretty optimistic. The deployments will not be restricted at the border. Even if they say it will, it won't be for long. This will be a nation wide operation. They will go into workplaces. They will go into schools. They will go into hospitals. They will go down the street, knocking on doors, and searching every room. This time they'll remember to check the attic. They won't need a warrant. And after all, if you "don't have nothing to hide" then why wouldn't you let them turn your house inside out? Assuming you fit their ever-narrowing definition of "legal citizen," that is; If you look like an illegal immigrant, they'll accuse you of being one and whisk you away in an unmarked black van. If they find that you are anti-Trump or voted for Kamala, van.
And it's also optimistic to assume that the members military would object. Nope, they're ready and willing. Most people who join the military these days are there because they fallen down a propaganda trap brewing for decades; they see themselves as defenders of 'their' America. Either that or they think they're Rambo, or because it's a way to legally harm and kill people. Don't rely on the officers. Many of them are compromised too. Trump and Hedgeseth fired a lot of the high ranking officials whom were deemed disloyal and replaced them with MAGA partisans. Anyone who refuses to follow orders on "ethical grounds" will be court martialed, and the military courts are sympathetic to Trump too. That is barring the fact that the National Guard is even less restrained and even more partisan.
And that's before we get into the AI facial recognition and digital surveillance. They've already used facial recognition to track down campus pro-Palestinian activists. You know they're going to expand this. This is I'm not joking. US democracy is over, because people voted for a man who promised to dismantle it. I've already flew to a country with jus sanguinis citizenship law that I have living relatives in. (No, I'm not saying where. You know I am taking this seriously if I've already left the country I was born in. And my claim is still pending so I'm unsure if I'll be sent back.) but I understand that not everyone else has this avenue available. To the people who must remain, I can only offer empty words: Good Luck, and expect this dark chapter in American history to last a lot longer than 4 years. 2001:67C:2628:647:9:0:0:136 (talk) 05:03, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
You are forgetting one important thing [even if we leave aside inclination for all to 'go along with this'] - competence. The shredding of the Federal Govt is meaning that the admin chain 'o command is seriously out of whack right now, and the cretins the Negus put charge on the whole are utterly incompetent. Frankly put, it's only folks who have zero knowledge about how shit actually works who think the Big Boss can sit in the top office, 'push buttons' and lo, it magically happens [which includes most of the senior leadership in the Administration now]. No. What happens is that they set the very broad-brush goal, then bureaucrats/managers/technocrats underneath need to work out how to achieve these goals, whether they can actually fucking be achieved and then relay orders etc to make the wheels turn. As I said to a colleague last week, it's all well and good for the Pointy-Haired Boss to talk crap about 'positive thinking' and other business cliches but words don't change legal requirements, increase resources/time or alter facts of physical reality. Clearly, things are gonna fuck up if 'the people who make dreams into reality' have been fired, are dealing with nuts orders or are following various 'creative inertia' as passive resistance [like malicious compliance] and the ones who remain are a bunch of incompetents/newbies who have been hired on being politically reliable alone. And these are the folks going to make Gilead? History shows us that like Putin's invasion of Ukraine, militaries which are stuffed full of politically-reliable cronies suck at actual operations.
Speaking of 'legal requirements'... I note that Trump and co seem to be more and more intent into disobeying laws and even SCOTUS rulings now. Did you know there's a % demographic of right-wing people who believe strongly in following at least the letter of the law? Previous dictators like the Austrian megalomaniac got where they did because they got that and ensured every legal t and i was correctly done before moving on with said dreams. This rather chilly respect for the law includes folks like military officers and LEOs. In this respect, the military is just like an other big org; with the generals sitting in the big office, the grunts on the field 'doing the shit' and with all those officers in the middle 'making it all fall together'. But hell, not even all of 'the generals' approve and each time another commander [like that one in Greenland] who gets sacked due to not sucking off Trump the officer class is gonna get a little more pissy.
For this reason, and many others which I could write an essay on I urge the readers to not go over the Despair Event Horizon - 'MAGA has won, Gilead is here, might as well suck it up for a quiet life' - peddled above. They have not won. Gilead is not here... yet. But I do believe it's got to the stage where [for example], military personnel need to be reminded that their oath was to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign or domestic. Not to the Orange King. Not to build Gilead. Not for the MAGA feudal elites. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:00, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
A few notes on the "more positive end, sort of":
A) Some "blue states" already are starting simply ignore Trump's orders, especially when they are clearly illegal. New York in particular flat out has ignored Trump's attempts to end diversity in education and eliminate New York City's congestion pricing. The more Donald Trump openly flouts the rule of law, the more this gives "blue states" carte blanche to do the same and start ignoring the most bullshit of Trump's orders. (Short of Trump sending the military in, of course, which would probably end up being civil war level shit. But as KP noted above, the military is not completely tied to Trumpism and possibly can act as a firewall to Trump's stupidest impulses. To give one recent example: a combination of a military firewall and federalism is what helped neuter the worst impulses of Jair Bolsonaro.)
B) Watch for the reactions of, well, essentially everyone else. It is hard to think of exactly who is an ally to Trump's vision of America. (Russia? El Salvador? Hungary? Anyone else?) The United States (until now, I suppose) has gotten a lot of advantages from being the world's "safe haven" for investment. Trump's bullshit has started to make a lot of people wonder about that these days. And it's clear that Trump, for all his bluster, still doesn't want a complete economic crisis on his watch.
It is clear that the reason Trump's "tariff the world" bullshit were paused is because that bond markets were starting to panic and people were starting to unload US treasuries big-time. And the United States is not in a great position for this sort of thing. The 123% debt-to-GDP is sustainable if the "investment vibes" believe that nothing bad will happen; it is *far* less so if uncertainty rules, and investors demand a nice yield premium for taking on risk.
Long term, a lot of what Trump is doing undermines this "safe haven" / center of the financial world status regardless; I expect the post-Trumpian pain to be far worse to the US than Brexit was to the UK. But I do think that investor pressure might also put a clamp on some of the worst Trumpian impulses (though, sadly, I have to emphasize the "might" part.) BobJohnson (talk) 12:35, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
One addition from an analysis today:
While I think it's pretty clear that "the immigrants!" are a popular rally cry among the right, I think the Gestapo-level, proto-Nazi shit of deporting "enemies" to a foreign gulag (even if they did nothing wrong at all and were merely an "administrative error"), and Trump's penchant for disobeying court orders, is a massive overreach, at least in the court of opinion. Such is shown in an analysis of poll data if you break down the details: even only 28% of Republicans agree that Trump should flout court orders.
Sadly, even in the above analysis, there is still some "wiggle room" for some horrid shit, like what went on in the detention camps with Trump 1.0. But many people who howl at immigrants (rightly or wrongly) have a "tiered" view, where the foreign-born doctor is ranked much higher than the foreign-born manual laborer. Neo-Nazis like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon don't give two flying flips about this sort of nuance. And these neo-Nazis certainly don't give two fucks about due process; I think that sort of authoritarian shit is a very minority view in America at the moment. So this is perhaps yet another area where the administration is overreaching, and a talking point opportunity for opposition politicians (if they actually grew a spine). BobJohnson (talk) 13:36, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

One of the things which worked against Liz Truss was bringing in the lettuce (ie mocking her by comparing her to something fairly trivial). What 'animal, vegetable or mineral' could be used for Trump?

Could Machiavelli's The Prince be brought into the discussion? Anna Livia (talk) 15:29, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

An orange, maybe. ミ★ LunaAHHHHH 16:44, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
I have two candidates!
Fat, ugly, unwanted, toxic but yet convinced of its own beauty - the cane toad.
Unable to cope with reality - the ostrich. (Yes, I know it's apocryphal)Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:30, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
Blobfish perhaps.
With Truss it was mainly which would last longer in office/the display - so what a/v/m for the tawdry trumpery? Galloping Gertie? Anna Livia (talk) 23:04, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
Trump is the Black Bear. Kinda scary, but most likely to be digging in your garbage for sustenance. Make yourself big and the black bear shrinks. Never treat a black bear like a pet, it doesn't see you as a friend. Torrent (talk) 04:08, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Cockatoo? 0-screaming in no reason flat, destroys anything it can get its beak on to and absolutely constantly needs to show off and be the centre of attention. Namako (talk) 14:04, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Eyyy, I kinda like Cockatoo. I never had a pet bjrd, but I had a friend In high school with a couple and the family absolutely hated them. fully fed up, never saw them treat their pet birds with anything but disdain. Torrent (talk) 08:11, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

What happened to the RW Support Server?

