I went shooting for the first time with some buddies back in July 2019. I remember wondering how people could get so passionate about such a stupid redneck activity that was rendered totally obsolete by the benevolent power of policemen and governments.
The "rednecks" sure seem passionate about murdering things! I don't share the fascination myself, so I admit I don't understand it. What's actually fun about peppering objects (and living creatures) with high-speed projectiles? Do you just like feeling destructive? Is it conspicuous consumption—showing off the fact that you've got enough money to afford gun collections?
I can't speak for anyone else, but I'll say this. I killed several rabbits to keep them out of my garden and I shot a deer once for the meat. I'd do it again, but I didn't particularly enjoy the actual shooting of the deer. I was very pleased it was a humane kill, and I think that was a more humane way to get meat than buying it from the grocery store, given what I know about factory farming. I very much enjoy fishing.
Most of my firearms training is centered around tactical stuff, which is very fun, and a skill that I hope and pray never comes in handy.
Forgive me if I don't quite believe you, Handwaving Freakoutery. You wouldn't be having *fun* playacting at scenarios where you get to kill people, if you didn't relish the thought of getting to do it for real at some point. Does that sound reductive of me? Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but otherwise I don't understand the enthusiasm for it.
Are you going to answer my implicit question or are you going to try to deflect some more by interrogating me? I'll ask more directly: do you relish the thought of killing people, Handwaving Freakoutery? That's the sort of feeling you might consider being more *honest* about.
Just to be clear, you're pre-committing to disregard what he tells you, and that's supposed to be an indication that you're worth engaging with in anything other than mockery?
Acta non verba, I suppose. When one's actions are in direct opposition to one's words, I take both the actions and words less seriously.
My guess is that Brynn doesn't really believe much of her catastrophizing. In true egregore node fashion, she's just repeating the catastrophic screeching from other Twitter drones, for that sweet sweet social media clout.
In my brief internet stalking effort I know she's very intelligent and very well paid to do some highly technical stuff in the defense contracting industry. That obviously doesn't eschew egregorical capture, but it does mean she'd at least be someone who was interesting to talk to at a cocktail party.
I think that one could make an argument that very intelligent people, especially people who are very intelligent in a single specific domain, are more vulnerable to egregorical capture.
I don't know if I agree about Brynn being interesting to talk to - I hate being screeched at. But who knows? People act weird on the internet. In real life she may well be a lovely person.
When did intelligence stop being a conduit for open-mindedness? Or is it that we conflate success of some sort, whether earned or incorrectly given, with intelligence. We have no real idea if she is actually intelligent from her writings. IMO. Maybe she was successful? Maybe not. Maybe she fell up the ladder due to it being the government/government adjacent and there being no where else for her to go. I'm not making claims, just giving ideas.
Anyway, I think education has long enough been mistaken for intelligence. Anyone can follow rules and obtain a degree(s). I'm not sure that explicitly indicates a level of intelligence. Anecdotally, I have come across people who are dumb as a box of rocks, but somehow managed to obtain masters in accounting and earn a CPA. They could barely open a spreadsheet, or tell you the difference between a credit and a debit. (Through my fiancée, I'm an engineer by trade) I would love to see some literature on education vs intelligence. Not sure if it is obtainable with non-garbage data.
It depends on what the meaning of the word 'intelligence' is 😏
🗨 We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought. Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. ~~Bertrand Russell
"I think that one could make an argument that very intelligent people, especially people who are very intelligent in a single specific domain, are more vulnerable to egregorical capture."
I think it's intelligent authoritarians -- control freaks, schoolmarmism writ large. WHY AREN'T YOU FOLLOWING THE RULES THERE NEED TO BE MORE RULES YOU MUST THINK AND BEHAVE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE RULES
"People act weird on the internet."
Theory: People tend to express themselves more freely and are more contemptuous of social norms/taboos on the internet. It's like being drunk. Getting drunk and going on the internet takes it to the next level.
I think you should read “A Conflict of Visions” by Thomas Sowell, he has, imo, the most complete explanation of what these people think. They think man is unconstrained and can be perfected, bad behaviors fixed. The opposite side has more tragic vision that human nature is unchanging. Pretty much all disagreements boil down to this simple conflict of visions on human nature.
Some smart people think they’re smart enough to finally crack the problem, given how successful they’ve been in other areas. It’s not that they’re necessarily authoritarian, they’re just hopeful that this time will finally be the time when the smart people usher utopia. The closer they feel they are, the more they feel like they have to lose, and the more aggressive they get
"The opposite side has more tragic vision that human nature is unchanging"
This vision has its upsides and its downsides; it's comic as well as tragic. I personally believe that humans are innately capable of behaving unselfishly, and, ironically, can achieve self-actualization through such behaviors (Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid" is a key text for me on this topic). I also think that it's a product of individual volition and can't be successfully reproduced via some external entity's coercion.
"they’re just hopeful that this time will finally be the time when the smart people usher utopia"
Yeah, like Bullwinkle pulling the rabbit out of his hat. "This time for sure!"
Either Brynn doesn't believe a word of what she's been spewing, or she's got a Sarah Conner bunker in the Mexican desert filled with machineguns and water.
Unlikely. Her background suggests devotional allegiance to an all-powerful and an all-benevolent government. She’s a joiner, not a rebel. Even though it rejected her, Tannehill sees a strong, Progressive federal government as the thin reed protecting her transgender family from the barbarians inhabiting the hinterlands.
great job - feel like I don't read this substack enough...
