ApplesauceIrishCream
No bio...
User ID: 882
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
But I think there are lessons for the “anti-woke” too. That is, relative age effects are a proof-of-concept for significant arbitrary privilege being a real thing.
Is this a novel lesson for many people? The first thing that comes to mind in terms of significant arbitrary privilege is "being born to wealthy parents." Probably many people would support some balancing against that privilege--trying to recruit students from low-income or first in family to go to college backgrounds is relatively non-controversial--but algorithmically adjusting test scores to correct for parental wealth strikes me as a fringe, though findable, preference.
Similarly, "not having significant developmental or learning disorders." Generally arbitrary, but algorithmically adjusting test scores in this case would defeat much of the sorting purpose of test scores to begin with.
Some people are luckier than others; initial inequality is inevitable. But luck exists across a tremendous number of dimensions; only some of those dimensions can be corrected-for socially; and many fewer of them should be.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Learning disorders are pretty close to being a special case of an IQ differential. Someone with a lower IQ will struggle to ever be as good a doctor as someone with a higher IQ, holding other attributes constant. (Lower IQ does not directly indicate a better bedside manner, or other benefits; that sort of "fairness/balancing/whatever" is for video games, not reality.)
Affirmative action has many problems, and "less capable graduates" barely makes the list. Even if you set aside the naked racial preferences and the reputation hit to successful minorities, you still have the mismatch between students and institutions, leading to much higher minority dropout rates from institutions above their level, when they could have been successful at institutions closer to their testing levels. Testing has a tight correlation with academic performance and graduation rates; when minorities end up thoroughly dominating the lowest quintile in class, it should come as no surprise that they also dominate the list of dropouts. (Of course, when you add in predatory student loans, and the worst case scenario is "loans + no degree," affirmative action starts to look like a perfect storm of how to screw over minorities most efficiently. I guess advocates of affirmative action can rest on their good intentions?)
"Adjusting" is never free; there is always a tradeoff. Even the mere knowledge that "adjusting" is happening generates second-order effects. Sometimes the specific policy is net-positive--the tradeoff was worth it. All too often, though, the effects are net-negative, as with affirmative action.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Sure he is motivated to survive: it's not clear he knows effective means to maximize his odds of survival, that's the whole problem (starting this war has done very little good for his long-term survivability, I think).
I think that the entire situation involves a great number of mistakes, generally tragic ones, by all parties. The magnitude of the mistakes varies by quite a lot, from the trivial (Zelensky's glamor magazine photo shoot) to the profound (Putin's decision to attempt the conquest of Ukraine).
In my view, Putin's decision to invade has utterly wrecked his own medium-term objectives. I believe that he wanted to elevate Russia back into the upper ranks of the Great Powers, and intended the enforcement of a Russian sphere of influence as a necessary step towards that goal. The actual effect has been to make Russia a pariah state, and hardened anti-Russian sentiment all along its borders.
Even if Ukrainian resistance collapses tomorrow, and Russian forces secure Kyiv within a week or so, the above failure remains. Putin's life's work is dead. Immediately calling a unilateral ceasefire and pulling every Russian back across the border won't revive it, either.
I feel pretty confident in my read of Putin's motives, but not confident at all in predicting his next move, since I don't see a next move that is productive from his perspective. Stall and hope for a miracle? But Russian attitudes stereotypically tend to the dour, not the optimistic.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
In hindsight, I was wrong to guess in February that Russia wouldn't be foolish enough to invade.
Oh, I was completely wrong on this point as well. After Putin's adventures in Georgia and Crimea, I expected that we'd see a repeat, salami-slicing a good chunk of the Donbass, but stopping there. I was stuck in the mental mode of "the previous tactics worked, let's repeat," while it seems obvious in hindsight that Putin's thinking was more "the previous probing tactics revealed Western weakness, let's escalate" and we got the thunder run on Kyiv.
Perhaps if the thunder run on Kyiv had gone differently, or Zelenskyy had fled, defenses might have collapsed.