I try to open it, but it says the server has no channels; It wasn't like this a few hours ago, is this only happening on my end? If not, then what happened? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 00:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Same issue for me, first explanation that comes to mind is that someone with administrator rights has nuked the discord. Which could mean their account was compromised, but this is just a guess. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 07:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
The Board of Trustees part is still there. Spud (talk) 09:11, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Isn't Tech the only one with admin rights? Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 12:48, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
I hate to say it, but it seems like Techpriest went rogue and nuked every part of the server except for the Board chat. She is the owner of the server, and she just changed her profile pic and username. Techpriest did not respond to my Discord message asking her what happened. Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 13:33, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
She's the last one I'd see doing something like this. That's more of a Carthage thing. Did something happen yesterday on the discord? Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 14:00, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that she once said that she wasn't going to delete the server if she left the site. She said that if that happened, she would give the server to someone else. So I assume that she had a good reason for nuking it. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 14:03, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
This just sucks. I was active on that server way more than even on RW itself. There were like tens of thousands of messages on there, including some posts of mine that I would have really liked to save to my notes or something... Techpriest (aka @color_out_space on Discord) does not answer to my DMs either. It's sad that so many years of good-faith interactions had to be deleted as to not be used against us. Though I understand given the nature of the last few weeks' legal discussions on there. What a shitty time to be on RW, honestly. I hope it will be restored at some point in the future. KaDaShOvA (talk) 16:58, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Hopefully the channels are just hidden instead of deleted, but I'm not sure if that's the case. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 17:19, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
No, I'm fairly sure they were deleted. That's how it worked on the Discord I ran years ago. It looked pretty much the same. I think deleting the support channel is just an additional step that Techpriest hasn't taken yet. But I could be wrong. KaDaShOvA (talk) 19:12, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
I was surprised too. I just checked the server today and bam. Techpriest, if you're reading this, I hope you're doing okay. — Exaskliri (they/them) (talk | contribs) 17:26, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Server status

Okay, just a quick announcement. Tech transferred ownership of the RW Discord server to me. Most channels are back up. I will be keeping the server open and up as a place for all of us to continue chatting together, although I will have to spend some time reestablishing some stuff and reorganizing. Pizza SLICE.gifDuceMoosoliniYour friendly RW dictator moderator 01:19, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@DuceMoosolini Yeah, I think permanently removing #Off-topic was a wise choice lol. Were there other things worth reorganizing? I'm looking forward to the redesign. KaDaShOvA (talk) 21:01, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
I created a Discord account just for this. I haven't reallly been of help lately, but I hope I'm welcome.
I also didn't know you had to verify your cellphone number to text on Discord. I'll probably finish that later. ミ★ LunaAHHHHH 05:01, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Inflation devalues Debt... Kinda

There's a weird argument, that Inflation is really actually good because if you have a dollar in debt, it is worth the dollar including the dollar's drop in value. This is stupid, because nobody gets more dollars to pay debts. Except for the people who can increase their income to match inflation. Torrent (talk) 03:17, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Of course, the only ones who can increase their income to match (and surpass) inflation are billionaires. The oligarchs are enjoying this inflation even more than the furries! Bonus points, they can call themselves trillionaires sooner. 2001:67C:2628:647:17:0:0:347 (talk) 05:11, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
That's actually a well-known effect. When you owe money to a bank and inflation is high, inflation is transfering money from the bank to you. The reverse is also true: when you have deflation, your loan with the bank will skyrocket. This was one of the causes of the Great Depression, I wrote about it here. Of course, in practice, interest rates tend to follow the inflation rate (the Fisher effect), but if you want to borrow money and you expect the inflation to rise more than the banks expect, this might be a good time to do it. Now, beating banks in their own game is difficult, but it is possible, even if it sound like gambling. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 13:09, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Except most folks can't negotiate fixed-interest loans and lenders have gotten vary wary of doing long-term fixed interest period [esp during unstable times] - I would guess the end was the 70s with a combo of both floating currencies and oil-related inflation. So it's a lot harder to pull off. I would guess now the major exploitation [apart from currencies] is through interest-free credit/debit lines; one thing I really noticed in '22/'23 that large companies were a) dragging out payments to suppliers while b) getting shit-hot on collecting cash owed prompt. Ie that in an era where inflation was running at 0.5%+ monthly it was trying to extort interest-free short loans off their creditors while stopping their debtors from doing similar. Obviously, this is a game which seriously favours the super-wealthy due to power disparities. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:24, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, I was talking about fixed-interest loans. So, changing my argument. If you lend money to the government and you expect that inflation will rise faster than the Fed will raise the interest rates, now it might be a good time to sell your US Treasury Bonds. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 14:31, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
I don't know about the "oligarchs" fully liking what's going on... from what I'm seeing, the sentiment in "biz" papers like The Economist and Wall Street Journal is now very sour on Trump (though The Economist always was to some degree, the Rupert Murdoch papers generally have been Trump cheerleaders from what I remember, so this is a shift). One Substack (I know, but Charlie Eaton is a professor that seems to specialize in higher education financialization) even speculated that Harvard's recent pushback against Trump wouldn't have happened without a pissed off ruling class alumni to help. Also, I'm seeing some evidence that the parts of Silicon Valley who haven't got high on whatever Elon Musk is on are now heavily souring on the administration (one data point -- YCombinator co-founder Paul Graham, who voted for Trump, has supported Muskian bullshit in the past, and in January 2025 spewed out a long-winded spiel against "woke", recently tweeted regrets about his Trump vote.)
Yes, the rich can weather inflation and the dollar decline and the end of Pax Americana and the end of a major pillar or legal stability and all of that better than the poor. But that doesn't mean they want or like what is happening. Methinks most of the oligarchs voted for Trump 1.0... not this. Guess they failed to read Project 2025 very carefully... BobJohnson (talk) 15:04, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm more interested in the future of the US national debt. What if Trump declares he will not pay back what he owes to the "communist" country China? More insane econ populism yet. KaDaShOvA (talk) 21:04, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
That's called "default". You don't want to see that.
What is happening now though is that globally, people are fleeing from the dollar. It doesn't take much imagination to get a "Recep Tayyip Erdoğan bullshit economics" vibe from Trump 2.0 (the RW article doesn't go into detail about Erdoğan's crappy know-nothing economic policies; for that, there is Wikipedia.)
Historically, my question that I don't know the answer to would be: "has a 'global economy leader' ever had that kind of economic crisis historically?" Because much as Turkey's economic crisis sucked for Turkey, it made little impact for the rest of the world. I doubt this would be the case for an American economic crisis. (If "investment market vibes" are right, the US would experience the worst of any "Trump bullshit economic policy" fallout, but the rest of the world still probably will get mighty scorched.)
And, yeah, that's assuming that Trump doesn't try something stupid like a default, which would probably trigger a *huge* currency and T-bill run. I'm guessing such might end up being worse for the United States than the Turkey crisis. Worse than even, say, the 1998 Russian financial crisis (and we know what the end result of that was...) BobJohnson (talk) 00:07, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
The honest truth is; we don't actually know what would happen to the global economy if the USA even partially defaulted on their public debt because it's never happened before [aka a default of the producer of the de facto world currency]. It's like simulating what would happen after a nuclear war or if we faced the Black Death again - aka we can imagine, we can extrapolate but at best all we have is expert guestimates. And all those guestimates are 'it would be very, very fucking shit'. KarmaPolice (talk) 00:27, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
I am a fan of the description that pure capitalism is exploitation and gambling. Econ minded people don't really make it sound like anything else. Torrent (talk) 01:38, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
A large part of capitalism *is* gambling. But it's more like Texas Hold Em, where there are rules and strategies one can utilize and play off of, and less like a slot machine. (Unless you are r/wallstreetbets and just throwing money at "options" that you don't understand.)
Bonds, being a form of debt, are probably one of the least "casino like" form of the markets. It's basically similar to a loan: I give you X dollars to do what you want. In return, you give me X dollars in payment every N weeks/months/years, and *also* pay me the amount I put in in the end. There's a whole lot of jargon involved ("principal!" "maturity!" "coupon!" "yield!") and, like everything in life, humans have made some elements of bonds complicated. But the "core" is simple: it's a loan.
The gamble with *any* loan, of course, is that the person you lend to fails to pay you at some point. The risk of "default", in other words.
Governments with solid finances and rule of law are considered some of the safest places to park money in the world. For a long time, the United States was considered one of *the* safest places. It's not anymore -- Germany, Switzerland, the Nordic countries, Australia, Canada, and others are seen as more credit worthy -- but it merely "one level down" (for now). What's good for the United States about this situation is that the US's debt is a *lot* cheaper to service. If you are an investor and think that the country's going to default, naturally you're going to want that risk priced in. Countries with shakier finances have to pay more for debt.
So, what if Trump decides to say, "I'm not going to pay a loan we made to China because I'm Mad King And I Say So?" All of a sudden, people who have money in Treasuries now know that the money "loaned" to the US, in the form of bonds, is *no longer safe at all*. Even if this eventually gets corrected in the courts (because Trump technically can't do this shit), people with any insight knows that the GOP rot extends *far* beyond Trump -- who knows what will happen in the future? As a result, I think such a thing there will be a *massive* rush out of these US government bonds into other places of safety.
We're actually seeing some of this now with things that disturb the market (the tariffs and Trump's attacks on the Federal Reserve), but in a much slower manner. The (IMHO correct) "market vibes" these days are that the Trumpy Republicans are loony and have "lost the financial plot", so to speak. So other traditional "safe" currencies -- the yen, the Swiss franc, the euro (along with "vibes" shit like gold) -- have gained a lot of ground over the USD. Likewise, there has been a modest rush out of Treasuries into other safe havens. Not enough of a rush to cause a full-blown financial crisis yet, but enough to actually cause some bond market pain and make Trump do an about face on his bullshit tariffs. There's a lot of headlines about how the US stock market is the suck, but what there are less headlines on is that several foreign stock markets are "doing spiffy" this year. Not all of them (sorry, Japan), but a lot of them.
TLDR; in the international markets, there's definitely a "gamble" going on alright. Against the US. BobJohnson (talk) 19:06, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

possible marshal law on 20th

It looks like trump might declare marshal law on the 20th of April. We're really scared about it. Koafox (talk) 14:12, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Not Godwin's Law-ing, but that has a notable birthdate. Anna Livia (talk) 15:59, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
What's your source? I wanna look into this. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 16:10, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia page [1] - Births 1600-1900 (and other places) Anna Livia (talk) 17:25, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Trump's administration is musing about whether or not to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 on that date. Ostensibly for the supposed "border crisis", but many fear worse.
(Keep in mind though that around the world, state leaders have been impeached for trying to invoke a bullshit martial law that goes too far.) BobJohnson (talk) 16:18, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Am I the only one to notice that this date is Easter Sunday? KarmaPolice (talk) 16:47, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
I wouldn't buy into this conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theorists are worthless human beings and you shouldn't believe what tripe any of those horrible people in the White House or any conspiracy theorist says. Captain Chrome (talk) 17:29, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Except there has been examples of conspiracy theories which proved to be true. For example, price-fixing cases, Watergate and corps hiring 'consultants' to thwart worker unionisation attempts. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:36, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
It's not much of a "conspiracy theory" when Trump 1.0 first threatened to use it to deploy federal troops to the Mexico border in 2019 and then threatened to use it to deploy federal troops to suppress Black Lives Matters protesters in 2020. The question (as always with Trump) is whether bark > bite, but I personally bet that he actually will try to use it in order to send troops to the Mexican border (though I expect immediate lawsuits afterwards, of course).
Whether it goes further than that, it's hard to say. It's not impossible given the state of the Republican party these days, but it's also easy to see Trump and his other cronies "overplaying their hands", so to speak. BobJohnson (talk) 18:00, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
It's certainly interesting when Snopes does not instantly dismiss it as nonsense. They are pretty good at keeping an eye on internet fake news.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:11, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Talked to some people, a priest/risk assessment manager said that it's probably not going to happen on the 20th because it's Easter and people will probably not do much that day. Koafox (talk) 15:24, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Which is also a good reason to do it that day. Less immediate kickoff from opponents, which in this case includes 'judges'. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:55, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Good point. If it does happen, it will be my worst birthday ever. Trying not to think about it too much. Koafox (talk) 18:01, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
No worries. Trump doesn't have enough marshals. Local law enforcement would never go along with military interference, even in red states. Thing about the oath to the constitution that military officers take, unlike politicians, mostly those guys really mean it.Zatoichi (talk) 04:07, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Hatred of Reddit

Something that has always fascinated/perplexed me is how you apparently can't say anything good about Reddit on the Internet without some bozo replying, "Reddit moment! Keanu Chungus Wholesome 100! Thank you for the gold, kind stranger!", or something similar. First of all, I'm not like that (or at least, I actively try not to be like that). Secondly, even if I was like that, what would be the point in mocking me over it?

