sophia-epistemia

[sophia-epistemia]

I feel like leftists who rush to dunk on Paul Erlich should probably show a little more humility. Like, there’s two historical events/processes that played out from the 70s-90s that consequently invalidated his predictions of imminent mass famine. Firstly, a new scientific advance in the Green Revolution unlocked even greater crop yields than had already been unlocked by the fertilizer revolution of the late 19th and early 20th century. Hurrah for agribusiness.

Secondly, the WTO, NAFTA, and other free trade agreements allowed a globalization of agricultural surplus such that it no longer really matters that there are many countries with enormous populations that do not (and probably could never) feed their populations using solely their own land and water. The 100 million citizens of Egypt can be fed in part by agricultural surpluses from the US, Russia, Brazil, and the Netherlands, such that the Egyptians even have a little bit of farmland left over to grow non-food crops like cotton instead of wheat. Hurrah for neoliberalism. (The farmers of the Third World had to take one for the team).

A lot of leftists seem like they’re doing an endzone dance as if they correctly predicted how and why Erlich would be wrong, even though it was only through massive defeat of the Left and environmentalism that this was possible. It’s basically a happy accident.

And the fact that the Earth’s population growth is slowing on its own (without coercive population control measures) is also a happy accident. None of you predicted this or proposed this. It just kinda happened on its own.

Furthermore, the overpopulation problem is still not solved. The food supply for 11 billion humans may be secure (maybe, for now), but there’s plenty of other things humans need and want that it’s difficult to imagine all 11 billion can have without turning every inch of the Earth’s surface into strip mines and plantations. Providing electricity, decent housing, sanitation, roads, meat, greasy junk food, phones and computers, and home appliances for every human on Earth is going to require unprecedented resource extraction and land cultivation, in a world already suffering massively due to existing extraction and cultivation.

As of 2025, it’s pointless to focus on population control as a means of saving the environment because world population growth is already slowing down and expected to plateau in the next half-century. And the people you’d be most able to reach with population planning rhetoric and policies are already the least-fertile populations in the world anyway, so the effect would be minimal.

But if something had been done in the early 1970s. If, perhaps, non-coercive but very aggressive population planning policies had been pursued, providing free condoms and birth control to the whole world for example. If the slow-down in population growth had started earlier and been faster, such that the world’s population peaked at only 8 billion instead; the world would be immeasurably better off. All of the existing environmental problems would be less severe, less urgent, and we’d be able to solve them with fewer costs to ourselves.

And I see no acknowledgement of that at all from the sneering critics of Erlich who act like racism is the only reason anyone would ever have been concerned about overpopulation. A pro-life conservative slander.

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abortion bans were never about reducing the amount of abortions. if they truly wanted to reduce the amount of abortions, the pro-lifers would have been all over providing sex ed and birth control things, but they are not consequentialists.

So something you often hear as a criticism - or praise depending on the context - of the Republican factions is their loyalty, of how much they "shut up and march" even when sidelined in order to win. I won't get into the reality of that (they are stronger relative to Dems, but that is more about Dems just faceplanting than them being super amazing at this), instead I want to highlight the pro-life faction for a second.

A probably-effective move of the Trump campaign was to pretty much shove the pro-lifers in the closet. Trump pledged to never support an abortion ban, he pledged to subsidize IVF for all Americans, he said "this is a state's rights issue, they got that, we are done now". And the pro-life faction pretty much didn't budge an inch in support, they took it all on the chin, that much is true. The question is, how smart is this to do?

I think a lot of the criticism is kind of misguided. It is essentially saying "why aren't you stupid?" It is really common for a faction's "motte" demands to be politically popular and perhaps sustainable, but their "bailey" demands to be outside the overton window. If they push for them it just won't work. A smart faction knows when it is time to double down on defense instead of going on offense. Abortion seems clearly in that camp in the US - people are gonna get used to some states not having abortions while their state does. In a certain sense the pro-life faction was really smart.

But not that smart! Because, well, let's see what their win got them:

Oh. Turns out people really, really like abortions, and if you make them illegal in "some states" they will go elsewhere or smuggle in pills. Maybe should have thought of that, before, well before being pro-life? But anyway, pro-lifers generally believe in their stance - it isn't an excuse to Hate Women or w/e, they really, truly think that millions of babies are being murdered. And all they accomplished was increasing the murder rate slightly. They failed! Completely, totally. They haven't won an inch.

Now obviously that is "from a certain point of view", and ofc you can see this as a Step 1. But I think a lot of pro-life people won't really see it that way - people just really suck at the math of policy efficacy. By no means is this unique to their faction, everyone confuses the symbolic and the real. Many will say "well it isn't happening next to me" and consider that a win. Others won't, of course - and tension will eventually emerge over this, now that Trump is in power we are gonna see! But still, it is interesting how often people in politics just think they are winning, and how much that shapes coalitional dynamics.