You note the problem with unregistered guns in this country. It doesn't get that much better if you do go through the hoops to purchase, own and lawfully use guns. And all those scenarios which you eloquently note triggered more (and many first time) gun sales can be boiled down to the fact that the gov't systems we rely upon are fragile at times. Can't count on overwhelmed emergency services and if you don't have another option you're screwed.
It is a semi-crime (or precrime) to simply own guns - in my beloved New Jersey we are warned that when we are transporting guns to the range (the only legal reason to transport them) we need to go from point a to point b. Stop for gas, its a felony, etc. And the laws for things like magazine capacity, ammo types, suppressors, types of stocks on long guns... it all seems designed to trick you into mandatory time in prison for simple mistakes...
And then there is the whole 'duty to retreat' context in neighboring NYC a parking attendant was shot by a robber and managed to disarm and neutralize the robber with the offending weapon. The attendant was initially arrested in his hospital bed for "attempted murder assault and gun possession" (NYPost April 1, 2023 ). Status since changed to "pending investigation"...
Putting people in an impossible position of either being defenseless or on the razor edge of a frivolous felony. "Be your own 911" was laughed at as some prepper, paranoid idea before 2020 - now not so much.
When 911 is applauded and held as heroes for responding and acting at a sprightly 14 minutes, (nothing against them, they did great in context, but this is the reality of the situation) being your own first responder is the only prudent action.
agreed - and in the past few years I have: become a volunteer EMT (our average response time is around 5 mins), developed some skill with handguns and rifles of a few different flavors and have gotten 4 stripes on a blue belt in BJJ. None of these are the answer in and of them selves but I am trying to get better at defending my family and being less of a drain in times of general turmoil.
Live in a city with line of sight to lower & mid Manhattan, so you wouldnt expect it but have seen gov't/ emergency services seriously fray.
On 9/11 lost phone service, public transit for a while. During Hurricane Sandy, we lost transit, electricity, water phones for more than a week. And during Covid surges, saw hospitals going on 'divert' meaning they would accept no new folks - even in the ER.
It doesn't take much. So it is good to have some self reliance. I feel like I know a little but there is much to learn in this area.
"Putting people in an impossible position of either being defenseless or on the razor edge of a frivolous felony."
Exactly this.
Those clamoring for "stricter laws" are mum on how they are to be realistically enforced. The enacting of more unenforceable laws to magically convert people into felons for going about their daily business tends to make even those with innate respect for the law, or who think that laws generally have some social utility, a little bit more jaded and cavalier about the whole business.
Lot of uncharged and unconvicted felons walking around out there, harming nobody. This fact may give the Brynn Tannehills of the world conniptions. To me it just means the laws are stupid.
"There is no way to change hearts and minds of Republicans or the courts."
What is this changing "hearts and minds" of the "courts"? There is a word for that, it's called activism. Instead of just understanding you are wrong, period, and then realizing there is a path to change (an amendment) you just want to ram your will down the throats of others. Screw you. I'm sick of these people and their complete lack of self-awareness.
They don’t care about the institutions, or why these laws exist. All they see is the destination they like and the obstacle course in front of them. They’ll say whatever needs to be said to get over today’s obstacle course. This is how activists have always been and always will be. Best thing to do is just ignore them.
It's extremely hypocritical given they constantly whine about alleged "judicial activism" (with little to no proof). I guess I shouldn't expect less. It is just frustrating seeing people lie or be hypocritical so blatantly.
Just the language used is very telling. "Hearts and minds." She's Robert McNamara or John Paul Vann; we proles and our wrong-minded courts are the Vietnamese peasantry. Perhaps the village must be destroyed in order to be saved.
"While mankind tends toward evil, the legislators yearn for good; while mankind advances toward darkness, the legislators are attracted toward virtue. Since they have decided that this is the true state of affairs, they then demand the use of force in order to substitute their own inclinations for those of the human race."
Bastiat identifies a phenomenon here but in my opinion he is underestimating "mankind" and overestimating "legislators." To start with, I think putting them into two distinct and separate baskets constitutes sophistry.
Maybe I should've added more context, but he is being sarcastic here. He's describing the worldview of the "legislators" that believe they can mold humanity like putty.
That's some impressive whining going on there. Hey lady, it's not Republican run towns that have a "gun violence" problem, so of course the Republicans think "more guns" is a good answer to the few random psychos they see.
It is perhaps not surprising that when people are caged like rats in overdense places like Chicago some of them behave like caged rats. We're apes. Supposed to be hanging out with your troop, brachiating, enjoying a banana -- not a mindless drone in an insect colony. Literally developed tools so we could *eat* termites, not *be* them.
I don't think it's actually inherent to cities and city life (though perhaps I've misunderstood what you're getting at) as much as the shitty policies that leave so many people who live in cities in an absolutely hopeless and frequently inescapable position within them. I don't think there is anything inherent in the existence of the structure of "the city" that mandates there be this wretched underclass. But the people who claim to care about helping all seem bound and determined to make certain there is not only no improvement, but an actual increase in the number of wretched.
I've got a good deal of experience with the gun industry.