It's doubly absurd when the exchange is happening on Reddit itself. Seriously, there's an entire subreddit, R/averageredditor, whose users all have this mentality. Let that sink in: you have an entire community of people who love hating on Reddit users, and it's hosted on... Reddit. By definition, every single user of that subreddit is a massive hypocrite.

The sad thing is that there are a lot of good reasons to criticize Reddit: the bots, the groupthink, the mods who abuse their power, the fact that Spez decided to make Reddit's API private to anyone but the highest bidder, etc. But none of the complainers ever seem to touch on these criticisms- instead, they rely on making fun of popular jokes and memes among the Reddit community, which you could argue are very much oversaturated, but they don't really reflect the site as a whole.

I don't really have a conclusion here. This is just something I've had on my chest for a while. Lizardcreator (talk) 01:09, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I use reddit and have literally never seen anyone reference "big chungus" or Keanu Reaves. Ioe bidome (talk) 01:19, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
They're memes from 2018ish, I don't understand why they're so heavily associated with Reddit today either. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 01:53, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
I am on a number of Reddit communities and usually find them very helpful. I have also never heard of "Keanu Chungus". Nevertheless, like everything social media associated, I am sure I could find a lot of crap on Redditt if I spent the time looking for it and cared to use my time interacting with it.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:43, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Personally I’m getting off social media, too many disingenuous bots (literal and metaphorical sense), I thought Reddit was better than Instagram, but the problem is the pro-GenAI and other kinds of bullshit defenders (r/FuckTheS gaslighting for example). I have problems whenever something is unfair or not just, and I understood this; these people don’t care, they’re all about themselves and they’ll use any logical fallacy to defend and hide from the true intentions they hide within themselves. Just look at my recent comments (it’s on my user page), before I eventually start to use it less and less. They’re a waste of time and we should fight those behind Gen AI, not the baffoons defending the billionaires. Sorry if it’s off topic but I needed to let this be known. SomeAutisticAce (talk) 17:12, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Before smartphones there was a Darwin Awards website for mocking people who removed themselves from the gene pool through stupidity. Mocking outsiders is to communities like dandelions are to a garden, it takes over unless you start weeding (and its much easier to manage a small local community than a giant social media platform funded by ads and surveillance). Clay Shirky wrote a classic essay about this http://reddragdiva.co.uk/lj/group_enemy.html Polydamas (talk) 19:09, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
There's actually a movie titled Darwin Awards which is not bad for what it is, a 1-idea film. Includes a guest performance by Metallica! Bongolian (talk) 20:12, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Would AI be able to solve the purpose of human existence?

https://www.quora.com/What-ethical-dilemmas-should-we-consider-as-technology-evolves-rapidly/answer/David-Moore-408?ch=15&oid=1477743839367290&share=118d711a&srid=3lrYEM&target_type=answer

It got me thinking based on a post I read, though it has more to do with AGI then AI as it is now.

If we do not determine the unambiguous goal of human existence post haste, then a machine superintelligence will. Is it to survive? Then we will be made into Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. Is it to breed? Then the hatcheries of the Brave New World will overflow. Is it to know blissful pleasure? Then a matrix of cannabinoid and dopaminergic drivel will envelop us.

Ever since Charles Babbage proposed his difference engine we have seen that the ‘best’ solutions to every problem have always been the simplest ones. This is not merely a matter of philosophy but one of thermodynamics. Mark my words, AGI will cut the Gordian Knot of human existence….unless we unravel the tortuosity of our teleology in time.

It reminds me of the experience machine when it came to pleasure, how instead of just seeking out experiences that you enjoy you could just hook people up to a machine and give them the same chemical rush that they would get anyway. A simpler solution to the "messy" nature of living. I found it hard to argue against it because it seems like our efforts are about making things easier, chasing what we like, in fact it's tough to argue we are motivated by anything else. I mean...what if AGI could just cut through our storytelling to get at the core of what we are doing? I know such a solution sounds reductive and oversimplified and not a lot of people might want it, but isn't that being irrational. I mean if the outcome is the same but one method gets you it in a quicker and simpler and more secure manner and the other (life as we know it) is messy and impractical then why not?

I never really gave such things much thought before but it does kinda chill me, that maybe the most meaningful things we value in life really just boil down to chemical reactions that you could just replicate for the same result without the action. A comic I read a while ago sorta shares my feelings about what such a state might look like: https://x.com/Merryweatherey/status/1516836303895240708/photo/1

But I'm worried that maybe what we hold dear might be called into question and what we take life to be about and mean might come undone in the coming age of information (assuming we aren't already there). I know there's a lot of IFs in that one, especially assuming what AI would do. But my worries got up because so far AI hasn't exactly been a net good for society at least from what I see (mostly due to AI art being used to replace artists or whole departments just being replaced by AI).47.5.66.54 (talk) 02:37, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

