I'm a huge Norm fan. Having watched his many interviews, seen and listened to his stand-up, seen his podcast and netflix show many times, I can say that he was clearly quite conservative, though not a bigot or hateful.
There's also more to the story here. Not that it's in any way justified, bur this guy's wasn't targeted only because he tweeted about Norm Macdonald.
> Having watched his many interviews, seen and listened to his stand-up, seen his podcast and netflix show many times, I can say that he was clearly quite conservative, though not a bigot or hateful.
This is worthwhile to address. Norm was a conservative, for sure. There's nothing wrong with that.
There is something wrong with anti-social (or sociopathic) behavior. That behavior is not associated with conservatism any more than it is with liberalism. I've known hardcore punks who you'd think would end up solid democratic voters, but nah. It's not so simple.
Norm was not a sociopath, nor someone who was a poisonous partisan or tribalist, as near as we can tell. It wasn't in his comedy, it wasn't in his personal life from what people say.
He wasn't part of the "tribe" which is swatting this family. These people feel he was part of their little tribe, is what I am saying. And they are wrong. He's wasn't.
> These people feel he was part of their little tribe, is what I am saying.
I think this is an invention on your part. While his comments about Norm MacDonald may have been the inciting incident, the continued harassment of Tomlinson has little to do with them.
We don't really know if he was a conservative because he was always doing a bit. The only thing we know for sure about him is that he was a deeply closeted gay fella.
This doesn't seem like serious science. They just looked at correlation between biodiversity and a few dozen things.
Of course, for many reasons, we should try not to drive species to extinction. That's not really science; it's just basic moral intuition. People seem embarrassed to admit that their motivations are perfectly reasonable things like "I like living things and we shouldn't kill them off".
It could be argued that some serious science starts with "just looking at correlations", guided by intangible drives like imagination and moral intuition. I wouldn't dismiss it as "not really science", and may even lean toward saying that it's important for the scientific process, or even the development of mathematics, to listen to your moral intuition and follow your nose. It's often driven by asking questions and posing theories.
> It could be argued that some serious science starts with "just looking at correlations"
Sure, but it can't end with "just looking at correlations". The rigorous experimental follow through has to be there otherwise its just data analytics not science. Sure analyzing data is a key part of science but its not even close to all of it.
Sure, intution is necessary, but they just took a bunch of data from all over the world and fit it to curves. This particular appoach hasn't born a lot of fruit; at least give us some natural experiments.
Just feels like makework. And even if the data show that, e.g., killing off all hummingbirds would improve pollination rates, no one would be like "yee-haw let's do it", right?
"Of course, for many reasons, we should try not to drive species to extinction."
I disagree with your statement that "it's just basic moral intuition." You really think that we shouldn't be trying to extinct the Guinea worm? You might want to do some protesting as humanity is actively on a mission to drive the population of that species to 0.
The more interesting question is why are some species OK for humans to extinct and others are not? What makes humans such great arbiters of these things and why does "morality" only seem to apply when convenient? Who says a Guinea worm has less right to exist then your pet dog? Who decides what is good biodiversity and what is bad biodiversity?
This narrative has been around for a long time in one form or the other. In its pure form, it's arguing that the form of human society is downstream from military technology.
The earliest mention I'm aware of is "the old oligarch," who claimed that Athenian democracy was justified by the fact that Athens was a naval power. Since every able male could man an oar, wider sufferage made sense. He contrasts this to Sparta's less democratic structure and its military, which was supposedly based on its few elite hoplites (helms/greaves/shield/spears were expensive).
You could compare this idea (military tech shapes society) to the Marxist claim that societies are shaped by economic forces. Both claims have some truth to them, but reality is more complicated. In particular, human societies today are less violent and founded on mutual consent/social contract moreso than on violence. Therefore, I would expect new military technologies to have limited disruptive effects within states and more between states. We'll see!
The claim is that bronze enabled complex, highly centralized states because it was rare (due to a dearth of tin). So only the connected/rich could afford it, and they used it to build empires/kingdoms/etc.
Iron wasn't superior to bronze (in the fact the article claims it was worse), but it was good enough and widespread. All you needed was a furnace with bellows, charcoal, and an iron source (which were everywhere). Since everyone had access to iron, no one person/group had an edge over the others and this prevented highly centralized polities from being established.
so economically speaking it was cheaper to mass produce iron weapons.. I would have assumed a first mover advantage. It would be surprising if iron tech sprung up everywhere at the same time. And sure smaller groups could do it, but some groups would do it better,faster, cheaper (paretto principle). They should have had a material advantage me thinks. Since its cheaper you could arm more people perhaps. Lastly, the current powers could have also adopted iron and armed larger armies.
