Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Lex Clips" channel.

  1. Is there a way to calculate the scale at which space starts acting like a continuum instead of a discretized set (if that's the right term)? Edit: I should stop writing down hot takes when it's this late, this is exactly what they talked about next. Although, not at a very detailed level, ironically. So a proton is about 10^-15, and the universe is at a resolution of about 10^-100? Sounds plausible that a proton should see this as a continuum. What's the risk that all this is just a function of the computing approach, though?
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  2.  @facejets  Well, I think there's an issue of a qualitative difference rather than a quantitative difference. An infinitely divisible universe is not the same as a discrete-space universe, and honestly, I'm not sure that one is "simpler" than another.
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  3.  @facejets  Well, reality / space, like what they're talking about here, except they're claiming it's discrete.
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  4. "The State wants one big neck, with one big leash around it." Here, I actually agree with Malice. This drive for the petty bureaucrats to prefer consolidation because that helps their mediocre intellects (and let's face it, compared to well-functioning market emergence, every human or inhuman intellect is mediocre) to navigate the complexities of everything a country consists of, that drive to consolidate is naturally oppressive. George Orwell was part of an army that tried to operate in an Anarchic way, though. It didn't work out so well. Does he ever address this?
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  5. "Effective altruism is the McDonald's dollar menu of charity"
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  6. "Tech trumps other forms of communication" The existence of Freedom of the Press in the first amendment alongside Freedom of Speech, is a direct recognition that the framers knew this.
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  7. "Why don't they look more authentic?" Because they're NOT authentic. The system (up until now) for selecting TV talking heads has not selected for authenticity - it has selected for ambition and attention-seeking, and there have been few enough candidates and few enough gatekeepers that the system was easy to corrupt. Exhibit A: Anthony Fauci.
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  8.  @soumyaripan5131  It's remarkable how many people want to lock humanity into its cradle. I suspect it's a matter of light pollution. Supposedly, 80% of the North American population lives in places it's impossible to see more than a handful of stars, each night. I'm not sure how bad it is in Europe -- I suspect, worse.
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  9. So would Einstein be comforted by the fact that, while God plays dice with the universe, Einstein has given us the tools to understand how those dice are loaded?
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  10. @Alexandros K Just curious, did you upvote it? I've gotten the impression recently that YouTube is playing silly games with my account.
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  11. @Alexandros K Huh. Very interesting.
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  12. YouTube should give the USER the ability to filter their own feed. We have a "SafeSearch" switch on Google search. We can mark things Spam (and check our Spam folder to mark things "not spam") in Gmail. There should be a set of setting boxes we can tic saying "no ethnic jokes" or "no Bible verses" in our YouTube feed, if we're feeling thin-skinned about such things appearing there.
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  13. It's interesting to note that "the information war" is being waged against US. Ukraine is winning... hooray?
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  14. Why do you assume that technological change is accelerating? To accelerate, don't you need a larger change, in a smaller unit of time? Look at the time period between 1970 and 2020. We invented the Internet and the Cellphone. That's about it. Look at the time period between 1870 and 1920. We invented radio, automobiles, airplanes, telephones, sound recordings / movies, LOTS of things that changed life dramatically. If you really want to be depressed about how much we've slowed down, consider how much we settled North America in the years after the Transcontinental Railroad, and compare it to the how much we settled the Moon after the Apollo Program.
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  15.  @jinzok  The tide has turned -- we're getting more Mexicans headed south now. The ones we're seeing now are mostly just passing through Mexico, which is why it's so effective when Mexico closes their own borders.
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  16. Mars has a 24.7 hour day. We'll be fine.
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  17. "No system saves you from the individual, from their greed or lust for power" Isn't this the core of the Judeo-Christian story? Transformation, redemption, atonement, at the level of the individual human heart, wrestling with the reality of your sins? It enlists each person to attend to whether they are right with God.
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  18.  @sorenjunkers3834  Thanks for the interaction. Are you a bot?