I once read a Star Trek 'official' story where 'the locals on a planet' had hooked themselves up to 'pleasure generating machines - but the pleasure had turned to discomfort or worse.
Part of 'pleasure' is that it is intermingled with ordinary life/can be encountered unexpectedly. Anna Livia (talk) 10:43, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Singularitarianism is religion for nerds. Antares (talk) 11:27, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Agreed. I'd also point out that for the example comic given, being hooked up to a machine that provides total bliss and satisfaction until the end of time, it shouldn't be unappealing for most considering that "Heaven" is the same promise (albeit in an divine manner).
OP's question, in my opinion, implicitly and incorrectly suggests there must be some purpose behind humanity when there isn't (nihilism all the way). "I try to die, I try to live again, same shit", or as the meme goes, finding a nice girlfriend who will kill you is two birds one stone. Impiricism (talk) 13:57, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Is that a Cowboy Bebop reference? Also the argument that pleasure and avoiding pain could be seen to be a strong argument for it since a lot of what we do could be seen as variations of that.47.5.66.54 (talk) 19:57, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
We already have things that artificially give you "chemical thingies" that often typically mimic evolutionary reward processes. They are called "recreational drugs".
The thing is, you can't simply induce these artificial chemical rushes over and over again in a repeated fashion. It doesn't work like that. Lifeforms are not static; they are adaptable. In the cases of these drug-induced chemical rushes, the body eventually -- or even rapidly, in some cases (LSD is one notorious for such) -- becomes tolerant of repeated doses, and will no longer give those little chemical rewards to those recreational drug molecules without an extended break, so that the body can reset.
Many of the more astute fans of the "less physically addictive" sorts of drugs know this and do not seek repeated daily doses of these sort of chemicals... knowing that if they did such, it won't be the (hopefully) profound experience they are seeking. So the "drug experience" becomes more of a "holiday" type thing, where it is to be done only on occasion.
For the, er, more physically addictive drugs (think opiates or alcohol)... well, addiction isn't pretty, right?
All of this is honestly moot because an LLM is not going to simulate a neurotransmitter mimicker molecule (this -- sort of -- is what most recreational drugs are) anytime soon, period. But it also shows that the above scenario, from a neurochemical perspective, is probably bullshit from the start.
However...
There *is* something to the notion, methinks, of "AI" (well, sort of) being used to help emotional manipulation techniques online, of the such that engages you and warps your worldview in the process. We already have that; it's called social media. It will never lead to addiction in the chemical sense, but it could lead to that sort of "compulsive disorder" "addiction" you see in other things in life, such as gambling. The root cause is as simple as social media companies, seeking profitability, analyzing huge amounts of data with and figuring out what gets maximum "engagement" in determining the social media algorithm to promote.
So, why focus on the fanciful dystopia where we already have this very real one? BobJohnson (talk) 14:25, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
I guess it's more like questioning the real reasons we do things and like the quote I posted just giving the simplest answer to that since the best solutions are simple. The comic is sorta implying that with the vast power AGI (not current AI) that what if it is possible to do that in humans, then what? I know some people were talking about how thousands of years ago people thought some things would be impossible and now they aren't, and the implication is that with AGI such things like the human adaptation could be overwritten with the vast computing and processing power of it. Of course this is a COLOSSAL IF and when I think about it seems to be assuming way too much.47.5.66.54 (talk) 19:57, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
It would have to be more than just AGI, though; you'd have to somehow also interface brains to machines. While such makes for good speculative fiction, reality is that we have not advanced terribly far in this area as of yet. Maybe some day someone will come up with a way, but I don't know how it would work, especially given that anything "implanty" (which is what I would think would be necessary) would (probably rightly) creep most people out.
One problem I see with the comic is that "take a pill in your pod" scenario... well, that's not how "the drug scene" works now. Few people take their recreational chemicals alone. Putting aside "the drugs", if someone does come up with some gee-whiz pill (or even a Holodeck-y thing) that does these spectacular "experiences", there's a very good chance that this will be something people will gather together to do. And there's going to be *some* sort of "human social elements" attached to it -- cultures, memes, trends, etc. Some may overdo it, but probably most won't.
I guess another problem here is this well known issue with computers: Moravec's paradox. Namely, computing has done brilliantly aiding many fields that often people struggle with, such as advanced mathematics and science. However, computing has an extremely difficult time with things that humans find instinctual and simple. Deeply embedded motor skills, skills built up over *eons* of development, skills that our brains often don't even think about. It's how come, in the two decades spent throwing huge amounts of money and time at self-driving cars, we are nowhere near at a level where humans can be replaced in these tasks. It's not terribly difficult for humans to drive a car (though most of us will never be at the level of a, say, Lewis Hamilton). Getting a computer to drive a car at even a *basic* level is *very very hard*.
Think about all of the skills displayed by humans in sports, particularly the pure physical ones -- skills that require coordination of senses, movement of muscles, quick reactions, etc. Likewise for the social elements that often are present at sports gatherings. Despite "brawn" being involved, a "brain" is also involved too at every stage of the process. Can a "pill experience" augmented by a computer replace these very physical, very human things? At the moment, IMHO this hardly seems likely. BobJohnson (talk) 00:24, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
I find the assumption that humans 'just want chemical bliss' odd. It's similar to the assumption that people just want to 'relax' eternally. In my experience/observation; the 'bliss' [be it chemical or not] comes from the fact it's a break from various activities. The cool beer in a pub garden after a day's graft, the lie-in on your day off, the dirty weekend of dining and orgies after the month's slog to meet the yearly returns etc. That for most folks, once you've 'unwound' sufficiently the mind almost starts to look for productive activities to perform. Not necessarily 'work' [a lot of folks don't like work] but stuff which has a real 'output' of some form. And the sense of achievement, that you've 'done something worthwhile' is a lot more long-lasting that say, a chemical high. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:52, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
I guess the implication is that if such feelings are the results of chemicals why not just plug in and get them directly? I've asked this before but when it comes to atheist or humanist forums I don't really get a good answer. I guess I'm saying if there is nothing supernatural about our feelings or meaning and it's all chemicals then why not, and for some reason God or other gets dragged into it, though I'm not sure they are engaging with the question. The only thing I really have though is that such a device doesn't sound appealing to me, maybe that's status quo bias or something else. I know I also mentioned that AI would cut through our storytelling about our experiences, but maybe in doing that we get further from the truth not closer. Of course this is nothing but conjecture, if that.
This page from IEP explains the whole thought experiment and responses to some objections: https://iep.utm.edu/experience-machine/#H5
Though I'm not sure about the status quo bias or even asking people about this experiment, as trying to imagine such a thing is...well hard on a good day and impossible otherwise. I can't help but feel in their studies that they aren't really getting closer to what people would say or choose so much as just dealing with highly abstract and fanciful ideas that we can't be sure people are understanding well.47.5.66.54 (talk) 19:57, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Humans have evolved to always chase pleasure while avoiding pain in order to survive. This pleasure comes in the form of basal instincts such as food and reproduction, but also mental stimulation; a moderate amount of mental stimulation is required to keep our minds sharp to cultivate our problem-solving skills and look out for threats. it rewards us with a small hit of dopamine each time we do it. It's why we get bored when we are unstimulated. However, until very recent it was impossible to actually receive these pleasures at all times. Humans, while hardwired to seek pleasure, were not meant to receive it constantly. The greatest example today is the proliferation of 'brainrot' content and endless scrolling on shortform content. It gives people constant little dopamine rush each time they view a clip but it also leads to cognitive decline and shortened attention spans. It's like the brain equivalent of getting fat from eating too much, as getting fat was nearly impossible up until ~100 years ago and humans are instinctually hardwired to gobble up as much food as possible because it was so scarce for all of human history. Same for mental stimulation. We have entered an age of excess that evolutionary biology could not have accounted for, and cannot as evolution does not aim for anything except keeping us alive long enough to pass genes; and in fact is leading to harm on a mass scale while we seek these easy little pleasures. There isn't any deeper meaning to human pleasure, not beyond an evolutionary purpose intended to keep us alive in the wild, but not in modern society. 2001:67C:2628:647:18:0:0:D8 (talk) 22:16, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm generally skeptical of evo psych interpretations for why we do the things that we do since we can't really test them. In fact the field seems to generally be considered pseudoscience. The problem with your mental stimulation line is that other animals also look out for threats but don't have the reasoning and problem solving ability that we do, so that doesn't seem accurate. Plus recent evidence has challenged the idea of humans just chasing pleasure and avoiding pain given some of our behavior. In fact with how our brains are today the evidence doesn't really support the notion of "Hard-wired" or just chasing pleasure, rather something else. Since humans have no need to worry about their survival what is happening now is what happens when we find out why we want to keep going. In short it's not really chasing pleasure or pain, it's meaning. It's not really to do with excess so much as what happens when you have a species that us with intelligence like us that doesn't have to worry about base survival anymore. But also pleasure didn't keep us alive in the wild.
Either way none of that has anything to do with the point I'm making and it's mostly just speculation at best. The reality humans face now is we've sorta moved past evolution to something else, seeking meaning for existing, a why to it all. We have humans choosing not to have kids, some who starve themselves of pleasure thinking it leads to some other state of being, and some who risk their lives daily. The old framework people had for human motivation doesn't seem to support the evidence today. Which kinda reminds me of the point in the quote about meaning and purpose. Our ancestors were concerned about survival, but we ask why should we. The evolutionary explanation doesn't cut it anymore, and never did.
Also it's fallacious to use words like "account for" or "purpose" when it comes to evolution, because evolution doesn't work like that. It's not a sentient process that designs things, it's really just a "what works" sorta thing and kinda haphazard at that.47.5.66.54 (talk) 23:17, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
I am late to this conversation, but I do care a lot about this. And it is a poor understanding of AI to account any human phrase as unfit for an AI evolution. I do have a burning question, if we launched a million rockets today, each with the top AI and the tech to play it, in the hopes that one reaches another life, is that Representative of humanity? I mean, we did it before, we launched an album into space, Andy Warhol drew a dick on some moon paraphernalia, and I can't call that anything but timeless and human. But how much information about humanity would constitute a human Space capsule? if today, all of our available information, including this conversation, was consolidated fired off into space, would that be enough to say humanity has a chance to outlive our star? I am at my core of two minds on this. First is, yes, that would not bother me. Second is, every day we get more information, so holding off on a human arftificial intelligence diaspora is beneficial. But I think that is so inconsequentially short/long term that it's not worth real consideration. Today constitutes humanity's best attempt, whether we agree with it or not. An AI librarian launched into space to survive outside of our time only to be able to tell the story as of all the information we have compiled right now is, to me, an example of the survival of humanity. I think we can be better, but I don't think we are less than human today. Torrent (talk) 04:20, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Not only late but off topic as well. None of what you said has anything to do with the topic or what the issue is.47.5.66.54 (talk) 05:28, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Would AI Be able to solve... Ok, I'm off, I guess it's not worth wrapping around. The issue is then, what? Is humanity better than their habits? The question I think still stands, can AI do the work of humanity? I don't think I answered it, and I admit I used your terms to insert a response more in line with the AI topic, sure, but I really don't think I am off topic. I'm not responding directly to you when I contextualize AI as a construct of humanity. Torrent (talk) 06:37, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
The issue is listed in the OP, about whether AI would solve the purpose of human existence like the quora user is thinking. No one is talking about if AI can do the work of humanity and your response isn't more in line with the topic so much as detracting from it. I will say that even though AI is a "construct" of humanity, it's not representative of humanity. But I digress and your remark is irrelevant to the main point.47.5.66.54 (talk) 20:32, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
OK. My bad. But can AI answer a question of humanity without doing work that is inherently human? So, I mean, my answer is no, AI will not explain existence, it will in no foreseeable future read the great mathematical algorithm of life and speak in any terms that would solve the problem of human existence. Like I said, this actually matters to me, so what do you think AI's work does? Solving existence or purpose is work, AI has to perform that work to solve it. I'm fine asking you now, what is the work you think AI does? or should I start a new topic? Because 'The Purpose of Humanity' is a question. if you don't like that I can agree with our best guess archived today by AI is what we've got and consider it off topic, then maybe you want to talk about the purpose of humanity instead. problem is, your answer goes into the same library that I think is valid to launch into space and call Artificial Humanity. I personally think we have done a really good job of taking the universe apart and rebuilding it. I wouldn't call that my purpose, but I think we've done enough to understand purpose as subjective, and where would we be without the people who found purpose in something we never did? AI draws on libraries full of this notion. Torrent (talk) 07:03, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
How to disambiguate the question? The problem seems to vanish behind the artificiality of the question. "Could AI be able to solve the purpose of human existence?" Things in themselves don't have a purpose in the sense of a real design that affords utility for an observer. Natural objects have a more or less stochastic utility. I can use an oblong, short, thin rock as a knife, but before I did so, it was just a rock, and after I put it down again, it returns to being just a rock. A stone in the shape of a baseball is not useful in that way. The distinction between natural and artificial objects is itself both natural and artificial.
The feeling that ones life has meaning is not unlike the feeling that returns to an etherized patient. How do I explain it? A detailed organic chemical explanation would do little to enlighten us. One needs only to feel through the senses. One can also use computers to offer explanations. When all you have is a hammer...
What will an AI think of you? Probably what it has been told to think, or a derivation thereof. Machine deontology is a possibility, but the desired consequence, that of a humanity satisfied as to its purpose, seems an impossible ask. In the first place, why would anyone believe a machine? AI would tell you your purpose, yes, but if your problem were psychological to begin with, it wouldn't work to make you happy, or satisfied, it would only be an imposition. So right away we see that, although AI may be used to answer questions and solve problems, there always must be open-ended questions and unsolvable problems. One can not square a circle or trisect an angle with straight-edge and compass with all the computing power in the universe.
The desire for a stated purpose for humanity is not unlike the desire for a perfect leader. Not necessarily fascist in nature, but reasonably associated with the notion of the divine rights of kings. Why would one suppose that such a thing were possible? That is, AI could be the ultimate source of meaning. It may be that many wish it were possible. But is the desire for that outcome a symptom of maladaptation, or personal disorder? Or is it the result of a semantic paradox? Can one be told by another what the meaning of their life must be? Can such a condition be more than slavery? A machine cannot answer this question. Zatoichi (talk) 16:37, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Mélenchon speaks English on visit to North America

Mélenchon adresses the president of most of this site's users. He will also take part in a meeting at the CUNY graduate centre in New York and with [[Jacobin]], as his book has been translated into English. New world (talk) 20:23, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ivf71fXJSo and https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gkRI3o8F3G0&pp=0gcJCYQJAYcqIYzv New world (talk) 14:25, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Ooooooh, this is interesting!

