Grokipedia

Musk's mildly-heralded Grokipedia is out as Beta 0.1; we should take a look. As I recall the last Wiki-clone was Justapedia, and that hasn't fared well. Gpedia is a better effort, though.

What is it? Of course, we turn to Wiki to find that it is AI - i.e. Grok - generated, but very clearly based on Wiki. Amusingly, turning to Grokipedia itself produces no results (it also plays badly with archive.is), which throws up the first obvious issue: it is significantly smaller than Wiki, at about 900,000 articles. Wiki still has the article about me (I've just updated it to say I'm retired); Gpedia doesn't, arguably a better choice but this is minor.

Searching for something neutral, I looked at Autun Cathedral (because I'd just come across this) and it seemed achingly familiar... this turned out to be because I'd been through in the summer. Comparing Gpedia with Wiki, Wiki is obviously superiour because it has images; I can't quite imagine how Gpedia has managed to fail in this aspect. The text is a virtual copy of Wiki, down to the error in reference 15 ("Capital: Virtues and Vices. Jean and Alexander Heard Library. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)"). But that's not a problem; Wiki is freely copiable, that's part of the point (though is Gpedia we wonders?). Problem two is the lack of internal links in Gpedia; again, I struggle to understand how they've screwed that one up.

Let's try something more controversial. Was George Floyd "an African American man who was murdered by a white police officer" or was he "an American man with a lengthy criminal record including convictions for armed robbery, drug possession, and theft in Texas from 1997 to 2007". Answer: he was both. You get no prizes for guessing which quote comes from which 'pedia; and note that for purposes of exposition I have only taken a short leading quote from both.

Tip-toeing up to GW, let's look at Global Cooling: G, W. Here the Gpedia text isn't from Wiki; it reads like someone has pushed Grok to do an analysis; it has done passably but the Gpedia text is worse than Wiki's.

Now to look at GW directly. A year or so back Wiki renamed its GW article to Climate Change, because <fashion>, so Gpedia wins by having the content at GW, although bizarrely at an article called Global warming (disambiguation) which can only be because it has picked up on Wiki's Global warming (disambiguation) page for some odd reason. But Gpedia loses by absurdly including minor nonsense about some rap album in the lede. It also loses by lacking detail, and above all by not having easy links to subsidiary articles, which makes following up on ideas much harder. And it lacks images, a major blunder. But as to slant, it is all fine; I had to go down quite a long way to "Surveys of climate scientists indicate that while over 99% of recent peer-reviewed studies endorse human causation as primary, approximately 14% attribute warming roughly equally to human and natural factors, highlighting persistent debate on precise partitioning" to find something objectionable. That statement is supported by two refs; the first is news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change and is sane, but doesn't support the statement; the second is by Scafetta. I also notice that I don't get a "see edits" button for that page.

Looking at The Theory of the Leisure Class, I recall not liking the Wiki articles I used for convenience; but Gpedia is if anything worse. It sez "Veblen examines the origins and behaviors of the leisure class, a non-productive upper stratum that sustains social dominance through displays of wealth rather than contributions to societal utility" but that's wrong; as I noted, the title is a lie and Grok has been misled. I suspect it is reporting what TV himself thought, but errs by stating it as a fact; he makes the mistake that nowadays would be analoguous to the "progressive" idea that bankers or venture capitalists are parasites and contribute nothing.

But this is all v0.1. I look forward to something out of beta being rather better. Oh, before I'm off: what does yer meeja say? The answer is... meh, nothing interesting.

Refs

* Populism fast and slow.

* Bill Gates Shakes Up the Climate Discussion.

The Theory of the Leisure Class

The Theory of the Leisure Class is a book by Thorstein "Bunde" Veblen. It isn't very good. It has one good idea - conspicuous consumption¹ - but spins that out into page after page of turgid Marxist-tinged prose⁶. Read it for yourself, here, if you dare. I started off reading carefully; about a third of the way through I became bored by the repetition; by two thirds I was skipping.

One of the many things wrong with it is the title, which is a lie. "Leisure class" in the context of the Gilded Age brings to mind the idle rich but these, ostensibly at least, are not his subject; instead "The leisure class as a whole comprises the noble and the priestly classes², together with much of their retinue. The occupations of the class are correspondingly diversified; but they have the common economic characteristic of being non-industrial. These non-industrial upper-class occupations may be roughly comprised under government, warfare, religious observances, and sports". So the leisure class actually has occupation, generally full-time. I think what he is doing here is using "Leisure class"" as a technical term quite different from its commonplace meaning, but relying on us to elide the two uses; but this is dishonest³; and he should just have written "non-industrial", or invented a term such as "class X".