The gun industry isn't really capable of the kind of subversive thinking that would have them place an agitprop agent in the other side, drumming up all the talking points that will get the (previously largely untapped) progressive left market to start thinking about tooling up. It's very traditionalist handshakes and cash transactions (Thanks, Chokepoint) and old-fashioned networking. It's kind of fascinating just how early 20th century style much of the industry still operates when it comes to its business and marketing fundamentals.
Ah. But if we're going to speculate, maybe as a White Hat she isn't working directly for the gun industry but they certainly benefit from massively increased gun sales. There are more angles to The Great Awakening plan than we can imagine and certainly the support for this plan is increased with an armed populace. Just spit balling here but I would not be surprised.
No argument there but it isn't impossible and I'm sure that in the long run there will be real surprises as to closet White Hats. Lots of speculation on DeSanctimonious, for example. Just hope there aren't too many on the Black Hat side!
All good except for one point at the end. "When transhumanists invent immortality for the rich" is mistaken in two ways. It will not be immortality, it will be indefinite lifespan. ("Biological immortality" is okay because it doesn't imply invulnerability.) The other thing is that, like every technology, it will start "for the rich" (rich globally or by US standards?) and quickly get cheaper. Like automobiles, computers, and cell phones were for "rich" but now they aren't.
"Indefinite lifespan for the poor" will not happen. There's not enough space on the planet. Which means it will be confined to the rich, which means there will be a war.
I'm not going to convince you otherwise in a short comment. Please take a look at ourworldindata or Humanprogress.org. Population growth has been slowing since 1968. It has almost stopped growing in the western world and even the UN projects global population to peak and then fall by the end of this century. Resources are more abundant than ever. You won't believe that but check out the resource abundance index and its methodology at HumanProgress.org. There is plenty of space.
I get all that, but that still doesn't solve the overall problem.
Imagine the resource burden of any given person over the course of their lifetimes. Divide that resource burden into renewables and nonrenewables. Renewable resources burned is not a huge deal as long as the renewable resource production is in balance with renewable resource consumption. Non-renewable resource burden is a huge deal, but it's finite because it's capped at the end of life of the person in question.
Now extend the lifespan to infinity. The renewable resource burden continues to be fine, but the nonrenewable burden becomes untenable.
If you want to go back to your population growth analysis, you need to do this. Population growth is a balance between baby making and dying. Back-calculate what the population growth would look like if the dying was eliminated. It's not pretty.
First, I have done the calculation of the effect of life extension on population growth, or rather biodemographer Jay Ohlshansky has done it, as have Leonid and Natalia Gavrilov, and I've reported it. (See article starting on p.19 here: https://www.alcor.org/cryonics-magazine-2023/)
"The bottom line is, is that if we achieved immortality today, the growth rate of the population would be less than what we observed during the post-World War II baby boom." Think of it this way: The extension of lifespan is the constant in the equation. The fertility rate is the exponent. At the extreme, if literally no one ever died, if no one had children the population would gradually decline due to murder, suicide, accidents, etc. Lifespan makes far less difference than number of children. So, it's a very weak reason to oppose life extension.
I find the distinction between renewable and non-renewable energy sources highly dubious. Solar is not renewable. The sun will eventually burn out, so it's already a matter of "how long" not a difference in kind. Further, solar uses rare earth minerals which are very much not renewable. Nuclear fission -- and fusion even more so -- have sufficient fuel available that it's practically endless.
From my article: "Biodemographers Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova conducted a sophisticated analysis of the effects of longer lifespans on total population. Using Swedish demographic data due to its detail and history, they showed that population effects would be minimal to modest, depending on the specific scenario. Their starting point was a 2005 population of 9 million. Without any intervention, population would fall by one-third by 2105. In “Demographic Consequences of Defeating Aging” [Gavrilov & Gavrilova, 2010], the researchers consider four main scenarios:
1. Negligible senescence after age 60. Median lifespan increases from 84 to 134 years for men and from 88 to 180 years for women but after 100 years the Swedish population would increase by only 22%.
2. Negligible senescence for 10% of the population. Population declines by 28%.
3. Negligible senescence for 10% of the population with growing acceptance leading to 1% added to the negligible senescence group each year and the last 5% refusing these technologies. Instead of a decline from 9 million to 6 million by 210, the population would decline to about 7.9 million. Population declines by 13.5%."
The first attracts government intervention like nothing else, the later two have to contend with Earth's rather high gravity. The progression is probably more accurately characterized as Government to Rich People to Common Man. Rockets are still transitioning from Government to Rich People. Given the energies involved Rockets may never make the last transition. Flying cars never made sense with current technologies. There's just too much power required to make them really efficient. If you read flying car as Helicopter you'll realize that they're also in the Rich People phase while being somewhat readily available to Common Men for a fee. Rockets will probably see a similar end state.
Most tech will eventually make that progression, but it does take time and markets to make it happen.
This is a Whig History view of technological progress, which conveniently forgets the rich tapestry of dead ends and broken dreams that the historical record can provide a less ideologically committed student. Cheers!
Where do I say there are no dead ends? Reality is nuanced. New developments often open up new opportunities. Often the dead ends don't stay dead. Lessons are learned from them and new things come out. The state of the art is still advancing and speaking as if some things will never happen is short sighted at best.
"Short sighted" is staring all day into the imaginary future and never giving more than a cursory glance at the actual past. Many things have been confidently predicted that have never come to pass. "Most tech will eventually make that progression" is a fool's credo.