New poll from RTWH actually gives Democrats a chance to flip the Senate. Forecasts Maine to flip. North Carolina and Ohio are toss ups. Even Alaska, Florida and Texas are close. Democrats have a 28% chance to flip the Senate. 2600:4808:356:7E01:4F9F:9076:9C2B:35A4 (talk) 22:10, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

The chance that there will be an election that can be considered 'free and fair' in 2026 is likely far below 28%. 2001:67C:2628:647:18:0:0:D8 (talk) 22:21, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Despite Trump's best attempts (and all the serious authoritarian bullshit going on, I think the United States currently is at a low "flawed democracy" level overall, although obviously lower than before Trump's election. My guess would be that the US is current somewhere in the area of many Latin American countries (like Brazil and Argentina) at this moment. Or, say, Poland under PiS. These are not exactly good comparison countries for the self-proclaimed "land of the free", but Trumpian authoritarianism is not near a China / Russia level. Yet.
Obviously, this doesn't mean roll over and let the Trumpian suck-ups transform the US into Hungary or worse, which I do think is their endgame. My point is more "there's still hope" and as long as it remains such (and despite election shenanigans that will undoubtedly happen) Trump is still beatable. To wit, PiS, for all its "illiberal democracy" characteristics, got booted out in 2023. (And one of the reasons they got booted was because PiS's "election shenanigans" actually went too far for the general public.) BobJohnson (talk) 23:23, 18 April 2025 (UTC)
Weeeell, the GOP is certainly trying with the “SAVE Act”, though they’ll probably not be able to ram it through a potential Democratic filibuster, unless someone (at least seven) on their side of the House aisle get REALLY stupid.
What worries me is how many in the US seem to be either willing to go along with “election shenanigans”, or at least not actively oppose them, in addition to the “Big Lie” conspiracy theory crowd and a highly politicised judiciary that can directly impact elections.
The latter is epitomised by the slow but systematic gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the GOP majority of the Roberts Court, which predates Trump and is very much a hallmark of both that majority’s conception of democracy and law and of Roberts’ personal penchant for ”salami slicing” to keep up appearances, while slowly reducing the democracy sauce until there’s precious little left.
Sure, Trump may still be beatable, but that’s mainly a testimony to how limited his popularity actually is among the US populace as a whole. However, as we saw in both 2016 and ‘24, it doesn’t take much of a thumb on the scales (including political apathy/loathing/resignation) to get him elected, because his fan base/cult is both extremely devoted and just big enough to not need that much extra to get him over the finish line.
Thus, any further restrictions on voting (all in the BS name of “election integrity”, of course) might be enough, and you can’t count on the judicial branch to provide any serious check on such efforts, either. It also matters that the GOP secured a lot of state level power through REDMAP and has thus been able to punch well beyond its weight where the voting laws/maps are decided (and gerrymandered). ScepticWombat (talk) 21:18, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
A potential snag I think GOP will run into is (like so many Democrat old fart politicians, sigh) their headspace is still stuck in 1980 or so. There has been an electoral re-alignment with Trump, but some of the GOP has assumptions on how to suppress the vote that are more "Reagan world" and aren't quite as relevant.
The SAVE Act, for instance, heavily biases voting towards those who have passports. Now, passport ownership aligns with higher income. Only... the Democrats are now the "high income" party. As well as the "party of the high information voter". In 1980, it was hugely the reverse. No longer.
So, my initial reading of this act is that even if it passes, they are literally shooting themselves in the foot. Sure, it might suppress those gosh darn poor minorities, but it will also suppress your average "low information" Trump voter big time, and that's probably more of an impact. Yeah, it sucks that the GOP has become enough of an authoritarian party that this is the norm, but at least "incompetence" remains a sliver of hope...BobJohnson (talk) 22:30, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Similar happened in the UK; that voter ID laws turned out [even after doing their best to keep seniors voting while disenfranchising students] to have backfired enough on the ruling Tory govt for that Edwardian cosplayer Rees-Mogg to admit in public a) it was an overt attempt to 'tilt the board' towards them and b) it might have actually worsened their result in the end. The thing which shocks me on that one is that the incoming Starmer govt has not modified or outright ditched that law.
Anyway, I think the SAVE act could also disenfrancise more MAGAs than expected for roughly the same reason I think the above failed; in that younger cohorts are much more likely to know where 'that documentation is' [UK edition: 'having needed to get photo ID so I can get a bank account for first job/uni etc'] than senior citizens who's filing system is a dusty banker's box full of yellow paper in the loft. Or in some cases, never bothered to get that paperwork together in the first place. KarmaPolice (talk) 23:04, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
Virginia has shown to still be purple when they don't pick Trump acalaytes, we saw this in 2021. But Trump did so much damage to Colorado that that state will never vote Republican again. He is also a huge reason Arizona and Georgia became swing states.--2600:4808:356:7E01:EF1C:B81A:D94B:EDCD (talk) 17:49, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Desperate to find book

I'm having an immensely difficult time finding this book: Wilhelm Nutzinger: Neunburg vorm Wald, Historischer Atlas von Bayern, Teil Altbayern, Heft 52, München 1982, ISBN 3-7696-9928-9. Originally a dissertation: Wilhelm Nutzinger: Neunburg vorm Wald, Dissertation Univ. München, 1980 (DNB 821247441). It's in the series "Historischer Atlas von Bayern", which has made access to unavailable books here: https://geschichte.digitale-sammlungen.de/hab/online/angebot But, Heft 52 (book 52), on Neunburg vorm Wald, is not there, even though Amazon says it's "currently not available" and local bookstores say it's too old. 2A01:599:A02:11B4:58C7:643B:9913:B667 (talk) 09:18, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't think this is the place where you will find people accustomed with obscure German-language geographical literature. If you are based in Germany, you might use the Fernleihe system or visit a library and see if it's available (see also https://search.worldcat.org/de/search?q=bn:9783769699289 for lists of libraries). You could also ask here (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bibliotheksrecherche) or write a kindly worded mail to a library of your choice explaining your situation. IluzalsipalStone them! 11:54, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
Are there any German-speaking forums focusing on German/Bavarian "Heimat"/regional/local literature? 2A01:599:A2D:9548:D80F:BB4:697B:B04F (talk) 13:23, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
(Also, I am based in Germany, but I'm not sure if big university libraries like Munich or even Regensburg, give access to everything for everyone, my local libraries aren't comparable at all [I use apple's mobile connection, so I don't know if my IP address is German or not, normally it should be somewhere in Germany but sometimes it shows EU countries' IP's, if that's the case feel free to let me know). 2A01:599:A2D:9548:D80F:BB4:697B:B04F (talk) 13:54, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
As the author has a (German) Wikipedia page perhaps start from there. Anna Livia (talk) 19:08, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
My local university library (Germany, but not Bavaria) lets people enter and read most books that are present without checking university pass or library card, and I've never been in a library where this wasn't the case. At least the LMU Munich library also claims to have no entrance restriction.IluzalsipalStone them! 12:23, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
(In fact, there are no access restrictions at all at most universities AFAIK, you can visit nearly any lecture without being an enrolled student, except for exams)IluzalsipalStone them!
As noted by Iluzalsipal above, Worldcat is the first place to go. The URL shows two links in this case (not uncommon) for two different publishers in the same year. The first happens to show US libraries and the second shows European libraries. I know from experience that Stanford University libraries do not allow public entrance without prior permission. They do engage in interlibrary loan however. Bongolian (talk) 17:54, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Start of a book I am writing

Sasha Angelovski opened her heavy eyelids. She felt extremely weak; much like a twig in a hurricane. The anesthesia was still in her system. Moving her limbs was a real challenge. It took a lot of effort to press the call button next to her bed.

Right now Sasha needed water as she was so thirsty. An elderly woman stepped into the room. She was of average height with a build much like a dancer. This woman was a nurse. Sasha asked her, “Could I get a cup of water”? The nurse smiled gingerly as she spoke, “That will be fine. I will get you some. Just relax and I will be right back”. The nurse left the room to get the water.

Sasha turned on the television mounted to the wall. Much as she expected, not a single channel was in English or her other languages of Macedonian and Albanian. All the channels were in the Thai language. That frustrated Sasha. She didn't understand the Thai language. She knew English, Albanian, Macedonian and some French but not Thai. Television was out of the question.

A man wearing a white coat and a stethoscope walked into the room. He looked like he was from India. Sasha didn't recognize the man. The man in the white coat introduced himself, “Hello Sasha, I am Doctor Lucas Satnam. I am your attending physician”. Sasha replied, “Hello Doctor Satnam”. The doctor checked the chart and said, “Your breast augmentation went perfectly. Are you experiencing any negative side effects”? Sasha said, “Just a little soreness is all”. Doctor Satnam told her that the pain was normal.

The nurse came in with a water bottle and gave it to Sasha. Doctor Satnam said, “Take small sips, Don't gulp it”. Sasha nodded in acknowledgement and took a sip of her water. The water soothed her dry throat.

Doctor Satnam stated, “You will be sore for a while. Do not lift anything over 10 pounds and get as much rest as possible. We will discharge you shortly”. Sasha was very sore but happy. The doctor and nurse left the room.

