Interesting Links for 08-08-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Teenage girls are being raped by several boys during their boyfriends' gang initiation

(tags:UK gangs rape )

2. The Dangerous Ideas of "Longtermism" and "Existential Risk"

(tags:morality transhumanism )

3. Genesis: an interpreted, Turing-complete Paleo-Hebrew programming language

(tags:programming Jews funny )

4. Humanities scholarship labor crisis: How the infrastructure of research is falling apart.

(tags:academia Doom research )

5. Why does the Bank of England appear to be ignoring its mandate?

(tags:economics Doom UK viaDanielDWilliam )

6. The terrible, awful, no-good morality of Thomas the Tank Engine

(tags:morality children stories )

7. How the Conservatives are going to crash the UK's most profitable export industry

(tags:uk art Education academia entertainment )

8. Tax cuts for the rich lead to higher income inequality in both the short- and medium-term with no significant effect on economic growth or unemployment

(tags:tax inequality economics )

9. Finland & Croatia Test Digital Passports

(tags:passport finland croatia )

10. Spain orders public places set air conditioning no lower than 27 degrees Celsius

(tags:spain electricity temperature weather )

Comments

[nancylebov]

#2. Seems fairly sound, though it fails to mention pushback against longtermism from within rationalism and EA.

I would think that one of the strongest arguments against longtermism is that we don't know that much about the future, so building a sounder present is more solidly based in knowledge.

Maybe there's a parallel between getting hypnotized by the future potential of the human or post-human race and getting hypnotized by "luxury space communism".

I've posted that link and my comment at astralcodexten.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-236/comment/8242094

[adrian_turtle]

I knew the daughter of a Welsh coal miner who didn't let her kids watch Thomas back in the 1990s, because she thought it was such a bad influence. I think she was equally concerned with pollution and worker exploitation.

[aldabra]

It's not clear to me that 10-to-the-58 consciousnesses in the pulsing ecstasy of love are additive in the same way that consciousnesses watching their kids die are. (And if they are, I think non-human consciousnesses count too: I've seen binturongs in the pulsing ecstasy of love, and I don't think we should be precluding them surviving long enough to go, er, transursofeline. In fact, the more different kinds of pulsing ecstasy of love we end up with the better, surely?)

Come to that, I think we could possibly simulate the pulsing ecstasy of love of sea snails already; I remember them simulating all the rest of their behaviour by about 1990. Are we? Why not?

There is something unsettlingly incel about this movement. If they could just get themselves some of the pulsating ecstasy of love here perhaps they'd be less keen on burning everything down for everybody else.

[anna_wing]

A change in acceptable summer office wear would help too. Instead of wool or polyester suits, linen ones, safari suits, or guayabera shirts would be both becoming and more appropriate to hot weather for both men and women.