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  19. "And the nation is behind him" ... According to whom? All regions of the nation?
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  20. "This is a man whose entire history is about cultivating the right opinions at the right time to achieve the right effect" In other words, he has developed the perfect suite of abilities to thrive in the Woke world. This is what emphasizing The Narrative(TM) or Consensus Reality(TM) over the simple truth, gets you.
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  21. "The US has no economic investment in Ukraine" Aside from all that money they owe us thanks to lend/lease.
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  22.  @iddqdHD  Dear sweet summer child, do you think with all their lobbyists, defense contractors actually need something as messy as a WAR to keep their budgets high? Besides, if defense contractors are so all-powerful in terms of budgeting, why isn't the defense budget keeping up with inflation?
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  23.  @tommyjado127  Weird that someone with Malice's preferences would attempt to impose a purely moralistic binary "right / wrong" dichotomy.
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  24. The next most likely explanation (after accident) is the CCP releasing it on their own population to rebalance their demographics, so China doesn't "grow old before it grows rich".
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  25. It's not just a function of the math.... Chaos is increasing -- we see by the shattering cup, that disorder tends to increase. Or by selecting a frame of reference.... At a human scale we actually see things discretely, rather than in some branchial space. Theories don't imply reality, they describe reality.
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  26. "We don't invest in infrastructure or education, because when we try, the money is stolen" Usually by people doing "diversity training", or creating a luxury "experience" for the underachieving children of the rich. Wait, are you talking about the East, or the West?
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  27. "Something unexpected might happen" Say, China invades Taiwan, and the full military might of NATO and Japan (hopefully minus nukes) swings into action against the Russian / Chinese axis.
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  28. "Government forces people who run businesses well to run them poorly, by people who don't run businesses at all." When Lex mentioned "difficult decisions", frequently those decisions are ones where you have to pick winners and losers, and those whose interests are deprecated, object to that. Those decisions are an inevitable part of "running businesses well." Does Malice not consistently insist that anyone whose interests are deprecated in a decision, has an absolute right to remove themselves from the any process where they find themselves on the losing side of any such decision? What is "forcing someone who runs a business well to run a business poorly" other than those on the losing side, attempting to avoid the consequences of those decisions?
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  29. But divorce court sure tries to outdo that, in terms of inflicting pain.
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  30. One way I found to look at Fermat's Last Theorem, was to see it as a delta not as a sum. In other words, it's obvious that the difference between any two consecutive squares, is the set of all odd numbers. Some odd numbers are also squares. So far so good. If you could look at the entire set of all the differences between any two cubes, and demonstrate that for some reason that no cubes could be included in that set, you might then generalize that to any whole-number exponent.
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  31. Ayn Rand, in her life, was a homewrecking s**t -- and this was absolutely consisted with her books. She was an absolute narcissist. Rand's thought is no basis for a stable culture.
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  32. Maxwell wasn't envisioning the electronics we have today. (Though Tesla is another story.) It gets more complex and morally grey; Wernher von Braun WAS envisioning space travel, but the capabilities he generated were put to use for awful ends, before he they were put to work again to reach the Moon. Even those awful ends, though, gave short-term achievable goals that served as stepping stones to long-term beneficial capabilites.
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  33. "You can tax it" Be VERY careful with this point of view. While "the power to tax is the power to destroy", a government also has an existential motivation to incentivize whatever it taxes. This led to the Opium Wars, and Britain's maritime empire.