Once the doctor and nurse left Sasha got out of her bed. She felt weak but confident. When she stood up Sasha walked to the bathroom in the hallway. Walking took a lot of effort but she pulled through. In the hallway Sasha noticed some staff wheeling a stretcher. She could see blood dripping onto the floor. The staff wore masks and face shields.

The medical staff shouted as they moved the patient to surgery. Sasha shrugged her shoulders and went into the bathroom. In the bathroom Sasha locked the door. Sasha took off her gown; revealing her body. She saw her new breasts. They were fairly big. Sasha smiled. The bottom surgery she had last month went well and she was overjoyed. Now with her breasts, she felt complete. Sasha jumped a little which made her breasts bounce. She dreamed of getting any guy she wanted. Sasha wanted to be a sexual object that drove men into pure lust. Now her dream would be reality.

Thoughts of being desired by men aroused Sasha. She told herself, “Time to take my new vagina for a test run”. Sasha put her hand in her underwear and started to masturbate. Her breathing became very rapid. Sasha talked to herself as she touched herself. “Oh yeah, I have been such a bad girl. Teach me a lesson” she said. Sasha quickened the pace of her fingers against her vagina.

Sasha breathed faster as she came closer to the climax. Her face was flushed and sweat rolled down her forehead. She pinched her left nipple with her free hand. Then came the climax. Sasha cried out in ecstasy. The feeling of orgasm was intense and pleasurable. Sasha pulled her hand out of her underwear and washed her hands. She put her gown back on and left the bathroom; Sasha was so happy.

Back in the hallway Sasha noticed a patient covered in blood being rolled through. The staff rolling the patient through also wore masks. A feeling of unease replaced the joy she had felt before. Sasha couldn't figure out what was happening but it was bad. She did not know that this was the prelude to something big and terrible.

Tell me what you think. --Trans Fem Agenda 19:54, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

It's a little lusty, you can't be unaware of that. Have you considered doing it in a comic/manga style? You like scene setting, character descriptions, actions and dialogue. I'd say 'playwright' I think you could confidently ask śOmebody to draw this up as a comic. Just be gracious because I still think you're working. I remember Sasha. I dunno where to go, but get some characters you can describe and try getting a couple pages of your writing drawn. And wherever you're looking, be nice, you're asking for free advice and I'm telling you to give free comic writing for free art. Keep working on Sasha if that's what you want, but again, work some characters, and my suggestion is to make a character you don't even like, write them the same way and find some people who want to draw some scenes. See your vision through some other artist's eyes without it being Super important to get right. It's work and practice, but I think you could write a really cool comic series based on what you've shared here and in the past. I think your writing lends itself to either graphic or visual representations of scenes. If you want my real advice, Find aspiring artists to work on some 1-2 page comic pages. Torrent ([[User talk:|talk]]) 08:41, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
@Torrent I am writing a zombie novel. I am trying to work on a transphobic main antagonist. My planned antagonist will be a billionaire that runs a multinational conglomerate. I have to come up with a motive for causing the zombie apocalypse. I don't have all the details worked out yet. As for the sexual part, it was intentional. My main character is sex positive. --Trans Fem Agenda 21:14, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Perhaps check eg AO3 and other fanfic sites to see what others do. (Beware 'Dead dove.') Anna Livia (talk) 17:26, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
In front of Sasha sat an old man. This old man looked very familiar to her. He looked like Sasha's previous neighbor George Frampton. They never got along because of who Sasha was. The old man turned to look at Sasha. He sneered at her. Sasha muttered, “Jerk”. The old man got up and shouted, “I don't give a fuck about the surgery and hormones you had, you are still a man”! Sasha retorted, “Kiss my ass”. George punched Sasha in the left eye. Before George could do anything else a big man grabbed him and knocked him to the ground. George shouted, “Your parents were right about you! You are nothing but a worthless faggot”! The big man restrained George until the air marshal arrived. George was cuffed to his seat. He continued to shout transphobic slurs.

Sasha was reminded of her childhood. Her parents were very abusive. They treated her like a monster. Sasha had flashbacks to her horrible childhood. When she was six years old, Sasha knew that her mind didn't match her body. It was not until she was twelve until she came out as a trans girl.

On July 15th of 1998 in Sasha's hometown of Skopje in the Republic of Macedonia she was working outside with her dad. The day was fairly nice; perfect for working outdoors. Sasha was taking a break after two hours of chopping wood. Her dad was smoking a cigarette. His expression was stone cold. He was not happy. Sasha took a sip of her grape juice when her dad spoke, “Sasha, your mother told me that she caught you trying on her makeup”. Sasha froze in fear. Not a single word came from her mouth. Her dad continued, “This is why I brought you out to help me. You need to become a real man”. Sasha finally spoke, “Father, I don't feel like a boy. I knew that I was different since I was six”. Her father was unfazed; his expression grew colder.

I am also working on the backstory of my main character. The George Frampton character plays a secondary antagonist role and is part of Sasha's childhood. George is part of a church in Macedonia that her parents attend. He is a Bob Jones University graduate who helps plant a church. My main antagonist will be a TERF who wants to commit genocide against transgender and Non-Binary people. --Trans Fem Agenda 19:30, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Trolling for dehumanization


Blue Police phone box

There is a 'news headline' claiming that the US government has developed technology US that can 'manipulate space and time'.

What is the basis of this? Anna Livia (talk) 23:42, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

A metaphor -- read the speech. It's... weird even in context, but I suppose it's supposed to be aspirational.
What's striking about the speech to me though is how much Michael Kratsios's technical worldview is solidly rooted in the 1950s-1970s. In that speech, America's Glory Days were technologies such as nuclear power plants, the Apollo space flights, the X-15, and the Concorde. Zilch is said about any "information age" technologies other than a few passing words on AI and semiconductors. Remarks are made about America's stupidly slow trains and crappy health care system, but as expected for a Republican, generic patter about "regulations" is trotted out as The Cause Of Everything Wrong In Society.
(Further doubling up the weirdness, the Concorde was a joint French/British project. America had little to do with it.) BobJohnson (talk) 00:28, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
It's official batshittery coming from the fascist-pwned White House. That said, its not without some context. In Timothy Snyder's book On Freedom (2024), he describes a philosophical fifth dimension in addition to 3-space and 1-time. The fifth is the ability to make choices and the ability to experience serendipity. Authoritarianism precludes the fifth dimension, without understanding the past, there is no future (what Snyder called the politics of eternity in his earlier book, On Authoritarianism). Bongolian (talk) 18:03, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Next Pope

I am wondering who will be chosen as the next Pope. I wouldn't be surprised if the next one will be ultrsaconservative. There where many Catholic groups who didn't like Francis because he advocated empathy, and not treating certain groups like garbage. Many Christians (both Protestant and Catholic) openly believe empathy is a sin, and they are quite open about that these days. What do other people here think? 199.119.233.222 (talk) 10:11, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

So newsfeeds will spend a couple of weeks centered on a different useless old cult figure entirely satisfied with his own important and hell bent (sic) on saving everyone from some fantasy or other. Pardon me while I go off to a cave for a bit....Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 10:42, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

For what it is worth:

John Paul II died within a week of Easter 2005 on 2 April (with Ranier III of Monaco dying on 6 April)
Benedict XVI died on 31 December 20 2022
Francis died Easter Monday 2025
And in 1914 Pius X died the same night as the 'Black Pope' (head of the Jesuits) Jesuit leader Franz Xavier Wernz