I think you're right that this alternate timeline gets closest to a win for Putin. The Western response in reality was a panicked economic cancellation of Russia. In the alternate "quick Russian military victory" timeline, what changes when the West is presented with the fait accompli? What's the likelihood that the West simply accepts the result, maybe with a militarized border in Poland?
There are countervailing pressures in the alternate timeline--maybe a quick Russian victory makes Putin more of a threat, accelerating the economic/diplomatic responses in the same direction, but with more urgency. Alternatively, maybe the real timeline where Russia got bogged down, showing weakness, allowed for a more vigorous economic/diplomatic response, and full economic cancellation would be seen as too risky in the "stronger Russia" timeline.
Setting aside the details of the military situation within Ukraine, I think there are two big points that Putin has hard lost in the context of European politics. The first is diplomatic, with Sweden and Finland set to join NATO. The Finnish border was never friendly, but going full NATO is a stark rejection of Putin's publicly declared preferences. The second is more cultural/economic, with the collapse of the European Green movement, and in particular German efforts to figure out an energy strategy that is reliable and diminishes Russian influence.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I have a mental model of Putin that I believe has held up well, though I can't claim anything like complete predictive power. I think his goals are Russian-nationalist; his preferred methods are more security-state than economic; and his beliefs include survival requires growth.
The post-Cold-War 90s were a massive paradox, nowhere more sharply felt than Russia. If you'd asked a Soviet citizen of the late 70s or early 80s, "imagine the range of possible outcomes where the USSR decisively loses the Cold War within the next 10-15 years," the real outcome would have been dismissed as a ludicrously optimistic drug-induced fever dream. At the same time, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting economic chaos in Russia were deeply traumatic on a societal level.
When Putin came to power, he was looking at a cratered population replacement rate that by the numbers predicted that Russia would not be a viable nation-state by 2100. Reversing this trend became his life's work. In order to create a Russia that would choose to produce the next generation, Putin needed to rebuild a sense of pride and accomplishment that had been savagely damaged by the failure and collapse of the Soviet Union. Not only had the Cold War ended in Soviet defeat, it had ended with an American triumph, and the prosperity-bordering-on-decadence of the American 90s only made the Russian dislocations cut more deeply. I don't know to what extent Putin's anti-Americanism is ideological, but I think it's sufficiently explained by a strategic choice to build up Russian confidence by undermining American successes and pushing for American failures.
(A sadly common mistake in the US is to insist on putting Putin in our cultural context rather than his own. "Putin is a Trump supporter! Putin is a fan of Hillary!" No. Putin prefers Putin and/or Russia. To the extent that he cares about American leadership, he'd prefer the self-sabotage of poor decisions generally, and any policy choices that gives him a freer hand to operate elsewhere.)
In the case of Ukraine, I think Putin was taking steps to re-establish Russian Great Power status by enforcing a sphere of influence. I was also quite surprised by his full-bore invasion including a major strike towards Kyiv; I thought he'd continue the salami-slicing tactics of the past 10 years in Georgia and Crimea, this time with the Donbass as his target. Evidently, he decided that the Western non-response to the salami-slicing indicated a weakness that he was free to exploit with escalation to large scale conquest. He was wrong, on a great number of levels.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I agree that BC's take is bad and should feel bad, but responding with insults (even accurate ones!) is not within the local rules.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Then there's the nuanced positions. Somebody can be vehemently pro-choice and I could be in a relationship with them despite me leaning pro-life, but it would have to be understood that I do want to be consulted on matters pertaining to childbirth within the relationship, as long as she understands that I'd never hold a gun to her head and force her to carry a fetus to term.