The other thing wrong with the title - and much of the text - is the "class" element. I think it fits happily into his Marxist-type outlook, but really there's no need to bring class into this at all; his observation is simply that people like to signal status, and one way of doing that is to demonstrate their wealth, and one way to demonstrate wealth is conspicuous consumption: to consume pointlessly and visibly. I can't see any reason why this would be restricted to any particular class, even if there were any real class boundaries; although obvs it will be more obvious amongst those with money above the survival level. Fans of feminism won't be happy with his observation (recall we're back in 1899) that women, as the chattels of their husbands, are particularly suitable to consume conspicuously - by doing nothing useful - thereby vicariously consuming for their husbands; but this seems fair enough for the times. Fans of religion won't be happy with the idea that ministers of religion consume vicariously for their absent masters.

TV presents his work as a theory, or perhaps as a discussion, or an inquiry; but with my Popper hat on I wonder if it should be considered in any way a scientific theory? Is it testable; could it be falsified? I suspect not; I think it could perhaps join Freudian analysis or Marxism on Popper's list of anti-examples. Wiki quotes Mencken saying Do I enjoy a decent bath because I know that John Smith cannot afford one—or because I delight in being clean? Do I admire Beethoven's Fifth Symphony because it is incomprehensible to Congressmen and Methodists—or because I genuinely love music? Do I prefer terrapin à la Maryland to fried liver, because plowhands must put up with the liver—or because the terrapin is intrinsically a more charming dose? And this seems to be a problem for TV which I don't think he addresses: in many instances he has no particular criterion for distinguishing when a consumption is merely conspicuous, and it is hard to see how he could have⁹. This seems related to the Puritan type idea that some things are necessary, and others not. Nonetheless I'm quite happy with his overall idea.

In the preface, he talks about the data employed in his argument, which makes me snort because there is no data. Indeed most of the text, page after page, remains resolutely abstract without even examples; but as to any actual data, it is entirely absent.

There are some minor oddities. For example: The duel is in substance a more or less deliberate resort to a fight as a final settlement of a difference of opinion. This is wrong: a duel is to settle points of honour. At one point he tries to explain women's fashion - he is fascinated by corsets - and correctly I think identifies it as signalling an inability to do any physical labour. He also tries to explain why each season sets new trends but his explanation does not convince. There is one, within his theory: that demonstrating you have the spare to allow devoting time to following the latest fashions demonstrates wealth; as does having the ability to acquire said fashion earlier than others.

I could do without the dodgy race-science elements; this doesn't seem to be necessary (his theory after all is quite generic⁸) and I didn't find the dolicho-blond stuff enlightening.

His schema⁷ has women-as-chattels as natural; towards the end he notices movements for female emancipation but does not seem sympathetic⁴: In a sense, then, the new-woman movement marks a reversion to a more generic type of human character, or to a less differentiated expression of human nature. It is a type of human nature which is to be characterized as proto-anthropoid, and, as regards the substance if not the form of its dominant traits, it belongs to a cultural stage that may be classed as possibly sub-human. This isn't a problem of his theory, obvs.

How much does all this apply today? CC amongst certain groups still exists, but I think in modified form. I don't think it applies much to me⁵ or those I know. Dressing well - dress is one of TV's few examples - is now available so readily that it doesn't form much of a signifier; I like the idea that luxury belief is now one of the marks. And he will certainly have to find himself some other class demarcation, now that "industrial" employment is so reduced.

Trivia: the idea of a Veblen Good, which is named for him, is nowhere mentioned.

Update: 2025/10/25: I discussed this with infants and wife. They were less inclined to believe the underlying theory than I was; and more inclined to say that it is impossible to separate CC from things-you-like.

Notes

1. I'm being somewhat lazy in giving wiki refs for all that; in these aspects I do not particularly recommend the wiki articles; I'm just using them to identify the concepts.

2. The book is full of language like that.

3. An idea taken up later by John "Justice as Fairness" Rawls.

4. To be fair, he has rather more to say than just this. To quote somewhat more sympathetically: But... futility of life or of expenditure is obnoxious... The impulse is perhaps stronger upon the woman than upon the man to live her own life in her own way and to enter the industrial process of the community at something nearer than the second remove.

5. But I would say that, wouldn't I? Perhaps blogging counts as a conspicuous display of spare time. We're back to the problem of how to you tell if an activity is CC or not.