Make of the coincidences what you will. (Assuming that 'they' were variously trying to keep Ranier alive until after the Pope had died, and trying to make Benedict the last notable dying in 2022/the first of 2023 are unprovable but not impossible.) Anna Livia (talk) 11:25, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Whatever your views are personally on the post and religion in general, the Pope isn't 'useless'. They're the head of the largest religious movement currently existing, boss of the most successful/oldest org in human history. And I don't think newsfeeds will spend a huge amount of time on it either; I mean they might do if it's a really slow couple of news weeks but what the fuck's the chance of that happening right now?
Anyway, what individual Catholic groups or individuals think means little. It is not a democracy; the Pope is elected by a small selectorate picked by previous popes who happen to be under 80 who then choose one of their own to get the Pope hat. And as we remember it's pretty rare for a Cardinal to be appointed before 55, this means almost all the selectorate was appointed either by Francis [who'd I'd class a 'cautious reformist'] or Benedict [who'd I'd class a 'flexible traditionist']. And as a Pope is unlikely to end up appointing loads of new cardinals who are very out of sync with his own views, we can assume the bulk of those selectorate will be at least non-hostile to the viewpoints of the person who appointed them. And as 80% of this selectorate was appointed by Francis and you need 66% to win [90 cardinals, barring one dropping dead during the concave (it's happened)] which means I think we can assume a new 'fierce traditionalist'/reactionary of the stamp of John Paul II is a non-starter.
But while the various groups don't have a vote, their opinion matters a bit - because almost all the Cardinals shall desire to avoid a major schism and thus a lot shall have at least some grip on what all the factions hate/like and by how much. And there's a huge amount of them; it's only morons who see it through a 2D 'conservative-liberal' axis, when in reality is a kaleidoscope of all different Orders, theological viewpoints and geographical groupings. Thus we can rule out anyone who desires to promote radical reform/modernisation [I personally think Francis pushed it about as hard as he could without cracking the Church].
If there is tensions on/with the 'liberal' wing of the Church [social justice, inclusivity, modernisation etc] there's also tensions on/with the 'conservative' wing too; not just on topics such as climate change and modern capitalism [in which they are often out of sync with what passes as 'conservative thought' now] but a more pressing question of 'how can we handle wannabe dictatorships like MAGA?'. Should we try to 'remain at the table' in the hopes to guide [or protect our own interests], or should we set our faces against such things? Should we even have a central policy on this? Perhaps we should simply do our best to 'keep out of politics' [but how can one do this when such things as 'love thy neighbour' have become political?]. These questions are important because the Cardinals will be acutely aware of historical 'comprimises' with temporal power which ended up severely backfiring. So it's possible to end up with a new 'traditionalist' Pope who won't shut up calling out JD Vance's shitty interpretation of Catholicism.
Lastly, like SCOTUS picks, you don't want 'your pick' to be too old or sick - because the longer they reign, the more time they have to 'stack the Cardinal deck' towards their viewpoint. This is more pressing because a lot of the 'conservative' Cardinals seem close to ineligibility age but not close enough to be dead - which might make a rerun in say, 2030 even harder to win.
So my bet is the next Pope will end up being either a moderate or another 'cautious reformist', white and under 75. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:15, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Maybe not "white". One of the candidates being bantered around is Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, and another is Peter Turkson of Ghana. Catholicism's influence is declining in Europe and other "Western sphere" nations but rising or steady elsewhere, and the Powers That Be may want to throw another bone to non-European entities (that probably was one of the influences in the previous pick of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Argentina), methinks.) Maybe not, of course...
That being said, white or not, I do think that a continuation of the "cautious reformist" approach of Francis is also quite likely. My "general impression" has been that Francis's most vocal critics have been "stick-in-the-mud" culture war "traditional Catholic" reactionaries, largely coming from Europe or America (especially the American EWTN sect). These are precisely the places where Catholicism is declining (perhaps *because* of this emphasis on angry culture war bullshit, I speculate? But I digress...) My impression is that Francis's focus on economic justice has been a popular decision in most of the rest of the world. From my viewpoint (not that it matters), there seems to be no good reason for the Catholic church to give in to those with the strange (heretical?) notion that Christianity is merely about growling about how evil those gosh darn homosexuals and abortions are all the time... BobJohnson (talk) 14:52, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
As an aside, Marjorie Taylor Greene, possessed by the spirit of Martin Luther; pretty heavily implied that the Pope was killed by God. Literally some "Blessed be the Lord for striking down the Whore of Babylon," type shit. --Ozzyboo (talk) 17:39, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Of course the Pope is/was useless - what has this one achieved beyond being apparently not a bad bloke? What have any of htem achieved other than giving people excuses for killing witches, rejecting science, burning protestants?? What will the next one "achieve"? I'll bet your left testicle on nothing at all.... just like the rest. And by way of coincidences - died <24 hrs after seeing Vance..... Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 05:51, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
I recall when JPII died 'some newspaper' mentioned there being a (?Polish) tradition that anyone who died within a week of Easter Sunday (as JPII did) goes straight to Heaven. As Francis made an appearance on Easter Sunday there might have been an element of 'overdoing it.' Anna Livia (talk) 11:19, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

The Conclave

I know the Conclave is meant to be sealed communications-wise - but is there an 'emergency communications cord'? ('There has been an outbreak of seriously ill Cardinals - medical and more help needed'/'The Tiber has burst its banks - we need to move everybody and the antiquities to safety' etc.) Anna Livia (talk) 11:19, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

AI and Historical Advancement; Analogous or Not?