Obviously you know yourself better than I can, but this specific position strikes me as dangerous. An unexpected pregnancy can be stressful and values-clarifying in ways that are difficult to anticipate. I would not be at all shocked by one or the other of the two people in the hypothetical relationship you describe radically changing position when confronted with the real, immediate situation (she decides "you get no say, period," or you decide "abortion is a dealbreaker, do it and I'm out," for instance). I'm not even suggesting bad faith! Just that a truly accidental bait and switch can happen, and abortion is the perfect storm for that type of accident.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
The US has a longstanding position against the military use of nukes by other people, and has made firm and public "serious consequences will follow" statements to that effect. Admitting that this position was a bluff is credibility-destroying, and frankly, credibility is more difficult to build than cities.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
If you are "shocked/saddened" that someone might disagree with you, this community may not be for you.
Your post is a central example of attempting to build consensus and trying to enforce ideological conformity, which is against the rules.
Scott's opinions are not above criticism, but this forum is for discussion and debate, not emotionally-loaded attempts at shaming.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I believe you may have overlooked the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, where the US promised to do precisely that.
A random detail of interest--the US Ambassador to Hungary at the time was the father of the current US Secretary of State.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
You've moved the goalposts from
Suppose you are a billionaire and want to decrease the amount of racism in the world; what decent options do you have?
to
Second, what do you think are the policies of the ideal world?
The first is a reasonable question--"how would I improve this situation, given resources?" The second is unreasonable. An ideal world has no policies because it needs no policies: it is ideal. It is trivially true that removing a large source of racism would not remove all racism; it would, however, be an improvement.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." --A. Hamilton
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
"Are you trying to connect with a human, or campaigning for office? Pick one"
"I am trying to connect with a high-status human, by appearing to be high-status myself," so yeah, basically campaigning for office.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
The law of evidence is a masterpiece of applied philosophy, where the central question is "how can we be confident (for any value of confident) that we know something is true?" The intricacies of hearsay and the balancing of admissibility (probative value vs. prejudicial effect) come from hard-won knowledge about measuring claims to truth in an imperfect world where people lie, or are mistaken, or were not present to observe the thing you really want to know about. It is top to bottom messy compromises and carefully honed best guesses presented to a random sample of average folk who are supposed to use common sense to sort truth from fiction.
The reason a lot of it is so complex is simple--the problem is really really hard, and we need a workable approach now. So we have a system, the result of centuries of work across millions upon millions of cases, trying to provide a delicate compromise between accuracy, fairness, efficiency, and a host of other values.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
The term you're looking for in the philosophy of punishment is "incapacitation"--making the criminal incapable of repeating his crime. Imprisonment gets there by putting physical separation between the criminal and his potential victims.
I'd be surprised if they didn't also cover deterrence, both general and specific?
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
The death penalty exists because horrific crimes exist where any lesser punishment is obviously insufficient. Those horrific crimes are...not as rare as anyone would prefer, and blood cries out for justice.
Vigilante justice is a form of justice. It's...not great, but nearly always available. It has significant problems with consistency, proportionality, accuracy, etc. all of which organized forms of justice can (and do) improve on, which is the underlying social contract. No vigilante justice, so long as organized justice provides better value in aggregate.
But organized justice needs to do the work, and the work suuuuuucks. When organized justice flinches away from the messy business of punishment, it violates the social contract that gives it legitimacy. Enough of that, and the system loses credibility, and people turn to vigilante justice instead. (This is bad. Vigilante justice is the second-worst outcome.)
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
But, the reality is that the categories of death-eligible crimes has expanded far beyond the scope of such extreme crimes.
It has not. "Extreme," in this case, is a measure of severity, not rarity.
There is not a single item on your list where the guilty criminal is routinely sentenced to death in CA, much less executed. The number of crimes committed in CA where the criminal deserves death considerably outnumbers the number of actual executions. Which is at least directional evidence towards the system working properly! Organized justice should lead to fewer executions, because of all the countervailing moral considerations involved that balance against justice.
The implication that CA--of all places!--is too quick and/or indiscriminate in its application of capital punishment is ridiculous.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Yes, incapacitation no longer applies as a justification when the circumstances aren't met. Imprisonment meets the incapacitation justification for the duration of the imprisonment, but not afterwards. Capital punishment meets the incapacitation justification permanently, as can various forms of maiming in the cases of specific crimes.