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I'm not, generally speaking, a fan of punishment as a solution to social problems. Punishment is often overly harsh, ineffective as a deterrent, and doesn't solve the actual problem. The punitive mentality is more focused on making sure the "bad guys" "don't get away with it" than on actually solving the problem.

But I get a lot more worried when people talk about "alternatives to punishment", or when they support their proposed solutions because "it's not punishment."

Because what that means, in practice, is "I'm conceptualizing this form of coercive control as 'not punishment,' and therefore not subjecting it to the rigor, due process, or evidentiary standards of punishment."

The U.S. loves punishment. It's one of our favorite national pastimes. But we do have, both legally and culturally, some limitations on punishment, at least in theory. Punishment isn't supposed to be "cruel and unusual." It's not supposed to be inflicted without "due process of law." You're supposed to be convicted by a jury of your peers.

But if you call it "not punishment," none of that matters!

You can force people to register under a law that didn't exist when they committed their crimes, because it's "administrative," not punitive.

You can subject disabled people to shocks similar to a cattle prod -- which would surely be cruel and unusual punishment -- but it's okay, because it's not "punishment," it's a "treatment" called an "aversive" (that's therapist for "punishment").

You can have people locked up and forcibly drugged solely because they can't afford housing, but it's okay, because it's "help," not "punishment."

Police can kill people in cold blood -- judge, jury, and executioner -- and it's fine, because it's "self-defense," not "punishment," even if they argue after the fact that the victim "deserved it."

It's also a matter of cultural attitudes. If you said "The punishment for trespassing should be life in prison," or "The punishment for loitering should be permanent loss of the right to control one's body, money, or living space," or "The punishment for turnstile-jumping should be lifelong forced ingestion of drugs that numb basic cognitive functions," most people would think this was horrific, much too harsh a punishment for a relatively minor crime.

But if you change it to "Instead of jailing and punishing unhoused people with mental health issues, we should respond to their minor crimes by Getting Them Help, like institutionalization, conservatorship, or outpatient commitment," people now think this is completely reasonable.

Even being the victim of a crime can get someone not-punished far more severely than the perpetrators are "punished." People might serve jail time for financial fraud, but not usually a life sentence. Being the victim of financial fraud, however, can lead to a life sentence of institutionalization -- which fraud investigators have cited as a barrier to getting victims to report fraud. I personally know of multiple disabled young adults who were afraid to report being the victim of sexual assault or other kinds of assault because they knew that if they reported it, the perpetrator might or might not face some kind of punishment, but they would definitely face some type of "not-punishment" coercive control, like forced therapy, forced drugging, supervision, or having to leave school.

You want a society with less punishment? Me too. But only if you acknowledge that "punishment" includes all forms of coercive control. If you do something to someone against their will, if you restrict someone from their right to live as they choose, that's a punishment, regardless of whether you call it that.

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"delusions of reference" ah! pleased to see they've begun to catalog the symptoms of allism

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i do think it would be very funny to make a dni page and just slap some classic shock images on it. dni if you’re not familiar with goatse. dni if you’ve never seen tubgirl

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that's not proving too much, that's making the point. argumate is completely Correct here.

trouble is you can't shut down the cults on the basis of false advertising without also shutting down all the religions who have already subverted our major institutions into giving them a free pass.

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I think ChatGPT is going to end up writing a lot of sermons.

I have two cousins whole are pastors, and they're diligent about planning out sermon series, and writing new sermons every Sunday, being diligent in their work, spending the necessary time preparing, etc.

I imagine that, as with most professions, not all pastors will be quite so diligent. Sermon plagiarism is already a serious issue, at least, per my cousins, a problem mostly because it's dishonest misrepresentation of someone who is supposed to be a spiritual leader.

So as with academia, there are probably varying levels of how you'd use AI to write a sermon. Maybe you're just asking ChatGPT some questions because it's "faster" than looking something up yourself. Maybe you're not AI-literate, so you're taking what it says at face value, accepting its interpretations of scripture.

Or maybe you're just asking for the AI to write a whole sermon for you, because that saves you ten hours or writing, study, and reflection.

So I think we can agree that this is going to happen in some fraction of America's 300,000 churches, and that it would be extremely difficult to spot, especially for the more transient sermons that aren't put up online, that only exist in the moments they're spoken.

I'm an atheist, but there's something poetic about it, the sum total of human conversation digitally devoured, the word of God placed into the machine, interpreted and spat back out, having at least some small amount of influence on the way people actually live, how they relate to their faith.

I need to talk to my cousins about it, but I would guess they don't have my same detatched interest in the topic.

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zero planck times.

how old does a claim to the land have to be before revanchism stops being leftist and starts being fascist?

