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Wrong. This is essentially the context in which we still live today though we’ve secularized substantially over the past centuries. But Rome was on the path to Christianity at this time and later converted, so this is a very common way to understand things. Generally a work is one of a few things: Christian, Jewish, maybe Muslim depending on whom you ask, as it’s also an Abrahamic faith, or Pagan.

To be honest this feels more like you have an axe to grind with Christianity or its dominance, similar to the people pushing for “BCE/CE” over BC/AD. I don’t know why, but don’t expect the rest of the world to carry that cross for you.

You must be on a very old browser, a terminal browser, ladybird, something like that. PEBCAK. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/OES_texture...

They have healthier people going in, obviously. When the average person is approaching being wider than he is tall, all the healthcare spending in the world can do only so much. I have a bunch of family in Europe and have heard way too many of their experiences with waiting lists and overcrowding.

Not sure what the heck you want in terms of validation if not "analysis that supports my point". Are you now criticizing that I've read on this and have data and analysis that agrees? I'm sure if I didn't, you'd come after me for not having that. Double bind sounding ass.

Ahh there it is. I figured you weren't American. Look man, politics sometimes comes up on here. I don't see you materializing whenever that happens to pitch a fit. Since America is the most significant nation, and where most of this site's users live, we can expect that when politics-adjacent topics are posted, American politics will always be at the forefront. You're going to have to get over that. If you have a counterargument, I suggest you present it.

I'd be really interested in seeing the source for this, if it's an open-source project, along with the prompts and some examples. Or other source/prompt examples you know of.

A lot of people seem to have these magic incantations that somehow make LLMs work really well, at the level marketing and investor hype says they do. However, I rarely see that in the real world. I'm not saying this is true for you, but absent vaguely replicable examples that aren't just basic webshit, I find it super hard to believe they're actually this capable.

Isn't that how most disagreements shake out at one level or another, once you strip away enough of the garnish? I am by nature either blunt or an asshole, depending on whom you ask, and may have come across more as the latter here, but the core message is about the same as most disagreements: "I believe my position is right because ABC, your position is wrong because DEF, you should believe mine instead."

I really don't see how anything I wrote was that controversial; he's free to disagree and pursue his own beliefs, obviously. Everything someone says that's not wrapped up in formal logic or statistics is implicitly opinion; the fact that I find repeatedly saying so tedious and ridiculous doesn't mean I'm asserting I am somehow an arbiter of the One True Faith.

We all act as we think best. I can try to change how others think. That's about the start and end of it.

This is a good example of "lying with statistics". You are doing this by implying we are paying more for the same thing. You are then doing more of this by equating healthcare spend to the total welfare state. Europe is still spending a lot of money on healthcare; less than us, but their healthcare is pretty crappy.

Healthcare is one part of the profligate safety net europe has maintained for decades, not the whole thing. Europe has more pensions, more unemployment, more retirement benefits, more childcare, more socialized housing, more of almost every flavor of welfare. They pay for this by shifting the burden of defending themselves to America.

Here's a good and more in-depth analysis: https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/04/europe-military-welfare...

It's a hell of a lot more useful than one graph. Please read it.

Funny how when I specifically share opinions that you specifically dislike, you sling mud about "echoing". Of course, everyone else's opinions are well-founded and of their own mind. Mine, on the other hand, are downloaded straight into my head from a daily Fox News broadcast. You can tell by how my opinions aren't your opinions, and therefore must be those of some Bad Guy or not Real Opinions.

Get a life dawg.

This is a pretty common question that's raised: how can we square this with loving our fellow man?

The short answer is Christianity isn't a utilitarian belief system. While God loves everyone equally, he puts some of us closer together in love: family, friends, neighbors, countrymen. This incurs a greater obligation, plus we ought to love more those who are closer to us.

Sadly, a lot of Christian faiths teach dogma before the underlying reasoning or take a Bible-only approach which I find to be incredibly incomplete. In case your upbringing didn't include much theological reading, I would strongly recommend Civitas Dei and Summa Theologiae; the latter is less explicitly relevant to its definition but probably a better book overall.

Not physical adjacents, no. If your brother lives two thousand miles away you should still focus on him more than your neighbor.

I'm unsure what Vance has to do with this. My belief comes from my religious upbringing and (in this case) Saints Augustine and Aquinas. Vance is not a spiritual leader or theologian of any sort.