6. See my witty para 3 on "Meritocratic" Sandel.

7. Not the CC idea; that is, in principle, entirely sex-agnostic. By "schema" I'm referring to his cod history of social development; characteristically this not only has no examples or data, it also employs his own terms to describe things, so you can't even tell what periods he is referring to.

8. Belatedly I recall to mention: at some point, that I cannot now be bothered to find, TV is critical of capitalism, because of the CC it encourages. But this is silly. CC is a generic feature of human nature driven by status seeking; the concept works in any system.

9. Another of his examples is studying classics and dead / useless languages being respectable, because useless. This sort-of feels plausible-ish, but doesn't fit quite properly.

Refs

* An alarming compendium of DOJ misrepresentations and falsehoods.

* In Search of a "New Environmentalism".

* On the Success of Neoliberalism.

* Film review: A Real Pain.

* Book review: Man's Search for Meaning.

* A visit to the Imperial War Museum.

* Liberalism, ISIS, and Toaster Nationalism / On the Success of Neoliberalism.

* Elite misinformation is an underrated problem.

* Highbrow climate misinformation.

It’s not the End of the World as We Know It

Back in April I presciently predicted, or perhaps just noted, The End of the World as We Know It, due to the Mango Mussolini's idiot tariff policy. But the sad story turns out to have a happy "ending": things have largely recovered. I put ending into quotes because, obvs, there's plenty of time for things to go wrong.

You may, like me, be tempted to suggest that all of that recovery and surge is AI hype, but you're probably wrong: el Econo reckons One concern is that artificial-intelligence investment spending, especially on data centres, is the only thing keeping the party going, spelling disaster if investors cool on the technology. This argument is strongest in America, where investment in information-processing equipment and software (IPES) accounted for about 40% of growth in real GDP over the past year. Yet, at an absolute minimum, two-thirds of IPES has nothing to do with AI. The data include, for instance, a business buying a computer. In addition, outside America there is no evidence whatsoever that IT is driving growth. Instead, the story is the resilience of the real economy even when the pols fuck it up, as long as they don't do so too badly.

The tariff case comes to the Supremes on Nov 5th.

Refs

* Prisons aren't filled with harmless pot smokers.

* Age and Cognitive Ability.

* Abundance 2025 - Review by RP Jr.

* MAGA Has a Point About Science. It's Time to Listen.

* Gaza Fatality Analysis: Latest Findings from Hamas & IDF Data.

Prospects for Peace

In the Middle East that is; the Russian invasion of Ukraine is doomed to grind on for longer I fear; more on that anon. Trump has a cunning plan, and Netenyahu has accepted it¹; Hamxs's rather delayed response is "yes, but"², as expected; Trump the eternal optimist³ thinks that things are going well.

Talks, as ever, continue. But while they do I have a chance to predict the future and get it wrong⁶, so everyone can tell me how wrong I was. Do you have a better prediction? Leave it in the comments⁵.

Hamxs is soaked in blood and has no function beyond terrorism, or resistance as they would put it; agreeing to disarm would be organisational suicide, so I don't see that happening. Looking at the plan, the actionable timeline appears to be:

* If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.

* Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.

* Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after 7 October 2023, including all women and children detained in that context. For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans.

So nominally (a) both agree; (b) fighting stops, some kind of withdrawl; (c) within 72 hours all hostages released; (d) Israel releases some terrorists. I find myself doubtful that Hamxs will go for (c). The hostages are useless to them, indeed a millstone round their neck, but they have been too stupid to see that in the past and I don't see them getting any clearer in their thinking.

What of other instances where long-term terrorists have given up? The obvious analogue is Ireland, where the IRA eventually gave up. There were key differences though: mostly, the conflict was embedded in civil society on both sides; and the world was obviously just passing it by; the public and the world was not egging them on⁴. This was organisational suicide for the IRA but not for the individual members, a possible model for Hamxs, but the situations are not really analogous.

Speaking of the public egging them on, and referencing Polling Pales, there's an updated poll from May. Whether it can be trusted I leave you to decide for yourself; I'll discuss it as though it can be. I'll start with killed-and-injured, because it is good news: the proportion of families with killed-or-injured has gone down; only slightly, but definitely. This is remarkable. [2025/10/28: more good news: the proportion of families with dead-or-injured continues to decline, down to 72% on October].

The report doesn't think it is remarkable, because it doesn't remark on it (update: and in Oct, does its best to draw your eyes away from the decline). It is not impossible of course: if you manage to wipe out enough entire families, it could happen. But more likely it is either inaccuracies, or sampling errors, or people lying, or whatever⁷. 