Nuclear costs about four times as much as it should, in the USA. South Korea (until very recently) and a couple of other places have built nuclear vastly cheaper than in the US. Nuclear is hugely over regulated, using absurd approaches like ALARA.
Interesting. I have one friend in California (I'm a Brit, in France). He & his wife are extremely liberal. I was surprised when I visited him last year, to learn that he'd just bought a handgun
Lots of blue folks making their way into what has traditionally been a very red space, over the last couple of years. Fantastic. Bring 'em on. It means they're starting to get it even if their elected officials still lack even a semblance of a clue.
netflix showed us transhumanist rich people immortality and it looked as bleak as it sounds (though my wife didn’t complain too much about a half naked joel kinneman through most of it).
Wait, what? You're a gun nut because of AI and transhumanism? Like, you actually think that's a real threat, but a threat that gun ownership somehow mitigates? Wow. That's very Goldilocks!
I guess I must have misinterpreted that Moloch post. I thought you were pointing out how not-really-serious the AI-apocalypse crowd was, with a big blind spot around how people don't need to own guns themselves if they can own governments.
For my part, I've worked with research-grade machine learning. I think that MIRI / AE crowd is very full of themselves and running a scam or two. I'm a gun nut for what I suppose are fairly traditional reasons: mere sci-fi doesn't put me over the threshold like history does. But I do find your takes quite entertaining, and the analyses valuable.
I'm not that worried about AI existential risk, but I do think that the long march towards automation is going to eventually displace so many people that the economy is going to flip upside down and the GINI gaps are going to continue to widen, which is always a solid predictor for nationwide violent revolution.
And the numbers on that aren't great even if you didn't throw AI and undying immortal Transhumanist methuselahs into the mix.
Well that's reasonable, although I suppose one could make comparisons with other polities having both much higher Gini coefficients and also the social stability that comes from deeply entrenched regimes. I still maintain it's less about who has the guns and more about who has the organization. Long-term survival is always a team sport.
The key point I would make about the kind of jobs that "AI" can displace, is that they're largely bullshit placeholder jobs that get handed out to rich kids. I imagine that these kids can be bribed and otherwise placated. The physical robots that can replace lower-class jobs aren't really working out: diminishing returns.
Not sure how the methuseloids are supposed to change the balance. Doesn't the ownership class already keep it in the family? But the Kissingers of the world are pretty gross, vampirism and all that. Spicy sprinkles for the apocalyptic narratives, at least.
In order to have an entrenched regime with a high GINI that doesn't experience revolution, you have to be ready and willing to Tiananmen Square your people regularly.
I'm with you on GPT displacing the middle managers. That definitely seems to be the implication. Many of the blue collar (strength based) jobs already got automated, and the current freakout is just that they're automating a different character sheet stat. You might enjoy this one:
Hmm. Most of the 20th-century middle manager jobs have been gradually automated away with the advent of modern information technology, and that has little to do with "AI". This current crop of generative models (including GPT) are just incremental improvements on search engines, natural language "expert systems", and commercial art-to-spec. I don't think they're especially threatening to anybody: if your job can be genuinely displaced by a stochastic parrot, it wasn't much of a job, and you'll probably become a parrot-whisperer.
You seem misinformed about some of the economics here. For starters, Corrado Gini was just a guy, never an acronym. The collective will to revolt, to the extent that it's driven by economic (rather than cultural or political) factors at all, has less to do with relative income or wealth disparity and more to do with the absolute poverty and despair of the poorest, which is fairly easy for a rich country like the US to fend off by handing out subsidies, with or without totalitarianism hard or soft. Pretty much every long-lived regime in the history of the world has had nearly all its wealth in very few hands. Now, you could argue the US is exceptional in all kinds of ways, but Red China just isn't a good fit for an informative analogy.
I went shooting for the first time with some buddies back in July 2019. I remember wondering how people could get so passionate about such a stupid redneck activity that was rendered totally obsolete by the benevolent power of policemen and governments.
What a difference 8 months can make.
The "rednecks" sure seem passionate about murdering things! I don't share the fascination myself, so I admit I don't understand it. What's actually fun about peppering objects (and living creatures) with high-speed projectiles? Do you just like feeling destructive? Is it conspicuous consumption—showing off the fact that you've got enough money to afford gun collections?
I can't speak for anyone else, but I'll say this. I killed several rabbits to keep them out of my garden and I shot a deer once for the meat. I'd do it again, but I didn't particularly enjoy the actual shooting of the deer. I was very pleased it was a humane kill, and I think that was a more humane way to get meat than buying it from the grocery store, given what I know about factory farming. I very much enjoy fishing.
Most of my firearms training is centered around tactical stuff, which is very fun, and a skill that I hope and pray never comes in handy.
Forgive me if I don't quite believe you, Handwaving Freakoutery. You wouldn't be having *fun* playacting at scenarios where you get to kill people, if you didn't relish the thought of getting to do it for real at some point. Does that sound reductive of me? Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but otherwise I don't understand the enthusiasm for it.
Fascinating.
How do you feel about FPS video games?
Are you going to answer my implicit question or are you going to try to deflect some more by interrogating me? I'll ask more directly: do you relish the thought of killing people, Handwaving Freakoutery? That's the sort of feeling you might consider being more *honest* about.
I do not relish the thought of killing people. There are many things which are fun to practice that one wouldn't want to do in real life.