The problem is if I learn how you make iron weapons and then escape (or any other spy scenario) I can make iron weapons anywhere and teach my friends. Even a second mover can get an advantage.
Bronze it wouldn't matter because I can't get the raw materials anywhere, and so I can't create an army to oppose you.
He's absolutely not saying iron caused the collapse, only that it prevented the recovery.
> The causes of the Bronze Age collapse are still debated by historians: a series of severe droughts; the sudden appearance of mysterious Sea Peoples, who raided along the Mediterranean coast; the disruption of the tin trade routes; internal revolts; or possibly all of these at once. But there is another unifying factor that could have prevented the resurgence of empires: iron.
Based on reading between the lines and watching the video, here's my sense of what happened:
1. Some protestors showed up at a council meeting to complain about flock
2. The council moved to disallow discussion of flock cameras
3. The protestors started disrupting the meeting, chanting, etc, and were forced to leave/were arrested
4. One protestor went to the podium and started talking about flock cameras, was politely interrupted, then had her mic cut. She flipped off the council and was arrested
If you oppose flock/this kind of surveillance, fine. But this kind of behavior is not tolerated at council meetings, and it's not a surprise that some of the protestors were arrested.
> “Well, I said: ‘Jeff Schrag is a cuck.’ I said: ‘Fuck you Jeff.’ I said: ‘Worthless’ and then, also, the final thing I said was: ‘Jeff Schrag has a tiny, stinky, cock,’” Powell explained. “I just let myself get handcuffed and let them do whatever power trip they wanted to do. Got my ticket and left.”
> 2. The council moved to disallow discussion of flock cameras
Not sure why they would do that. Our city council gives people three minutes to talk about what they want. Not sure why this city council wouldn't do that.
> The council moved to disallow discussion of flock cameras
> (…)
> this kind of behavior is not tolerated at council meetings
Right. We shouldn’t tolerate a council which is stopping the people from talking about the issues that are important to them. After all, the council is meant to represent the people; if they show up in large numbers to discuss a topic, it should be discussed.
Oh, wait, you meant the people should have just bent over and allowed the council to do as they pleased to silence the legitimate concerns of the populace. In that case, you’re wrong.
All I mean is that you shouldn't swear, call people "cucks," flip people off, etc. It's not an effective means of communication, and will get you removed from whatever room you're in.
5 minutes? I'll have spent more time writing this comment and posting the image to imgur than I did having the bot produce that image in the first place.
It's not grand at all; just an informative sign about some fall specials that is direct and to the point. (Nothing about it was done by hand, but nothing about it would get people all torches-and-pitchforks, either.)
Exactly. What we are really talking about is people lacking taste. People don’t want to see shit graphic design. At the state fair this year, all the food places and rides were covered an obvious low quality ai image work. The difference between acceptable and gross can be as simple as a prompt tweak.
> the frontier labs are priced according to the narrative that they have produced or will in the very near future produce a fully automated drop-in replacement for most knowledge workers
That's a reason to be bearish about AI companies, not LLMs. But is it even true? OpenAI and Anthropic have each reported ~50 billion in revenue with ~900 billion valuations. That's a high ratio but I'm not sure if follows that the only way it pans out is if we get "fully automated drop-in replacement for most knowledge workers".
It wouldn't shock me to see those revenue numbers scaling up to where they need to be over the next decade ( to, say, ~400 billion) without ever achieving drop-in worker replacements.
I looked at the math and I think it's true. Remember revenue is just sales, not profit. These labs are shooting for > $1T valuations, which traditionally means your PROFIT is at least 1/20th or 1/30th of that (so let's say minimum 30B$/year PROFIT).
These companies however are LOSING money (anthropic tries to make it sound like it's profit by deviating from accepted accounting principles) and subsidizing these models. When accounting for all the engineering salaries, training, GPUs, etc, what's their best-case realistic margin three years out, 10%?
So to we'd need a scenario where companies are spending a collective 300B annually on AI (believable) but ALSO that these companies jack up their margins WITHOUT companies switching to the cheaper open-source models (even when there's a $300B incentive to do so).
Yeah, just take the EBITDA and suddenly the valuations make sense. Paying money for a vending machine that currently loses money hand over fist is generally not a sound investment strategy
There's also more to the story here. Not that it's in any way justified, bur this guy's wasn't targeted only because he tweeted about Norm Macdonald.
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