A solid majority remain delusional: A majority of 56% (65% in the West Bank 42% in the Gaza Strip) expect Hamas and Israel to reach a ceasefire agreement in a few days while 41% do not expect that. That's essentially the same as a year previous. On the plus side, 48% of Gazans... say they support the demonstrations that took place over the past two months in the Gaza Strip demanding that Hamas abandon control over that Strip so there may be some hope. About 50% would be willing to emigrate; I would say that's a good solution if it were possible to find somewhere to take them. And (fig 17) armed struggle is now less popular than negotiations, at least in Gaza; the West Bank, which sees rather less armed struggle, prefers to fight.

Overall I think that agreement leading to release of the hostages is unlikely for now, whilst hoping that I am wrong.

Returning to reporting of yer conflict, Aunty says Hamxs wants to keep enough firepower to defend itself against Palestinians who want to take their revenge for nearly two decades of brutal rule and the catastrophe the Hamas attacks brought down on them.

Not really fitting into my flow of text, but I feel I ought to say the obvious: the claims of Israeli genocide are bollox and mostly malicious.

Notes

1. As far as I can tell, unconditionally. He has subsequently said things that make this somewhat hard to square, but nonetheless the words "I support your plan to end the war in Gaza which achieves our war aims" (or their Hebrew equivalent? The meeja is really appalling at providing full information) have been uttered.

2. Actually it is far more complicated than that with various factions disagreeing, and Hamxs's actual words being so ambiguous as to be close to meaningless, as expected. The fat corrupt political types living in luxury in Qatar are naturally keen to continue their fat lives, though the recent bombing may have reminded them that they don't get a free pass; the menwithgunz in Gaza have no lives other than terrorism, so are unlikely to want to turn into unemployable ex-terrorists at peace.

3. You will correctly object that Trump is also an eternal liar and uninterested in distinguishing true from false, but I think that he is also genuinely optimistic, like many such.

4. Indeed, I imagine most of the IRA's wives and mothers were urging them to give up. Shamefully, now, useless deluded folks in the West are still egging the Pales on. These people need to find meaning in their own lives, rather than other people's conflicts.

5. Speaking of comments, do try to avoid getting yourself spammed. Repeat offenders will just be suppressed.

6. 2025/10/09: Initial reports are promising and (10/10) a ceasefire appears to be in effect. 10/11: ceasefire still seems to be in place, but "Hamas hasn’t changed. It still believes that weapons and violence are the only means to keep its movement alive". Joy in Israel and Gaza but not amongst the "progressive" in the West. 10/14: Pales behaving badly: part 1, part 2, part 3. Hamxs have now released the hostages they haven't killed, but not the ones they have killed; this bad-faith slow-walking isn't promising. 10/28: Hamxs still slow-walking the hostages (and other dodgy stuff), and the prospects for phase two don't look good; and just as I say that, more fighting (more).

7. Another interesting discrepancy: see this X post and the corresponding Graun article: the male / female death rate inferred from orphancy is 6, not the 3 reported by Hamxs.

Refs

* A Muslim faith leader calls for stronger moral leadership in the Middle East?

* Care less / The Struggle / History is Bunk.

* Country capture.

* In Defence of War.

* Reflections on recent events in the Middle East.

* By the sword you did your work and by the sword you die.

* The Syrian Experiments.

* Might is Right.

* Bioethics: Tuskegee vs. COVID.

* Blackout: A Look into the Iberian Blackout.

* Disagreeing with not discussing race and IQ.

* Bring Back the Internet Gatekeepers says RH. I remain doubtful (in general; I will of course moderate here as the spirit moves me).

* "A whole lot of BS political views basically amount to assuming that life in our hard won civilisations is just the way things are, and that you can simply remove the foundations".

* Will the absence of robotaxis in Europe mark the moment its citizens notice how far their continent has fallen behind?

* ACX Grants Results 2025.

* A Surprisingly Good Nobel Prize in Economics.

* "Gaza is awash with guns and desperate people, and Hamas has no interest in relinquishing its weapons. More repression and chaos may await the devastated strip": El Econo.

* Ecstasy and Amnesia in the Gaza Strip.

* PA condemns Hamas executions as ‘heinous crimes’.

* Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025. Danny Orbach, Jonathan Boxman, Yagil Henkin, Jonathan Braverman.

* Free Trade and Dynamic Efficiency.

* Understanding Decarbonization by RP Jr.

* Hamas terrorists were filmed removing body remains from a prepared structure and re-burying them nearby, before summoning Red Cross representatives to stage a false “discovery” for photographers.