Civil war reenacting. Drownproofing. Learning first aid. Playing Risk or Axis and Allies.
You've never shot a nerf dart gun before? Do you think everyone who ever bought Grand Theft Auto is a closet thug and rapist?
You seem to me to be grasping at some very tenuous straws.
I'm not a gamer.
Just to be clear, you're pre-committing to disregard what he tells you, and that's supposed to be an indication that you're worth engaging with in anything other than mockery?
You've already demonstrated that you'd never know.
Acta non verba, I suppose. When one's actions are in direct opposition to one's words, I take both the actions and words less seriously.
My guess is that Brynn doesn't really believe much of her catastrophizing. In true egregore node fashion, she's just repeating the catastrophic screeching from other Twitter drones, for that sweet sweet social media clout.
In my brief internet stalking effort I know she's very intelligent and very well paid to do some highly technical stuff in the defense contracting industry. That obviously doesn't eschew egregorical capture, but it does mean she'd at least be someone who was interesting to talk to at a cocktail party.
I think that one could make an argument that very intelligent people, especially people who are very intelligent in a single specific domain, are more vulnerable to egregorical capture.
I don't know if I agree about Brynn being interesting to talk to - I hate being screeched at. But who knows? People act weird on the internet. In real life she may well be a lovely person.
Yes, having more intelligence means being more capable of inventing reasons to justify a position already held.
When did intelligence stop being a conduit for open-mindedness? Or is it that we conflate success of some sort, whether earned or incorrectly given, with intelligence. We have no real idea if she is actually intelligent from her writings. IMO. Maybe she was successful? Maybe not. Maybe she fell up the ladder due to it being the government/government adjacent and there being no where else for her to go. I'm not making claims, just giving ideas.
Anyway, I think education has long enough been mistaken for intelligence. Anyone can follow rules and obtain a degree(s). I'm not sure that explicitly indicates a level of intelligence. Anecdotally, I have come across people who are dumb as a box of rocks, but somehow managed to obtain masters in accounting and earn a CPA. They could barely open a spreadsheet, or tell you the difference between a credit and a debit. (Through my fiancée, I'm an engineer by trade) I would love to see some literature on education vs intelligence. Not sure if it is obtainable with non-garbage data.
The truly intelligent are very very good at coming up with ways to justify their priors.
It depends on what the meaning of the word 'intelligence' is 😏
🗨 We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought. Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. ~~Bertrand Russell
💬 inventing reasons to justify a position already held
Exhibit A. The bored ex-IT Peter guy above, attempting with desperate earnestness to 'out' our evil host ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[Level of self-reflection/awareness: not detected 😒]
"I think that one could make an argument that very intelligent people, especially people who are very intelligent in a single specific domain, are more vulnerable to egregorical capture."
I think it's intelligent authoritarians -- control freaks, schoolmarmism writ large. WHY AREN'T YOU FOLLOWING THE RULES THERE NEED TO BE MORE RULES YOU MUST THINK AND BEHAVE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE RULES
"People act weird on the internet."
Theory: People tend to express themselves more freely and are more contemptuous of social norms/taboos on the internet. It's like being drunk. Getting drunk and going on the internet takes it to the next level.
I think you should read “A Conflict of Visions” by Thomas Sowell, he has, imo, the most complete explanation of what these people think. They think man is unconstrained and can be perfected, bad behaviors fixed. The opposite side has more tragic vision that human nature is unchanging. Pretty much all disagreements boil down to this simple conflict of visions on human nature.
Some smart people think they’re smart enough to finally crack the problem, given how successful they’ve been in other areas. It’s not that they’re necessarily authoritarian, they’re just hopeful that this time will finally be the time when the smart people usher utopia. The closer they feel they are, the more they feel like they have to lose, and the more aggressive they get
"The opposite side has more tragic vision that human nature is unchanging"
This vision has its upsides and its downsides; it's comic as well as tragic. I personally believe that humans are innately capable of behaving unselfishly, and, ironically, can achieve self-actualization through such behaviors (Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid" is a key text for me on this topic). I also think that it's a product of individual volition and can't be successfully reproduced via some external entity's coercion.
"they’re just hopeful that this time will finally be the time when the smart people usher utopia"
Yeah, like Bullwinkle pulling the rabbit out of his hat. "This time for sure!"
thx 4 the Sowell rec
Tangentially but somewhat essentially related, you may also want to check out Kazimierz Dąbrowski on positive vs negative disintegration 👌🙂
"John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory" raises its head again.
"I got that reference!"
She probably is very intelligent and highly educated, and ironically that may contribute to her willingness to drink the Blue-Tribe Kool-aid and her inability to acknowledge the absurdities or negative effects of that ideology. El Gato Malo had an incredibly insightful piece on that paradoxical phenomenon this morning: https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/woke-addiction-drugs-and-cults-are?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android
Either Brynn doesn't believe a word of what she's been spewing, or she's got a Sarah Conner bunker in the Mexican desert filled with machineguns and water.
It could very well be the latter, in which case I hope I bump into her when the transhumanist lizard people's drone army goes to war with the UFOs.
All those video games are PREDICTIVE PROGRAMMING lol
Unlikely. Her background suggests devotional allegiance to an all-powerful and an all-benevolent government. She’s a joiner, not a rebel. Even though it rejected her, Tannehill sees a strong, Progressive federal government as the thin reed protecting her transgender family from the barbarians inhabiting the hinterlands.
great job - feel like I don't read this substack enough...