If reality is a rich tapestry, philosophy often involves taking a microscopic look at one of the threads. This is one of those cases. If you're looking to make policy, you should definitely consider way more factors than whether a specific type of punishment meets a specific philosophical justification!
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
This forum may be one of the absolute worst places on the entire internet for the members to apply their individual experiences to this particular topic. If you are here, your language skills are extremely good. Everyone here is an outlier in the same direction on this topic.
Gifted and talented students are a special problem in education, much like the learning-disabled, but for the opposite reason. For those with disabilities, it's difficult to find the right strategies to achieve education. For the gifted, nearly every strategy works, and it's difficult to find the best strategy.
Though as you note, "failing to move on when education has been achieved" is by far the most common way for the system to fail gifted students.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
In my view, effective self-defense is a natural right, and any reasonable approach to imprisonment abridges that right pretty harshly. I am not therefore opposed to imprisonment! There are contexts where natural rights may be properly abridged, and this is one of them.
However, you can't abridge a natural right without consequences, and in this instance, I believe that the state takes on the moral responsibility for the prisoner's defense, since the state has so sharply limited his ability to provide that for himself. The state--and in a democracy, the people--can't shirk this moral responsibility by just shrugging and saying, "shit happens." The state should prevent prison rape where and when it can, in balance with its other responsibilities, and punish the inevitable failures.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Imprisonment, as a punishment, is intended to restrict a prisoner's ability to commit crimes, by separating him from the rest of society and putting him under the supervision of guards. This is a direct, and intended, removal of liberty.
However, there are also second-order effects, that are not intended, but are--practically speaking--inevitable. One of those is the limitation on the prisoner's right of effective self-defense. This limitation isn't justified by the standard philosophical defenses of imprisonment-as-punishment, so in my view, the state needs to step in to replace what it has taken without justification.
You could similarly argue that if the state takes away someone's freedom, they are obliged to provide him with freedom.
More precisely, I'm arguing that if the state takes away someone's freedom without justification, they are obliged to provide him with something in exchange. In this case, if you remove someone's right to effective self defense without justification for removing that right specifically, then you're obliged to step in and make a reasonable effort to provide protection.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I would make a distinction between "fringe" and "extreme." "Fringe" would mean very unpopular; maybe 1% of the population believes [X], so it's a fringe belief. "Extreme" means far from the "average" view (for some calculation of average). So fringe ideas can show up wherever they like on any political spectrum, while extreme views can be much more popular, but not centrist.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
It seems to me that an Asshole Filter can only be dismantled from the inside, but the person who sets up that filter (in whatever context) doesn't have much reason to do so--in fact, the usual behavior he sees from others just reinforces the reason for the filter. Quite the unfortunate Catch-22.
(And yeah, I've seen a number of the "if you don't agree that [whatever], unfriend me!" posts. Haven't found a better approach than ignoring the posts, and backing away slowly...but that doesn't really help anyone in the long run.)
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
At least a couple of different types--first, a rare belief that (currently) doesn't have a strong political valence. For example, advocates of a number of rare diets or other health-related practices that are generally rejected by the mainstream, but also don't map to current politics. Second, a "compromise" position on a political topic that takes strong elements from both ends of the political scale and fuses them together in a way that partisans on both sides would reject, though for different reasons.
"Wearing magnets is good for your health."
"Human fetuses are morally equivalent to any other human, but humans are bad for the environment, so abortion is a positive good."
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Best starting point I can think of is intellectual humility--embrace the idea that you've got more to learn than you know, and grains of wisdom can be found in many unexpected places. In terms of external behavior, be willing to talk to anyone, even if that person is unpopular.
Even here, there is some wisdom in moderation; I'm not advocating for going full-bore quokka.
They managed to confuse Tolkien's Elves with Santa's Elves.
More options
Context Copy link