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  34.  @obgaming101  Saying the EU is particularly free, is getting to be more and more of a joke these days. It's turning into a bureaucratic dictatorship too. No freedom of speech, the right to bear arms is ignored, religion is deprecated, your movements are tracked, you own less and less all the time, and what material wealth exists is controlled and distributed by a set of unaccountable elites according to their own agenda that you have no say in whatsoever. Freedom is great, but the EU doesn't offer that, really. Back in the day, I saw the difference between East and West Germany. I saw the Trabants, I saw the bombed-out churches, I ate the awful food. Trabants weren't quite as bad as electric cars, vegan food isn't quite as bad as what Erfurt and Dresden had to offer, but the new gods the EU would have you kneel and pay homage to are utterly contemptible. I hope the Ukrainians can somehow win their freedom. Real, Bill-of-Rights freedom, where the government admits that rights are inherent to individual people, and any government that does not respect that is illegitimate and can be turfed out of power, with a process in place to do that peacefully and regularly. Unless by some miracle they get a government that can cleverly play the Russians off of the EU in such a way that they can avoid the authoritarian tendencies of either side, though, I don't see that happening. Instead they've got Zelensky, who's willing to fight to the last Ukrainian as long as he's "winning the information war" (waged against US, by the way) on the cover of Vogue.
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  35.  @firasbouhamdan9917  Depends on what part of Ukraine you're from, apparently. Although, this "information war" has been waged against us so thoroughly, I'm not convinced that anything the Zelenskyy government says is true, about anything. If he said "the sky is blue" I'd go outside to check.
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  36.  @firasbouhamdan9917  I'm having trouble telling one corrupt oligarchy from another. What's worse -- actual neo-Nazi brigades, or poisoning journalists? =( It doesn't help when some of Lex's guests gush so much about how Zelenskyy is "winning the information war", after which we see Z on the cover of Vogue. It's enough to make you want to wash your hands of the whole thing.
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  37.  @firasbouhamdan9917  Vogue is a propaganda rag masquerading as a fashion magazine. Teen Vogue is ever worse. There are a lot of Western media outlets that have clearly been captured by radical (probably foreign) interests. Twitter's only the beginning. There is an information war that is being waged AGAINST Americans. Zelenskyy is, unfortunately, our enemy in this. At this point it's gotten so bad, we really need to bring back the House Un-American Activities Committee, as well as the blacklist.
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  38.  @firasbouhamdan9917  An "Information War" is waged by lying to everyone else for your own advantage -- The Ghost of Kiev, Snake Island, etc. Zelenskyy is conducting information war operations against America, and even against his own people. It's clear that he (and especially his allies in the West) will fight to the last Ukrainian, at the risk of destabilizing and even starving a large chunk of the world. I don't like being manipulated, lied to, or handled. People who do that by definition can't be trusted. People who can't be trusted make VERY bad allies.
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  39.  @firasbouhamdan9917  The fact is that footage of the Ghost of Ukraine was generated from a computer game, so yes, that was a lie. If we are to value the political loyalties of the people of a region (e.g., independent Ukraine), then shouldn't we value the fact that the people of the DonBas and Crimea seem to be loyal to Russia and not Ukraine? I've heard that official recognition of those territories as Russian was on the table as terms that would stop the war - less, even, with DonBas simply being independent. It seems that the West is willing for Ukrainians to continue to fight and die, to keep people under the dominion of a country they do not want to be part of. Since this is the whole rationale of Ukraine being independent of Russia, it seems more than a little hypocritical.
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  40.  @firasbouhamdan9917  Supporting a "plausible" claim with obviously false "proof" does not inspire confidence. Exactly the opposite, in fact. I don't like being lied to, plain and simple, and Zelenskyy has been lying to us. I don't trust the people who are his biggest supporters, either. The same American news outlets who are now carrying water for Zelenskyy were talking about the DonBas and Crimea as being basically Russian. It's an admission against interests, which generally makes it more plausible. Similarly, US government officials were talking about Russian offers for peace in exchange for the recognition of Crimea as being Russian, and the DonBas as being an independent buffer state. It seems to me that a neutral buffer state between Russia and everyone else would be a good thing going forward. It bears repeating -- I don't like being lied to, and Zelenskyy's "Information war" involves proven lies targeting the American people, to increase our sympathy for Ukraine on false pretenses. This corrupt strategy is backfiring, and should be abandoned.