You note the problem with unregistered guns in this country. It doesn't get that much better if you do go through the hoops to purchase, own and lawfully use guns. And all those scenarios which you eloquently note triggered more (and many first time) gun sales can be boiled down to the fact that the gov't systems we rely upon are fragile at times. Can't count on overwhelmed emergency services and if you don't have another option you're screwed.
It is a semi-crime (or precrime) to simply own guns - in my beloved New Jersey we are warned that when we are transporting guns to the range (the only legal reason to transport them) we need to go from point a to point b. Stop for gas, its a felony, etc. And the laws for things like magazine capacity, ammo types, suppressors, types of stocks on long guns... it all seems designed to trick you into mandatory time in prison for simple mistakes...
And then there is the whole 'duty to retreat' context in neighboring NYC a parking attendant was shot by a robber and managed to disarm and neutralize the robber with the offending weapon. The attendant was initially arrested in his hospital bed for "attempted murder assault and gun possession" (NYPost April 1, 2023 ). Status since changed to "pending investigation"...
Putting people in an impossible position of either being defenseless or on the razor edge of a frivolous felony. "Be your own 911" was laughed at as some prepper, paranoid idea before 2020 - now not so much.
When 911 is applauded and held as heroes for responding and acting at a sprightly 14 minutes, (nothing against them, they did great in context, but this is the reality of the situation) being your own first responder is the only prudent action.
agreed - and in the past few years I have: become a volunteer EMT (our average response time is around 5 mins), developed some skill with handguns and rifles of a few different flavors and have gotten 4 stripes on a blue belt in BJJ. None of these are the answer in and of them selves but I am trying to get better at defending my family and being less of a drain in times of general turmoil.
Live in a city with line of sight to lower & mid Manhattan, so you wouldnt expect it but have seen gov't/ emergency services seriously fray.
On 9/11 lost phone service, public transit for a while. During Hurricane Sandy, we lost transit, electricity, water phones for more than a week. And during Covid surges, saw hospitals going on 'divert' meaning they would accept no new folks - even in the ER.
It doesn't take much. So it is good to have some self reliance. I feel like I know a little but there is much to learn in this area.
"Putting people in an impossible position of either being defenseless or on the razor edge of a frivolous felony."
Exactly this.
Those clamoring for "stricter laws" are mum on how they are to be realistically enforced. The enacting of more unenforceable laws to magically convert people into felons for going about their daily business tends to make even those with innate respect for the law, or who think that laws generally have some social utility, a little bit more jaded and cavalier about the whole business.
Lot of uncharged and unconvicted felons walking around out there, harming nobody. This fact may give the Brynn Tannehills of the world conniptions. To me it just means the laws are stupid.
It is funny that The War on Guns has proven about as successful as The War on Drugs, The War on Iraq or The War on Afghanistan.
Anytime the Government declares war on something since the 1950's it seems to be a good idea to bet on the other side, based on their track record.
+1 War On Poverty
I owned zero guns prior to 2020. Now my wife and I have 12. The kids also love going to my brother's farm and shooting.
Geez, these people are nauseating.
"There is no way to change hearts and minds of Republicans or the courts."
What is this changing "hearts and minds" of the "courts"? There is a word for that, it's called activism. Instead of just understanding you are wrong, period, and then realizing there is a path to change (an amendment) you just want to ram your will down the throats of others. Screw you. I'm sick of these people and their complete lack of self-awareness.
They don’t care about the institutions, or why these laws exist. All they see is the destination they like and the obstacle course in front of them. They’ll say whatever needs to be said to get over today’s obstacle course. This is how activists have always been and always will be. Best thing to do is just ignore them.
It's extremely hypocritical given they constantly whine about alleged "judicial activism" (with little to no proof). I guess I shouldn't expect less. It is just frustrating seeing people lie or be hypocritical so blatantly.
Just the language used is very telling. "Hearts and minds." She's Robert McNamara or John Paul Vann; we proles and our wrong-minded courts are the Vietnamese peasantry. Perhaps the village must be destroyed in order to be saved.
This reminds me of something from Bastiat:
"While mankind tends toward evil, the legislators yearn for good; while mankind advances toward darkness, the legislators are attracted toward virtue. Since they have decided that this is the true state of affairs, they then demand the use of force in order to substitute their own inclinations for those of the human race."
Bastiat identifies a phenomenon here but in my opinion he is underestimating "mankind" and overestimating "legislators." To start with, I think putting them into two distinct and separate baskets constitutes sophistry.
Maybe I should've added more context, but he is being sarcastic here. He's describing the worldview of the "legislators" that believe they can mold humanity like putty.
Can of ammo but when she opens it, it's fruit.
Or maybe a dead fish that has baked in the sun for a day or two?
That's some impressive whining going on there. Hey lady, it's not Republican run towns that have a "gun violence" problem, so of course the Republicans think "more guns" is a good answer to the few random psychos they see.
It is perhaps not surprising that when people are caged like rats in overdense places like Chicago some of them behave like caged rats. We're apes. Supposed to be hanging out with your troop, brachiating, enjoying a banana -- not a mindless drone in an insect colony. Literally developed tools so we could *eat* termites, not *be* them.