I think I absorbed much of this when I was pretty young - I had sort of settled on this way of thinking before ever picking up Civitas Dei - but reading and writing on it during my schooling helped me understand why.

This isn't a russian mentality, this is more of a realpolitik reading of how things work. Don't mistake a positive statement for a normative one.

There was actually a really good article in the FT of all places on this subject: https://www.ft.com/content/37053b2b-ccda-4ce3-a25d-f1d0f82e7...

The fact that the FT is picking this up should tell us something given its typical perspective. There are two big groups of countries in this situation concerned with keeping russia in check: America and the Euros. The former has less of a direct concern but more ability to do something about it; the former have more concerns but less ability. So we settled on a compromise where each country would contribute a proportion of GDP rather than a dollar figure. This is fair-ish; it's still a huge benefit to the euros, but pretty fair. Yet for decades, they have consistently failed to meet their proportional obligations, instead directing those funds to things like "free healthcare".

Other major reasons they can do this include not having debt from having to finance the rebuilding of their continent themselves.

That depends. Generally nation is a big part of how one defines rightly-ordered love. But if, say, I lived near the border, regularly went down to Mexico, had friends or colleagues there, then probably so. but more focused on alleviating their suffering than that of the country or state.

Sure, the world has changed. But rightly-ordered love isn't about geographical layout, it's about the natural order of community and social structure. That has changed but "mosquito nets in zimbabwe" being on the way outer end of a right ordering of love hasn't.

Reducing rightly-ordered love to "cruel nativism" is an incredibly uncharitable representation. I'd urge you to do some reading in comparative religion. Although I'm a Christian, I've found it instructive to spend some time going through other religions' texts, other philosophies, because dismissing them as backward or wrong does nobody any good. Learning more makes my conversations more productive and helps me better understand my own beliefs.

Sure I did. I'm aware his giving isn't just mosquito nets. That doesn't mean I believe the money is being directed correctly.

If your position is "it's his money so none of us should comment", I'd expect equal pushback on people saying "wow I really agree with how he's spending it."

Of course I have. I am well aware that my values are diametrically opposed to it at a first-principles level; I find utilitarianism to be an incredibly hollow worldview that fails on many grounds, not least of which are the teleological (disordered love is no virtue.)

I don't have to argue from the first principles of the EA crowd. Everyone believes in something and I believe they are wrong; your epistemic relativism makes no sense to me. Borderline absurdist.

You have to weigh that against the fact that you are much more able to figure out how to actually do what's needed at levels where you see things firsthand. At least, that's been my experience; it's much more realistic to start a nonprofit that can make a real difference locally, then perhaps scale with time, than it is to found something with a global mission, lacking global context on how things manifest around the world.

More importantly, I'm not a utilitarian, and do not subscribe to "effective altruism" or other utilitarian philosophies. At the end of the day it's Gates' money to do with as he wishes and it's my internet account to argue against that as I wish.

Let's be real here; there is supposed to be a chinese wall between buy and sell sides at the big banks, but I've heard too many stories of that getting circumvented in an unofficial way to believe that's entirely true.

"I do not recall"

The pattern for basically every small nation is "choose of which superpower you wish to be a client." From that patron you get some level of benefit. Not aligning with any either doesn't work (you get attacked) or means you get no benefit (and eventually get pushed into obscurity and instability.)

You can make a lot of complaints about America but we have, looking back on history, been nicer than any other patron. Other good evidence includes the fact that europe is still standing (paying to rebuild) and her extravagant welfare states of the past decades, subsidized largely by American defense spending.

It would be short-termist for Americans or euros to use chinese-made models. Increasing their popularity has an indirect but significant cost in the long term. china "winning AI" should be an unacceptable outcome for America or europe by any means necessary.

This comes down to a question of what one can prove. NNs are necessary not explainable and none of this would have much evidence to show in court.

The law means don’t do what a slow moving regulator can and will prove in court. In this case, the law has no moral valence so I doubt anyone there would feel guilty breaking it. He may mean individuals are using ChatGPT unofficially even if prohibited nominally by management. Such is the case almost everywhere.

You’re mis-framing this as “scaring”. It’s not. I am talking about real risks that inform my choice not to take drugs because the info available tells me MDMA is significantly too risky.