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we will fight their ethnic cleansing by killing all of them or deporting them

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The Culture. obviously. those options are "die horribly of a trivially curable infection", "normie life in an under-wordlbuilt '60s liberal tolerance morality tale" (unless it's modern trek and fuck that lol), and "live forever in transhumanistan" (yeah ino The Culture has a social norm against immortality; so what, real life has one against trannies and yet here i am)

At a time and location of your choosing in that setting, you live as an average person. (Yes, Trekkies can be in Starfleet if they wish.) Tag and comment with your specific responses.

This question is brought to you by discussion in my family group chat, which in turn was incited by watercooler discourse in an office somewhere. The watercooler answers were utterly fascinating to me, and now I'm wondering what my neargroup thinks. The specific answers in the poll above were chosen based on a review of various Discords' responses.

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I’m reading Dreadnought

I am so fucking tired of stories that go “what if the Justice League were self-important assholes?”

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idk where it was but i remember reading an excerpt of something about how child victims of sexual assault often come up with strategies to protect themselves (mentally or physically) as well as protect one another, despite often being depicted as helpless objects that have things done to them with no reaction. & then i think about how widely accepted it was in my middle + high schools that you could not depend on the counselors for jack shit, especially if you were a mentally ill kid. its just aggravating how children are never seen as active subjects. children are seen as deserving of protection, but you are never allowed to help yourself. you must wait for an adult to decide you are worthy of help, and you only get what help they decide you need. in middle school i got in trouble for skipping math class to have panic attacks in the bathroom. no one asked why i had panic attacks, they just reprimanded me for not going to the counselor (they also did not ask why i, a child with social anxiety, felt safer alone than with an adult i did not know or trust). so often i see kids who are struggling with bullying get told "tell an adult!" with 0 acknowledgement of how the adults in their life may be completely unhelpful or actively dangerous, and how kids are often extremely aware of this dynamic. me and my friends were a mentally ill children who were abused but not in the exact ways which are acknowledged as dangerous abuse (and even if they were, many children do not want to risk being put in the system for various reasons) and we had to share knowledge of the adults in our lives to protect ourselves and each other. this is all very rambly but i just hate how children's knowledge and strategies for survival are not recognized. i hate how children have a right to safety but only if its an adult doing the saving- because if they take matters into their own hands they are punished for it. safety, whether intentionally or not, can end up being another way for adults to exert control over children's actions & deny their autonomy because children are still seen as objects to be managed by adults instead of people in their own right

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HAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAAAAAAA

you can't buy comedy like this. sss tier. out of the league. amazing

if trump made $25B off his meme coin then that’s like. a 400% increase in his net worth. forbes has him at $6.7B. and that’s probably an overestimate because his books are notoriously difficult to make sense of and probably cooked anyway.

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there’s an extremely funny path to a third term for Donald Trump as president—

In 2028, two Trump loyalists run for president and vice president

Meanwhile, Trump runs for the house of representatives in a safe republican district

They all win their races

On January 3, 2029, the 120th Congress of the United States convenes and elects Donald Trump as Speaker of the House of Representatives

On January 20, 2029, the new president and vice president are sworn in

As his first official act, the president resigns, upon which the newly sworn in vice president becomes president, and the vice presidency becomes vacant

As his first official act, the new president also resigns

Upon the resignation of the president with a vacant vice presidency, the presidency passes along the line of succession established by the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, namely to the Speaker of the House, namely, Donald Trump

While Trump is barred by the 22nd amendment from being elected president more than twice, in this scenario he was never elected president.

It could also go like this

As his first official act the new vice president resigns.

The new president nominates Donald Trump as replacement and majorities in both houses of congress confirm him

The new president resigns

This is how Ford became president without being elected to either that office or the vice presidency. This does not require Trump to be elected to the House but instead he needs a majority in the Senate, which is harder to ensure.

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systems such as corporations or governments, which produce incentives to flatten humanity in order to subordinate human beings and simplify planning calculations,

Now, Melt

An essay by Mitigated Chaos Post for Monday, January 20th, 2025 (21,800 words, ~1h49m)

Another blogger's party has lost the election. He has decided to lose weight about it.

Good.

In this essay, I present my most powerful argument for human freedom – human dimensionality – as well as providing a powerful, general-purpose analytical toolset in order to help understand and pursue it.

With this concept, it becomes easier to identify and understand the risks and challenges posed by systems such as corporations or governments, which produce incentives to flatten humanity in order to subordinate human beings and simplify planning calculations, as well as understand the limits of the appropriate use of power.

Do not let the word count deceive you. I have worked hard to provide understandable examples to explain complex concepts, but I am not beholden to any publisher, and there is no page count requirement for me to meet – there is no padding in this essay. You can read the whole thing in under two hours, and it contains as much information as an entire book.

Along the way, I will address some brief criticisms by other bloggers. Rather than engaging in long-form discourse based on their larger bodies of work, I will be using these brief criticisms to help guide the broader discussion of more general issues. (If you wish to know their specific opinions, please see their own blogs.)

Due to the extreme length of this essay, for discussion and reblogging, please use this post.

The main essay can be read over at @timac-extraversal.