I don't think it's actually inherent to cities and city life (though perhaps I've misunderstood what you're getting at) as much as the shitty policies that leave so many people who live in cities in an absolutely hopeless and frequently inescapable position within them. I don't think there is anything inherent in the existence of the structure of "the city" that mandates there be this wretched underclass. But the people who claim to care about helping all seem bound and determined to make certain there is not only no improvement, but an actual increase in the number of wretched.
As someone who has spent much of their life in Appalachia, there are plenty of rural wretches as well. In modern times, wretchdom is bitribal.
The people who claim to want to help with that aren't really helpful there either.
She is rather saying the quiet part out loud, isn't she? "War on Guns" is rather directly a War on the Constitution, now isn't it?
Nice of her to be frank about it, at least.
Or maybe she's a closet White Hat working for the gun industry?
I've got a good deal of experience with the gun industry.
The gun industry isn't really capable of the kind of subversive thinking that would have them place an agitprop agent in the other side, drumming up all the talking points that will get the (previously largely untapped) progressive left market to start thinking about tooling up. It's very traditionalist handshakes and cash transactions (Thanks, Chokepoint) and old-fashioned networking. It's kind of fascinating just how early 20th century style much of the industry still operates when it comes to its business and marketing fundamentals.
Ah. But if we're going to speculate, maybe as a White Hat she isn't working directly for the gun industry but they certainly benefit from massively increased gun sales. There are more angles to The Great Awakening plan than we can imagine and certainly the support for this plan is increased with an armed populace. Just spit balling here but I would not be surprised.
There may or may not be a Great Awakening plan, but even if there is one I seriously doubt Tannehill is part of the overall scheme.
No argument there but it isn't impossible and I'm sure that in the long run there will be real surprises as to closet White Hats. Lots of speculation on DeSanctimonious, for example. Just hope there aren't too many on the Black Hat side!
All good except for one point at the end. "When transhumanists invent immortality for the rich" is mistaken in two ways. It will not be immortality, it will be indefinite lifespan. ("Biological immortality" is okay because it doesn't imply invulnerability.) The other thing is that, like every technology, it will start "for the rich" (rich globally or by US standards?) and quickly get cheaper. Like automobiles, computers, and cell phones were for "rich" but now they aren't.
"Indefinite lifespan for the poor" will not happen. There's not enough space on the planet. Which means it will be confined to the rich, which means there will be a war.
The spice must flow.
I'm not going to convince you otherwise in a short comment. Please take a look at ourworldindata or Humanprogress.org. Population growth has been slowing since 1968. It has almost stopped growing in the western world and even the UN projects global population to peak and then fall by the end of this century. Resources are more abundant than ever. You won't believe that but check out the resource abundance index and its methodology at HumanProgress.org. There is plenty of space.
I get all that, but that still doesn't solve the overall problem.
Imagine the resource burden of any given person over the course of their lifetimes. Divide that resource burden into renewables and nonrenewables. Renewable resources burned is not a huge deal as long as the renewable resource production is in balance with renewable resource consumption. Non-renewable resource burden is a huge deal, but it's finite because it's capped at the end of life of the person in question.
Now extend the lifespan to infinity. The renewable resource burden continues to be fine, but the nonrenewable burden becomes untenable.
If you want to go back to your population growth analysis, you need to do this. Population growth is a balance between baby making and dying. Back-calculate what the population growth would look like if the dying was eliminated. It's not pretty.
Of course people are more than “resource burdens,” even immortal ones.
Maybe instead of “immortality for the rich” you mean immortality for as long as one can be productive?
First, I have done the calculation of the effect of life extension on population growth, or rather biodemographer Jay Ohlshansky has done it, as have Leonid and Natalia Gavrilov, and I've reported it. (See article starting on p.19 here: https://www.alcor.org/cryonics-magazine-2023/)
"The bottom line is, is that if we achieved immortality today, the growth rate of the population would be less than what we observed during the post-World War II baby boom." Think of it this way: The extension of lifespan is the constant in the equation. The fertility rate is the exponent. At the extreme, if literally no one ever died, if no one had children the population would gradually decline due to murder, suicide, accidents, etc. Lifespan makes far less difference than number of children. So, it's a very weak reason to oppose life extension.
I find the distinction between renewable and non-renewable energy sources highly dubious. Solar is not renewable. The sun will eventually burn out, so it's already a matter of "how long" not a difference in kind. Further, solar uses rare earth minerals which are very much not renewable. Nuclear fission -- and fusion even more so -- have sufficient fuel available that it's practically endless.
From my article: "Biodemographers Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova conducted a sophisticated analysis of the effects of longer lifespans on total population. Using Swedish demographic data due to its detail and history, they showed that population effects would be minimal to modest, depending on the specific scenario. Their starting point was a 2005 population of 9 million. Without any intervention, population would fall by one-third by 2105. In “Demographic Consequences of Defeating Aging” [Gavrilov & Gavrilova, 2010], the researchers consider four main scenarios:
1. Negligible senescence after age 60. Median lifespan increases from 84 to 134 years for men and from 88 to 180 years for women but after 100 years the Swedish population would increase by only 22%.
2. Negligible senescence for 10% of the population. Population declines by 28%.
3. Negligible senescence for 10% of the population with growing acceptance leading to 1% added to the negligible senescence group each year and the last 5% refusing these technologies. Instead of a decline from 9 million to 6 million by 210, the population would decline to about 7.9 million. Population declines by 13.5%."