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  41.  @firasbouhamdan9917  I think geography is going to determine whether Ukraine is a buffer state or not -- but I was referring to an independent DonBas. If Ukraine is insisting that it needs to be independent from Russia because it wants to be independent, but insists that DonBas and Crimea must not be independent of Ukraine despite the fact that DonBas and Crimea want to be independent of Ukraine, do they have any real moral standing? You're insisting that Zelenskyy be believed without presenting any examples supporting his credibility, and the examples I provided calling that credibility into question were not effectively answered. If Zelenskyy's credibility is to be re-established (big IF, at this point), you're probably not the one to do it.
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  42.  @firasbouhamdan9917  If the people of a place want to be independent, shouldn't they be? If not, what rationale does Ukraine have, for its own independence? Ukraine wasn't a state for several centuries. Crimea wasn't part of Ukraine when it was. If you're arguing that the status quo must never change, why was it a good thing when Ukraine got its independence from Russia in the first place? I'm not saying that Putin is a great guy. I'm just saying that Zelenskyy isn't either. I'm trying to decide whether I should support my tax money (tens of billions of it) going to Ukraine, and risking nuclear war, for something that looks like a civil war in a leper colony. I'm also saying that I can't trust anything Zelenskyy says, thanks in no small part to people like Kotkin gushing about his "information war". You're not being terribly persuasive either. Best thing here may be for us to just ignore them and let them work out their own damnation.
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  43.  @firasbouhamdan9917  If Ukrainians in other regions have a say in whether DonBas is independent or not, why wouldn't Putin have a say in whether Ukraine is independent or not? You're gaslighting at this point.
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  44.  @firasbouhamdan9917  Feel free to bring that up when the Chechnya question comes up again -- although as far as I understand the history of the Caucasus, they would all be terribly disappointed if the fighting ever had to stop. Back to the Ukraine, though - by what rationale does Ukraine have to be independent of Russia, if DonBas and Crimea cannot be independent of Ukraine?
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  45.  @firasbouhamdan9917  You're trying to change the subject -- the actual shooting war in Ukraine is far more urgent than the situation in Chechnya. I don't think that Ukraine's position -- that it must be independent, but Crimea and DonBas must not be, and therefore war must continue -- is morally consistent or defensible.
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  46.  @firasbouhamdan9917  According to the principle that places that want to be independent should be independent, sure. How in the world do you defend your own position, that Ukraine can tyrannize Crimea and DonBas (and risk plunging the world into nuclear war while they're at it)?
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  47.  @firasbouhamdan9917  Status quo back in the 1990s was the USSR. If claiming "status quo" to some arbitrary time in the past is valid, that justifies Putin conquering just about all of his neighbors. Sorry, doesn't work as a justification.
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  48.  @firasbouhamdan9917  Ukraine was indeed one of the republics of the USSR. You're not old enough to remember that, are you. It was part of the Russian Empire before that, and it (or portions of it, anyway) was a part of Poland-Lithuania, before that. Crimea was not a part of Ukraine, but Ukraine was part of Russia, when Catherine the Great (no doubt inspired by toxic masculinity as Boris Johnson so brilliantly asserted) took Crimea from the old Hordes and made it part of the Russian Empire. This is why going back to some arbitrary point in the past just isn't worth it. Anyone can point to a different part of the past where something else was true. The fact remains -- Ukraine has exactly the same right to insist that DonBas and Crimea are part of Ukraine, that Russia has to insist that Ukraine is part of Russia. If the price of a peace that respect the will of Ukrainians to be independent of Russia, is respecting the will of DonBas and Crimea to be independent of Ukraine, there's no moral excuse to turn down that offer.
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  49.  @firasbouhamdan9917  So how long do you think Europe will be able to survive without Russian oil and gas?
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  50.  @firasbouhamdan9917  It's crushing German industry and could lead to people freezing to death this winter. First you'll fight to the last Ukrainian, now you'll let Germans freeze (not to mention, the Africans who will starve because of the grain and fertilizer disruptions.) Has anyone else on your side ever turned to you and said, "Hans, are we the baddies?"
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