So in one of my classes today an argument about AI being similar as the invention of the calculator occurred, and being very against AI personally I was struck with how sound this argument appeared; that both streamlined thoughts and allowed for the creation of ideas at a more accessible pace, and that the tasks and roles eliminated by both are good because of this. Do you guys have anything against this? I am stumped. Alastor (talk) 17:35, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Calculators work and AI doesn't. I know this sounds snarky but it's like true, there's so many differences between a calculator and "AI" (a vague, broad term muddled by years and years of marketing). A calculator just does basic math. Ideas, mathematical theory, etc were not developed off of the calculator, the calculator just makes basic math really really easy. The role the calculator eliminated was 50 people sitting in a room running numbers constantly. It's mundane labor made unnecessary by a calculator, but math itself is not replaced by a calculator. People still have to do math.
AI bros and corporate marketers want to imply that AI can replace everything from writers to artists to drivers to doctors. They want to make it seem like AI can automate these jobs like machines automated factory production. The fundamental issue with this is that things like medicine, art, writing, etc are not unnecessary, menial tasks like calculating, but important jobs that take specialized skills to learn and master. People enjoy doing these things. Nothing is gained by replacing artists with AI, or doctors with AI, or writers with AI. It doesn't make the mediums more accessible, it just removes humans from the roles they used to fill. Circling back to the original point, AI cannot and will never replace anyone at anything without doing what they did worse. AI art is ugly. AI writing is soulless. AI can straight up hallucinate shit. There is a limit to what AI can do and we're getting close to it. We're not getting past it. --Ozzyboo (talk) 17:53, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Not just that, but calculators always gave an accurate answer. They were created by technologists, who had no obvious political agenda by creating them. AI has been created by techno-entrepreneurs who do have obvious political agendas ("Stop hiring humans"[2], Musk's fascism with Grok, OpenAI's overlap with cryptocurrency, massive energy use and disregard for climate change, Zuckerberg's promotion of AI slime and of virtual reality over real reality). Bongolian (talk) 18:13, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
The idea that analogies are usually accurate is, I think a fallacy. I think they are useful for heuristic research. Similar things can result in very different ends: Water (H2O) and Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) are formulaically similar. One is safe to drink, and one is not. Another example is thalidomide, where one isomer can be a sedative, while the other causes birth defects. Analogies can lead to disaster in the simplest constructions. Zatoichi (talk) 18:50, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
With a focus more on programming, the latest term for replacing traditional programming work is "vibe coding", where the "vibe" thinking and language natural to business people is fed to LLM "AI" and it generates code. This points to what's expected and encouraged at the level of thinking -- replacing technical precision and detail-oriented care and clarity with vague visions and descriptions. The problems are: 1) How well can all the missing detail be auto-filled in? 2) How does thinking develop with such work?
There's plenty of debate about #1, and general concern about a future filled with quickly generated software systems filled with security holes and unwanted behaviors. Some time back I read about a person who bragged on X about making his online platform with "vibe coding", then panicking shortly after, as people had seen the news, poked around, and began exploiting all the holes in the software. I predict plenty of both "experiments" and pushes in this direction, and plenty of backlash and lively controversy ahead.
On #2, an essay making the rounds is E.W.Dijkstra's 1978 'On the foolishness of "natural language programming"', which argues that formal language and its use is the basis for the development of not only mathematics after ancient Greece, but also the intellectual discipline and technical culture of modern civilization. Why throw formalisms away, yearning for the use of natural language instead? "When all is said and told, the "naturalness" with which we use our native tongues boils down to the ease with which we can use them for making statements the nonsense of which is not obvious." Dijkstra views such a path as leading mainly to greater "ease of making undetected mistakes", and ties it also to an erosion of intellectual discipline that he remarks briefly on alongside lamenting the "New Illiteracy" of the 1970s. Presumably he would have seen a great risk of cultural regression in technical thought in modern-day uses of "AI". --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 19:42, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
'Nothing new under the sun' - Gartner hype cycle.
The argument was correct in the respect of putting 'AI' in the came category as calculating machines; ie as a new powerful tool for work. How was complex mathematical calculations done before these items? Rooms of people with pen, paper and log tables. The time, cost and mistakes of this method was enough to spur the UK Government to drop something like £5m in today's money on Charles Babbage's mechanical calculator [they wanted accurate/cheap navigation tables]. That by the early 20th offices started getting mechanical adding machines which hit the employment of bookkeeper's assistants, in a similar manner the typewriter and stencil machines displaced scriveners and the telephone cut down on the use of messenger boys.
But even then there's the GIGO problem; the adding machine performs accurate calculations but it needs a professionally competent person to work it, just like the typewriter requires someone who can actually spell, knows grammar and understands how to structure such things as letters. And AIs are generally the same; that it is not easy to get them to actually perform what you want unless by sheer luck. I did a test just last month; I tried to use a free image generator to draw for me a very basic storyboard of a short story - that even after I discount all the hours I took having to learn to operate the thing, it still took me a good 3/4 hours to do it. I suspect if it had been done by hand by a vaguely-competent artist we'd have been looking at half-hour, max.
The problem is, as Ozzy rightly points out is that our AI bros - just like every other iteration of tech-bro seen basically since forever - dreams of deskilling occupations to the point any untrained idiot can do it at minimum wage. And usually, this fails to pan out because running the 'deskilled machine' becomes a skilled occupation in itself - for example automated giant breweries might have gotten rid of a lot of the old skilled brewery workers but it generated need for highly-skilled chemists, engineers, computer operators and logistics managers.
The argument that 'AI will never suppass what humans can achieve' is both probably correct and irrelevant at the same time. Let's look at brewing again. A decent homebrewer or small 'artisan' concern can, I will adamantly state produce better product than one of the giant combines producing seas of EuroPiss or BrightSour. Yet... the combines grow bigger and bigger - turns out that the vast majority of drinkers either don't overly care about quality and/or they're attracted to the fact if you make a sea of EuroPiss, an individual can/pint is comparatively cheap. AI is the same; AI art might be mediocre, but there's situations where mediocre is 'good enough'. The same can be said about almost all the products of the modern world; from flat-pack chipboard furniture to one-size fits nobody that well clothing made from polycotton.
But, to continue my brewing analogy - does the mega brewery have to produce EuroPiss? No. It's the management which decided on the EuroPiss, not the equipment - that put a genuine master brewer in charge and teach them how to use all that new kit and you'll soon see them producing a sea of really good beer. And that is the other future of AI at least in the medium-term; where our professional human beings learn how to use this new tool to improve their own qualative/quantitive output.
I mean, I'm just old enough to remember the debate whether it was even possible to produce 'genuine art' on a computer at all. Similar debates raged in the early years of photography; where some people [mainly painters] arguing that 'it was not art'. And talking about 'genuine art'... it's an open secret that most top-rank artist 'studios' are in some respects mini-production lines where the 'name' only does a portion of the actual work, leaving the assistants to do the grunt work. Are you going to say an artist in c2030 'is not an artist' because they utilised AI in a similar manner? Or if an author uses AI as an research assistant, copyeditor and even a bit of light ghostwriting? KarmaPolice (talk) 20:14, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
AI currently has a problem that other technologies don't have -- it's more "black boxy" than many technologies. I mean, it's always been true that the artist and the one that designs the tools have separate skill sets. But, to use an example from musician world, the player has considerable amount of physical input in things like playing a violin. Even something more static (like a synthesizer or pipe organ) has knobs or levers that allows you to change the sonics. The art AI that I've seen has been on the level of "you type a few things and click a button and this auto-generated junk pops up". That's just not going to be too helpful for doing anything other than "generic boilerplate shit" (which, to be fair, is a lot of more of the "corporate" art type jobs. AI may not produce the next Great Artist, but an AI that spits out, say, generic greeting cards, seems quite plausible.)
Now, technology certainly can change quite rapidly in usability. Just look at the synthesizer -- what was once an obscurity which often required considerable technical know-how and finesse to deal with ill-tempered, bulky, expensive doodads has become simple plugins on laptops, and easy enough to use that its pretty much the dominant sound of world pop for the last couple decades. So who knows what the future will hold... but from what I know of LLMs, it will require some kind of different design compared to what we have now. BobJohnson (talk) 20:48, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Perhaps the most effective use of common language is in accident prevention. "Look both ways," is both a warning and a methodology. The existence of AI begs the question, "how smart can coding really be?" The two notions would seem to be incoherent. M.C. Escher's Hand's Drawing Hands shows the act of an inanimate two dimensional object creating itself. Most human language is either used to prevent disasters or to proliferate quotidian narratives. It is very difficult to use common language to describe something to older people that they have not already heard.
It would seem that the only way to test the humanness of an AI is to create a community of AI and observe their behavior. If they act like humans why not assume they are reasonable code representations of human minds? Humans are social animals. Typically, we are only concerned with the smart ones. Practically the AIs must vary in IQ values to observe a simulated social profile. Television and movie executives are already engaging the possibility of AI generated content. The next step might be an observable culture of AI interacting in a simulation. The ability to simulate reality would be a necessary condition to verify an artificial consciousness is even possible to create Zatoichi (talk) 20:55, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
It's interesting but not practically relevant yet, since current "AI" is not an attempt to create artificial humans (which is still a distant sci-fi dream), and some completely new design would be needed for that. It's not clear "how smart can coding really be", but current machine learning AI has been like a gigantic look-up table plus some noise and extrapolation on top, which is theoretically very limited. Language expression as the main focus also seems flawed, with language only a tool of the human mind and brain and not its center.
Simulation and judging similarity to humans leads to questions of what to measure, how to judge it. The Turing test is flawed because the measure is poor and once made the target, deception of the audience, in/through the system design, is key to the system being judged "intelligent". Social behavior in a virtual gathering could be interesting to focus on instead, but social behavior is also only part of human intelligence. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 22:46, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
The fact AI is 'black boxy' I think is both correct and irrelevant; that the important bit is not understanding how the black box is made, only how you can manipulate it to get the best results from it [which I accept, normally includes learning it's key weaknesses]. My little experiment told me that it was considerably harder/longer for me to even generate a pretty low-stakes request than if I'd say, contacted a real person to do the rough sketches.
From said experiment, I would say the main difficulties lies with a) appropriateness and b) usability. That yes [as BobJ puts it] it's very easy to 'type a few things and click a button and this auto-generated junk pops up' but it's actually rather hard to get anything particular - that I spent [for example] a decent 45 mins putting in a ream of prompts to describe my storyboard main character and then do enough tests to ensure it's getting some image uniformity going [and even then it wasn't that great] - I couldn't simply [purely off top of my head] tell the AI 'Halle Berry, with a buzzcut, 25kg fatter, dressed like a outdoorsy butch' even after I showed the AI photos. And even then the AI kept on having issues; it had a strange obsession with putting strawberries in food/drink, all beds were Japanese futons, it seemed to have some odd views [jeans as denim chaps, anyone?], an inability to understand rooms didn't have to be greige and even after repeated prompts to not do it, a ~20% chance they'd give Halle a boob job and a tight crop-top.
All these fails pointed to a) AIs inability to get what I actually wanted, b) their seriously wonky refrence pools [think this AI was fed too much sub-porn anime, Zoopla pictures and propaganda from the Strawberry Grower's Association] and c) lack of contextual understanding aka 'common sense'. This being the 'glue on pizza' kind of fails; that even after countless billions of development and decades of producing reams of 'commonsense knowledge' datasets AIs still don't get that rocks are inedible, cats have four legs [but many things that have four legs are not cats], that a 2010 manual for a Ford Focus might not be applicable for a 2020 Vauxhall Astra or to respond to someone saying 'I am anorexic' by giving diet tips. Aka pearls of wisdom that the vast majority of 8 year-olds would succeed in.
This tells me that anything 'creative' or requiring actual 'thought' is going to be well beyond any AIs for quite some time - similar to how after all that development, we still have not developed a robot yet with better motor skills than a 4 year-old. That the best we can realistically hope for is a generation of very single/limited-use AIs ['helpline answerer', 'archival assistant', 'personal assistant' etc] in which the interactions are relatively predictable/limited, the information it's expected to master is curated/closed garden and perhaps most importantly, don't cost the earth to either make or run. Aka not much more than rather spiffy, useful computer programmes. Tools. To serve humans. KarmaPolice (talk) 00:12, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
Back in the day when modern calculators were still novel and there was still a debate about whether they should be allowed in classrooms or for tests, math teachers would warn students that they would forget how to calculate if they relied on calculators too much. I think that's largely true, and could easily be applied to AI. Rely on AI too much and one will forget how to think/research/do art/write coherent text. Bongolian (talk) 05:48, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
So, I'm pretty opinionated on this subject as a writer who hangs around in creative communities with other writers and artists. I think a debate on whether AI art is "real art" is an exercise in futility. I personally don't think so, but that's unimportant. There is a much more salient debate on whether AI art (or writing) is good, and the answer is a resounding "No."
Art is inherently a human endeavor. It is one of the things that makes humans unique, our capacity to channel our feelings into creative works like art and writing. Good art fundamentally has to have thought and emotion put into it. It has to have a human element. One of the things artists or writers notice with AI is that the works it outputs are devoid of "soul". An AI does not think about the image or text it generates, it just generates it based on a prompt. Maybe the human put thought into the prompt, but there's a degree of disconnection there. AI is not intelligent. It cannot think, as much as techbros want to humanize LLMs and delude themselves about the "singularity" or some such. This means, to me, that AI cannot create good art, as a rule. Even if it looks good, even if it reads good, it's not good because there is no human element in it.
This is also why so many creatives dislike AI art and ban AI generated content from their communities. When you (and everyone around you) put countless hours of thought into your work, when you channel your emotions and feelings into your craft, when you make art, the idea that someone putting prompts into an LLM is as much of an artist as you are is insulting. --Ozzyboo (talk) 15:59, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
The same can be said against photography; that it's an insult against 'real artists' who spend hours with oils when all they do is turn up with a device and press a button. Except we know it's a lot more than that; that the photographer needs to master the skills of operating that device, have experience on how to get the best shot and lastly know what story they wish to tell with that photograph.
Similar can be said with image-generating AI tools. That I had to learn how to utilise those tools, get to appreciate their limitations and obviously have an understanding of what I wished to see represented on them. I am not arguing that 'shove a few prompts in and press a button' AI art 'is art', anymore than anyone would argue a CCTV film feed was 'art'. What I am arguing that it is possible for AI-assisted creative works to be seen as an art form - because the AI is merely the facilitating tool for the human brain directing it. For as you point out, the AI has zero emotion or imagination. The AI may not ponder over prompts, but the human operator sure does. Or at least, the human operator who is genuinely attempting to creative with it.
But let's cut to the chase here; a lot of creatives hate AI because it's a huge paradigm-breaker. That a lot of creatives make some living out of producing variants of hackwork - the cartoonist making company logos, the musician making little ditties for adverts, writers producing vapid blog content to order and so on. And I expect AI will be able to do most of these things to an 'acceptable level' quite soon. So it's not 'artistic', who fucking cares? It's an advert for haemorrhoid cream. Again, similar was said about previous developments - photography didn't kill painting, but it sure as hell wiped out a lot of second/third-rate painters who made a living doing portraiture of the provincial middle class. Other inventions were creatively disruptive; the record player led to the loss of a lot of work for jobbing musicians as the demand for live music tanked and television basically killed music-hall. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:59, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Living person who change their names or pronouns

In the page on Scott Alexander, David Gerard mentioned a gloriously stranger blogger who used to go by Ozy Frantz but has changed their last name and maybe pronouns since. Are there any policies for how to write about someone like that? Figuring out whether they want to be identified with their old name sounds like work, and I try to respect subjects of RW articles as people even if I think their ideas or actions are crap (so I focus on their handle if they use a handle and their meatspace name if they use a meatspace name and refer to them by their preferred pronouns). The few hundred Bay Area LessWrongers (and colonies in other US cities) produce a lot of writers who post very fast.Polydamas (talk) 05:44, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

This section on a related issue may give you some general guidance Transphobia#Misgendering and deadnaming. When in doubt, use the person's current preferred name instead of a pronoun. Also, they/them should be acceptable. They/them has a long history of usage to refer to a single person of unspecified gender (dating back to 1450 as per the OED).[3] Bongolian (talk) 06:05, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
One should always use a person's preferred language, if possible. The above precautions seem adequate in principle. But anyone can change their mind about the language they prefer. With regard to any social practice thought to be important, It is the responsibility of those who know to politely inform those who do not know.Zatoichi (talk) 17:07, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
From what few trans professionals I've spoken with / read about suggest (Surname) and 'They' is a reasonable generic position for pages etc (with a line in the first paragraph saying 'known as Hannah MadeupName before 2018').
The former is because they've (usually) not disowned their earlier work/achievements and if you're writing you would need to explain why it switched pronouns halfway through the piece. Which draws extra attention to their transition - like all 'identity' things, some want it at the forefront while others do not want it to become the thing which defines them. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:29, 24 April 2025 (UTC)