It's not as much about space as it is logistics.
Eventually all the poor are going to be packed into containers bound for the Offworld Colonies.
Right! Just like nuclear power and moon rockets and flying cars!
I love living in the future. We have all the cool stuff.
The first attracts government intervention like nothing else, the later two have to contend with Earth's rather high gravity. The progression is probably more accurately characterized as Government to Rich People to Common Man. Rockets are still transitioning from Government to Rich People. Given the energies involved Rockets may never make the last transition. Flying cars never made sense with current technologies. There's just too much power required to make them really efficient. If you read flying car as Helicopter you'll realize that they're also in the Rich People phase while being somewhat readily available to Common Men for a fee. Rockets will probably see a similar end state.
Most tech will eventually make that progression, but it does take time and markets to make it happen.
This is a Whig History view of technological progress, which conveniently forgets the rich tapestry of dead ends and broken dreams that the historical record can provide a less ideologically committed student. Cheers!
How dismissive.
Where do I say there are no dead ends? Reality is nuanced. New developments often open up new opportunities. Often the dead ends don't stay dead. Lessons are learned from them and new things come out. The state of the art is still advancing and speaking as if some things will never happen is short sighted at best.
"Short sighted" is staring all day into the imaginary future and never giving more than a cursory glance at the actual past. Many things have been confidently predicted that have never come to pass. "Most tech will eventually make that progression" is a fool's credo.
https://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm
Nuclear costs about four times as much as it should, in the USA. South Korea (until very recently) and a couple of other places have built nuclear vastly cheaper than in the US. Nuclear is hugely over regulated, using absurd approaches like ALARA.
Interesting. I have one friend in California (I'm a Brit, in France). He & his wife are extremely liberal. I was surprised when I visited him last year, to learn that he'd just bought a handgun
Lots of blue folks making their way into what has traditionally been a very red space, over the last couple of years. Fantastic. Bring 'em on. It means they're starting to get it even if their elected officials still lack even a semblance of a clue.
I am a firearms instructor in Texas, and I have seen more first time gun owners in the last two years than ever before.
netflix showed us transhumanist rich people immortality and it looked as bleak as it sounds (though my wife didn’t complain too much about a half naked joel kinneman through most of it).
Wait, what? You're a gun nut because of AI and transhumanism? Like, you actually think that's a real threat, but a threat that gun ownership somehow mitigates? Wow. That's very Goldilocks!
I guess I must have misinterpreted that Moloch post. I thought you were pointing out how not-really-serious the AI-apocalypse crowd was, with a big blind spot around how people don't need to own guns themselves if they can own governments.
For my part, I've worked with research-grade machine learning. I think that MIRI / AE crowd is very full of themselves and running a scam or two. I'm a gun nut for what I suppose are fairly traditional reasons: mere sci-fi doesn't put me over the threshold like history does. But I do find your takes quite entertaining, and the analyses valuable.
I'm not that worried about AI existential risk, but I do think that the long march towards automation is going to eventually displace so many people that the economy is going to flip upside down and the GINI gaps are going to continue to widen, which is always a solid predictor for nationwide violent revolution.
And the numbers on that aren't great even if you didn't throw AI and undying immortal Transhumanist methuselahs into the mix.
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical
Well that's reasonable, although I suppose one could make comparisons with other polities having both much higher Gini coefficients and also the social stability that comes from deeply entrenched regimes. I still maintain it's less about who has the guns and more about who has the organization. Long-term survival is always a team sport.
The key point I would make about the kind of jobs that "AI" can displace, is that they're largely bullshit placeholder jobs that get handed out to rich kids. I imagine that these kids can be bribed and otherwise placated. The physical robots that can replace lower-class jobs aren't really working out: diminishing returns.
Not sure how the methuseloids are supposed to change the balance. Doesn't the ownership class already keep it in the family? But the Kissingers of the world are pretty gross, vampirism and all that. Spicy sprinkles for the apocalyptic narratives, at least.
In order to have an entrenched regime with a high GINI that doesn't experience revolution, you have to be ready and willing to Tiananmen Square your people regularly.
I'm with you on GPT displacing the middle managers. That definitely seems to be the implication. Many of the blue collar (strength based) jobs already got automated, and the current freakout is just that they're automating a different character sheet stat. You might enjoy this one:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/modeling-the-socioeconomic-future
Hmm. Most of the 20th-century middle manager jobs have been gradually automated away with the advent of modern information technology, and that has little to do with "AI". This current crop of generative models (including GPT) are just incremental improvements on search engines, natural language "expert systems", and commercial art-to-spec. I don't think they're especially threatening to anybody: if your job can be genuinely displaced by a stochastic parrot, it wasn't much of a job, and you'll probably become a parrot-whisperer.
You seem misinformed about some of the economics here. For starters, Corrado Gini was just a guy, never an acronym. The collective will to revolt, to the extent that it's driven by economic (rather than cultural or political) factors at all, has less to do with relative income or wealth disparity and more to do with the absolute poverty and despair of the poorest, which is fairly easy for a rich country like the US to fend off by handing out subsidies, with or without totalitarianism hard or soft. Pretty much every long-lived regime in the history of the world has had nearly all its wealth in very few hands. Now, you could argue the US is exceptional in all kinds of ways, but Red China just isn't a good fit for an informative analogy.
https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1645878160087564294
"Exhibit A."