If you’re suggesting marijuana is also unsafe, I strongly agree. Smoking anything is a risk and more importantly THC is shit for your brain, pro schizophrenic, turns people into lazy fattys, etc. I never have nor will I ever touch THC, absent perhaps light usage for pain if I get cancer or something.

Where I live my high school bio and chem classes gave more than enough foundational knowledge to understand this. It’s not actually that complex and all the remaining info is freely available online.

The risk of molly has little to do with other risk factors besides eg interactions. You fail to understand that risk and damage are the sum of all your risks and damages, not the single highest value. Things stack up.

If your assertion is “frying a little piece of their brains is fine”, I think that’s an extraordinarily reckless thing to do. Adults may have the right to do so, but I will not stop telling them that they are doing so, because most abusers are either unaware or minimize and deny so they can feel good about their abuse.

Okay, I looked at Baggott's work a little more. Here are my primary concerns:

1. He's talking his book to a certain extent. This is his life's work and he runs a company in this space (though a B corp) so he will have a bias here. That's fine overall, as it may help balance people unfairly biased against psychedelics, but it's worth remembering. I'm not saying this to impugn his character so much as to point out everyone has biases, and someone in his position likely has strong ones, even if partially-founded.

2. He believes an SSRI alleviates negative symptoms, but we don't know it does more than alleviate the comedown. It appears his endpoint was cognitive performance post-use, not long-term damage that may appear once off the SSRI.

3. This doesn't touch the dopaminergic risks of amphetamines, which are substantial.

A few exploratory bits of research into one potential way to alleviate the acute effects post-administration don't translate to an established method to use this in a remotely-safe fashion.

This is a weirdly defensive answer. I didn't attack you personally, I brought up well-founded risks.

Your suggestions, while interesting, don't remove these risks. Yes, certain types of abuse make it worse: dosing higher, polydrug abuse, hot environments, and dehydration are all ways to damage your brain further. However, use of MDMA in an ideal sense probably still causes some level of damage.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16472832/

2mg/kg dose, so ~160mg for an adult human. More importantly rat to human is usually a 6ish HED factor so that’d be <30mg. In reality metabolism, brain volume, etc all matter but this is not an even remotely safe drug.

This isn't a "purely theoretical exercise", most of those are established mechanisms of amphetamine toxicity. This isn't "listing possible mechanisms", this is sharing salient info of risks of which possible abusers (given the nature of the thread and discussion so far) should be aware.

I'm sure as heck not "ranting out behaviors that would scare a layperson". Most of what I listed is pretty comprehensible with a grasp of high school chem and bio. Most of the information for this is freely available online. The information we have should scare a layman out of use, and probably someone with a greater background, too.

Whatabout-ing with sleep deprivation or similar doesn't make sense to me either. Did I say that was good or healthy? Bad things stack. Your body doesn't keep a record where it says "you've accumulated 10% damage from an un-fun cause like exhaust or sleep deprivation, so now you get to experience 5% damage from a fun cause like molly." That's just a really weird way of thinking about this.

People are within their moral rights to run the risk but I don't understand this defensiveness that it's somehow a good or smart risk to run for the average case of abuse.

I didn't say it was likely to kill you, I said it was unsafe, that harm-reduction methods are wholly inadequate to making it safe, and that users should be aware of that. If people want to give informed consent to run those risks, be my guest, but "people do other unsafe things" 1. ignores that most of those don't directly cause brain damage, and 2. not all risky things are of equal risk, and brain damage is probably higher up than jay walking.

There are a lot of possible mechanisms:

- mitichondrial inhibition

- hyperthermia

- excitotoxicity for DA at least

- hyperthermia speeds up redox cycling of dopamine quinones

- more quinones due to all your dopamine unprotected by vesicles

- metabolic impairment means harder to regenerate NADPH/make glutathione

- probably others I can’t remember at the moment.

You may notice many of these “synergize” in a way that’s particularly bad for the user.

It’s really not worth touching for anyone outside a clinical setting.

Nope. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16472832/

2mg/kg dose, so ~160mg for an adult human. More importantly rat to human is usually a 6ish HED factor so that’d be <30mg. In reality metabolism, brain volume, etc all matter but this is not an even remotely safe drug.

Also taking SSRIs near MDMA administration is one of the worst pieces of what is doubtless intended as harm reduction advice I’ve ever seen. You don’t hand people a recipe for serotonin syndrome because of a small scale rat test or two.