Man… This one has lived rent free in my mind for almost thirty years. I had to read this and other German tales in German class.

I am so in love with Notesnook. It’s been about a week and I fell hard. Great UI. Encrypted. Cross platform. Loads quickly. I wish markdown was native and not a shortcut though.

I know a northerner who is virulently an anti-monarchist. His whole family is.

Unschooling and by extension, the democratically run Free Schools come to mind.

US manufacturing was dominant through the thirties and forties. It really shone in the 40s under a war time economy. It was a sleeping giant and the world knew it. Pennsylvania outputted more steel than Japan and Germany combined. Audacious goals set by President Roosevelt were mocked by Hitler as audacious Hollywood goals. The US easily surpassed these goals.

It was an amazing display of competence. The only other countries to match the intensity of growth would the USSR during the five year plan and the PRC during the eighties. But both of them were starting from an agricultural economy. The USSR never reached the American manufacturing peak and China has surpassed.

The unprecendent dominance is due in no small part because the rivals needed to rebuild. But under representing America’s position with regards to labor, capital, resources and state coordinated mobilization would be a serious error.

I’m gonna answer from the perspective of someone who believes the world is a better place when it is led by America without reverting to a thin jingoist ideology. These aren’t my views, but a steel man of someone I would disagree with.

Why does America feel the need to control the world?

In the wake of the world wars, we realized that the world is best off with one power to lead the world. No powers and multiple powers will result in another world war. We were the best position to take that role after WW2 and resist the Soviet union’s attempt to gaining that position.

Do what they say?

Many of these countries don’t do what America says because America says it. Heck, many go against what we say. But they believe in a better world and when they remember that, they undtand that America is putting themselves in the most danger by clearing that path for the rest of the free world.

Instead of taking care of their own problems at home?

The problems we have at home are pretty limited. Most of these problems are born out of laziness. But we keep the criminals in check both at home and abroad.

When did the US become police officer of the world and enforcer?

If we didn’t step up after ww2, the world would have slipped into another world war or deem communism run rampant.

I guess my question is who gave the Americans the right?

The civilized world at the end of WW2. And under our leadership, the world is safer and healthier for it.

I say this as an American. But would not the world be a better place if we just minded our own business and quit nation building and stoking non existant fires?

From communism to extreme religious views, we are the only ones who are capable and willing to step up and protect the world against that. It’s a difficult and thankless job.

I’m not feeding them, the store is. My local worker owned grocery store doesn’t accept credit cards. Not my favorite, but I don’t pay cash back prices when I shop there.

That’s why you should never use cash. You’re paying cash back prices and getting none of the cash back.

Americans love salad almost as much as they love talking about rhubarb.

Its silly that you can see one of the unifying concept that holds the Republican coalition together, but liberal one.

The Democratic gerentocracy embodies the problems of the Democrats. Hell, there’s a significant portion of the Democratic party that are just conservatives now who are disproportionately represented in the leadership. But the thing that holds them together is maintaining power.

This means they don’t fight if they deem the fallout risk to be too high. They bend a knee in symbolic support and then through all the symbolism and say it was the young progressive who poison them.

Choosing not to fight, let’s them maintain power. Most of their fight is boxing out other voices from gaining power within their coalition. But when the shit hits the fan, and the Republicans have gained control, the Democrats cry uncle, blame the progressives, and turn to us and ask us, “Who else are you going to vote for?”

This comment is an old conservative rant.

“Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more “rational” than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man’s thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That’s easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?”
- Ann Coulter

This dude got me.

Sadly it’s been a week. I’ve read this several times as closely as I could and tried to understand where my apprehension lies. I spent some time with the wiki link to counterfactuals and wanted to really dedicate more time doing so, but wasn’t able to dedicate the time to it.

So, again, to restart the conversation, I wonder if, I have two separate confusions. The first, if consciousness is a property that is weakly emergent in brains, what is a brain?

I think I have a hard time buying that consciousness is a property of a brain and not mind. And I get that you are not trying to prove that it does. I’m far more interested in why, in the face of minimal support, we would align ourselves with weak emergence over strong emergence.

I have a lingering second problem. What is a model? In that wiki link, it has a three layer model: association, intervention, and counterfactuals. I would be hard pressed to consider the first two layers as sufficient for bing considered a model. But I think the three layer model doesn’t, as far as I’ve read, address intention, causal connection, or first order simulation. I think I’m hard pressed to see a collection of cells, neuron or otherwise, doing more than creating a response to a condition.

American malls were inspired by the town square, if I remember correctly

Instead of measuring out your pasta, have you considered switching to Linux?

Shut up and calculate!

Mamet went full MAGA

Increase the density of air around them by ten of fifteen percent. If they begin to lie, reduce it to like 85% of normal.

I continue to be this old.